Month: August 2015

Categories
News

Exempt or not exempt? Judge considers FOIA lawsuit

Attorney Jeff Fogel says city police don’t want to release narratives of stops and frisks because of “dirty linen.” Staff photo

The Public Housing Association of Residents and local branch of the NAACP passed the first hurdle in their lawsuit against the City of Charlottesville for police records of stops and frisks when a judge refused the city’s request to throw out the suit August 25. The case is also raising questions about how government bodies use discretionary exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act to withhold materials from the public rather than use the discretion to release information.

In June 2012, the Charlottesville Police Department started reporting narratives of the reasons and circumstances of each stop—police call them temporary detentions—because of community concerns about racial profiling and because African-Americans had been stopped without any basis, the suit alleges.

Police initially were going to turn over the records in June 2014, says lawyer Jeff Fogel, who’s representing PHAR and the NAACP and who successfully sued the city over its panhandling laws. He became ill and was unable to follow through with his FOIA, and when he requested the records again in February 2015, it was denied, citing the “criminal investigative files” exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, according to the suit.

The lawsuit was filed in May and the city’s response was to ask that it be tossed because of the exemption.

The records were created to determine whether officers were following the law, not as criminal investigative files, said Fogel in court. The suit notes that in May 2014, Chief Tim Longo told City Council that of several hundred stops, African-Americans were detained in 70 percent, while only a small percentage of the stops led to criminal charges.

Judge Rick Moore said he’d need an evidentiary hearing to determine if the records are exempt. Assistant city attorney Andrew Gore offered up sample records and Fogel objected. “To allow the defendant to cherry pick seems a problem,” he said.

To be determined is whether Moore will review all of the estimated 500 police narratives.

After the hearing, Fogel alleged that police talk of transparency was “hypocrisy” and said, “There’s some dirty linen and bad searches they don’t want the public to know about. The city knows they’ve violated constitutional rights and that’s why they’ve refused to provide them to victims. That’s an outrage.”

Longo declined to comment on Fogel’s allegations, citing the pending court matter.

PHAR staffer Brandon Collins said police are trying to hide racial profiling. Withholding the records as criminal files “doesn’t equate with the fact most of these people haven’t been criminally charged,” he said.

Open records experts have another concern: that police routinely declare information part of criminal investigative files and therefore exempt from public view and oversight.

Attorney Alice Lucan calls the law “unnecessarily expansive” and says police can put anything in  a criminal investigative file, including public documents such as newspapers. “The core of the problem is that it becomes reflexive,” she says. “We can keep everything secret so why not do it?”

Megan Rhyne with the Coalition for Open Government points to the investigation of Virginia ABC agents’ bloody arrest of Martese Johnson, and Governor Terry McAuliffe’s claim that he’s not allowed to release the report. “It could be released in its entirety, with information redacted,” she says.

As for the Charlottesville Police narratives, she says, “To me, it’s odd that at a time when the public is looking so closely at police activities—whether to defend or detract—there’s a lot of attention being put on the way policing is done and it seems tone deaf to take such a position.”

This article was changed at 8:27 a.m. September 2 to reflect the correct name of the Public Housing Association of Residents.

Categories
Arts

Return on beauty: Hamid Karimi’s artistic stamina pays off

More than 90 landscape paintings by local artist Hamid Karimi are on permanent display at UVA Health South Rehabilitation Hospital. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Hospitals aren’t exactly known as hubs of creative engagement. Yet the trend of visual art in hospitals is on the rise thanks to studies that show scientific links between patients, art and lowered stress levels.

While Charlottesville may have yet to see the type of full-fledged contemporary art installations as Indiana University School of Medicine at Illinois or the Cleveland Clinic’s Arts & Medicine Institute, UVA Health South Rehabilitation Hospital is changing its clinical aesthetic with the help of local artist and gallery owner Hamid Karimi.

