Month: January 2020

Categories
News

In brief: Kaine on Iran, police withdraw cameras, speaking in CODE

Senator Tim Kaine speaks at Batten about US-Iran relations. Photo: Sanjay Suchak

Kaine argues for peace

War with Iran may well be on the horizon—but U.S. Senator Tim Kaine has a few objections. He spoke about his new war powers resolution and his hopes for a return to diplomacy during an event at UVA’s Batten School of Public Policy on January 17.

Kaine has recently managed to drum up bipartisan support for a resolution that would limit the president’s powers of war and put more responsibility back in the hands of Congress. The resolution will almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, but Kaine argued that on some level the veto is beside the point. “Congress should do whatever we’re supposed to do, [regardless of] what the president does,” the Virginia Democrat said. 

Trump’s decision to walk away from the United States’ nuclear deal with Iran was “one of the worst decisions” the country has ever made, according to Kaine. “If you abandon diplomacy, you make war more likely.”

“We won the Iraq war, and yet looking back at it, most people say it was a catastrophic mistake,” said the senator, who serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.

Kaine delivered his remarks in his usual wonky, earnest style, invoking everything from Thomas Jefferson’s interactions with Barbary pirates to his own experience as a lawmaker with a child in the military. Ultimately, however, he made his opposition to war with Iran clear. “There is not a war scenario with Iran that is a simple, easy mission accomplished,” Kaine said. “There’s just not.”

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Quote of the Week

“Twelve handguns a year is more than enough, for most citizens. If you need more than that, go to Texas. They don’t have any laws.”

­—State Senator Dick Saslaw, speaking in favor of Virginia’s proposed one-handgun-a-month law earlier this week

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In Brief

A police camera hanging on a telephone pole near Westhaven.

Caught on cameras

C-VILLE reported last week that the city had installed four surveillance cameras near Westhaven and Prospect, two majority black public housing neighborhoods in town. Since the article was published, the police have removed those cameras just as quietly as they hung them up. When asked why the cameras were taken down, police department spokesman Tyler Hawn said any questions about the cameras should be referred to city spokesman Brian Wheeler. Wheeler has not yet responded to requests for comment. 

Bias unmasked

Only one arrest was made at Monday’s massive pro-gun demonstration at the state Capitol: Mikaela Beschler, a 21-year-old Richmond woman, was arrested for covering her face with a bandana. It’s a felony to wear a mask in Virginia, but many gun-toting protestors had also covered their faces. “It’s become abundantly clear that the mask ban, which was intended to combat the Klan, is now only enforced against anti-racist activists,” tweeted Delegate Lee Carter.

Speaking in CODE

Construction is chugging along on the gigantic CODE Building, the office and retail space coming to the west end of the Downtown Mall in 2021. At a press conference last week, organizers promised that the building will emphasize “entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas” as well as “the principles of wellness and sustainability,” foster “unplanned interdisciplinary cross-pollination;” and have spaces where people can “maybe do a webinar, film it, blast it out.” 

Don’t Byers it

Albemarle County Police Department sent out a warning this week about a telephone scam: A mysterious caller has been ringing up locals, identifying himself as Captain Darrell Byers, and telling the marks they have an arrest warrant on their head that can be resolved by wiring money. Don’t fall for it. The local police aren’t perfect, but we’re pretty sure they’re not that corrupt.

 

Categories
Living

The vision thing: What do cats and dogs actually see?

Cats’ sleek and gorgeous eyes seem built for precision, but the precious pets are close to legally blind, with vision somewhere around 20/150! Photo: Getty Images

Centuries of domestic breeding have resulted in cats and dogs that come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. If you have a favorite breed, there’s a good chance that you like it to some degree because of the way it looks. But what do our pets see when they look back at us? In truth, they see better than us using multifocal contact lenses.

Let’s clear up the most common misconception first. Dogs do not see in black and white. They do, however, see a different color spectrum. This is because their retinas—the light-detecting membranes at the back of the eyes—are built differently. Human retinas have three types of light-sensitive cells called cones, each of which is tuned to a single color: red, blue, or green. Dogs have only red and blue cones, which makes their vision similar to that of a person with red-green color blindness.

