Month: October 2023

Tents popped up in Market Street Park last week after City Manager Sam Sanders lifted an 11pm curfew, a move he made in response to allegations of police misconduct and discrimination against the city’s unhoused Black population. At a September 28 press conference, Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis said the allegations were not accurate, and the police department’s investigation had been resolved.

Prior to Sanders lifting the curfew, officers were often called to speak with people setting up tents and staying in the park after hours. It was during these calls that it was alleged that officers were instructing only unhoused people of color to leave the park, and that a Black unhoused man was kicked by police.

“One of the officers kicked the young man who was sitting here, his name was Key Marcus,” said Deidre Gilmore at the September 18 City Council meeting. “He was trying to wake him up, but instead of gently touching or just maybe using a nightstick, he decided to kick him.”

Gilmore’s concerns were echoed by other advocates during public comment at the council meeting. Though no formal complaints were filed against the CPD, Kochis consulted with the commonwealth’s attorney and opened an administrative investigation into the interactions.

“The City of Charlottesville takes these allegations seriously, and Chief Kochis and I will remain focused on maintaining positive interactions with all of our officers,” said Sanders on September 21, when he announced that the park would be open 24/7. “I want the city to be a catalyst for change in addressing housing insecurity and homelessness, which is why I am assembling my team to build a long-term strategy.”

The investigation lasted a week, after which the department released body camera footage of two specific incide​​nts.

The first video shows the September 12 arrest of Roscoe Boxley, an unhoused Black man who was staying in the park. When told by officers he would need to leave before 11pm, Boxley set up a chair on the walkway to protest, and said he would not leave unless arrested.

“After 11pm, when the park closed, the officer advised [Boxley] that he could avoid being arrested if he would just leave the park like everyone else was,” says Kochis. “The individual refused to leave the park at that time. He was arrested without incident.”

In addition to trespassing, Boxley was served with a felony warrant for probation violation.

“As soon as I was awakened, I made up my mind at that point that I was going to protest,” says Boxley. “I had already made a sign.”

Footage from September 16 shows officers waking up people sleeping in the park and telling them to leave. Kochis says the officers noticed that a man they had just spoken to had gone back to sleep. “Officers attempted to wake him up again, but received no response. At this point, one of the officers touched the heel of the person’s foot with his own foot to wake him up. He woke up, he eventually packed his stuff, and left the park.”

After a review of the investigation, Kochis concluded that allegations of police violence and discrimination against unhoused people at the park were “unfounded and simply did not occur.”

“Responding to calls involving the unhoused are complex and multifaceted,” says Kochis. “As such, I have ordered the review of our training protocols as they relate to the handling of calls for service involving the unhoused.”

Despite the investigation’s findings, some remain disappointed in the police response. “No matter what the police do, they never find anything wrong,” says Gilmore. “I know what a kick is. You could have touched him with your nightstick. You don’t put your feet on your dog.”

“When we spoke at City Council … I was just going by what I heard,” says Darryl Jones. “He did get kicked from what I saw in that video. And that’s what I didn’t like, where they tried to dress it up and say he lightly tapped him. I don’t care, you shouldn’t have put your foot down there.”

Boxley no longer lives in the park, as part of a court order, but he says the unhoused people pitching tents in the park are only a “symptom” of a larger problem.

“We don’t want to be in the park. It just so happened to be the space of safety,” Boxley says. “Nobody wants to see a bunch of racist people taking pictures because they miss that statue. We don’t want to be nobody’s circus act. This is not a village, this is some people hav[ing] a hard time trying to get attention. They[’re] trying to get some help.”

The city has recently received numerous messages about the conditions in Market Street Park, resources for the unhoused, and safety concerns. And after a CPD request for information following a stabbing in the park, city councilors and Sanders have received hundreds of emails calling for the reinstatement of the park’s curfew or immediate action on the homelessness crisis.

Reverend Alex Joyner, pastor at First United Methodist Church, has witnessed the expanding homelessness crisis firsthand. While he knows there is no simple solution, he is optimistic about expanding resources to meet the growing need. “It’s such a complex problem that involves affordable housing and involves mental health and involves access to services,” he says. “Enforcing the curfew might move the problem, but it doesn’t come to the ultimate solution.”

