Month: January 2007

When it comes to subjects like development and employment, UVA is undisputedly a major presence. But, according to Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors (CAAR) (www.caar.com) CEO Dave Phillips, the University isn’t even showing up to the affordable housing party, much less swapping ideas in the debate.

Realtor and CAAR CEO Dave Phillips wants UVA to join in the discussion on local affordable housing. UVA says it’s too busy being a university.

“I’m not sure that UVA’s doing anything for affordable housing,” Phillips says, echoing remarks he made in October at a work session with local developers. At that time, he said, “I think overall the University is the player here that’s not at the table, ever, on this discussion. If we can’t get them on board, we can never solve the affordable housing thing.”

UVA President John T. Casteen III had the opportunity to respond to this criticism at a legislative forum in December when an audience member brought up Phillips’ remarks.

The University is tackling affordable housing in its own way, Casteen said, mentioning projects like the architecture school’s ecoMOD modular housing project. Architecture faculty and plenty of alumni also pitched in on the Habitat for Humanity Builders Blitz last June.

“We house a lot of people at rates lower than in town,” Casteen said, adding, “What I doubt is that we will financially benefit people for whom Dave speaks.”

Indeed, UVA houses half of its undergraduate student body, and besides, Phillips isn’t complaining about the student housing problem—he represents developers and realtors who make a profit selling to parents of young ‘Hoos.

But Phillips is claiming UVA could do more to house its own large workforce.

“Other universities who face the same challenge have adopted things such as land grants and land trusts that are ways that the university employees can essentially live on land owned by the university at a more reasonable rate,” Phillips suggests.

UVA spokesperson Carol Wood responds via e-mail: “We are addressing the issue of affordable housing in the classroom and in the laboratory where faculty and students work together to create solutions that will become models that can be re-created not just in Charlottesville, but around the globe. …As a public institution of higher education, the University focuses on educating students.”

It’s possible the Virginia General Assembly will pass minimum wage legislation this year, bumping up the State’s $5.15-per-hour wage, circa 1997, to $7.25. Groups like the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP) (www.virginia-organizing.org) say they’ve lobbied especially hard, and three different versions of a minimum wage bill have been submitted for the 2007 General Assembly session.

Charlottesville Delegate David Toscano is sponsoring one of three minimum wage bills in the General Assembly this year. Will federal legislators beat the assembly to the punch on raising the paltry $5.15-an-hour rate?

But it’s looking like Congress might beat them to the punch. A minimum wage bill raising the wage to $7.25 passed the House with favor from 82 Republicans on January 10. The Senate will debate its own version of a minimum wage bill this month, reports The Washington Post, and the climate of Democratic takeover is sure to fan the flames of change.

“We don’t care what level it happens, we just want to see an increase in the minimum wage,” says Joe Szakos with the Charlottesville-based VOP. “We would prefer to have both federal and State so that the State says, ‘Yes, we really believe in this.’”

While federal Democrats may have a shot at minimum wage reform, local Dems may have their hands tied in a Republican-controlled General Assembly. Charlottesville Delegate David Toscano (www.davidtoscano.com) introduced a minimum wage bill, his second in two years in the assembly. He says intellectual trends about the economics of the minimum wage and majority constituent support give the bill a better chance.

Jan Cornell, leader of the Staff Union at UVA, has been following the wage issue in Virginia for over a decade. “The bill doesn’t even make it out of committee…because the Chamber [of Commerce] goes in there and says we’re going to lose jobs,” Cornell says.

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce has traditionally opposed a minimum wage hike, and they’re doing it again this year, confirms Amy Hewett, director of public relations for the chamber. Traditionally, opponents’ argument has been that raising the minimum wage is bad for the economy, hurts businesses and does nothing to increase productivity. This year, state Republicans have had another defense—they say the minimum wage decision should rest at the federal level.

Some State lawmakers are dead set on restricting women’s access to contraceptions and abortions, introducing legislation year after year to do just that. To explain the 2007 versions of bills introduced by the usual suspects in Richmond, the local group Left of Center (www.loccville.org) called in their “favorite defender of the uterus,” Becky Reid, grassroots organizer of Planned Parenthood, to their January 9 meeting in Starr Hill’s Art Gallery.

Fresh off his marriage amendment triumph, Republican Delegate Bob Marshall is sponsoring legislation that would criminalize abortion the moment Roe v.Wade is overturned.

Speaking to a youthful crowd of around 50, Reid discussed the role of conservative legislators in morphing sexual education to promote moralist ideals. She emphasized that politicians “are trying to project bias into medical guidelines, when we need sound science and facts.”

Reid spoke specifically of Republican Delegate Bob Marshall (www.delegatebob.com) of Manassas, who co-sponsored the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions. Should the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturn Roe v. Wade, Marshall’s House Bill 2124 would immediately criminalize abortion as it was pre-Roe—one to 10 years of jail time for performing an abortion. Marshall also co-sponsors Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) legislation, which would require greater building space for abortion facilities, effectively shutting down smaller clinics.

The new year also sees the introduction of a bill stating that for admission into schools, girls must have a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus initiated by any sexual contact and found to be a cause of cervical cancer—parents could chose to opt-out. Reid said that the State legislature has found ways to oppose the Birth Control Protection Act, which defines birth control as contraception and prevents it from being regulated by Virginia’s abortion laws that require a mandatory 24-hour delay, state-scripted counseling and parental consent for minors.

Next up for Planned Parenthood (www.ppblueridge.org) is the Pro-Choice Lobby Day on January 25 in Richmond.

cd The country-based awe shown to Gram parsons sometimes makes us ignore the influence of R&B and blues on his writing, even though his choice of cover songs proves James Carr touched him as deeply as George Jones. Despite his lethal habits, the temporary Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother leader was smart enough to sense a convergence of the agonies of truckers and the Delta weariness of black sharecroppers—a connection so unnerving to ’60s country fans their attitude to Parsons was often hostile.

Country music’s grievous angel, remembered through tunes handpicked by country music’s best backup vocalist, Emmylou Harris.

This box set of his complete Reprise recordings comes with many alternate tracks and radio interviews, respectfully assembled by his singing partner Emmylou Harris, another country artist who knows this genre gains greater depth when it acknowledges its kinship with all the traditions of the South.