Author: Cara Salpini

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Virginia band marches to Macy’s for Thanksgiving Day Parade

Look for the Cavaliers' spell out during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Photo Bill Ross

 

This week, families and friends will come together to celebrate Thanksgiving by eating turkey and watching football. For many families, the Macy’s 89th annual Thanksgiving Day Parade will also be on the agenda, and for.Virginia fans, it will be even more exciting. The Cavalier Marching Band will appear for the first time in UVA history as one of 13 marching bands in the parade.

To get to New York, the Cavaliers need to raise $250,000.. All in all, the fundraising process has been fairly successful, with only $13,000 more to go, according to. Ann Lawrence Grasty, the director of university annual giving, who says there have been over 1,000 individual donors, half of whom have never donated to the band before.

The donations ranged from $50,000 matching gifts, $4,000 individual donor gifts, and even 25 cents from a little boy. “Every donation was made with just as much love for the band,” says Grasty.

Associate Director of Bands Andrew Koch says the band has been preparing all year for its performance, which will include an hour-long march routine in front of the more than 3.5 million live viewers at the parade itself, as well as a special performance for the estimated 50 million TV viewers.

“When we’re on TV, we’re actually going to do a spell out,” a marching band tradition at UVA football games, Koch explains. “Our first spell out is going to be NYC, just to say thank you to the city for letting us be there, and then we’re going to transform that to UVA.”

Koch says that all 320 members of the Cavalier Marching Band are looking forward to the event, despite a 2:30am practice the day of the parade. However, the marching band also has UVA’s last two home football games to prepare for on November 21 and 28. While the focus is on the Macy’s performance, “we’re still trying to do everything we can to entertain the folks at home,” Koch says.

He feels confident about the band’s rehearsals so far, saying they’ve been “chipping away at it” for the whole semester.

“They feel a tremendous responsibility to do a great job,” Koch says of the students, “and they’re doing everything they can on top of their exams and classes being busy.”

Cavalier fans watching the parade, in addition to the Virginia spell out, can expect a performance of UVA’s “Good Old Song,” which will be played in the band’s TV performance. Koch hopes that along with the students having a great time, the camaraderie will extend to the viewers.

“Hopefully people will be saying, you know, ‘Hey, that’s our state! That’s our school! That’s our band!’ We just want to give everyone a good reason to be happy to be a Virginian,” Koch says.

 

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ABC officials file motion to dismiss Martese Johnson’s lawsuit

Martese Johnson 's lawsuit claims he was "permanently disfigured" during his encounter with ABC agents. Photo: Jackson Smith

Three ABC agents and its director filed a motion in U.S. District Court November 16 to dismiss all seven claims in UVA student Martese Johnson’s $3 million lawsuit stemming from his encounter with agents last March that left him bloody and needing 10 stitches.

Johnson alleges false arrest, excessive force, negligence and battery against special agents John Cielakie, Thomas Custer and Jared Miller in his suit. Against Miller, Johnson makes a further claim of assault.

He accuses the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and its director, Shawn Walker, of negligent supervision and training, and a failure to train or supervise.

In response, the defense claims that as an agency under the control of the commonwealth and not as a single person, the ABC is protected by Eleventh Amendment immunity, meaning a lawsuit cannot be heard against them.

The defense also sought to exempt Walker from the claims made against him by insisting that he “…was not present at the event and there is insufficient evidence to show that he was negligent.”

The physical contact between Johnson and the three ABC officers was reasonable, according to the defense, because they had “probable cause” to believe Johnson was using a fake ID, which is a Class 1 Misdemeanor.

Johnson’s repeated attempts to free himself from the officers restraining him were cited as justification for the amount of force used by the ABC officials, according to the motion.

“The plaintiff performed such acts [pulling away wordlessly from the officers] no less than three times during the stop,” the motion reads. “In a tense and uncertain situation, these acts could have caused a reasonable officer to make the split-second decision that force was necessary to prevent the plaintiff from leaving the scene or to protect his safety.”