Like humans, cats have three types of cones, but they still don’t see color all that well. This is because cats and dogs have another problem with color vision: Regardless of which cones they have, they don’t have very many of them. Instead, their retinas are packed with a different kind of light-sensing cells, called rods, that don’t detect color at all. Rods are better suited to seeing in dim light than they are to parsing the hues of rainbow. People have fewer rods than cones, so while we get to see the daytime world in bright color, we are fated to stub our toes searching for the toilet at night.

But all those rods aren’t the only reason why cats and dogs can see so well in the dark. You’ve likely noticed your pets’ eyes glow bright green at night. This is courtesy of the tapetum lucidum, a reflective layer behind the retina. Any light that slips through the retina bounces off this secondary layer for another pass through the animal’s retina, effectively doubling its sensitivity.

There’s more to vision than color and brightness, however. Compared to people, dogs and cats have limited visual acuity. Dogs have roughly the equivalent of 20/75 vision, meaning they need to be 20 feet away from something to see it as well as a normal person could at 75 feet. And you may be surprised to hear that cats fare even worse! Those sleek and gorgeous eyes seem built for precision, but cats are close to legally blind with vision somewhere around 20/150!

Making matters worse, dogs and cats have trouble adjusting their vision to different distances. This is because their lenses can’t adjust shape as readily as ours can. If you’re over 40, you’re familiar with what happens when your lenses start to become inflexible. It gets harder and harder to focus on anything close to your face. Welcome to life as a dog.

The short of it is that cats and dogs see better at night than we do, but those adaptations come at the cost of clarity. But poor vision doesn’t slow them down any. They don’t need to drive cars or read the fine print. And what they lack in eyesight, they make up with magnificently superior senses of smell and hearing. Even animals that lose their vision due to degenerative diseases do incredible job of navigating their homes, because their vision was never that great to begin with.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He moved to Charlottesville in 2003, the same year he received his veterinary degree from Cornell University.

Categories
Living

Liquid gold: Local cidery and coffee roaster garner national awards

The Harrison apple, an heirloom variety once thought to be extinct, was reintroduced by Tom Burford of Albemarle CiderWorks—and used to make an award-winning cider. Photo: Courtesy Albemarle CiderWorks

On Friday, January 17, Albemarle CiderWorks and Mudhouse Coffee Roasters scored top honors in the 2020 Good Food Awards in San Francisco. Among more than 2,000 entrants, the cidery and coffee producer were regional (South) winners in their respective categories—ACW for its Harrison cider, and Mudhouse for its Geisha Moras Negras roast. Bestowed annually by the creators of Slow Food Nations, the awards recognize “players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic, and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture.”

Albemarle CiderWorks’ Harrison cider took top regional (South) honors at the annual Good Foods Awards in San Francisco. Photo: Courtesy Albemarle CiderWorks

As the name suggests, the ACW cider is made from the Harrison apple, an 18th-century variety that fell out of use and was thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in the late 1970s. Years later, ACW’s Thomas Burford became the first contemporary orchardist to cultivate the yellow, black-speckled Harrison, and today it is widely grown and popular among cider makers (but too ugly for supermarket sales).

The story of Mudhouse’s award winner begins in 1960, when the Geisha coffee variety was introduced in Panama. Mudhouse sources its beans from a third-generation family farm there. Grown at an altitude of about 5,400 feet, the fruit is hand-picked by migrant laborers from the Ngäbe-Buglé indigenous region, and it is quite precious. Eight ounces of Mudhouse’s Moras Negras will set you back $75. That’s more than most of us would be willing to pay. But at the 2006 Best of Panama event, an executive from Vermont’s Green Mountain Coffee remarked, “I am the least religious person here and when I tasted this coffee I saw the face of God in a cup.”

If you’re into that sort of thing, you can buy the stuff at mudhouse.com.

Speaking of awards…

Five local vineyards wowed the judges at the 2020 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, securing prestigious awards and doing the Monticello American Viticultural Area proud. Jefferson and Barboursville vineyards, Veritas Vineyard & Winery, and Trump Winery earned Double Gold designations for five wines, and newcomer Hark Vineyards was the only Best in Class winner from Virginia, singled out in the classic packaging category for its 2017 chardonnay label design. The Chronicle’s annual event is the largest in North America, drawing 6,700 entries from 1,000 wineries this year. Judges dole out Double Gold medals sparingly but found worthy recipients in the Jefferson Vineyards 2018 viognier, Barboursville’s 2018 vermentino, and Trump Winery’s 2016 meritage (a red blend consisting primarily of cabernet franc). Veritas nabbed two double-golds for cabernet franc bottlings, the 2017 reserve and 2017 standard in the $40-and-over and under-$30 categories, respectively.