Reinvention is a bit of a theme for Karimi, whose work includes figurative, abstract and landscape paintings rendered in oil, acrylic and pastel (occasionally). Though he recently dove into a rainy days series, which features images depicted through the rain-slicked windshield of a car, the Tehran-born Charlottesvillian rejects the idea of stylistic repetition.

“Being creative means you have to go back to the drawing board over and over,” he says. “A lot of artists believe that if you really want to make a name for yourself you have to find one style and stick to it. But you’re not creative when you’re copying the same thing. Art has to be experimental.”

The philosophy of art seems to weigh more heavily on Karimi’s mind than most—likely because he began his career in, well, you guessed it. “I first studied western philosophy at the University of Oslo,” Karimi says. “Everything is based on logical reasoning. I took a course in art where we asked things like, ‘How can you distinguish beautiful art from ugly art? What is our artistic faculty? How can we tell that one piece of art is different from another?’”

The course, he says, did not involve painting, and he felt like the discussion went way above his head. So he dabbled in visual self-expression for the first time, attempting to experience what his classmates spoke about. “But then I thought that I wasn’t good at it so I left the brush,” he says. Discouraged, he abandoned the craft only to return again years later—then give it up, return and give up once again.

Then, a few years ago, he told a friend that he wished ‘I could do something magic like create art.” When his friend gently suggested he just do it already, Karimi got angry with himself.

“All along I told myself that painting is something I am not good at, it is beyond my skills,” he says. “Why am I telling myself that? I thought, ‘I’ve only tried a couple times. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough.’ After that, all of a sudden, I got better and better and better. I filled my whole house with paintings.”

Eventually, he began selling his work and donating it to friends. Most recently he founded Barboursville Fine Arts Gallery, which features the work of 11 local painters and sculptors, including his own. “I want to share art with the community,” he says.

One of his abstract pieces made it into the hands of Dianna Gomez, who works at UVA Health South Rehabilitation Hospital. She began to collect his art, filling her office and turning it into an impromptu gallery space. Noticing how visitors came to admire it, Gomez invited Karimi to exhibit in the hospital. Now more than 90 of his paintings, all of them landscapes, dot the walls across three different floors.

“Hamid has a good variety of paintings and the vibrant colors catch your attention,” Gomez wrote in an e-mail. “I think having a local artist featured at the hospital adds a personal touch to the décor and it makes the patients smile.”

Like many of UVA Health South Rehabilitation Hospital’s patients, who focus on reclaiming physical function and strength after illness or injury, Karimi says his biggest creative process and source of personal joy has been the recreation he’s done on himself.

“One day I was sitting back and wishing that some magic would change my life, that something fun would happen,” he says. “Then I remembered that I have filled my house with paintings. I’m a self-made artist. If I could do things I couldn’t do before, that is the magic. I have the magic on my walls.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Monika Herzig

An all-female band of jazz players takes over Brooks Hall when the Whole World in Her Hands Tour comes to UVA on Friday. Photo: Publicity photo

She writes about it, she teaches it and more importantly she lives it. Jazz pianist and educator Monika Herzig leads an all-female lineup featuring veteran flutist Jamie Baum, along with Israeli-American musicians Reut Regev on trombone and Adi Myerson on bass, and Nashville-based drummer Arianna Fanning holding down the beat for an evening of instrumentals presented by the Charlottesville Jazz Society and WTJU.

Friday 8/28. $10-20, 8pm. Brooks Hall, UVA Grounds. 249-6191.

Categories
Living

Taking back time: New catering service delivers dinner to your door

Sarah Nycum founded the Nycum Company as a dinner solution for busy people who don’t have time to cook at home. Photo: Norm Shafer

Of the many gloom-and-doom observations concerning our modern existence, the sense that life is speeding up is a well-worn drum. While piloting our vehicles home from work we field a final call, dictate e-mails, remind our kids (via voice text) to do their homework, Google the weather, purchase tickets for the concert we accidentally forgot about and so on.

