Tuesday, April 12
Next time, take the stairs
Downtown pedestrians got a little excitement today, and gratefully avoided injury, when Cheryl Longnecker accidentally backed her Subaru Outback up the stairs of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. Longnecker was attempting to parallel park her car on Market Street when her right foot, which was covered by a cast and a foam boot, got stuck on the gas pedal. The accident damaged her car and some of the stairs; no charges were filed. “All I wanted to do was return my library books,” Longnecker said.
City set to spend $106M
This evening City Council approved a $106 million budget for fiscal year 2005-06. The final document cuts the real estate tax rate by four cents to $1.05 per $100 of assessed value, and eliminates the equivalent of 14.25 positions from the City payroll. In the coming months, Councilor Kevin Lynch says, the City will conduct work sessions to examine rising expenditures for jails and social services. “Looking at our trends, it’s pretty clear that a number of the costs are driven by low-income demographics in the city,” he says.
Wednesday, April 13
Target won’t miss
With the official opening of Target only three months away—July 20, to be precise—the marketing campaign officially gets underway with a 52-page, full-color booklet inserted into this morning’s edition of The Daily Progress. With its focus on home décor, including the Isaac Mizrahi Pop Flower bedding collection, the promotional material aims squarely at Albemarle suburbania.
Thursday, April 14
State to developers: Hell, yeah!
Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population might get by on small membership, but ASAP manages to pull in the big dogs. Tonight Al Weed and Mitch Van Yahres gathered with ASAP to tackle the question, Does State government help or hinder growth management. Without a doubt, the State hinders localities from managing growth, they said, with Van Yahres emphasizing the heavy load of campaign donations tied to development interests. Weed stressed the effect of Virginia’s “Mother May I” Dillon Rule, which requires that all local authority be delegated by the State. Though he didn’t pitch his newest venture, Public Policy Virginia (www.ppvir.org), Weed is clearly on track to become a ubiquitous speaker across the Fifth Congressional district, where he lost his November challenge to Republican Virgil Goode.
Friday, April 15
Leitao plays ball with UVA
After visiting UVA yesterday for eight hours, 44-year-old DePaul University basketball coach Dave Leitao is today unveiled as the successor to Pete Gillen, who last month was sacked with a $2 million contract buy-out. Leitao, who is 58-34 in three years at DePaul, is reputed to be a great recruiter. Much has been made in local sports media of Leitao’s race, too. Leitao is the first-ever black coach of any sport at Mr. Jefferson’s university.
Saturday, April 16
Dems love C&O; C&O loves ’em back
After the State Election Board made public today the first-quarter campaign contributions to statewide candidates, it’s clear the place for local Democrats to go on Election Night, November 8, will be C&O Restaurant. Proprietors of the Water Street mainstay gave $200 and $1,000 to the campaigns of Creigh Deeds and David Toscano, respectively. Deeds, the Charlottesville-area State Senator,
is running for Attorney General; Toscano hopes to win in the House of Delegates. Other noteworthy donors to Deeds’ campaign include Russ Linden, co-chair of Charlottesville’s Democratic party, who gave $1,500, and UVA history professor Jeffrey Rossman, who contributed $10,000. According to the SEB website, www.sbe.state.va.us, Rossman had not contributed to the campaign of would-be rival Toscano as of yesterday, but Bruce Williamson, co-owner of the ice park, had written a check for $5,000. Deeds’ war chest equals $408,876. Toscano has raised $33,175.
Sunday, April 17
Gibson outs Griffin
In his Political Notebook column this morning, Bob Gibson let more blood into the water for the sharks circling Dr. Scottie Griffin, the increasingly marginalized superintendent of city schools. Simply asking of the School Board that hired Griffin almost one year ago, “did they check out her background,” he details several lawsuits that have trailed her since a 1999 claim in Flint, Michigan, that was settled out of court. The suits all seem to point to bullying management tactics. Griffin, who started rubbing people the wrong way as soon as she got here on July 1, left her last job merely six months into it. Gibson wonders, “Did the Charlottesville School Board know when they hired Griffin from New Orleans that she was being sued there in federal court?”