This is nuts!

Sorry, fans of dairy alternatives like soy and almond milk, you may have to adapt to new terminology. A bill just cleared the Virginia House Agriculture Subcommittee defining milk as “the lacteal secretion, practically free of colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of a healthy hooved mammal.” The measure is intended to protect the commonwealth’s dairy industry from the surge in popularity of plant-based “milk” products. The legislation is moooving up the lawmaking food chain for further consideration.

Munch madness

C-VILLE’s Restaurant Week 2020 kicks off Friday, January 24, with 40 restaurants offering three-course meals for $29 or $39 (plus tax and a huge tip, please)—and presenting some tantalizing dishes. We’ve got our hungry little eyes on a few, including: Little Star’s seared rockfish with escarole, chipotle, manchego, and pimento fundito; Fleurie’s pan-roasted Polyface Farm chicken with braised cabbage and bacon; Kama’s grilled Virginia oysters with uni butter; 1799 at The Clifton’s rainbow trout with sweet potato, kale, and orange emulsion; Three Notch’d’s truffled mushroom ragout with potato gnocchi, vegetarian bordelaise, baked kale, and pecorino; and to top things off, Common House (aka Vinegar Hall)’s buttermilk panna cotta with persimmon jam. A portion of the proceeds benefit the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, so eat up!

Bird is the word

Bowerbird Bakeshop, that is. The team behind the City Market stalwart recently announced a brick-and-mortar location at the Tenth Street Warehouses this spring. On Monday, co-owners Earl Vallery and Maria Niechwiadowicz surpassed their $5,555 GoFundMe target (by about $500) to defray part of the $70,000 start-up costs. Ten percent of all donations above the goal benefit City of Promise, the nonprofit working to empower underserved populations in Charlottesville.

Movin’ on up

It’s last call at Ace Biscuit & BBQ’s Henry Street location. The charming storefront next to Vitae Spirits will close on January 26 as the kings of carbo-loading move to bigger digs at 600 Concord Ave., just a couple of blocks away. No opening date at the new location has been announced.

Plus ça change

Less than a year after taking the helm at Gordonsville’s Rochambeau, Michelin-starred chef Bernard Guillot has returned to France, citing personal reasons. But the restaurant won’t miss a beat, as Jean-Louis and Karen Dumonet step in to fill the void in early February. The couple met long ago at cooking school in Paris and have been collaborating on restaurants all over the world for 35-plus years. Their latest project, Dumonet, was a popular French bistro in Brooklyn.

It’s mai-tai o’clock somewhere

Now that it’s actually cold outside, Brasserie Saison is hosting a Tropical Tiki Getaway so you can mind-trip to a warm, sandy beach. The intimate downstairs Coat Room will be decorated like a luau (we see a fake palm tree in our future) and paper-umbrella cocktails will be served. Wear your Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops. 6-10pm, Thursday, January 30. 111 E. Main St., Downtown Mall, 202-7027, brasseriesaison.net.

Categories
Arts

New life: Michael Bay-directed franchise improves without him

Martin Lawrence and Will Smith reprise their buddy-cop roles in Bad Boys for Life, directed by buzzworthy Belgian filmmakers Adil El Arbiand Bilall Fallah. COLUMBIA PICTURES

Who knew the only thing a Michael Bay sequel needed was a new director to rein it in? Say what you want about Michael Bay’s movies (Lord knows I have), but his work is inimitable. You can tell right away if you’re watching authentic Bay or a knockoff. He is a master of his own technique, and if you want nauseating nonsense, there’s no one better. He truly lives for what he does, which is more than can be said for many directors.