In this frenetic lifestyle many a stalwart tradition winds up sacrificed to the undertow. In the opinion of one local mother, Sarah Nycum, the most deplorable of these losses is the once sanctimonious family dinner—that nightly occasion whereat families would gather around the dining room table before a home-cooked meal and share the day’s adventures. So disturbed by this trend was Nycum, she founded a company based upon the notion of not only restoring the familial supper, but giving time-short families the ability to enjoy it minus the hassle of planning the dinner, going to the grocery store, then prepping and finally, cooking the meal.

The result? A one-stop, customizable, hands-on, families first catering service: Nycum Company.

“Back in 2010, when my husband and I had our first child, we made the tough financial decision that, as kids are only little once, I’d be a stay-at-home mom,” says Nycum. This choice proved crucial to the development of Nycum Company. “Right away, I saw how blessed I was to be able to stay home with my child, but also, could compare my own experience with that of friends and other family members,” she says.

Before becoming a mother, with her career as a full-time corporate marketer/HR agent and a husband working as a high school administrator, Nycum was well aware of the effort putting together a homemade dish each night required. After a long day at work and the commute home, cooking was less joyous, more of a chore. Couple those professional obligations with the non-stop duties of parenting, and the inconvenience factor went through the roof. “I could see friends struggling,” says Nycum. “You get off after a 10-hour day and race across town and pick your daughter up from ballet practice, and then race over and pick your son up from soccer and after all that, ‘What do you do?’ There’s no time to cook a meal—you wind up resorting to fast food. And this becomes routine.”

Then there were the elderly relatives. “I had a relative that, due to her failing sight, could no longer cook,” Nycum says. “She and her husband had this beautiful kitchen, wherein she’d spent so much of her life preparing wonderful meals, and they were eating out every night. She wanted to cook, wanted to eat a hardy meal in her own home, but couldn’t.”

So Nycum started helping out. Once or twice a week she’d put together meals and deliver them to her friends-in-need:

The response was overwhelming gratitude and encouragement. The fare was exquisite, the reclaimed time soothing to the point of inspirational. Word spread fast that Nycum was providing meals for numerous friends and family. “Friends were urging me to start a business helping people in this way,” she says. “Without meaning to, they’d forgotten what a cherished ritual the dinner with the family really was.”

Following this advice, after five years of casual service, this past July, Nycum Company officially cut the ribbon.

Nycum likes to emphasize her company’s affordable, hands-on approach. “I want prospective clients to call me,” she says. “That way, I can get to know them—if anyone has allergies; what they like, don’t like; favorite dishes; budgetary concerns and so on. Once I determine a client’s needs, we explore the possibilities from there.”

These possibilities include choosing from a variety of existing menu options—such as fresh artichoke dip, a plethora of garden salads, shrimp and grits, cheesecake—or working with Nycum to customize a menu from scratch, or simply opting to have Nycum work her creative magic and do it all (meals are thematic and typically include an appetizer, soup and/or salad, two entrees and a dessert).

Once the menu has been designed, Nycum hand-selects produce from local farmers, farmer’s markets and artisanal shops. She prepares the meals with homemade care and delivers them directly to the client’s door. Post-feasting, clients provide Nycum Company with feedback, which is tracked and used to create an ideal menu schedule. “What I want more than anything is for our clients to be able to experience a restaurant quality meal prepared with locally sourced ingredients they can trust at a price that won’t break the budget—and all of this around their own kitchen table,” says Nycum. “I want to help people take those couple of hours of time back, and help them use that time to bring their families closer together.”

As the saying goes: Nothing brings people together like a good meal.

–Eric Wallace

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: People’s Blues of Richmond

People’s Blues of Richmond is a powerhouse of throwback blues rock and modern, dark psychedelica. The trio plays the Southern on Friday. Photo: Publicity photo

Founded during a time of grief, People’s Blues of Richmond is a band that oozes with emotion. Co-founders Tim Beavers and Matt Volkes were mourning the loss of a friend when they began playing and writing songs together, eventually resulting in 2013’s Good Time Suicide. Tracks such as “Cocaine” and “Black Cat” define the band’s raw passion fueled by a retro heaviness dug from the classic rock foundations of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. And the group’s rapidly shifting progressions from celebration to psychedelia make for a live show of hopped up mayhem and musical exhilaration.