Monday, April 18
Here we are now, entertain us
Atsushi Miura had it right when the former local musician sang, “Charlottesville is so boooorrring.” At least that’s suggested by a report City Council is expected to hear tonight from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Commission on Children and Families. After interviewing 260 local middle- and high-school students, the CCF found they want more after-school activities. Though 69 percent of teens were already involved in after-school programs, a majority want other stuff to do—perhaps a teen club, coffee house, or music hall where adults were “respectful and caring” but not “controlling.”
Written by Cathy Harding from staff reports and news sources.
Tracks of their tiers
Did Warner dis the UVA union by signing the charter bill?
On April 6, Governor Mark Warner signed the long-debated university charter bill, now known as the Higher Education Restructuring Act. Charter’s critics, who were hoping the Guv would significantly amend the bill, say they’re disappointed by the outcome.
“He didn’t do us any favors,” says Jan Cornell, president of the Staff Union at UVA (SUUVA).
As it stands, charter will create a two-tiered labor force at UVA. Current employees will be governed by the present human resource policy, while future employees will be hired under a different policy. The exact terms of the new policy will be determined later this year, when every Virginia college will draw up a “management agreement” that will detail the schools’ relationship with the State.
Cornell and other critics say the likely outcome is the new human resource policy at UVA won’t be as good as the current one. The long-term effect, they say, is that working for UVA, the region’s largest employer with 11,217 employees last year, will be less rewarding.
SUUVA and other labor unions like the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the AFL-CIO pushed Warner to amend the charter bill and eliminate the two-tiered labor force, to no avail. However, Cornell is encouraged that the charter law requires schools to make their management agreements and new human resource policies public. “We’ll be checking them out,” Cornell promises.
Last year, when charter first appeared on the legislative table, Cornell predicted that protecting workers’ welfare amidst the bill’s many complexities would be SUUVA’s biggest task in its three-year history. “UVA wanted to make itself quasi-private,” says Cornell. “But em-ployees wouldn’t have any collective bargaining rights. We got UVA to remain a State agency.”
UVA spokesperson Carol Wood downplays SUUVA’s role in shaping the charter bill, which evolved significantly in the General Assembly. “It turned out we were able to achieve all our financial goals and still remain a State agency,” Wood says. “We were never going quasi-private.”
The Governor’s approved bill will create three different levels of autonomy. Well-endowed schools like UVA have more freedom from State oversight than smaller schools with less financial wherewithal. Every school’s management agreement with the State will require approval by the General Assembly sometime later this year.
Under the new law, UVA’s Board of Visitors will have authority to build buildings, set tuition and fees, and write human resource policy. In an April 12 letter to UVA employees, President John Casteen said that every two years, employees hired before charter takes effect will have the option of sticking with existing State classified employee system, or switching to the new policy. Apparently new employees will not have the option of switching to the old policy.
UVA employees will no doubt pay close attention when administrators begin drafting the management agreement, and Cornell hopes that interest will draw more members to SUUVA. This spring, the CWA, which is affiliated with SUUVA, will be sending “at least 20” organizers to Charlottesville, Cornell says, trying to sign up new union members.—John Borgmeyer
Yes, we have no compassion
Come January 1, those who assist illegal immigrants will be law-breakers
In the past five years, Hispanics have become Charlottesville’s fastest growing minority group. As is true around the country, where there’s an immigrant population, there’s political debate over whether immigrants who are here illegally—undocumented immigrants, as they’re known—should be allowed to receive public benefits.
There are no official estimates for the number of undocumented immigrants in the Charlottesville-Albemarle vicinity, but according to a March study some 250,000 undocumented immigrants reside across Virginia. The great majority of them are Latin Americans.
The latest chapter in Virginia’s ongoing immigrant debate concerns House Bill 1798/Senate Bill 1143. Governor Mark Warner signed it into law on March 28; it goes into effect on January 1. One of the bill’s two sponsors, Delegate David B. Albo (R-Fairfax) characterized his bill as disqualifying undocumented immigrants for State or local health care (barring emergency cases and disaster relief) and welfare or public assistance such as Food Stamps. The bill doesn’t spell out what, if any, new fines or court time providers who serve undocumented immigrants might face.
“I didn’t want a single darn dime to go to illegal aliens,” says Delegate Albo. “You can’t have these clinics where illegal aliens can come on in and get their Sudafed and flu shot.”