The defense further claims that because Johnson received medical treatment after his arrest, it is not “plausible” to claim that the officers had used excessive force in arresting him.

 

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October surprise: Lunsford faces lawsuit over FOIA request

Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford contends a pre-election FOIA lawsuit is politically motivated. Staff photo

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford, in a hotly contested race for reelection, faced additional heat October 29 when Richmond attorney Matthew Hardin filed a lawsuit against her for creating a “barrier to transparency” in her response to a Freedom of Information Act request issued earlier this week.

The FOIA request asked for information on Lunsford’s credit card usage, reimbursements she received from the county and correspondence about convicted former supervisor Chris Dumler, overturned abduction-conviction defendant Mark Weiner and Albemarle police officer James Larkin during the period of January 2012 and December 2013.

“We were curious whether she paid for [personal business] trips on personal funds or with taxpayer money. Of course correspondence was requested to see what standards her office was using as regards more controversial cases,” Hardin explains.

Lunsford responded by saying she would need $3,200, as well as five additional weeks to produce the requested documents.

“It’s an incredibly high number and it impedes access to the records,” Hardin says. “It’s more than an average Charlottesville citizen pays for health insurance.”

Hardin acknowledges that Lunsford is allowed to charge a reasonable fee in response to the request, but says that by insisting on reviewing the records herself, Lunsford unnecessarily increased the fee.

“She’s the highest paid employee in the office,” he says, “We believe that her assistant commonwealth’s attorneys could review these at a much lower cost and we believe when that’s available, that’s what the law requires.”

Alan Gernhardt, staff attorney at the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, says the costs do not surprise him and that he has seen similar fees in the past. Gernhardt specifies that depending on what the search involves, Lunsford’s $3,200 could be a reasonable amount to charge.

“There’s tons of practical and technological questions involved,” Gernhardt says, “Just searching through the mass volume of e-mails can be time consuming.”

Gernhardt adds that the time delay also is not surprising and it’s “not out of the realm of possibility” that Lunsford would require that amount of time to retrieve all of the records.

Hardin stresses that he’s not trying to cause trouble for Lunsford. “It might turn out that everything she’s done is completely correct and honest and I hope that that’s the case,” Hardin says, “but the problem is that without the records I can’t tell.”

The lawsuit falls at an inconvenient time for Lunsford, who runs for reelection November 3. Hardin, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tyler Pieron, denies any political motivation in the requests.

“We’re not interested in the elections,” Hardin says, “I will happily drop the lawsuit if the records are produced in a reasonable way at a reasonable time.”

Denise Lunsford did not respond to CVILLE’s e-mail requesting comment, but in other media accounts, she has called the lawsuit “politically motivated.”

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Scarlet letters: Dean responds to BSA’s ‘shaming narrative’

Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs Maurice Apprey fires back at the Black Student Alliance president for an open letter he calls unprofessional. Photo by Jack Looney

In a scathing open letter e-mailed to UVA’s Office of African-American Affairs and later posted on Facebook, the university’s Black Student Alliance attacked the office’s strategic outcomes for the upcoming year for wording the group felt painted black students as a problem.

Of particular offense to the BSA was the following statement: “The new director of the Luther P. Jackson Black Cultural Center will oversee the negotiation of spheres of influence among student leaders that threatens to wreak havoc on climate at the university.”

The BSA’s open letter denounced this phrase, saying it was an attempt to limit the power of black student groups. “Black students do not ‘wreak havoc’ by exercising our First Amendment rights of assembly and free speech when we speak out against injustices,” says the letter. “Black students and our concerns are not to be swatted away, our leaders are not to be subdued, and our voices are not to be silenced.”

Dean of the Office of African-American Affairs Maurice Apprey, who wrote the line that set off the BSA, expresses a deep frustration with the way the situation was handled and says the students misunderstood the meaning of his words and failed to ask him privately for clarification.