Friday 8/28. $10-12, 8:30pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
News

Courting disaster: Republicans pick a losing judicial fight

file photo

In our experience, the current Republican majority in the General Assembly excels at exactly one thing: grandstanding. Not great at legislating, consensus-building or acknowledging basic reality, but boy do they know how to make a ruckus. If the definition of a conservative is, as National Review founder William F. Buckley put it, someone who “stands athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’” Virginia’s GOP contingent has it down. The problem for them is that history does not stop, and sometimes their propensity to pontificate instead of legislate causes the party real problems.

This was definitely the case during the recent GA special session, called by Governor Terry McAuliffe to address repeated court rulings that Virginia’s current congressional district map is unconstitutional. Now, even the most casual of political observers knew that the chances of a new map coming out of this session were infinitesimal. But the actual outcome of this political puppet show was so disastrous for the elephants, it was almost as if they had planned it that way.

The Republicans’ first mistake was failing to file even one revised redistricting plan following the October 2014 court order that instructed them to do so. Although it’s had nearly a year to work on a legislative fix, the GOP caucus has instead ignored the problem, hoping that a higher court would eventually rule in its favor. The Democrats, meanwhile, have proposed three formal redistricting plans (all of which were completely ignored by the Republican majority, natch).

The second huge mistake the Republicans made was trying to hijack the special session to remove and replace recently appointed state supreme court Justice Jane Marum Roush. Roush, a widely respected former Fairfax County Circuit Court judge, received an interim appointment from McAuliffe a few weeks back, and Republicans have been grousing about it ever since. While they praise Roush herself, GOP leadership was annoyed that the governor didn’t consult them before making the appointment, and thus were determined to remove Roush from the bench and confirm their own choice, Court of Appeals Judge Rossie Alston Jr., to a full 12-year term.

And this is where things got juicy. While the Senate was maneuvering to replace Roush, and the House of Delegates was deeply mired in the redistricting debate, Senate Democrats pulled a devious maneuver that seemed straight out of the GOP playbook. Partnering with Midlothian Republican Senator John Watkins, and making great strategic use of Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam’s tie-breaking vote, the Senate’s Democratic minority quickly passed a motion to dissolve the special session, thereby keeping Roush on the state supreme court, and making it all-but-certain that the assembly will not meet the September 1 deadline for passing new redistricting legislation.

Once that deadline has passed, the task of redrawing Virginia’s districts will fall to a panel of federal judges, who will almost certainly unpack the commonwealth’s problematic 3rd District in a way that will negatively impact the state GOP. Meanwhile, McAuliffe will reappoint Justice Roush, and the Republicans will continue to fulminate that the entire mishegoss was unconstitutional, and that the special session isn’t technically over until the House adjourns, and that sputter sputter cough cough sputter.

But as the great newspaper humorist Finley Peter Dunne famously wrote, politics ain’t beanbag, and the Republicans just found that out the hard way. All they can do now is regroup, and try to move their grandstanding to firmer political ground.

Odd Dominion is an unabashedly liberal, twice-monthly op-ed column covering Virginia politics.

Categories
Arts

Film review: Franchise hopeful American Ultra fails to launch

The wild plot threads of American Ultra starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart don’t knit into a compelling storyline. Photo: Universal Pictures

As if there were any doubt, the age of the comic book movie is here to stay, having embedded its logic and narrative rhythms so deeply in our psyche that even a wholly original, self-contained story like American Ultra cannot help but play like an attempt to introduce yet another franchise. Essentially an origin story for a superhero that falls somewhere between Neo in The Matrix and James Franco’s Saul Silver in Pineapple Express, Max Landis’ sometimes-clever screenplay and committed performances can carry the movie when the plot and action sequences come to a standstill but he never attempts to dig very deep to find originality in its tricky premise.

