Each week, C-VILLE’s Green Scene page takes a look at local environmental news. The section’s bulletin board has information on local green events and keeps you up to date on statewide happenings. Got an event or a tip you’d like to see here and in the paper? Write us at news@c-ville.com.
Hawk gawk: It’s hawk migration season once again, and the Rockfish Gap fall hawk count is underway. Join volunteers in the parking lot of the Inn at Afton daily to watch the birds on the wing. If you’re interested in becoming an official counter, contact Vic Laubach at laubach@virginia.edu.
Star party: Brush up on your constellation knowledge and join volunteers from the Charlottesville Astronomical Society for an evening of educational stargazing. Meet in the field next to the barn at Ivy Creek Natural Area at 8pm Friday, September 6, and bring your own telescope if you have one. Cloudy skies will cancel the event.
Muddy waters: According to a study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Virginia, two- thirds of the rivers in the eastern U.S. are alkaline. The study looked at nearly 100 rivers from Florida to New Hampshire, and found that over time spans of 25 to 60 years, most of the rivers had become significantly more basic, which can impact drinking water and wastewater treatment. The full report can be found at pubs.acs.org/journal.
Fans are hoping for a surprise appearance by her legendary husband when Pegi Young &
The Survivors play three local shows this week. Image: Jay Blakesberg
If you were devastated by the news that Neil Young won’t be playing at the Lockn’ (nee Interlocken) music festival this weekend, here’s some good news. You’ll still see a member of the Young clan at the fest.
Pegi Young, Neil’s wife of 35 years, launched her own solo singing career in 2007 and has since cranked out three records along with her legendary bandmates, piano player Spooner Oldham and bassist Rick Rosas. Pegi Young & The Survivors will take the stage early on September 6 and deliver its own brand of eclectic Southern rock in front of the Arrington, Virginia crowd.
Here’s some more good news. The trio, along with guitarist Kelvin Holly and drummer Phil Jones, both new to Young’s latest record Bracing for Impact, will bookend their Lockn’ appearance with Charlottesville gigs on September 4 at The Jefferson Theater and at Monticello on September 7 for the Harvest Heritage Festival.
“My band is just phenomenal,” Young said. “We keep moving forward. We go out and play music we feel satisfied with and put forth our best show every night.”
Young and the Survivors do a mix of tracks, written collaboratively among the band members, and covers of classic Americana tunes. While Young pens most of the lyrics for the originals, the latest LP also features Neil’s bar house romp “Doghouse.” It’s a contribution that works particularly well, according to Young, because she and her husband have similar songwriting styles.
“Some musicians might write strictly autobiographically, but neither one of us do,” she said. “There’s usually some inspiration that sparks the idea, but then they take off from there. They’re fiction.”
Young’s songs often are inspired by the darker side of life. Doom-and-gloomers “Flatline Mamma,” “Trouble in a Bottle,” and “Daddy Married Satan” each grace the new record. But there’s also a hint of hope in Young’s lyrics, not to mention plenty of jaunty melodies and horn runs to keep the audience upbeat and bouncing.
“That’s my specialty,” Young said. “My daughter calls them sad bastard songs. Sad songs with happy melodies.”
Young said her band’s covers have to be inspired, as well. Whether it’s her or one of her mates that brings the idea to the table, she insists the covers are always songs she can get inside and “deliver with conviction.” Over the years, that’s included tunes by Irma Thomas, Lucinda Williams, and Devandra Banhart, as well as rearrangements of her husband’s contemporaries.
“We take some liberties and hope the songwriters are O.K. with it,” Young said. “The other members of Crazy Horse have been very complimentary. Lucinda Williams—I got good feedback from her, as well as Devandra Banhart. It is nice that some of the artists we choose to cover have reached out.”
Young said her late-blooming music career and eclectic style have been inspired by her early days listening to music on the West Coast, when different genres started exploding in the U.S. She grew up fascinated by the public and college radio stations that were playing obscure music in styles she didn’t even know about.