At first glance, having someone new direct a sequel to a Bay movie seems like an even bigger mistake than letting Bay do it in the first place, like a sugar-free version of a soda that was gross to begin with. Enter Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah with Bad Boys for Life. These Belgian filmmakers on the rise unleash the potential that was always there with the series, but was suffocated by its direction with a script unworthy of its lead performers. There are shootouts and car chases, but this time they can be enjoyed without Dramamine. There are jokes, but they’re written by people who know what’s funny, and delivered by actors who understand why a character would say such a thing.

Bad Boys for Life

R, 134 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

The film follows Detectives Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett (Will Smith and Martin Lawrence), longtime Miami police partners. After nearly a quarter century of taking down bad guys, Marcus is ready to retire. Tired of the violence and lack of security, he’d rather sit in his reclining chair and help his newborn grandchild grow up. Mike, meanwhile, takes this as a betrayal and has no intention of slowing down, until a mysterious assassin guns him down in the street. Mike recovers, but not before momentarily dying, and the pursuit of his would-be killer leads him to unexpected discoveries that make him question what he truly believes. Maybe he can’t run from his past, maybe there is a better future without the shootouts and fast cars.

If you’ve ever seen an R-rated buddy-cop movie, you will probably figure out the foreshadowing right away. But that’s just the thing: A film with Michael Bay’s name on it has real, honest-to-God foreshadowing. It has themes, ideas, even a meaningful title. “Bad boys for life,” but whose life? Does that hold true after Mike died before being resuscitated?

The genre’s formula is played to its strengths, and the talented directing team makes sure a joke lands before the next one starts. You know who’s shooting before someone gets shot, and you see where the car is going before it crashes. Bad Boys for Life has all of the boilerplate things that make a movie competent and watchable, with the added bonus of being fun and funny along the way.

The dynamic between Smith and Lawrence remains the main attraction as in previous installments. Both put in the work of carrying an action franchise while appearing totally at ease in the roles. Special attention must be paid to Lawrence, who brings depth and sensitivity to Marcus. The actor-comedian has been full of surprises, with a compelling turn in last year’s Beach Bum, and now delivering real emotion in a decades-old guns-and-gags series. If this is the last entry—“One last time,” as Mike and Marcus say—Bad Boys for Life should mark a new beginning for Lawrence’s career.

Local theater listings

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema 375 Merchant Walk Sq., 326-5056.

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX The Shops at Stonefield, 244-3213.

Violet Crown Cinema 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall, 529-3000.

SEE IT AGAIN
Stop Making Sense

NR, 88 minutes/Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

January 27

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Son Little

Son Little arrives with songs from his soon-to-be-released album aloha. Publicity image.

Son salutation: R&B soul musician Son Little has an eclectic body of work that includes contributions to recordings by The Roots, RJD2, and Portugal. The Man. He cites Paul McCartney, Kendrick Lamar, American indie act Grizzly Bear, and Swedish electronic band Little Dragon as early influences, and earned his biggest props to date for his Grammy-winning work on Mavis Staples’ 2015 song, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” The bar is set and anticipation is high for Little’s fourth album, aloha, due out on January 31.

Sunday 1/26. $16-18, 8pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Roxane Gay

Author Roxane Gay comes to Charlottesville as the keynote speaker for the 2020 Community MLK Celebration. Image: Jay Grabiec

Rox our world: Roxane Gay can write with both authenticity and wit about Italian restaurants, feminism, body image, racism, rape culture, gun control, and other cultural hot buttons. She’s become internationally recognized for her to-the-point social criticism, and in 2019 Playboy called her one of the most important and accessible cultural commentators of our time. That same year, she made speaking appearances around the world and published a comic series about three generations of black women who are master thieves in Chicago.

Thursday 1/23. Sold out, but unclaimed tickets released prior to show, 6:30pm. The Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 979-1333.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Joe Policastro Trio

The Joe Policastro Trio brings its cinematic style to WTJU and Fellini's on Friday night. Publicity image.

Screen team: Based on its latest material, you could call the Joe Policastro Trio dramatic. The alt-jazz outfit’s recent recordings include the West Side Story suite, as well as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” “Nadia’s Theme (From ‘The Young and the Restless’),” “Twin Peaks’” theme, Blade Runner’s love theme, and many other well-known TV and screen epics. On its aptly named new release, Nothing Here Belongs, the trio includes some original numbers, while featuring innovative takes on popular
songs by Bruce Springsteen and Talking Heads.