American Ultra tells the story of Mike Howell, a small-town stoner and self-described fuckup. Mike leads an uneventful life, doing very little beyond his job at a convenience store, doodling his comic creation Apollo Ape and doing his best to make his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) happy despite his many fuckups. Cut to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where we learn that Mike is actually a sleeper agent who is about to be terminated by power-hungry upstart Adrian Yates (Topher Grace), prompting Mike’s handler Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) to activate him in order to save his life and the program that produced him.

What follows is a balancing act between two stories: the first, a potentially entertaining tale of a burnout who is constantly surprised by skills he never knew he had, and the second an unnecessarily complex tale of a power struggle within the CIA. The former has potential, and Eisenberg’s sometimes frightened, sometimes amused reactions to his super soldier training can be fun to watch, but moments of forced sincerity and predictable plot twists get in the way before true enjoyment can take root. The latter—while ostensibly the primary plot device—only drags things to a halt.

American Ultra occasionally shines in the interactions between its principals. Eisenberg and Stewart breathe life into the roles of Mike and Phoebe, as individuals and as partners in a semi-functional relationship (even after the blood starts flying). Lasseter and Yates, meanwhile, have terrific anti-chemistry, and not a single body movement or facial tic between the two conveys anything other than utter contempt that is a joy to watch.

Yet what could have been a daringly original take on superhero tropes unfortunately wastes a fresh script and the freedom of an R rating, only to go places we’ve been before. The film ends suddenly (not a spoiler) with a wholly unearned animated sequence depicting Apollo Ape committing a series of violent acts that have nothing to do with what came before. It is drawn in a raw, pulpy style, suggestive of the underground comix movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Perhaps at one stage, American Ultra was conceived as a Zap Comix-esque riff on the Marvel formula. Indeed, had this story been written as a pulp comic and not a screenplay, the satire would carry through. Yet despite its good intentions, great performances and inspired concept, American Ultra never transcends origin story cliches enough to become more than a prequel to a nonexistent franchise.

Playing this week

Ant-Man

The End of the Tour

Fantastic Four

The Gift

Hitman: Agent 7

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Minions

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Ricki and the Flash

Straight Outta Compton

Shaun the Sheep Movie

Trainwreck

Vacation

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Categories
News

UPDATED: Two Virginia journalists slain by former station employee

Alison Parker and Adam Ward, two WDBJ journalists, were killed August 26 during a live broadcast. Photo courtesy of WDBJ7.

On August 26, viewers of Roanoke’s WDBJ morning news show initially didn’t know what had happened when the camera abruptly dropped and multiple pops could be heard. Later, they were shocked to learn they’d witnessed the execution of a reporter and cameraman on live TV during the interview of a third victim about Smith Mountain Lake’s 50th anniversary.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s Department received a phone call at 6:43am, alerting it that shots were fired at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, according to a press release.

The reporter, Alison Parker, 24, and her cameraman, Adam Ward, 27, were pronounced dead at the scene, the first journalists killed in the U.S. since 2007.

They’d been interviewing Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Vicki Gardner, who was reportedly shot in the back and taken to Carilion Clinic. On the day of the murders, a spokesperson for the clinic, Chris Turnbull, said Gardner was in stable condition. Gardner continues to recover from surgery and non-life-threatening injuries.

“We know this has been a very difficult situation to manage professionally and personally,” Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton said at a press conference that afternoon. Members of WDBJ continued to provide constant coverage of the slayings of their two former colleagues and the race to track down their suspected killer throughout the day. They also reported that flowers, phone calls and e-mails were pouring in to comfort the grieving news crew.

About five hours after the murders and succeeding a brief police chase, the suspected killer crashed his rental car into the median of I-66 in Fauquier County, nearly 200 miles away from the scene of the crime. When police reached his car, Vester Lee Flanagan II was suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Overton reported that Flanagan died at 1:30pm at the Inova Fairfax Hospital.

The Franklin County Sheriff’s office says Flanagan, through his writings and evidence left behind, identified with others who have committed domestic acts of violence and mass murder, as well as the September 11 terrorists. Flanagan purchased a gun two days after Dylan Root shot nine black worshippers in a Charleston church.

