Tuesday, April 19
Taxes the focus of Kaine’s town hall meeting here
Earlysville resident Ann Mallek says she’s seen it happen many times in her neighborhood. “People living in little farmhouses are suddenly surrounded by $800,000 homes,” she says, “their assessments go up through no fault of their own.” Real estate taxes are a major theme of Virginia’s gubernatorial campaign, and today Democrat candidate Tim Kaine told Mallek and about 60 other supporters at the Albemarle County Office Building that he is the man to solve the problem. Kaine pledged to make 20 percent of a home’s assessed value tax-free, and to exempt building additions from taxation. He also promised to veto any unfunded mandates that would pass costs on to local governments, which in turn must raise local property taxes to pick up the State’s slack. “The State needs to be a reliable partner,” Kaine said.
Wednesday, April 20
Supervisors think of the children
Albemarle’s grip on high-quality teachers will apparently continue into 2006. Today the County Board of Supervisors passed a $255.9 million budget that reduces the property tax rate to 74 cents from 76 cents per $100 of assessed value. The board bandied about the idea of cutting the rate to 72 cents, but political pressure from teachers and school administrators who want to lure and keep the best teachers, nixed that idea. The Supes allocated $81 million for school operations next year, an increase of $6.1 million over 2004-05. Supervisor Sally Thomas says public safety actually determined the tax rate. The County wants to hire more police officers and career firemen this year, and Thomas says the County used a computer program to determine that “we were not going to be able to do intelligent things, as far as debt service and ongoing obligations, if we cut the tax rate by more than two cents.”
Thursday, April 21
Push polling comes to shove
The race to replace retiring 57th District Delegate Mitch Van Yahres got hotter today when Democratic candidates Kim Tingley and David Toscano went at it on George Loper’s political website, loper.org. Toscano’s campaign accused Tingley of push polling, or feeding potential voters false information under the guise of a telephone poll. A press release by Toscano, released yesterday, says the pollsters made “numerous and incorrect assertions about [my] character and record.” Tingley immediately responded with a release titled, “Tingley Takes High Road…,” saying the poll included positive and negative questions about both candidates. “I do not believe Democrats should attack other Democrats in primaries since this only hurts the party in the general election,” Tingley said. When it comes to the 57th District, however, the Democratic race tends to equate with general balloting as the Charlottesville district is overwhelmingly blue.
Friday, April 22
Yes, but where are the WMDs?
Weapons inspector Charles Duelfer drew a rapt audience of 100 into the Iraqi nerve center of his hunt for weapons of mass destruction today at UVA’s Miller Center. Backtracking to the time when then-CIA director George Tenant directed him to “find the truth,” Duelfer recalled training a dozen experts among his staff of 1,400 to think like an Iraqi. There was just “one guy whose head you had to get into,” Saddam’s, Duelfer said. Apparently, some heads are easier to penetrate than others.
Peatross out of thedoghouse, back in the courthouse?
The Supreme Court of Virginia today released a 33-page opinion that unanimously cleared Judge Paul M. Peatross of any ethical wrongdoing. He has been virtually absent from the Albemarle bench for a year since a complaint was filed against him. It reportedly stemmed from conflicts between him and Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos and public defender Jim Hingeley. It is unclear if Peatross will resume hearing cases that involve either or both lawyers. Substitute judges have filled in for him during the year.
NEA grants humanities program $25K
U.S. Senator George Allen announced today that the Charlottesville-based Virginia Foundation for the Humanities is among the 12 Virginia arts groups granted money by the National Endowment for the Arts. VFH’s Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, which pairs a “master artist”—from carpenter to performer—with an apprentice, will receive $25,000.
Saturday, April 23
Dogwood Parade: Loyal as ever
The masses swarmed into Charlottesville today from outlying counties to watch the 47th annual Dogwood Parade. They visited Downtown with their lawn chairs and mini American flags to watch more than 200 entries, including shriners, beauty queens, middle-school bands and random city officials parade along the new route that now includes a segment along High Street. The parade is a featured event of the Dogwood Festival, which, when it started in 1950 was known as the Apple Harvest Festival.