“They take those words and boom! They explode,” Apprey says. “Is this what I think of them as students? That they’re going to wreak havoc all over the place? No. It’s the lack of negotiation of these spheres of influence that could wreak havoc, not the students themselves.”

With the outrage over the letter, “I suddenly became a slave master that had to watch over them so they didn’t wreak havoc,” he says.

Apprey, who has worked at the university for 35 years, says that before this event, he had a relatively close relationship with the BSA. For the past eight years, he has frequently mentored leaders of the student group and even offered funding for some of the group’s projects, the latter of which he now regrets.

“They should not have a line in my budget or even space in my office and it was my mistake for giving them that,” Apprey says.

Not only did Apprey find the BSA’s letter unprofessional, he also found it offensive. In a private letter to BSA President Aryn Frazier, Apprey calls the letter a “shaming narrative” and questions why she aired her concerns in the public arena rather than in private.

“In the two years you have been here,” Apprey writes, “I know of no reason why you would grant yourself a single reason to mistrust me.”

Despite agreeing to an interview, Frazier did not follow up with responses to C-VILLE’s questions.

Now three weeks since the October 7 letter was released, Apprey says he has received multiple apologies from student groups whose signatures were attached. Darius Carter, president of UVA’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, issued a public apology to the OAAA.

“While NSBE appeared as a co-signer for the open letter,” Carter writes, “we were not in full agreement as an organization, nor were we aware of the intentions to distribute the letter.”

In addition to the engineering group, One Way Christian Fellowship apologized for “prematurely” sponsoring a letter it did not fully understand, and Imani Nichols says that the executive board for the Black Oasis for Learning and Development did not give consent to have its signature used.

At an October 19 town hall meeting to address the concerns of black student groups, an unwanted limelight fell on the BSA, says Apprey. A student at the meeting boldly asked who else had ever felt encroached upon by the BSA, resulting in an overwhelming response.

“Everybody’s hands went up,” Apprey says. “They had not anticipated that at the town hall meeting. What looked like a conflict between OAAA and BSA turned out to be a latent conflict between BSA and other…umbrella black student groups.”

Apprey notes that this discord among black student groups is exactly what he sought to improve in his strategic outcomes, writing in a public letter to Frazier that the BSA “…sees itself as an overarching authority for all black organizations.” Apprey says the BSA’s dominant role prevents smaller black student groups from growing comfortably.

Apprey adds, “The silver lining in the cloud is that it’s very clear that there are other umbrella black student groups. They exist, they all want to be counted, they all want to be heard. So now they have to negotiate the very thing I was talking about, the spheres of influence.”

Frazier’s open letter also names grievances unrelated to the office’s function, namely the lack of black faculty members at UVA.

Noting that the OAAA is not responsible for hiring faculty, Apprey directed Frazier to the provost. “Even though this is out of our domain, we advocate continuously for diversifying our faculty and staff. More to point, we, every dean at OAAA, contribute to teaching at this university.”

The office has revised the wording of its strategic outcomes, emphasizing instead the director’s responsibility to “foster shared leadership” between black student groups.

Apprey remains supportive of the Black Student Alliance as well as all other black student groups on Grounds, but notes the incident could not go unaddressed.

“Some people have objected to the way I have gone after the president,” Apprey says. “The answer is very simple—the venom that was speared was just too much to ignore.”

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People’s Climate Movement brings Dominion pipeline into question

A slew of people gathered at the Freedom of Speech Wall to rally against climate change Wednesday. Photo by Cara Salpini

On Wednesday, October 14, the People’s Climate Movement called environmental activists to Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall to rally on climate change.

Dominion Power’s potential installation of a pipeline that would run throughout Virginia wildlife areas was the big issue, and the free speech chalkboard was filled with “No Pipeline” signs, buttons and stickers opposing Dominion.