Sanders explained his decision to open Market Street Park at the October 2 City Council meeting. “I do not do knee-jerk reactions. I strive to solve problems, not just identify them and talk about them at the surface,” he said. “I did not decide to lift the closing hours of Market Street Park under duress or without regard for our police department.”

Sanders, who acknowledges the complexity of helping Charlottesville’s unhoused population, outlined the current state of an action plan, including immediate items of determining logistics for expanding overnight shelter availability. “We are in conversation with PACEM [People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry] to see if it’s possible to open the shelter early,” he said.

The city seems to be taking action to help the unhoused population, but the situation and police response to calls involving homeless individuals remains complex. “When we are called, it’s typically because multiple systems have failed these communities,” says Kochis. “We’re not always best suited to deal with those, but we have to answer the call.” 

For now, Market Street Park remains open around the clock.

Keyes found guilty

After a three-day trial, and a few hours of deliberation, a Charlottesville jury found Tadashi Keyes guilty on September 28 of first degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. The victim, 36-year-old Eldridge Smith, died on January 28, 2023, after being shot in his vehicle. Smith was a member of B.U.C.K. Squad, a local gun violence interruption group, and a motive for the shooting was not made clear by either the defense or prosecution. Keyes’ sentencing is scheduled for January 24, 2024, with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Open school board seat

Applications for the Albemarle County School Board Rio Magisterial District seat are open through Friday, October 13. The vacancy is the result of Katrina Callsen’s resignation to focus on her likely election to the Virginia House of Delegates. Interviews of applicants will be conducted at a special school board public meeting later this month, with a meeting on the appointment set for November 9.

Voting deadlines

Election day is Tuesday, November 7, and several deadlines are approaching. Virginia residents have until October 16 to register to vote or update an existing registration. Same-day voter registration is available through November 7, but will require the use of a provisional ballot. For those looking to vote by mail, the deadline to request a ballot is October 27. More information about the election can be found at elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/calendars-schedules/upcoming-elections.html

A recent study by the Chesapeake Bay Program found that in the four years from 2013-14 to 2017-18, the bay’s watershed lost over 25,000 acres of tree canopy, while the amount of impervious surface (like buildings, roads, driveways, and parking lots) increased by over 50,000 acres. That’s disturbing news for folks living there—meaning us.

Charlottesville and its surrounding counties are part of the Chesapeake Bay’s vast watershed, and tree coverage plays a huge role in protecting our streams and rivers that feed into it. Trees absorb air pollution; they help control erosion and stormwater runoff, keeping silt and pollutants out of the streams; and they keep things cool and sequester carbon dioxide, thereby countering climate change. According to i-Tree, an online assessment tool, in 2018 Charlottesville’s trees provided $1.6 million in environmental benefits annually. For Albemarle County, that figure was over $76 million.

Our area is fortunate because we have great tree coverage to begin with: 42.5 percent of the city and almost 69 percent of the county, according to fact sheets developed from the CBP study. But we too are losing tree-canopy acreage—not a huge amount yet, but a heads up. “Even that single large tree makes a difference,” says Ann Jurczyk, chair of CBP’s Land Use and Conservation Subcommittee and Virginia director of outreach and advocacy for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “Fully mature trees—we just can’t replace them fast enough.”

In Charlottesville, Steve Gaines, urban forester with the Charlottesville Parks & Recreation Department, oversees trees on all city-owned property, including parks, schools, and rights of way—about 10 percent of the city. While the city has data on the percentage of tree coverage by neighborhood (thanks to a study commissioned by the Charlottesville Tree Commission, a City Council-appointed advisory body), having information on the quality of coverage is also crucial to guiding replanting and habitat restoration efforts (Gaines notes the city has applied for federal funding to do just that). 