“I loved that there were not such defined lines,” she said. “When FM radio started, it was all over the map. That was back in the day before it became a business. Everything has changed completely.”
Young has also changed a lot over the years. In addition to launching her music career, she and Neil founded The Bridge School in 1984 to help developmentally disabled children like their son Ben, who was born with cerebral palsy. It’s yet another cause for a duo devoted to an exhausting list of causes.
“It’s not really fatiguing to us because it’s such a joy and is having such a huge effect,” Young said. “The mission is to enable the students to achieve a certain level of competency. The big, over-arching goal is to enable participation through communication.”
Young said she’s had to deal with her own share of communication issues in her life. A self-described “really shy person,” she spent a decade singing back-up for her husband before gathering the gumption to put out her own release. Of course, having the backing of the guy who wrote “Old Man” is a pretty good way to ensure success.
“Neil has always believed in me,” Young said. “He’s a big supporter. I had written for years and he knew I did this when not a lot of other people knew. He just encourages people to express themselves in whatever their art form might be or their manner might be.”
Although they’re on the road separately these days, Young and her husband do still find opportunities to hit the stage together. And while what was lining up to be a great reunion opportunity at the Lockn’ festival won’t materialize, Young promises there will be other chances.
“We just celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary—we manage to find time together,” she said. “We try to intersect on the road as much as possible.”
So, any predictions about when those intersections might deliver fans a Young family sing-along?
“I learned a long time ago about trying to cast predictions.” Young said. “There is no cheese down that hole, as a friend used to say. Surprises are better.”
Alan Jones, Mark Bernardo, and Kelly McPhee appeared in court and pled guilty to manufacturing fake IDs. Contributed photos.
The three suspects arrested in May for manufacturing at least 20,000 fake IDs in a Rugby Road mansion pleaded guilty on Wednesday to two counts: conspiracy to commit identification document fraud, and aggravated identity theft. The combined charges hold a maximum of 17 years in prison, according to U.S. District Court Judge Norman K. Moon.
Alan McNeil Jones, Kelly Erin McPHee, and Mark Gil Bernardo, each represented by separate defense attorneys, waived their right to be charged by indictment, which, according to Moon, means the court has enough evidence to sentence the three based on their guilty pleas.
It’s been four months since the massive raid of a house on Rugby Road, when federal agents arrested McPhee, 31, and Bernardo, 26 for manufacturing fake IDs and shipping them to college students across the country under the company name “Novel Designs.” Jones, 31, was arrested the day after the May 6 raid. The three suspects have been in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail since then.
As a result of the high-profile raid on May 6 of the Rugby Road house and the ongoing investigation, law enforcement officials have seized roughly $2 million, computer equipment used to manufacture the fake IDs, cell phones, tasers, a Jeep Wrangler, a Land Rover, and assault rifles.
According to U.S. Attorney Timothy Heaphy, a United States attorney for the Western district of Virginia, the investigation into the elaborate scheme to sell fake IDs to minors began about a year ago. It all started with what officials described as a “lucky tip” from a student at the College of Charleston, who dropped five fake Ohio driver’s licenses from her pocket outside a post office box at school in April 2012. The fake IDs were turned in to the police, who questioned the student and then learned about Novel Designs and the Charlottesville post office box through which the business was run. After months of quietly observing the post office box that Jones and McPhee frequented, federal investigators posed as underaged students and purchased fake IDs through the company, which granted enough evidence for the search warrant, which was carried out on May 6.
Heaphy said the investigation was notable in the fact that it stretched across multiple jurisdictions, including local law enforcement personnel, the Virginia State Police, and the United States Postal Inspection Service.
Jones, McPhee, and Bernardo will appear in court on Monday, December 16 for sentencing.
Cavalier Daily Editor-in-Chief Kaz Komolafe and Executive Editor Charlie Tyson (standing, left and right) look over pages with staff on the day their paper made the switch to digital-first content. Photo: Christian Hommel.