Olivia Lewis, a student at the University of Virginia and a member of the Climate Action Society, explains, “This is a really important issue for us because this is where we live and it’s going to negatively affect Virginia.”

Many others at the rally felt the same way. Elizabeth “Lil” Williams, a member of a local grassroots organization called Wild Virginia, explains that the pipeline might endanger rare species like the Cow Knob salamander, which is unique to the Shenandoah region.

Williams says Virginia faces a very real threat from climate change, of which the flooding in Norfolk is a direct example. She says the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which would put a price on carbon and provide funds for climate change mitigation efforts like solar power, is the next step forward and she remains optimistic that climate change can be halted.

“I think that it’s really going to take a grassroots effort,” Williams says, “of people all over the country and all over the world to stand up and say, ‘We have to face this huge problem,’ and I am hopeful that… if we can face the reality of what’s going on, we can make a change.”

Several of the speakers expressed similar sentiments, both about Virginia and about climate change as a whole. Adrian Jones, who grew up in Union Grove, reminisced on his childhood and the slow depletion of our resources.

“When I was growing up,” Jones says, “you could live off the lay of the land—the fruits, the wild berries, your neighbor’s garden… We would even drink from the streams and the freshwater there. Those things are now threatened.”

Many older members in attendance nodded their heads in agreement, sharing in the memory of an environmental age they hope to gain back.

For those in attendance, though, Dominion Power’s pipeline is not a part of this plan for the future. Kirk Bowers, another speaker at the event, mentions that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would set tackling climate change back by 20 or 30 years.

“But,” Bowers says, “we don’t have 20 or 30 years to wait.”

Updated October 19.

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CBS correspondent Wyatt Andrews joins UVA faculty

Wyatt Andrews comes back to his alma mater to teach practical journalism. Photo courtesy Wyatt Andrews

The Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia hired its first professor of practice—a non-tenure track faculty position for distinguished professionals—this month, welcoming longtime CBS correspondent Wyatt Andrews, who graduated from UVA with honors in 1974.

While the university has implemented professors of practice for many years in other departments, such as the Darden School of Business, the relatively new media studies major has been largely lecture-based.

Andrews, a member of WUVA Media for his entire college career and a professional journalist for 41 years, explains that his courses will meld academic analysis of the news media with hands-on experience in the craft of news writing. These hands-on classes will most likely start in the fall semester of 2016 and will include both a beginner and an advanced class for aspiring student journalists.

“The idea,” Andrews says, “is to teach students how to report and ask them to produce actual news stories. In the advanced class, we will be very ambitious and very investigative.” Andrews adds that while some students may be interested in only broadcast journalism or only written journalism, all of his students will learn both.

UVA has no journalism major, and Andrews believes a liberal arts education is far more important for prospective journalists. He points out that he himself graduated from UVA as a foreign affairs major.

“All good journalists are very good reporters and writers and all good journalists know a little bit about most everything,” Andrews says, “and the way you get training and get to that place of knowing a little bit about everything starts with a liberal arts education. …Journalism is essentially the real-world practice of the liberal arts.”

With these practical courses still a year away, Andrews says he is most excited about a survey course he will be teaching next semester called “The News Media.”

“I want students to understand and be able to analyze how they handle the news,” Andrews says, because it’s easy to choose news sources that conform with one’s point of view. “I want them to analyze whether it is good for them as citizens to always, in all formats, choose the news that they consume rather than having it presented to them.”

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Planned Parenthood Project detours in Charlottesville

Michele Hendrickson is seen talking to students about the Planned Parenthood Project. Photo by Cara Salpini

The McIntire Amphitheater was lined with pink crosses October 7 as the Planned Parenthood Project, an organization dedicated to defunding the 98-year-old reproductive health services organization, held an informational session with students about abortion and women’s health. The crosses, totaling 897, were symbolic of the number of abortions that the group claims Planned Parenthood performs every day.