Sounds tough, but the bill basically just restates federal law, according to both Dr. Susan McLeod, district director of the Thomas Jefferson Health District and Sue Moffett, director of benefits for the City social services office.
“We don’t think that [the bill] is going to impact us much at all,” Moffett says—a sentiment McLeod echoes.
While HB 1798/SB 1143 makes undocumented immigrants ineligible for benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), for which they were already disqualified under federal law, there is one important adjustment. To qualify for the benefits under the State bill, immigrants will now have to provide proof they reside here legally.
Problems that do arise from the bill will stem from this proof of residence component, says Tim Freilich, managing attorney with the Virginia Justice Center. Freilich worries that with the new identification requirements even those here legally could have difficulty getting their hands on the myriad documents required.
“To train every intake worker in the state to recognize those documents takes an awful lot of money,” explains Freilich. “It’s a huge unfounded mandate from the State to local and county governments” and could instill fears that might prevent people from applying for services to which they are legally entitled.
Moreover, the attitude behind the bill—that of pushing undocumented immigrants into an underground culture cut off from mainstream society—may worsen Virginia’s longstanding immigrant issue.
“I think that the bill itself will cause nowhere as much damage as the message that it sends, which is that the state of Virginia does not care about over 200,000 human beings who are doing the toughest work in Virginia’s economy,” says Freilich. “Everyone knows that the U.S. immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed, but it’s not going to be fixed by Virginia’s General Assembly.”
One thing Freilich and Albo agree on, however, is that the version of the bill Warner signed is significantly milder than the original version. By that measure, undocumented immigrants wouldn’t have had access to the court system and consulate-issued IDs would have been banned.
While his efforts were largely neutralized this go-round, Albo wants to continue his fight to deny undocumented immigrants even one dime. Next year, Albo plans to present a bill to the General Assembly prohibiting undocumented immigrants from registering to vote.—Nell Boeschenstein
Plan of inaction
Neighbors’ “no” to Legend is the latest stall in a two-year saga
Everyone thinks of the builders and developers as being greedy SOBs,” complained Arthur Valente, hours before Ridge Street residents claimed victory over him, folded up their “No Development” signs and left a City Planning Commission meeting. Valente’s Legend Development pulled a subdivision plan scheduled for a vote from the agenda of the meeting on Tuesday, April 12, but the dissension surrounding the proposal won’t dissipate as easily.
With the County fo-cused on maintaining rural areas and the City on containing sprawl, development that fills in undeveloped city parcels should be a favored technique. But Arthur and Alyson Valente have been trying to get an in-fill project approved for the past two years. During that time, they’ve seen the property in question at the end of Baylor Street rezoned, new planning ordinances passed, and their original City planner take a new job. A dispute with the Ridge Street Neighborhood Association is causing the present impasse, but it’s just the latest in a string of roadblocks between drafting the blueprints and moving the earth.
Legend Development is a small company with six employees. Waylands Grant in Crozet is its most recognizable development.
The Moores Creek subdivision plan (the developers have dropped the apostrophe in the name of the creek) would extend Baylor Lane, off Ridge Street, to build 29 single-family homes. It is a “by right” development, allowed by zoning regulations, which must be reviewed by the Planning Commission because it entails more than 10 units. Between 2003 and last Tuesday night, three or four different iterations of the plan have been discussed with the City. The file takes up a full shelf in City Planner Brian Haluska’s office. “It is kind of its own animal,” he says.
“There are very few pieces of land that would support a subdivision this big anymore,” Haluska adds. “We may be fresh out of land after these next couple of years.”
The Ridge Street Neighborhood Asso-ciation says the steep wooded slope above Moore’s Creek is basically unbuildable.
“Some folks are opposed to the development mainly because of the environmental impact and the access issues,” says Wayne Cabell, president of the association. “In order to build on this site, there would have to be a lot of earth moving.”
The neighbors were piqued by what they say was a lack of dialogue with Legend Development. Their research indicates this would be the first sizable development approved without feedback from the community in 20 years.
The construction-weary residents already hear constant hammering and hoeing for another 100 units going up in the area. By now, they are familiar with the ins and outs of planning and have learned to couch their objections in the language of City code.