UVA’s Cavalier Daily is an unusual specimen in the world of campus newspapers. Founded in 1890, it is financially and editorially independent from the University. Students sell the ads to generate an annual budget of a few hundred thousand dollars, which pays for a print circulation of about 10,000. Students write the copy. Students edit and produce each page.
And last year, it was the students on the paper’s managing board who faced a dilemma news outlets all over the country are grappling with: How to justify daily print publication and monetize online content in a world where Internet readership is growing and ad revenues are shrinking.
Their decision to cut back to two weekly print editions and push daily content on the Web was fully realized last week. On Tuesday, as newly returned students crowded the floors above their basement office in Newcomb Hall, Editor-in-Chief Kaz Komolafe and Executive Editor Charlie Tyson took a break from prepping for their first meeting as a digital-first team to explain that the transformation, which is expected to save them about $40,000 per year, was tricky for a news outlet with a staff of 150 and leadership that’s always in flux.
“It’s rare for people to be around for more than a year,” Komolafe said, which made it easy to put off big decisions. “It keeps it exciting and dynamic, but it does mean there’s been a tendency to say, ‘Oh no, it’s fine for this year.’”
The shift to a Web-first approach started a year ago, when the previous managing board renegotiated the paper’s print contract and launched a revamped website.
By the end of last semester, the staff was posting stories online throughout the day instead of waiting until the evening to make final edits and throw everything on the Web at once. Last week saw change to two newsmagazine-style print editions issued Monday and Thursday, each anchored by an in-depth front-page feature story.
There are still kinks to work out, Komolafe said, and however exhausting the daily editorial grind was, it was hard not to feel emotional about abandoning it. But she and the rest of her team think the new model is a better fit for a college audience. It’s also come with good side effects.
Content decisions that were largely made by a small group of editors in the past are now the subject of regular staff meetings.
“It was pretty top-down,” Tyson agreed. But no longer. “We thought it was important to maintain a sense of cohesion and unity among the staff when we moved to online, because we didn’t want to run the risk of everyone going off and working on their laptops,” he said. Now there are twice-weekly meetings that give everybody a chance to weigh in—and bond.
The culture shift is going to be important to the Cav Daily’s future, because four of the five managing board members who implemented the changes are graduating next spring. They have two semesters to cement the paper’s new identity and hand over the 123-year-old reins.
“This is definitely a decision and a process that the younger staff are going to have to own going forward,” Komolafe said.
The future of the area’s biggest transportation project, the Western Bypass, may still be in flux, but the regional planning organization is now focused on the more distant future. The transformation of Route 29 into a 35-mph boulevard, a transit route to Crozet, and bus lanes connecting the airport to Downtown Charlottesville are all projects under consideration for inclusion in the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Long Range Transportation Plan. Due to be finalized in the spring, the LRTP marks funding priorities through 2040, and is now open for public scrutiny.
Last week, the MPO offered up three possible design scenarios for local road and transit improvements in an open house at the Water Street Center. It was the first in a series of public input sessions set to take place in the coming months as the MPO Policy Board decides which projects—new roads, new bus routes, new bike and pedestrian paths—will get a piece of the $300 million-plus transit funding pie in the next two and a half decades.
As elected officials and residents milled around the poster-plastered conference room, MPO coordinator Sarah Rhodes explained that the road projects are nearly identical in all three scenarios. All feature “Multimodal 29,” a plan to turn Route 29 into a low-speed urban boulevard with more access for bikers, walkers, and buses. The idea of deliberately slowing down traffic on the congested road generated some criticism from elected officials when it was floated as an option earlier this summer, but Rhodes said it’s essential to the big picture of the highway’s future landscape.
“Our major transit improvements along 29 will not function unless we have that concept in there,” she said. “It’s creating more of a place within 29, slowing down traffic on it, providing more bike and pedestrian connections, and providing this transit link”—all of which is prefaced on the idea that the planned Western Bypass will siphon off through traffic.