Friday 1/24. Free, 8pm. WTJU Studio, 2244 Ivy Rd., and Free, 10pm. Fellini’s 200 W. Market St.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Blackalicious

Blackalicious celebrates the 20th anniversary of Nia at the Southern on Thursday. Publicity image.

Back on the beats: When Blackalicious’ first album, Nia, was released in 1999, critics praised the duo for their rap skills, production style, and ability to push hip-hop in a new direction. Following up with the equally compelling Blazing Arrow (2002) and The Craft (2005), Chief Xcel and Gift of Gab took 10 years to release Imani, Vol. 1 in 2015, and stayed true to their formula of positive vision, verbal dexterity, and lyrical eloquence combined with smart, expansive sonic beats. On the road to celebrate their 20th anniversary, the Sacramento group is sure to deliver its popular “Alphabet Aerobics.”

Thursday 1/23. $25, 8:30pm. The Southern Café & Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
News

More than a store: Uplift Thrift benefits mental health, addiction services

Executive director Erin Tucker hopes the new Uplift Thrift, at 600 Concord Ave., will help fund On Our Own's programs.

With the newly expanded Goodwill on 29 North, SPCA Rummage in Seminole Square, and boutique favorites like Darling, Charlottesville has no shortage of spots to score second-hand goods. But the newest arrival, Uplift Thrift, comes with a unique mission: all of its proceeds support the work of On Our Own.

Since 1990, On Our Own has offered free services to adults struggling with trauma, mental illness, and addiction. Its programs center around a peer support model, meaning “everyone who works here actually is in recovery,” says executive director Erin Tucker. 

“Having that lived experience to share with someone else is really important,” she says. “It offers an instant rapport with people.” 

While the recovery center gets some local and state government funding, Tucker also continuously applies for grants. She hopes that the revenue from Uplift Thrift, which opened on Black Friday, will make a big difference.

When founder Paul Patrick first opened On Our Own (in partnership with Region Ten), most of the people who came in were experiencing homelessness or struggling with mental illness or addiction, Tucker says. Because there was no place that met their basic needs (such as showering), the center felt obligated to offer those services.

However, when The Haven opened as a day shelter in 2010, “we turned [the center] into a place where only people who were in the contemplative stage of recovery could come,” says Tucker. “We didn’t want anything to distract people from their recovery.”

Today, On Our Own has a variety of structured programs run by trained peer recovery specialists. It also hosts a daily peer support group and connects visitors with personal advocates, who do weekly one-on-one peer support. 

According to Tucker, about 30 to 50 people stop by every day, excluding Sundays. 

Tucker pictured with senior staffers Cyndi Richardson and Cristy Bodie, who have worked at On Our Own for nine and six years, respectively.

For over two years, Heather (who asked that we not use her last name) has been going to On Our Own for mental health support, which she says has helped her to put her life back together.

“If I’m having a bad day, if I’ve lost sight of my path to wellness, I know I can always go to On Our Own, and I will be accepted for where I am, and encouraged to re-center on my own goals of recovery,” she says. “It feels like family.”

Over the years, On Our Own has forged several long-standing partnerships, including one with the upscale consignment shop Glad Rags. The shop donated all of the clothing and jewelry that it didn’t sell to the center, but because it was mostly vintage items that its visitors didn’t want, Tucker sold them herself and put the money toward the center’s services. 

“[One day] I realized it would be better if we had a space for all of these lovely clothes,” Tucker says. “But right about the time we were looking for the place, the state called us with good news, saying that they were going to gift us an amount of money…[and] then the owner of Glad Rags decided to retire, and she gifted us all of her inventory that was left over.”

In addition to shopping at Uplift Thrift, those willing to help can donate gently used items (excluding beds and mattresses) to the shop—or sign up to volunteer or make a donation on On Our Own’s website.

Categories
News

Low pay, little power: Charlottesville mayors have limited authority

Mayor Walker speaks at a City Council meeting.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker was re-elected on January 6, after a short but intense discussion at a City Council meeting that left part of the new council feeling put out. Two councilors, Heather Hill (who made her own bid for mayor) and Lloyd Snook, abstained from the vote rather than cast their support for Walker.

Just watching the proceedings, you’d never know that the mayor of Charlottesville wields essentially no more formal power than any other city councilor.