This year, the city’s invasive control efforts have been focused on parks—Azalea, Forest Hills, Jordan, and Washington, site of the recently publicized “goat buffet.” (Fry’s Spring is also slated for the goat treatment.) In addition, the city spends $100,000 annually on tree planting, last year concentrating on school grounds. The key thing with replanting, Gaines says, is “getting the right trees on the right site.”

The Charlottesville Tree Commission reviews and makes recommendations on city projects and ordinances that affect tree coverage, says the commission’s Jeffery Aten, a local landscape architect. The commission is also part of a public-private effort called ReLeaf Cville that runs both educational and hands-on programs. With a $46,125 grant from the Virginia Department of Forestry, ReLeaf will plant 126 trees in the Rose Hill neighborhood this fall.

Albemarle County has to manage a wider range of land uses—a mix of urban/suburban landscape with more rural areas. “Maintaining tree canopy is a priority across several departments, including Community Development, Facilities & Environmental Services, and Parks & Recreation, focusing on landscape standards for development, partnerships for tree planting, and invasive species management on county land,” says Abbey Stumpf, the county’s manager of communications & public engagement. Current policies and possible new initiatives will be considered as part of the “AC44” Comprehensive Plan development process—residents can submit their comments on draft goals and objectives for environmental stewardship, parks and recreation, and historic, scenic, and cultural resources through the AC44 website.

In both the city and county, nonprofits like Blue Ridge PRISM, the Rivanna Master Naturalists, and the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards work with government agencies and run their own programs on public education and habitat restoration. The Tree Stewards have planted trees at schools, parks (including Darden Towe, McIntire, Greenleaf, and Pen), and greenways, and its volunteers help care for the trees after planting, a key to long-term success. The Tree Stewards recently completed urban planting projects in the Belmont and 10th and Page neighborhoods. “We go to the places where they need trees,” says former forester and Tree Stewards member Barbara White. And, through the organization’s free classes, tree walks, and volunteer workdays, “we try to take care of the trees we do have.”

Of course, the elephant in this room is development, a pressing and contentious issue in both the city and county. In Charlottesville, where most of the canopy loss occurs on private land, “the only way we can influence this is through the ordinances and the code,” says Gaines. Public hearings are now underway for ordinance revisions that will help support forest preservation, including making the city’s Best Management Practices for Tree Preservation required. Albemarle County code has an “environmental standards bonus, which allows developers that maintain a larger percentage of wooded area a 5 or 10 percent increase in housing density. 

An encouraging new initiative, Resilient Together, is an 18-month collaborative planning process among Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and the University of Virginia (a significant landowner in both jurisdictions). The goal is to work together on climate resilience planning, which will include urban heat reduction, stormwater mitigation, and wildfire management—each benefiting from a healthy tree canopy. As it gears up, the Resilient Together initiative is actively encouraging public input and participation.

In the meantime, CBP will use data collected in 2022-23 to release an updated Chesapeake Bay watershed study next year.

India Sims’ favorite place in Charlottesville is 5th Street Station, the large shopping area anchored by Wegmans supermarket. It’s one of the few places in town where her presence feels expected rather than just tolerated. For Sims, who is in a wheelchair and has been partially paralyzed since she was 10 months old, finding welcoming spaces has been a constant challenge.

5th Street Station does a good job with accessibility, Sims says. There’s plenty of parking, sidewalks have ramps instead of curbs, entrances are accessible all the way around buildings instead of on just one side, store aisles are wide enough to be comfortable for a wheelchair to navigate, and the café-style seating outside Wegmans is easy to use. 

“They took it upon themselves to make it accessible all the way around the building,” Sims says. “If you go anywhere else, they don’t do that.”

Sims doesn’t often go to other parts of the city for that reason. She says it’s just too tiring to deal with the frequent obstacles, or even barriers to entry.  

“I wanted to take my children to Banana Republic in Barracks Road,” she recalls. “And there’re two steps to get in there, and they don’t help you, so we couldn’t go.”

Downtown can also be deterring for those who use wheelchairs. Many buildings have entryway steps; uneven or widely spaced bricks can be rough to pass over; and the sidewalks are narrow with high curbs. A poorly placed signpost or utility pole can make it too tight for a wheelchair to pass, let alone turn around.