Sunday, April 24
Getaway car didn’t get far
Four young men, ages 19-22, were picked up by City police in the early-morning hours after an armed robbery of a UVA student, according to a report in The Daily Progress. Standing against a parked car, a man held up 22-year-old Nathan Baker at knifepoint and then got into the car, which drove away. Baker noted the license plate and called police. Within minutes and a few blocks away, cops picked up four men in a car matching the description.
Monday, April 25
McKibben thinks global, lectures local
Environmentalists and fans of The New Yorker can expect a long line to get into the Harrison/Small Library auditorium at UVA today when much-lauded green author Bill McKibben addresses the subject of genetic engineering and global environmental change in a free lecture.
Compiled by Cathy Harding from staff reports and news sources.
Just what the doctor ordered?
UVA banks on a young coach to give the basketball program a shot in the arm
Forget the color of Dave Leitao’s skin. Instead, ponder his youthful glow. Although UVA has made headlines by hiring its first-ever black coach in any sport, it is the age of the basketball team’s new skipper that may determine whether the Good Ship Hoops sinks or sails. Leitao, 44, is younger than all but two of the ACC’s 12 basketball coaches, and with his youth come both optimism and doubt.
What Virginia’s foundering basketball program has needed most, besides more wins, is an image makeover. For a decade, the Cavs have languished in an aging arena haunted by the memories of the Ralph Sampson era and the When-There-Was-Defense era. University Hall became as stale as an old bag of peanuts.
Yet last week the telegenic Leitao gave the program new life just by appearing at his first press conference. Looking calm, confident and barely older than the kids he will lead next season, Leitao exuded vigor that has been absent on the bench. Suddenly, the Cavs have a comer at the helm, instead of a goner, as well as a brand-new buzz that Leitao can carry with him on talent-scouting trips. In the world of college basketball, where the winds of public perception shape teams’ recruiting fortunes, the combination of youth and novelty can help a newbie coach land top talent despite the reputations of older, more established coaches (think Jeff Jones in his first years at UVA).
There is also a good chance that Leitao’s relative youth will help him relate well to his players and lay down some needed discipline without alienating them. Leitao inherits a young but talented core of athletes who often performed last season as if they needed some tough love. (Repeatedly failing to defend the in-bounds plays under the basket, for instance, suggests strongly that the players were either getting too few stern lectures or ignoring their coaches altogether.)
If and when Leitao needs to kick an errant player in his figurative can, it might help that the coach is 13 years younger than his predecessor, Pete Gillen, and 18 years younger than South Carolina’s coach, Dave Odom, who may or may not have been close to getting the UVA job a few weeks ago. And when the players need a heart-to-heart, they will have the ear of a coach who is old enough to be their father—but, thankfully, not their grandfather.
Last week Leitao promised that next season “these young men will play and fight together like never before.” That bold prediction had the masculine, battle-ready ring of an Al Groh sound bite, which was a good sign. The Cavaliers will not drag themselves out of the ACC cellar unless they start treating basketball games like blood wars.
But can Leitao lead the team to the “championship level” in the cutthroat ACC? After all, the newcomer must square off against hall-of-fame coaches who were winning postseason games before he had even graduated from college. Although Leitao’s record as a head coach gives fans hope, it also raises questions. In his three years at DePaul, he restored an ailing program, taking the team to the NCAA Tournament in his second season. But last season DePaul’s record against NCAA tournament teams was 2-6, and losses to Bradley and Northern Illinois helped keep the Blue Demons out of the big dance.
Perhaps Leitao would have taken DePaul back to the tournament in his fourth season. Then again, perhaps he would have struggled to return them to the NIT. His resumé is just too short to reveal any patterns. Maybe the unknowable is what makes Leitao so intriguing: He may not have that many wins, but he doesn’t have that many losses either. For now he is something of a coaching tabula rasa on which fans may sketch their hoop dreams as they write checks to the John Paul Jones Arena.