That’s not a new revelation: The mayor’s role has been debated before, especially in the summer of 2018, when the aftershocks of the 2017 Unite the Right rally led to the hiring of a new city manager and a period of introspection from a government accused of lackadaisical leadership in a time of crisis. City Council chose not to pursue a change of system then, and some critics still see incongruities in the city’s way of governing.

Charlottesville currently operates under a “council-manager” or “weak mayor” system, which UVA law professor and municipal government expert Rich Schragger categorized as the most common form of government in towns and small cities across the country.

In a council-manager system, “The council is the board of directors, the mayor is the head of the board of directors, and the city manager is the CEO,” Schragger says. “Our mayor is for the most part a figurehead.”

Dave Norris, Charlottesville’s mayor from 2008-11, says that the mayor does serve an important role, but agrees that it’s mostly ceremonial. “Oftentimes it’s the mayor that people go to when they have issues,” Norris says. During his term, people would regularly stop him in the grocery store or the gym to give him their 2 cents about whatever happened to be going on in town.

Placing ceremonial authority and decision-making authority in the hands of two different people is a potential source of uncertainty, however. “The city manager makes decisions which the citizens think are being made by the mayor or the city council,” Schragger says. “It’s a kind of diffusion of authority that sometimes causes confusion.”

The city manager, the most powerful individual person in the government, isn’t elected at all. Charlottesville’s city managers have historically held the office for long terms. Prior to current city manager Tarron Richardson, who took office in 2019, Maurice Jones held the role for eight years. Before that, Gary O’Connell was manager for 15 years and Cole Hendrix was manager from 1971 to 1995. 

“After having served as mayor, I really feel like the chief executive officer of the city should be directly accountable to the people of the city,” Norris says. 

Nancy O’Brien, who became the city’s first female mayor in 1976, isn’t as pessimistic about the system. She feels that the weak mayor system can encourage collaboration across the government. “You need a consensus on major items,” O’Brien says. “A little more community-building is required to move forward with things. There’s a leadership opportunity…you say, ‘what do you think, can we work together to get this done.’” 

O’Brien also says that it’s good to ensure that the person running the day-to-day operation of government always has the “professional management skills” of a hired city manager.

Both Norris and O’Brien agree on one big structural issue with the mayorship, however: the pay is too low. 

“The time I put in, I may have made 25 cents an hour,” O’Brien says. If the mayor’s salary isn’t enough to live on, mayors have to have additional income, which closes the door for many potential candidates, says O’Brien. “It’s important that it be accessible to people of talent.”

“Even though it’s a weak mayor system, it’s still easily a 50 or 60 hour a week job if you do it right,” Norris says.

The mayor’s salary is currently $20,000 per year. The other city councilors make $18,000. The city manager is paid $205,000. 

Overhauling the mayor system would mean changing the town charter, a complicated process requiring approval from the General Assembly. Better compensation for city councilors is an issue independent of the mayor system, however, and one that local legislators hope to address more directly. 

Charlottesville Delegate Sally Hudson, for example, pointed to legislation she’s introduced that would remove the cap on salaries for Charlottesville City Council members without overhauling the whole system. The bill was filed just this week.

The conversation about Charlottesville’s mayor is part of a larger debate about the push and pull between state and local power in Virginia. A legal precedent called the Dillon Rule means localities here can only exercise power explicitly given to them by the General Assembly. “Cities are subject to the whims of the state legislature,” Schragger says, adding that the most obvious example is Charlottesville’s state-protected Confederate monuments.

The state government affects what the city can do in other ways, too. “Minimum wage, affordable housing, a lot of that stuff is dictated by the state,” Schragger says. “Existing gun laws don’t allow cities to regulate guns in the way they would have liked to. Charlottesville would have liked to regulate guns a long time ago.”

Although Mayor Walker’s re-election might have seemed dramatic, her next term in office will be subject to the same constraints that all of Charlottesville’s previous mayors have faced: being a largely symbolic figure in a city government that wields little power to begin with.

“Charlottesville used to think of itself as a small city or a large town,” says Norris, “but a lot of the things that we’re dealing with now are the kinds of things that some bigger cities have to grapple with.” 

As Walker seeks to continue to address those issues, she won’t have many levers to pull.