“It’s just like a maze for people that are disabled,” Sims says. “I know that they want that historical feeling, but it’s not going to hurt anything to just put some brown pavement there too to help.”

Sims says that the difficulty in accessing public spaces keeps many with disabilities from going out, rendering the population and its needs invisible.

“I see so many people that are disabled that hide in their community because they don’t want to deal with the people out here,” Sims says. “One, it’s inaccessible, and two, there are so many discriminatory people that make them feel unwelcome.”  

Disability advocates maintain that we all have different access needs. Whether you speak a different language, come from another culture, or move through the world in a wheelchair, we are diverse, and accessibility means welcoming those differences. 

“When we think about access, we should really be considering a human perspective,” says Jess Walters, a disability advocate and artist based in Charlottesville. “[Access] can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”

Design choices determine who a place is built for. A space created for car traffic, for example, looks different than a space for pedestrian traffic. Signs that are in English or in Spanish make a choice about who is being spoken to. Advocates say that those with disabilities are often left out of the picture when spaces are being designed.

“Not providing access ultimately means you’re not inviting disabled people into the room,” Walters says. “Disabled people make up a quarter of the population. We are the largest minority, and yet we often have the smallest amount of influence.”

Walters has Alport Syndrome, a rare genetic disease that damages the kidneys and can cause late-onset deafness. 

“So the one I fight for daily is closed captioning and [American Sign Language] interpreters,” Walters says. They say they encounter difficulty getting accommodation for their access needs. The resistance has to do with how people with disabilities and accommodations for disabilities are conceptualized, they say.

“Because we’re socially a burden,” Walters explains. “Therefore, our access needs are a burden.”

In their artwork and activism, Walters seeks to shift how disabilities are viewed.

“The focus is always on how to fix what’s broken, it seems,” they say. “A mantra within the community is, ‘We’re not broken. Society is broken for not including us.’”

Walters advocates for a more humanistic perspective. That is, thinking of a person with disabilities as whole rather than someone with a piece that’s missing—whether it’s hearing, sight, mobility, or something else.

“When you look at us from a deficit-based perspective, you sort of only see the negative and you don’t really get the larger picture,” Walters says. “That moves away from that sort of humanistic, holistic viewpoint which, I think, does us disservice because it ultimately eradicates variability.”

Walters says the needs of a person with disabilities are historically viewed as “needier,” when they should be viewed as “different.” 

In Albemarle County, 9.3 percent of the population lives with a disability, according to 2021 U.S. census data—almost one in 10 people. Providing equal access requires acknowledging a spectrum of different needs.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 makes up the major legal infrastructure to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. The ADA addresses equal access to employment, state and local government services, businesses, and nonprofits, as well as telecommunications. The act includes requirements for sidewalks, buildings, sign language interpreters for government programs, and provision of reasonable accommodations for businesses and employers. 

However, implementing those standards can be difficult.

Sarah Pool knows ADA requirements as well as anyone, and better than most. Diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease at the age of 16, she was legally blind by age 30, and now, at 63, she sees only spots of light in a fog. Getting around is a challenge for her, and a major hurdle of living with blindness.

“It’s not a lot of fun when you’re walking down the sidewalk and suddenly you’re smacked in the face with a branch,” Pool says. 

Pool walks with a cane, but it goes right under trees and shrubs that reach into the sidewalk. The ADA does have a regulation for that: Vegetation may grow no more than four inches into walkways.

Pool has been active in addressing complaints about accessibility to the city’s ADA coordinator for the past 15 years—some for vegetation, and also frequently regarding the regulations for detours around construction zones. 

Pool says some of the problems that she’s noticed include the cross-slope of sidewalks, the slope from side to side, which should not exceed 2 percent under ADA regulations. Many sidewalks are also narrower than the required 36 inches and, Pool says, there are over 200 places that are missing required curb ramps where they should be. 

Paul Rudacille, who was appointed ADA coordinator for the city last year, agrees that Charlottesville has some shortcomings.