His limited track record aside, most evidence suggests that Leitao—hard-nosed and no-nonsense—was a sound gamble for a program in need of rejuvenation. By handing the reins (and $925,000 a year) to a fledgling head coach, UVA has inspired many fans to think once again of the future, a victory in itself. The University could have played it safer by hiring a so-so veteran or a quick-fix specialist, but the middle-age retreads on the market would not have come packaged, as Leitao does, with the sweet scent of so many tomorrows.—Eric Hoover
The Downtown Mall’s ongoing makeover
Coming up: Hotel, French paper store and Capshaw’s music biz
There’s just no accounting for the pace of redevelopment on the Downtown Mall. Some things move fast, and some things move slowly. Eager ’villeans will just have to wait to
see what’s behind the drop cloths and scaffolding once a few highly visible downtown landmarks are refurbished.
Behind door No. 1 lies Lee Danielson’s property, the former Boxer Learning building, at 200 E. Main St. Danielson said in early January that demolition to make way for a new hotel would begin by the end of that month. Four months later the structure with the black granite façade still lies vacant and intact.
In mid-April Danielson headed to Charlottesville from his home in California to consult with his contractor. The ever-optimistic Danielson now says construction of the nine-storey, 99-room hotel should begin by July 1 and finish by October 2006.
When the curtain rises on the building, it will be The Landmark Hotel, a high-end boutique lodging operated by Windsor Capital Group, which runs chains like Embassy Suites, Marriott, Hawthorn Suites, Radisson and Renaissance. The project was originally rumored to be partially financed by leading developer and Dave Matthews Band manager Coran Capshaw. Danielson says Capshaw is not involved.
Finding a hotel operator held up the start of construction. “We just had some changes in the financial make-up of the project, in terms of who the operator would be,” Danielson says. “I interviewed many, trying to find the right one that would fit within the guidelines of what Charlottesville deserves. I will tell you that I found out hotels are not easy to do.”
Other Downtown redevelopment projects have proven much easier. Ludwig Kuttner’s Terraces building at 100 W. Main St. is undergoing a partial facelift. The former Foot Locker site is being remodeled as the new home of a high- end Parisian paper store, Caspari, and other unrevealed commercial ventures. Lexie Boris of Monticello Associates, a real estate development firm, says a building permit was issued March 3 and construction started almost immediately. The contractor, Caliper, has a permit to block the sidewalk until June 30.
“Things are just falling into place,” Boris says of the pace. “It’s probably going to be a little ahead of schedule at this point, knock on wood. I should never say such a thing.”
Caspari’s first-ever U.S. boutique should open this fall. Their product line includes paper plates, invitations and napkins printed with designs copped from museum collections. “Napkins look like linen, plates like pocelain,” a press release promises.
Behind door No. 3, at the Fourth Street corner of the Mall, construction on the old SNL building is wrapping up. The exterior of the building was mostly finished in mid-April, and work crews are now focused on the interior. Real estate agent Stu Rifkin says the space is mostly rented and should be ready for occupancy by the end of the month. It’s rumored that Capshaw will move his music management business, Red Light, into the space along with the management group running the Charlottesville Pavilion (nee Amphitheater) for Capshaw, who also owns the building. Other tenants will include bead store Studio Baboo and possibly Blue Ridge Internetworks.—Lacey Phillabaum
After the Cook shooting, now what?
City police and neighbors respond to grand jury report
On August 21, 2004, a resident of Friendship Court called the police for assistance in a domestic dispute. When the officers arrived on the scene, the suspect, Kerry Cook, though unarmed, resisted arrest. The subsequent scuffle ended when one of the cops shot Cook, a 31-year-old African-American
man, once in the stomach—resulting in a coma that left Cook hospitalized for three weeks.
Questions, suspicions and accusations of excessive force ensued and, as a result, last October the City Attorney’s office organized a grand jury to investigate. Over the next five months, the jury met 19 times, taking sworn testimony from 38 people about the incident.
In the end, when the grand jury released their report on March 7, they ruled the police officers who responded to the call had not, in fact, used excessive force. However, the jury went beyond a simple ruling. They also assessed police department relations with the African-American community. They said, in short, that those relations need attention and improvement, and need it stat.
The relationship between Charlottesville’s African-American community and city police has always been tenuous—the result of a long history of missteps, misunderstandings and Southern race relations. With the arrival of Police Chief Timothy Longo in early 2001, hopes for an improved situation ran high, and still do.
“Our current police chief is very different from people that have held the job in the past [in a good way],” says City Councilor Kendra Hamilton, “We’re very lucky to have what we have now.”