Michele Hendrickson, a regional coordinator for the Planned Parenthood Project and a member of Students for Life of America, explains that the project is traveling around the United States by bus, stopping at college campuses to inform students about the statistics surrounding abortion at Planned Parenthood and to encourage them to choose other healthcare options.

Hendrickson notes that there are “…thousands of federally qualified health centers out there that do not commit abortions. They don’t sell abortions or profit over abortions at all.”

Ann Clare Levy, a second year student at UVA and a member of Hoos for Life, firmly agrees in supporting other healthcare centers, such as the Pregnancy Centers in Charlottesville, calling Planned Parenthood’s treatment of women “misleading.”

“Ninety-four percent of women who go into Planned Parenthood who are pregnant get an abortion,” Levy says, “That’s not a choice to me. That is a very biased push toward abortion and that’s because Planned Parenthood makes a profit off of it.”

Allegations that Planned Parenthood profits off of abortions are unconfirmed, but many anti-abortion advocates note the high cost of abortions as an indicator that abortion is a large source of revenue for the healthcare provider.

A fact sheet on Planned Parenthood’s website tells a different story about the abortion services it provides, stating that abortions account for only three percent of their services. Out of a total of 10.6 million, that amounts to 327,653 abortion procedures a year. However, the organization does not provide information on the total number of pregnant women who seek out services at Planned Parenthood, making it hard to prove or disprove Levy’s statistic. Planned Parenthood did not return multiple phone calls.

Although abortion is a controversial issue, Levy and Hendrickson both report having mostly positive interactions with students, and Levy even calls the students at UVA “a pro-life generation.”

“The conversations have been great,” Hendrickson concurs. “Even when we can agree to disagree on abortion… because it’s really not even about that today. Students are kind of seeing Planned Parenthood in a new light and they’re open to hearing all of these facts about Planned Parenthood.”

Despite Levy and Hendrickson’s positive attitude on the event, third-year student Molly Sall calls the activist group “deceptive,” condemning the facts used by the project.

“I think it’s very unfortunate,” Sall says, “that they’ve taken what are essentially just totally false facts and blown them up on a big banner with a fancy font.”

Sall also expresses confusion over why students at UVA would be affected by the project’s message when college campuses are primarily liberal environments.

“People are just walking by,” she says. “People don’t particularly care. The ratio of work that went into this event versus turnout is pretty dismal and I think that’s a really good indication of how people our age tend to feel about this issue.”

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No loitering: Where you can(’t?) stand on the Downtown Mall

Wells Fargo took down the sign that said "no loitering" outside the bank on the Downtown Mall, and legal experts say the bank can't enforce such an edict. Photo: Cara Salpini

On any given day Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall plays host to a crowd of visitors, locals and out-of-towners alike. The pedestrian walking street fills up with families going out to dinner, students doing homework in coffee shops and friends shopping together. With the Downtown Mall acting as a center for social activity, a “no loitering” sign on Wells Fargo Bank raises questions about the legality of preventing passersby from standing in a public place.

“It is not illegal to loiter,” legal expert Jeff Fogel says. “The Supreme Court has decided that a number of times.”

Fogel, who successfully sued the city for its ban on panhandling within 50 feet of a mall crossing, explains that loitering is only illegal if someone is loitering for an illegal purpose, such as prostitution or drug selling. He adds that for someone to be fined, the bank would have to prove that that person was loitering for an illegal purpose.

“The definition of loitering is, after all, just idly standing around,” Fogel says. “You can’t prevent someone from doing that.”

In the context of the Downtown Mall, where people are frequently standing around, a “no loitering” sign seems especially out of place. Kadiera Bennett, a manager at the Wells Fargo on the mall, explains that it was not her choice to put up the sign.

Kristy Marshall, Wells Fargo’s corporate communications spokesperson for Virginia, explains that having a “no loitering” sign is a corporate policy for all of their locations.