One piece of the transit puzzle that made it into earlier rounds of project planning is conspicuously absent: An extension of the Bypass, previously conceived as a two-lane route following Dickerson Road from Ashwood Boulevard past the airport. “It showed no useful benefit, and was just a huge mess,” said Rhodes, and the MPO Policy Board scrapped it after the first planning phase.
Where the three project mashups differ significantly is on transit. Click the following images for a close-up view of each. For a detailed possible project list for each scenario and for more information on the MPO’s planning process, go to www.tjpdc.org/lrtp.
Scenario A calls for a bus route between Charlottesville and Crozet as well as Bus Rapid Transit—an express bus system, at times with its own dedicated car-free lanes —from UVA and Downtown Charlottesville up 29 to the airport and beyond.
Scenario B also includes Bus Rapid Transit, but proposes connecting 29 and Downtown via the Meadowcreek Parkway. It also adds a transit-and-HOV lane across Free Bridge.
Scenario C calls for a bus link to the airport and a transit-only route across Free Bridge, but no Bus Rapid Transit.
Bike and pedestrian projects will be examined separately, but before that, the MPO will absorb public comment on the trio of scenarios presented last week and select a preferred option, and, eventually, a projects list. But that doesn’t mean anything is set in stone, said Rhodes.
“People can come out and say ‘I hate that’—repeatedly,” said Rhodes. “There’s still plenty of time.”
Lounge orchestra Pink Martini takes fans on a big band romp with a twist at the Paramount on Thursday. Publicity photo
Straight up
Listen to the multilingual, orchestral anthems of the internationally acclaimed Pink Martini as members play parts of their eclectic retrospective and reveal the future sounds of the multicultural, politically motivated music scene all in addition to creating the evening’s largest cocktail lounge.
Thursday 9/5 $29.50-65, 8pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.
Hollywood heavyweights Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez never quite gain enough speed in the plotless action flick Getaway. Image: Warner Bros.
No escape: The car chase thriller Getaway has no traction
“Tremendously shitty.” That’s the best phrase to describe the new Ethan Hawke-Selena Gomez (!) driving thriller Getaway, a movie in which characters can break the Internet in fewer than five seconds and a car can be armored to prevent total destruction, but the guy who armored it forgets long enough to send someone to shoot it up who didn’t bring armor piercing bullets.
These are not criticisms. These are mere observations. And in a way, the tremendously shitty Getaway demands that we not piss and moan about it, or grouse that an Academy Award nominee (Hawke) is in this noxious, bottom-feeding sludge. Nah, our job, viewers and film lovers, is to make the best of a bad piece of filmmaking (which looks like it was shot on standard definition video). After all, how many movies are so ill-conceived, poorly written, and indifferently directed that they’re just plain fun? Not many, I’d wager.
Here’s my suggestion. First, pick up your friends and head to the nearest multiplex. Buy one ticket to Getaway. Then let your friends in through the exit so that only one of you has to take a hit to the pocketbook. Make sure you all bring your favorite alcohol, and also make sure you have the same volume and proof. You’re about to get shit-faced.
Here are the rules: 1. Drink whenever there’s a close-up of Ethan Hawke shifting gears (bonus if you can guess how many times you’d stall the car if you tried these maneuvers in real life). 2. Drink whenever you see Jon Voight’s teeth, lips or facial hair (do a double shot if you think seeing only these parts of his face is worse than seeing his entire head). 3. Drink whenever Gomez tells Ethan Hawke to “stop, please stop!”
You can also add your own variations. For example, every time you realize the police in Sofia, Bulgaria, are the worst police anywhere, do a keg stand (this option will take advance planning). Or drink when you realize the movie takes place in Bulgaria because it’s too expensive to shoot elsewhere.
You may notice I’ve mentioned nothing of the plot. That’s because there is no plot. I have no way of knowing whether the following is true, but it feels like this is how Getaway was written: Someone took 14 different chase-filled screenplays, indiscriminately tore random pages from them, threw the pages in the air, then picked them up and reassembled them in whichever order they landed. Then they threw that out each morning and wrote the scenes 30 minutes prior to shooting.