However, longstanding suspicions were ignited anew after the 2003 DNA dragnet (in which, as a means of catching the ever-elusive serial rapist, African-American males were asked to submit to cheek swabbings for DNA samples). The Cook shooting only made it worse.
In their report, the grand jury set forth six recommendations for ways the police department could repair relations with
the black community. Recommendations included more police training on community relations; a request that the Thomas Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board (CCJB) adopt race relations as a priority for research and action; increased hiring and promotion of African-American officers, continuing support for calls concerning domestic violence; enhancing the police department’s computer system; and expanding the community policing concept.
Suggestions are all well and good, notes Hamilton, but at this point they’re just words on paper. The question now is whether something’s going to get done.
One African-American woman, a former 14-year resident of Friendship Court who requested anonymity, has no hope of improved relations between the black community and the police department.
“It’s only going to get worse,” she says. “The more the police push, the more the drug dealers push back.”
As she says this, she’s sitting with a friend enjoying the afternoon sun on a stoop a couple doors down from where the Cook shooting occurred.
The two women name particular complaints, specifically frustration at what they see as police officers patrolling the community with a preconceived notion that all the residents there are suspicious. A third resident, Michelle Burnley, joins the two women. She offers that trying to talk to the police “is like talking to the air.”
Pessimism and frustration like this are understandable and hard to debate, but Karen Waters, executive director of Quality Community Council, an advocacy and networking organization targeted at the city’s poorest neighborhoods, is optimistic.
Pointing to the closeness of Friendship Court’s community as an asset, “it’s up to [the Friendship Court community] to come up with their own ideas and it’s up to us to listen and to act,” Waters says.
Everyone seems to agree that the issue is communication. It’s no coincidence then that such is precisely what the grand jury’s recommendations address. Chief Longo, in fact, says that the police department has already acted on two of the grand jury’s recommendations and has plans to further implement others in the future.
According to Longo, the entire department just finished its first weeklong training session with officers from the Virginia Community Policing Institute. In addition, since the grand jury report, the department tweaked and improved its computer system to make it easier to identify potentially problematic behavior among officers.
With help from Waters, and other community leaders, Longo is also planning a series of meetings with the residents of Friendship Court to discuss what the problems are and how to solve them.
Citing the way talking things through and being open to criticism helped the police department weather the DNA dragnet storm, Longo says, “One of the ways you [create trust] is to open doors and windows to communication and operate in a very transparent way.
“It’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of work, and I’m committed to do that because relationships are the essence of life.”—Nell Boeschenstein
Griffin bows to pressure
Superintendent quits 10 months into her 4-year contract
Over the past seven months, the meetings of the Charlottesville City Board of Education have been studies in contrast. The meeting on Thursday, April 21, was no different. It kicked off happily as the seven board members congratulated six music teachers for their unbroken string of state honors. But the meeting concluded painfully when the board voted 5-2 to accept the resignation of Dr. Scottie Griffin, the embattled superintendent who began her job July 1.
Few could have been surprised by either outcome. Even as the division copes with the provisional State accreditation granted five of its nine schools last year, it continues to earn widespread acclaim for advanced academics and high-caliber extra-curriculars. And even as the small number of her vocal supporters urged the school board to cave to their oft-repeated charges that Griffin, who is black, was the victim of racism and sexism—rather than her own imperiousness and poor communication skills—the writing had been on the wall for weeks. The board had convened at least four closed meetings on personnel matters in the last month, and on March 31 it voted to severely limit Griffin’s spending authority—never a good sign for a top administrator. When the April 21 meeting convened with Associate Superintendent Gertrude Ivory sitting in Griffin’s regular chair and Griffin nowhere in sight, there could be no doubt what would unfold.
But the future of leadership in the City schools is more uncertain. For the short term, at least, administrative leadership will fall to Ivory and Assistant Superintendent Bobby Thompson, a 17-year veteran of the Charlottesville system. Though Ivory and Thompson had only learned that Griffin would bail minutes before, they said immediately after the board meeting that they would collaborate right away on how to regain the trust of teachers and others in the division.
“Mr. Thompson and I have talked about the fact that we will need in our school division some activity or message to bring some unity to the school division,” Ivory said.