Marshall adds, “We normally don’t allow loitering around our stores just because it’s a bank and we have customers coming in with money and we want it to be a secure environment.”

While Wells Fargo’s policy may be aimed at ensuring the safety of customers, Lieutenant Steve Upman says, “There’s no loitering statute in Charlottesville or in Virginia.”  Upman, public information officer for the Charlottesville Police Department, acknowledges that there is a city code preventing solicitation within 15 feet of an ATM, but says there’s no similar code for loitering.

Fogel agrees that the bank most likely put the sign up to deter people from hanging around the area, but he points out that the bank cannot legally enforce a “no loitering” sign.

“They don’t want people hanging around their building?” Fogel says. “Tough luck. This is America. You can’t tell people where to stand. There’s no way they can enforce that. They can constitutionally prohibit loitering for something like prostitution. But you cannot be prevented from loitering. The bank can’t prohibit that. They don’t write the laws.”

Following C-VILLE’s inquiry, Wells Fargo has removed its sign.

This article was updated at 4:11 p.m. October 7.

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Small step or giant leap? UVA’s Title IX resolution draws hope for future, raises concerns about past

UVA's rotunda. File photo.

Still caught in the wake of last year’s Rolling Stone controversy, the administration at the University of Virginia has been hard at work trying to improve its response to sexual assault. Attempting to mend the damage, the university entered into a resolution agreement with the Office for Civil Rights last week that promises to uphold Title IX regulations.

Among other things, UVA vowed to provide sexual assault training for students and faculty, develop an effective system for reviewing complaints of sexual assault, improve outreach with students and review its previous complaints to determine if they were handled appropriately.

Liz Seccuro, a UVA grad who was raped as a first year in 1984, described the Title IX resolution as “a watershed moment for sexual assault victims.”

She adds, “For the first time there is culpability, and an acknowledgment that the university has not followed the rules in the past or treated sexual assault victims on Grounds properly.”

Despite the acknowledgment not everyone is ready to believe in the changes that UVA pledges to enforce.

Seccuro, for one, calls her experience, “nothing short of disastrous,” saying the administration “protected the perpetrators and witnesses” in her case.

While the university is surely not the same as it was 30 years ago, there are disturbing similarities between the way Seccuro was treated and UVA’s present-day violations of Title IX for four consecutive academic years. Title IX is a federal law that prevents gender-based discrimination in a federally funded education program.

From 2008 to 2012, as well as three cases after this time period, the Office for Civil Rights said UVA failed to respond to student reports of sexual violence in a timely and equitable manner.

Although the Title IX resolution details a plan of action for UVA to effectively address sexual assault in the future, Seccuro doubts whether real change will occur, calling some of their previous efforts “lip service” and emphasizing the importance of hard consequences to stimulate change.

Current students at the University of Virginia are more optimistic about the changes, including several sexual assault groups on Grounds. One Less and One in Four, two student-led groups that practice advocacy and peer education, published a statement addressing the recent resolution agreement.

“Although we recognize the many past mistakes with regards to the treatment of survivors’ stories and reports, it is clear that the university has made crucial steps towards fostering an environment conducive to reporting and comprehensive, fair adjudication,” it said.

Alexandria Pinkleton, the president of One Less, adds that it’s not just UVA making changes. One Less and One in Four combined efforts this fall to introduce Dorm Norms, an educational program for first-year students explaining how each of them can prevent sexual assault.

Pinkleton notes that they reached more than 1,200 students this year and hopes the university will continue to support them in the future.

The two clubs also described their hopes for future transparency in UVA’s sexual assault policies, a thought seconded by Seccuro, who observes how confusing these policies can be for victims and accused alike.

The resolution addressed this clarity for student organizations, specifically mentioning fraternities and sororities and saying that the failure of an organization’s student members to comply with the Title IX policy may result in the university “severing all ties with the organization.”