Overton says Flanagan was a former WDBJ employee and the sheriff’s department has a copy of a “lengthy, multi-page fax” of grievances and a suicide note that Flanagan sent to ABC News, which received the 23-page document at 8:26am on the morning of the murders.

According to ABC, Flanagan had called several times over the past few weeks to pitch a news story, and at approximately 10am August 26 he called again, introducing himself as Bryce Williams, which was the name Flanagan used on-air, and stating that his legal name was Vester Lee Flanagan II. He said authorities were chasing him before hanging up the phone.

Ward, who attended Virginia Tech, was preparing to move to Charlotte, North Carolina, where his fiancée, WDBJ morning producer Melissa Ott, was taking a new job. He was leaving the news business, one of his colleagues told ABC News.

Parker grew up in Martinsville and attended James Madison University. “Alison was our bright, shining light and it was cruelly extinguished by yet another crazy person with a gun,” said her father, Andy Parker, in a statement. “She excelled at everything she did and was loved by everyone she touched. She loved us dearly, and we talked to her every single day. Not hearing her voice again crushes my soul. Our family can only take solace in the fact that although her life was brief, she was so happy with it. She lived it to the fullest and her spirit will always be with us.”

Her father has vowed to fight for tougher gun control laws. Governor Terry McAuliffe publicly shared the same sentiment:

“As we reflect with heavy hearts on this tragedy, it is appropriate to begin to ask questions about how we can prevent these senseless events in the future. Keeping guns out of the hands of people who would use them to harm our family, friends and loved ones is not a political issue; it is a matter of ensuring that more people can come home safely at the end of the day,” McAuliffe said in a press release. “We cannot rest until we have done whatever it takes to rid our society of preventable gun violence that results in tragedies like the one we are enduring today.”

At JMU, Parker was a news editor for the student newspaper, The Breeze. The paper’s adviser, Brad Jenkins, describes her as tenacious and someone who wasn’t afraid of asking hard questions.

“She had a real spirit,” Jenkins says. “She wanted to get the news, so she went after it as hard as she could.”

JMU’s school of media arts and design has established a scholarship in her memory.

A scholarship at Salem High School, which Ward attended, has been created in his name.

Original story updated on September 1, 2015.

Categories
Living

What’s the point?: The rhyme and reason of routine visits

Your observations about your pet’s health are just as important as your pet’s veterinarian’s during a checkup. Photo: File photo

“What are you looking for?” asks a client as my hands press deep into the sides of his dog’s belly.

I’m surprised for a moment. It’s such a simple and reasonable question, but it hardly ever gets asked amidst the routine of a physical examination. I’m not even sure what to make of it at first. Is he skeptical? Does it look like I’m faking it? I’ve been doing this for so long that it feels entirely obvious what I’m looking for. But then I realize that maybe it’s not obvious at all because I have trouble finding an answer.

My immediate instinct is to say that I’m looking for problems—a broken tooth here or a stinky ear there. That seems to make sense, but on brief reflection I realize that’s not it.  The truth is quite the opposite. I’m looking for normal, and hoping I find it. I don’t know how many thousands of physical examinations I’ve performed in my career, but each one gets added to this amalgamated notion of what a normal animal looks, sounds, smells and feels like.

Whether it be the slippery bulk of a dog’s spleen, the lunar beauty of a cat’s retina or the reassuring lub-dub of a healthy heart, these sensations are hardwired. The point of a physical exam is to find out if the patient in front of me matches those sensations, and to pay attention when she doesn’t.

The problem with looking for problems is that there’s just so many of them. To say that I’m looking for each individual entry in an infinite list is absurd, if not arrogant. Naturally, if I’m faced with a patient that has a specific predisposition (maybe he’s had seven ear infections before or his breed is prone to heart disease), I’m going to double-check the trouble spots. But on the balance, looking for problems is just too narrow and it’s a good way to blind yourself to things you weren’t expecting.