“Charlottesville, like a lot of cities, at least older ones on the East Coast, was built before the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Rehabilitation Act, which is older than the Americans with Disabilities Act,” Rudacille says. “So, a lot of things do need to be upgraded.” 

Rudacille says that Charlottesville is currently undergoing an ADA transition plan, a required self-evaluation of physical barriers that limit accessibility throughout the city. He says that city contractors will be looking at every single curb ramp, walking every sidewalk, and evaluating crosswalk signals. 

Precision Infrastructure Management, hired by the city to conduct the audit, is in the process of assessing all public facilities in Charlottesville to find out if they meet ADA criteria. For example, contractors are looking to see if curb ramps are where they should be and if they have the proper grade and tactile warning strips for pedestrians who are blind. For pathways, they’re evaluating whether they are wide enough, if they have obstructions such as signposts, and checking for vertical height displacements—tripping hazards where sidewalk panels have come apart and become uneven. The assessment is currently looking at right-of-ways in the city but will also cover facilities, parks, programs, services, and the city’s website. The evaluation is meant to be in-depth, comprehensive, and detailed.

A major component of the transition plan is community outreach—input on public services will help shape priorities for the implementation phase of the plan that addresses where improvements should be made and what those improvements should be. A survey is available on the city’s website for residents to offer feedback, a more open forum for engagement is on the schedule, a town hall-style community meeting was held September 20 at CitySpace, and another is planned for December.

“Primary consideration should always go [to] the person with the disability,” Rudacille says. “Some people want accommodations, and some people don’t want accommodations.”

Rudacille points out that awareness is also key to providing accessible services. Charlottesville has many accessibility services in place already. JAUNT is a reservation-based, accessible transit service that residents can use to travel to areas Charlottesville Area Transit doesn’t reach. The city is required to provide closed captioning or ASL interpreters for public programs upon request. Municipal web pages are also required to work with text-readers so they are accessible for people who are blind. 

Pool hopes the transition plan will also include a training program so that city employees know how to connect people with the accommodations that are available. Overall, Pool is very happy to see the transition plan underway.

“This is probably one of the most significant things the city has ever done,” Pool says.

However, the city’s jurisdiction only goes so far. ADA regulations also address requirements for private businesses and non-governmental entities, but enforcing those standards is more difficult.

Sims has run into such problems in the private sector. She says she’s had trouble getting a loan to start her own cosmetology business. The reason, she says, is discrimination. Despite having a license, she believes the lenders didn’t think she could succeed because she’s in a wheelchair.

Employment has also been a challenge. Sims says she has had 30 interviews in the past year. 

“On the phone, amazing,” Sims says. But she says the tone changes when employers find out she uses a wheelchair. “They never call me back.”

Kim Forde-Mazrui, a professor of law at the University of Virginia, says that in addition to prohibiting conventional discrimination, the law also gives employers an affirmative obligation to accommodate a disability. That means an employer is required to determine whether a reasonable accommodation could be made to allow a person with a disability to do a job.

“For example, I’m legally blind,” says Forde-Mazrui. His employer, the UVA School of Law, is required to determine if there is a reasonable accommodation he would need for the job. In fact, he does use software that can read his computer screen aloud for papers and textbooks. “They have to work with someone with a disability before they just decide that someone with a disability can’t do the job.”

However, it’s hard to prove that someone wasn’t hired because of their disability.

“That’s very difficult,” Forde-Mazrui says. “Which is why employment discrimination cases are so hard to win, because so often they turn on the subjective motivation of the employer.”

In Albemarle County, just one in four (24.4 percent) people with disabilities are employed and one in 10 (10 percent) live below the poverty line, according to 2021 U.S. census data. In national averages, those with disabilities are less than half as likely to be employed and twice as likely to live below the poverty line.

Sims says affordability is a major concern for her as a person with a disability and should be part of the conversation around access. 

“I want accessible housing for people that are disabled. I want us to be able to go get a home without a problem. I want us to be able to get a loan so that we can start a business, any business that we want. I want everyone that doesn’t want a business to be able to work.”

That is the future she says she’ll continue to work for.