Kathy Galvin, Democratic candidate for City Council, thinks the tone of the local political debate has become divisive and its substance has over-emphasized a handful of hot-button issues.
“Our citizens want us to debate the issues, they want public input, but they also want us to get to work, make strategic decisions and get things done,” Galvin said in a press conference today at the Transit Center on the Downtown Mall. “But we have come to a low point, I believe, in our local discourse that sadly mirrors the rhetoric … and the paralysis at the federal level in Washington D.C.”
To Galvin, some candidates have adopted a “bunker mentality about a particular issue or set of issues.” Unsurprisingly, those issues are the construction of the Meadow Creek Parkway through McIntire Park and the controversial community water supply plan debate. (For the most recent updates on both projects, click here and here).
At a recent City Council Democratic candidates forum, the ‘Greener, Smarter, Stronger by Design’ candidate, threw her support toward the parkway and also endorsed the construction of a new, earthen dam as opposed to a dredge-only approach for the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.
More after the photo.
Democratic candidate Kathy Galvin and her supporters on the Downtown Mall. Chiara Canzi photo.
Candidates Colette Blount and Dede Smith were the sole opponents of the Meadow Creek Parkway. Blount and Smith also supported a dredge-only approach, along with Brevy Cannon and James Halfaday. Just like Galvin, Incumbert Satyendra Huja and local developer Paul Beyer support the construction of a new dam. (For more on the forum, click here).
By being so “single-issue oriented,” candidates are missing an opportunity to discuss other more important issues in the city, says Galvin, which range from poverty to affordable housing to the construction of a new school for middle schoolers to the improvement of public transportation.
Although Galvin was surrounded by Democratic heavy-hitters–– among them former Charlottesville mayor Kay Slaughter–– Stratton Salidis, a member of the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park and vocal opponent of the parkway and of a new dam, came to the event to protest Galvin’s stance on both issues.
“I am here because it’s easy to say green, but I don’t think that voting for a road through a school and a park is not a very green thing to do,” he told C-VILLE.

“This notion that somehow talking about these issues is distracting from meeting these more important social justice issues, well, I think that these are very important social justice issues and the money that is going towards these projects could go to these other needs.”
Local advocate Stratton Salidis opposes the construction of an earthen dam at Ragged Mountain and the construction of the Meadow Creek Parkway.
"To say that you are for building for people rather than cars and to support a road through a central park, I think it’s a major discrepancy," he says. Chiara Canzi photo.