A number of dead-end streets wind through their neighborhood behind Fifth Street. Ridge Street is the only in-out access. Legend Development’s plan included a reduced street width for the Baylor extension, with room for on-street parking in only one direction. The proposed road was also steeper than allowed and required a variance. City Traffic Engineer Ken Keena said the steep hill and a sharp corner made the proposed road unsafe, and City staff recommended that the Planning Commission deny the variance.
Valente withdrew it before it could be denied. He says he’s already responded to concerns by scaling back the proposal to 29 houses from more than 50. He also hopes to donate three acres of the nine-acre parcel as an educational area to study riparian habitat and extend the Rivanna Trail.
Valente says he’s tried to dialogue with the association, and correspondence with the group proves it. In an August letter to him, the neighbors acknowledge his “openness and willingness to talk” but rule out dialogue until the “access issue is addressed.”
“If you attempt to build houses in that neighborhood without addressing the access issue, we will resist you through every legal means at our disposal,” it continues.
The logic of the market dictates that this land will eventually be developed, according to City Planner Haluska. “Those pieces of land were too expensive to build on [before] and basically undevelopable because of the slopes,” he explains. “But the market takes off high enough and the money you can get per unit starts going up.”
So the neighborhood association will savor its success while Valente runs the numbers on changing the plans again. The Moores Creek subdivision is not just going away though. “We would like to work this all out,” Valente says, “so that the City, developer and association are all pleased.”—Lacey Phillabaum
The green challenger
UVA planning prof argues for delegate seat
Richard Collins has a lot to say. As a UVA professor, he’s lectured to students about urban and environmental planning, and in 1980 he founded the Institute for Environmental Negotiation on Grounds to mediate complex public policy disputes. He’s written four books and a host of articles on conflicts between public and private interests. Now he wants to talk to you.
Last week, Collins, 70, announced he would challenge David Toscano for the Democratic nomination in the race to represent the 57th District in Virginia’s House of Delegates (also in the race is homebuilder Kim Tingley). So far, Collins says he’s raised about $10,000. Toscano has at least four times that much.
Collins’ green leanings may play well
in Charlottesville, but he’s aware that
not everyone buys into the no-growth ideas he’s promulgated as a member of Advocates for a Sus-tainable Albemarle Population (ASAP). The notoriously talkative prof recounts the best insult he’s received so far from one of his conservative buddies. “He told me, ‘Rich, you may not elevate the debate, but you sure will extend it.’ I thought that was pretty funny.”
On Tuesday, April 14, we had a good, long talk with Collins. Below is a heavily edited transcript of the interview.—John Borgmeyer
C-VILLE: David Toscano has racked up a long list of prominent supporters in Charlottesville and Albemarle, and a lot of people think he’s the presumptive nominee. Why did you decide to challenge him?
Rich Collins: I decided I would run only after I tried everybody else who I thought would be a good candidate. I talked to Maurice Cox, Kevin Lynch, Waldo Jaquith, Jeffery Rossman—a lot of people who I thought would be a good alternative to David, especially on environmental issues. All of them said no. I’m retiring at the end of this semester, so I thought that if I really believe these things I’m saying, I could run.
Nobody ever said, “Hey Rich, you’re the guy.” Most people said, “Rich, I don’t think you should do this. You’re set up to lose.” David Toscano has been preparing for this for years. He’s got organization, he’s got money, but I think we should have competition. I like competition, I like talking to people, I like to argue. In democracy, we’re bound together in argument, and I just love that.
What ideas are you talking about?
The planet is in trouble, and to do something about that is our ethical obligation. The human population, with our drives to consume and waste, is pushing limits that were never important before. We can affect the climate and oceans, we can extinguish species. We can threaten the planet itself, just through our ways of thinking. The word “sustainability” has to enter the hierarchy of values like “liberty,” “democracy,” “fraternity” and “community.”
We have to transform the idea that growth is the single quest of mankind. The idea of sustainability—of expanding human welfare without a constantly expanding stream of goods—that’s the future. You start from where you are, in local government. That’s where the energy will come from.
How’s that going to work in Charlottesville?
In this particular situation, the 57th District is probably the best place from which to put a progressive candidate in Richmond.