Seccuro, who was sexually assaulted at a fraternity, believes the relationship between the university and the Greek system is reliant on money and thinks it could have an effect on sexual assault investigations.

“Never underestimate the Greek alumni machine and the power it wields,” Seccuro says. “The university is afraid to alienate the Greek organizations and their checkbooks, so investigations will be delayed, if they ever even happen.”

However, Seccuro believes it’s unfair to fraternities to paint them all in the same light. As she puts it, “We’re trying to prosecute rapists, not an entire culture.”

While the Title IX resolution holds many promising steps for the future, especially where university policy is concerned, the University of Virginia might have a long path before sexual assault victims feel comfortable with administrators handling their cases.

For Seccuro, who says she never received an apology from UVA, the answer lies in empathy.

“The university needs to come out of the dark and lend a hand, an ear and a much-needed heart,” she says. “We can have all the best practices and policies in the world, but we must have basic empathy afforded the victims of this most devastating crime.”

Real talk: UVA students discuss sexual assault

Over the past year, UVA has not only updated sexual assault policies, but it has also implemented mandatory education modules and bystander-training programs like Green Dot to raise awareness of sexual assault. Here’s what students say about the changes.

Charlotte Barstow, Third year

“On education modules: It encouraged me to be on the lookout for things and not be afraid to step in if something’s off or looks a little suspicious.”

Shanelle Rucker, Fourth year

“It’s interesting because I think that everyone sees the alcohol wise modules and the sexual assault modules as kind of obnoxious to do. But they’re still learning at the same time.”

Michael Mutersbauth, First year

“Everyone’s on their guard. Things may have slipped through the cracks or problems may have occurred because someone turned the blind eye. I feel like people aren’t doing that anymore.“

Dominic Lam Ting Luk, Fourth year

“I think [sexual assault] has definitely been taken more seriously ever since last year. It definitely helps that it’s more on everyone’s mind now because I’m sure it was going underreported before.”

Elizabeth Muratore, First year

“I think it’s great that [the university] is investigating these cases, but I think the only thing that will really make people feel safer is if the cases stop coming in.”

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UPDATED: City Council sides with YMCA

Will the Y ever get built? Image courtesy Piedmont YMCA

The Brooks Family YMCA has been in the works since 2006 and secured a ground lease from the city to build in McIntire Park in 2008. Seven years later, the still-unbuilt facility faces continued opposition from members of the Charlottesville City Council as amendments to the ground lease were introduced earlier this month.

In a 3-2 vote on September 21, City Council approved the YMCA’s request for a change that would dictate that if the YMCA defaults on its $12 million bank loan from Sonabank, the bank would hold the lease and be responsible for finding a new tenant for the space if necessary.

Although the facility’s use-agreement dictates that a new tenant would have to maintain a nonprofit community recreation facility consistent with the YMCA’s plans, Councilor Dede Smith said at a September 8 meeting that she is dissatisfied with the amendments.

According to the Daily Progress, Smith said, “Once it’s with the bank, it’s not clear what will happen to its ownership and we will have no say about it except for a fairly minimal level of oversight. We’ve [potentially] lost any control we might have had over who operates in our public park.”

Smith also voiced concerns that the Brooks Family YMCA would be unnecessary, citing outdated membership and program revenue projections, and pointing out that several other recreational facilities have been erected since the project was approved for a ground lease in 2008.

Councilor Bob Fenwick said he was concerned when Mayor Satyendra Huja tabled the scheduled discussion of the YMCA’s financial plan hours before City Council met September 8.

At least one council member remained confident in the plans for the YMCA. Councilor Kristin Szakos went so far as to call some of Smith’s apprehensions “fear mongering,” and said she was “embarrassed” by them, suggesting that these concerns should not put a halt to the project’s advancement, the Progress reports.

Updated 12:48pm September 22 with council vote