But just so my editor knows I actually saw the movie—Ethan Hawke is a race car driver. He’s retired because he sucks (lolz). His wife is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands he steal a car and drive it around. Selena Gomez gets involved (I refer to her as “Selena Gomez” because her character, literally, does not have a name). There are many, many, many car chases, most of which are monotonous.
A critic I know said Getaway was the longest 90 minutes of his life. He should have brought bourbon and three friends to the screening.
Getaway/PG-13, 90 minutes/Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Playing this week
2 Guns
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Before Midnight
Carmike Cinema 6
Blue Jasmine
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
The Butler
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Closed Circuit
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Elysium
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
The Grandmaster
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
Iron Man 3
Carmike Cinema 6
Kick-Ass 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Man of Steel
Carmike Cinema 6
Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6
The Mortal Instruments:
City of Bones
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
One Direction: This is Us
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Percy Jackson:
Sea of Monsters
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
Imagine your dream restaurant. What would it be like?
The menu would be designed to your tastes, with food prepared by world class chefs, using only the best ingredients. There would never be any crowds, and you’d have the whole place to yourself. You could arrive when you chose, and stay as long as you like. You’d even have your favorite music playing throughout the evening.
Believe it or not, this exists in Charlottesville. One of the best kept secrets in town is the custom-designed restaurant concept available at The Space, the Downtown event site that opened in 2010.
In 1991, two young Charlottesville cooks had an idea for a restaurant: “What if it’s all about the food?” That concept, the primacy of food over service and décor, would come largely to define the next two decades of Charlottesville dining, culminating in the recent wave of food trucks, where customers really do get nothing but food. But, the two cooks, Tim Burgess and Vincent Derquenne, did not set out to be pioneers. Attention to food was all they could afford.
Both in their mid-20s, Burgess and Derquenne cobbled together just barely enough funds for a down payment on a restaurant. Metropolitain, as they called it, was a bare-bones diner on the then-barren Downtown Mall in the space now occupied by Bizou. Service, Burgess admitted, was an after-thought.
To start, a basic menu of familiar items allowed Burgess and Derquenne to pay the bills while slowly introducing guests to more adventurous offerings. Before long, they were wowing diners with dishes like chanterelles over grits and rabbit quesadillas. Metropolitain’s popularity soon outgrew its space, prompting a move to larger and more chic digs on Water Street. There, the restaurant became what many consider the most influential Charlottesville restaurant of its time, constantly challenging the palates of its legions of fans.
Metropolitain eventually ran its course, and Derquenne and Burgess closed its doors in 2003 to focus on their other two restaurants, Bizou and Bang!. In 2010, they turned the onetime Metropolitain location into The Space for catering private parties and receptions.
While those events provide much of The Space’s business, less well-known is that it is available during the week to small groups who agree to spend at least $1,000 on food and beverage. If that sounds like a lot, with just five couples it would be $100 per person, which is not much more than what you might pay on food and wine for a blow-out meal at a restaurant of similar caliber. For a smaller per-person fee, bring a larger group.
In exchange, you can have a restaurant to yourself and food prepared by two of the top chefs in Charlottesville, expertly paired with wines by Derquenne. Having enjoyed several intimate dinners at The Space, I am aware of nothing else like it in town. A recent dinner there confirmed that Burgess, 50, and Derquenne, 48, are still at the top of their game.
When we arrived, a board of housemade charcuterie and flutes of champagne awaited at the bar. After mingling over rabbit pate and The Space’s own Virginia ham, we sat down for dinner, serenaded by our own playlist of music.
While The Space can tailor a menu to your preferences, my favorite way to eat there happens to be the chefs’ favorite way to cook: Let them decide. Burgess and Derquenne enjoy allowing their creativity to run wild with whatever fresh ingredients happen to be available. “We’re two older chefs still looking to let it rip every now and then,” said Burgess. And, let it rip they did.