Teachers may well be ready to smoke the peace pipe, according to Bekah Saxon, president of the Charlottesville Education Association. “What I’m hearing from people is a real sense of regret that we have had this much tension and anger and
hurt feelings in the division,” she said the day after Griffin resigned. “But there is a real sense of optimism, too, that we will be able to pick up the pieces and communicate and build the relationships and
trust that need to be built for all kids
to succeed.”
Indeed, helping every kid achieve better is high on the agenda after months of tortured school board discussions about racial disparities in test scores and how exactly Griffin’s top-heavy proposals would fix them. The State and Federal governments will further sanction Charlottesville if it fails to improve its passing rates on certain standardized tests.
Ivory put in 33 years in the New Orleans school division before being recruited by Griffin for the job here. Her specialty is literacy programs. A brief scan of board minutes from the New Orleans division suggests that she has a proven track record in that area. In one program under her direction, Journey to Success Summer School, participating fourth-graders and eighth-graders passed a literacy retest at a rate of nearly 2-to-1 over kids who weren’t enrolled. She took the Charlottesville job, she says, because “I thought issues facing the school division were issues that could be conquered. I know there are things we can do to make students academically able.”
In the six months it is likely to take the school board to recruit another superintendent, Thompson and Ivory will keep the message positive, she says. “We have to do work to reassure [teachers] that their voice is important, their work with students is respected and together we can make a difference.”—Cathy Harding
Democrats’ hopes are dashed
The GOP is not yet broken by internecine funding
With the Republican Party’s stranglehold on Virginia politics, any slack in the party’s death grip grabs the attention of progressives. The Washington Post reported April 3 that some Republicans, including Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode, were supporting a political action committee seeking to unseat other Repub-lican incumbents in the House of Delegates. The incumbents broke party ranks and supported higher taxes last session. In response to the impression left by the Post piece, everyone involved is eager to squelch rumblings of an organized backlash against them.
The Virginia Conservative Action PAC promoted conservative candidates for office generally when it was formed in 2001. Executive Director Robin Dejarnette says the group changed its focus to defeating Republican incumbents “when they voted for the tax increases.” Seventeen Republicans crossed party lines to support Governor Mark Warner’s budget compromise in 2004. Of those, VCAP is targeting delegates Bobby Orrock, Harry Parrish, Joe May, Edward Scott and Gary Reese.
“I think we were shocked that these guys went against their party platform and their leadership and voted for a tax increase,” says Dejarnette. “We were taken aback by that. We felt there needs to be a conversation or dialogue before you raise taxes and the way to have that dialogue is to engage in the political process.”
The change in mission has forced Republican legislators and office-holders to distance themselves from the PAC. The timing of when they stopped donating or stepped down from VCAP’s board is delicate; generally, it’s considered impolitic for one legislator to oppose another legislator from his own party. Delegates Bob McDonnell and Kirkland Cox were on the board of VCAP until some time before December, when VCAP started funding the Republican challengers.
Representative Goode and Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore were two of the Republicans identified as donors to VCAP. Kilgore spokesperson Tim Murtaugh emphasizes that the candidate gave $1,000 simply to support an event with conservative commentator Ann Coulter. “[VCAP] only shifted their focus after the donation was given,” Murtaugh says. “The incumbents that we are talking about that are now being targeted, they all have Jerry’s support.”
Rep. Goode gave $250 in 2004 earmarked for another speaking event.
But the Republican incumbents that have been targeted aren’t sweating it. The challenger to Del. Bobby Orrock of Spotsylvania has received more than $10,000 from VCAP, but Orrock says he’s not worried about retribution from conservatives who toe the party’s anti-tax line. “The proof is in the giving,” he says. Indeed, the most recent campaign financing report filed with the State Board of Elections shows that Republican legislators have stopped donating to VCAP.
Del. Edward Scott is yet more sanguine. He emphasizes that he has the endorsement of Jerry Kilgore and other party leaders. “I think what’s important is the message that the Speaker of the House has conveyed on a number of occasions that we have a united House Republican caucus that is working for the re-election
of incumbents.”
So get it straight: The Grand Old Party in Virginia has no dissension in its ranks.—Lacey Phillabaum