When you look for normal, however, it’s easier to notice when something violates well-established expectations. It’s that same sinking feeling you get when you notice your wallet isn’t in your pocket. You know right away that something is wrong and then you set about investigating why. And I’m not the only one in the exam room doing this.

I can’t possibly overstate how important pet owners are during a routine physical exam. While I’ve spent years learning to recognize normal across many different animals, the owner has spent years learning what normal means to that one in particular. They are the ones who notice if a dog is reluctant to climb stairs lately or if a cat has started spending more time at the water bowl. Those deviations from normal can be as revealing as anything I might stumble across during the visit.

For that reason, it’s vital that pets come in with someone who knows them well. Even the most meticulous physical examination can’t catch everything, and veterinarians rely on conversation to complete the picture. Routine vet visits are often treated like an errand that can be delegated to anybody in the family, but this can really limit the value of the experience. Nobody benefits when I ask if there’s any change in appetite, and get “I don’t know, my wife handles all that” in return.

That’s really the crux of what makes routine visits worthwhile. It’s not meant as a forum for me to let you know what’s wrong with your pet (although it can be). More often, it’s a chance for us to notice and discuss those little deviations from normal, and to decide on the best way to handle them before they veer off any further.

Categories
News

Battle for a brewery: County planning commission rejects growth amendment

The Board of Supervisors could vote to adjust the comprehensive plan boundary at the September 9 meeting.

After the Albemarle Planning Commission unanimously said no way to expanding the growth area at the Interstate 64 and U.S. 29 interchange August 18, the lines have been drawn between those who are shocked the county is hastily trying to amend its comprehensive plan to attract a West Coast brewery, and those astounded at what they call the “anti-strategic growth” sentiment at the meeting, especially when it comes to beer.

Albemarle economic development director Faith McClintic is pushing for the amendment to add 223 acres just south of I-64 with the blessing of a Board of Supervisors’ letter of intent. She says she can’t name the company, but in a call to Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon, spokesperson Marie Melsheimer confirmed the company was looking at Charlottesville, along with two other locations.

Businessman Jerry Miller thinks that’s a great idea. “We as a county have the ability to create a beer trail like Nelson,” he says. Not only would that bring in tax and tourist revenue, he says, but he believes for his 30-something demographic, “having a beer trail would improve the quality of life.”

He points to Asheville, North Carolina, which has become a beer mecca as the result of a “fabulous nucleus of breweries down there,” says Miller. And according to media reports, Asheville is one of the locations Deschutes is considering. “The planning commission is not hearing opportunity knock,” says Miller.

Former supervisor Sally Thomas represented the Samuel Miller District from 1993 to 2009, and she’s seeing a way of doing business that simply wasn’t done during her tenure on the Board of Supervisors, when the board was more concerned with keeping growth in check than luring out-of-state businesses.

“In the game of economic development, we’re shocked by the things Faith McClintic says are quite common in communities determined to bring new businesses,” says Thomas. While Albemarle always extracted proffers from developers to help pay for infrastructure costs, in other areas, taxpayers are paying for utility extensions like the one that will be needed to get water and sewer to the land Deschutes is eying.

Thomas says she encouraged the planning commission “not to be guilted into” voting for the amendment for fear of being accused of not being supportive of economic development.

Certainly the resounding rejection by the planning commission was not a happy omen for McClintic. “I would be kidding myself and others—it hurts us as a community for this project and it hurts us for other companies sitting on the sidelines,” she says. The Board of Supervisors will have the final say after a work session September 2 and public hearing September 9—although even if the amendment is approved, the property will still have to be rezoned, “another lengthy process,” she says.

McClintic refuses to divulge the economic incentives being used to attract Deschutes, but if the supes approve the amendment, she says they’ll also have to OK a proposal letter of incentives, which will become public at that time. Whatever Albemarle and the state offer up, she says, will be contingent on the number of jobs the brewery would create, the wage level and the amount of capital improvement.

“Most places are offering incentives but that’s not the primary factor for us,” says Deschutes’ Melsheimer. “We’re just looking for some place comparable to our location in Bend.”