A medley of ripe heirloom tomatoes was topped with a fried squash blossom, basil, olive oil, and a gastronomical trick called balsamic “pearls”—small spheres of jellied vinegar that burst in the mouth like caviar. Seared diver scallops joined chanterelle mushrooms, sweet potato coulis, and pecan dust.
The show-stopper came in the least expected place: the salad course. Chevre was encased in paper thin local yellow beets acting as “ravioli” skins, and then topped with endive, apple, micro-arugula, and more beets. It was a reminder that complex flavors can be achieved without turning on the stove. Next came sliced Rock Barn pork flank atop kale sautéed with lardon and red pepper. And finally, there was a lick-your-plate peach tarte tatin with housemade buttermilk sorbet.
Of dinners like this, Burgess recently wrote on his blog: “The next time you have a group of friends and you want to go on a culinary adventure, drop me line and we’ll be happy to cook for you.” Will do.
The grave of Jesse Scott Sammons, a descendant of the Hemings family of Monticello, was in the path of the Western Bypass. Photo by John Robinson
A federal official’s announcement last week that a cemetery and house site in the path of the planned Western Bypass is eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places has become the latest hang-up for the road project, and has some questioning the process the Virginia Department of Transportation used to evaluate the property in the first place.
Keeper of the National Register Carol Shull determined the cemetery off Lambs Road in Albemarle County was eligible because it held the graves of “persons of local transcendent importance”: Jesse Scott Sammons and his son-in-law Dr. George Rutherford Ferguson, 19th-century landowners and prominent members of the Hydraulic Mills community, a prosperous enclave of free blacks now partly inundated by the Rivanna Reservoir.
Shull’s report underscores historical context. Despite the oppression of African-Americans in post-Civil War Virginia, the two men “achieved professional careers and provided distinguished leadership and service to their communities,” she wrote.
She also roundly rejected arguments from the Federal Highway Administration and VDOT that the house on the property lacked significance and couldn’t be conclusively tied to the cemetery. Even with alterations and an addition, she wrote, “the Sammons family would still recognize their home.”
As a result, it’s not only the gravesite that was deemed eligible, but a large portion of the original 28-acre farmstead.
For Sammons descendant Erica Caple James, an MIT anthropologist who has worked with local historians for nine months to argue for protection for the state-owned site, the eligibility determination was a major validation.
“To see the Keeper of the National Register so meticulously and eloquently outline how and why this history is important and what it means to our national history was incredibly moving,” she said. “It made me feel that the struggle was so worth it.”
Exactly what effect the Keeper’s determination will have on the Bypass isn’t clear. The law says VDOT must consider the impacts of the project on properties deemed eligible for consideration in the National Register, so whether the Sammons property makes it onto the rolls of registered places doesn’t actually matter. It’s still back to the drawing board for VDOT, which must further amend its latest Environmental Assessment of the project to include a new memorandum of agreement among stakeholders, including living Sammons descendants. The FHWA must then approve the amended assessment.
“We have yet to sit down and talk to everyone, so I don’t want to speculate on what the outcome may be,” said VDOT spokesman Lou Hatter.
Steve Thompson, a Charlottesville archaeological consultant who joined other local historians in calling on state and federal officials to examine the property more closely, said the Keeper’s decision highlighted problems with the way the state has assessed land it needs for the Bypass.
VDOT, its cultural resources consultants, and FHWA staff argued “strenuously and repeatedly” that the site didn’t rise to the level of an eligible property, Thompson said, but their arguments were ultimately invalidated.
“My question is, how is it possible for all these people to be so wrong?” he said. It makes him question VDOT’s motives. “It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the whole process is somewhat compromised, that they’re letting other things cloud their judgment,” he said.
Who's who in the four 2013 races for seats on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors?
As we head into election season proper, we’re taking a look at the four contested races for seats on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. We’ve already introduced the Scottsville, Rio, and Samuel Miller district candidates. Today, we hear from the two vying for the Jouett District seat: Independents Diantha McKeel and Phillip Seay.
Phillip Seay
Party: Independent
Age: 52
Occupation: Executive Director of The First Tee of Charlottesville
Government experience: No elected office.