It’s a question of having markets work for you. Property taxes are such a big issue for me. Growth costs a lot more than people realize. Your water gets more polluted, your traffic becomes more congested, your schools become crowded, your police force is pressed—and your tax assessments go up. I’m calling these dramatic spikes in assessment a “growth tax.”
Maybe you’ve never thought of it that way. Maybe you thought government was being foolish with expenditures, and you couldn’t understand what they were doing with all this money. What they’re doing is trying to accommodate the growth. We need to shift that tax back to those who are creating this cost.
My proposal would provide the option for local government to freeze the assessments. What could happen is that homeowners would not have to pay higher assessments until they sold the place. For newcomers, it would be like a price for admission to a community in which there has been a great investment into water, sewer, schools and an attractive community. I’m strongly in favor of using markets to make long-term changes in our economy.
She’s the ultimate girl
Jessica Witt will take Frisbee to the world stage
An athlete from Charlottesville will represent the United States at the World Games this year.
Jessica Witt, a graduate student in psychology at UVA, is one of 11 ultimate players selected to represent our country at the 2005 World Games in Duisberg, Germany, which run from July 14 to July 24. After months of deliberation, this winter a selection committee picked Witt as one of the five women to join six men on the co-ed team.
“I kept thinking it was stupid to apply, that there was no way I’d make the team,” says Witt, 26. “At first I was in total shock, and now I fluctuate between excitement, fear and disbelief.”
Founded in 1980, the World Games are sort of an alternative Olympics, held every four years, with 3,500 athletes from 100 different countries playing 40 different sports. Featured contests include familiar activities like archery and football, as well as sports unfamiliar to most Americans, such as “korfball,” a co-ed basketball-type game.
Ultimate is a fast-paced field sport that combines elements of football, soccer and basketball, played with a plastic flying disc (technically a Discraft “Ultra-Star,” not a “Frisbee”). It became a featured sport in the World Games in 2001, when Canada beat the United States’ team for the ultimate championship. As one of the best female ultimate players in the country, Witt will be a crucial part of the Americans’ quest to bring home the gold medal.
After two years playing varsity soccer for Smith College in Massachusetts, Witt devoted herself to ultimate and immediately proved herself a world-class player. In 1997 she played in the U.S. National Championship tournament with Nemesis, an all-woman’s team from Chicago. The next year, she joined the Boston women’s team, Lady Godiva, which made the semi-finals of the World Championships in Scotland.
“I love ultimate because it’s a faster game [than soccer]” she says. “You’re more involved in the game at all times. But the biggest thing is the community that ultimate offers. I love having 21 female friends to be competitive with.”
Since moving to Charlottesville in 2000, Witt has played in local recreation leagues, while saving her notoriously intense play for Backhoe, a women’s team in the ultimate hotbed of Raleigh, North Carolina. Last year, Witt led Backhoe to a third-place finish at the National Championships.
Melissa Proctor, a Backhoe captain and co-chair of the committee that picked the U.S. national team for the World Games, says Witt was a shoo-in for the team because of her all-around athleticism and exceptional ability to throw long, accurate passes.
“We were looking for players who could do it all—play offense, defense, throw well and think on the field,” Proctor says. “Jessi’s very smart on the field.”
Beth Oppenheimer, a UVA law student and new member of Backhoe, says Witt “was a huge mentor for me.” Oppenheimer says that besides her skill and work ethic, one of Witt’s greatest strengths is the way she can shift from a serious competitor on the field to a “genuinely fun person” after the game.
It’s an important part of ultimate. The sport is governed by a code of conduct called “spirit of the game,” which means players call their own fouls, even at the World Games. As ultimate gets more popular and competitive, Witt and her peers will set the example for combining high levels of competition with the spirit that makes the ultimate community unique. “Good spirit means respecting your opponent,” says Witt, “You call your own fouls honestly, you don’t heckle or give cheap shots.”
In the next few months, Witt will be practicing with the World Games team, and trying to raise money for her trip to Germany. She’ll have a chance to hang with her new teammates at Poultry Days, a huge ultimate tournament that coincides with a chicken-themed festival in Beavercreek, Ohio. The long-running tournament is as renowned for its madcap atmosphere as it is for high-level ultimate.
“I hope my team doesn’t want to take it too seriously,” Witt says. “I want to party.”—John Borgmeyer