Diantha McKeel
Party: Independent
Age: 63
Occupation: Clinical research coordinator, UVA Division of Cardiology
Government experience: Albemarle County School Board, Jack Jouett Magisterial District (1997-present); CATEC Board
Q: The Jack Jouett District is at the crossroads of Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA. In what way does that affect your responsibility as a district representative?
Seay: There are varying interests all over the county. The challenge is listening to everyone and not allowing voices to be overshadowed by the people who are screaming the loudest. I’ve already encountered that. I have some people in the rural areas of Jouett who have said O.K., such and such might be helpful for the people in the urban ring, but it’s really not helping us. But that diversity can be good, because it increases your potential to solve problems.
McKeel: It is true the Jack Jouett District is unique, with urban and rural areas and much of UVA. Many citizens are not even aware of exactly where the county ends and city begins. We are one community and work best when we work together, operating from a basis of trust, respect and common interest. In my school board position, I have practiced this type of cooperation and hope to expand the county’s commitment to city/county/UVA cooperation. We have more common ground than sometimes is recognized or built upon. For example, part of my neighborhood’s “walkable community” is located in the city. And UVA has some of the most brilliant “minds” in our nation. We should tap into their expertise more often!
Q: What are your views on the Western Bypass?
Seay: I lived on the last piece of property across Earlysville Road that VDOT did not purchase for 13 years. They purchased a quarter of the driveway. The right edge of the westbound lane would have been 54 paces from that driveway. I went to all the meetings, asked all the questions. Sometimes as a landowner you have to step aside for the greater good, but in this situation, I couldn’t see that, other than the fact that it was just another road that may not solve our traffic issues. That said, as I understand it, this is now out of the Board of Supervisors’ hands. If by chance it does come back, I’m going to make it a point to sit down with every Jouett resident and say, “What’s your position on this?” And then it’s going to come down to what that majority says as to how I vote. Because right now, with going out and meeting people, it’s a 50-50 split.
McKeel: I oppose the current design of the proposed Western Bypass. While I agree our community needs a bypass, this route and design will not achieve the intent. Board of Supervisor members need to represent the interests of Albemarle County and their constituents. Therefore, I believe serious consideration needs to be given to the 41 homeowners and numerous neighbors that have been affected. Land use and transportation decisions should be made and not brought back years later, thus placing property values at risk and creating situations where homes and land cannot be sold. And certainly, decisions should not be reversed unless properly vetted by the public. I found the same to be true at the school board level when deciding major community issues such as redistricting students.
Q: What do you think are the three most important issues facing Albemarle County right now?
Seay: Fiscal responsibility. I will work to ensure that our tax dollars are truly being spent on the goods and services that our County government is duty-bound to provide.
Transportation. I will work for sensible and effective transportation and pedestrian services.
Schools and education. As a former teacher, this is near and dear to me. Are we training kids for the 22nd century? Are we training them to be entrepreneurs, to create things? Or are we training them to be dependent? I want to see the money get to the teachers in the classrooms.
McKeel: Education and our local workforce development. Nothing affects families, property values, and the ability of a locality to attract and maintain economic prosperity more than an excellent educational system and high quality workforce. They go hand and hand.
Public safety, including police, fire, and rescue. Having a safe and gang-free community is also critical to our quality of life and prosperity. We have work to do over the next several years as our police force is understaffed. The “neighborhood” policing model needs to be supported, as well as the return of the school resource officers. I strongly support the work of GRACE (Gang Reduction through Active Community Engagement Committee) and hope to remain on the committee as a representative.
Infrastructure. After years of eliminating investments in infrastructure, especially in the growth areas, Albemarle County needs to determine what our community needs and expectations are and establish a cost effective plan to support the investments. These investments (roads, court buildings, schools, storm-water, sidewalks, and bike and walking paths) all support economic prosperity and our quality of life. This is an area where we need to hear from citizens and seek opportunities to reach across jurisdictions collaboratively and form public private partnerships wherever possible.
