Author: chiara-canzi

Independent Council candidates criticize media for Democrat-only forum

Four Independent candidates for City Council want to be heard just as much as their Democratic counterparts.

In a joint statement released this morning, Brandon Collins, Scott Bandy, Paul Long and Andrew Williams criticized the local media for organizing a Democratic-only debate last month. 
Fellow Independent candidate Bob Fenwick was not included in the statement.

On July 20, Charlottesville Tomorrow and The Daily Progress sponsored and hosted a forum for the seven Democratic candidates for City Council, something the Independents call "a dubious, if not offensive act."

"We note that this forum was intended to help inform the public prior to the Democratic Party primary," reads the statement. "However, we would like to point out towards a wrongly held and promoted belief that many in this city believe the Democratic Primary is the sole factor in determining who is elected to Charlottesville City Council. To host and sponsor a forum for ONLY one group of candidates, the Daily Progress and Charlottesville Tomorrow has promoted the belief that the Democratic Primary is really the only true election in Charlottesville."

The group adds that, if the local media will not host a forum with the five Independent candidates, then “a great disservice to the common good will be committed.”

The statement comes one day before all 12 candidates square off in two debates, the first sponsored by the Senior Statesmen of Virginia and the second hosted by the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association, both slated for tomorrow.

Charlottesville says panhandlers lack standing for lawsuit

The City of Charlottesville has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by five homeless men, who call the City’s Downtown panhandling ordinance unconstitutional. In the motion, filed on August 5, the City of Charlottesville argues that the plaintiffs do not have legal standing because they "fail to allege a plausible claim of ‘injury in fact.’" None of the men, the City argues, have been charged with or convicted of a violation.

“Does the City really want people to break the law in order to file a legal challenge to the Council’s effort to limit free speech?” says Jeff Fogel, attorney for the homeless men, in a statement.

Last August, City Council approved an ordinance that restricted "soliciting" (formerly called "panhandling") within 15’ of the entrance to banks and ATMs during business hours, and within 50’ in each direction of the two vehicular crossings on the Downtown Mall. (For background on the ordinance, click here.)

While the plaintiffs claim that the ordinance violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to free speech and equal protection, the City argues that “facially, the Ordinance does not impose an outright ban on begging on the Downtown Mall, in general, but simply narrowly limits the place where any soliciting may take place.” The response also cites the court case Hill v. Colorado, in which the court mentions multiple instances of "unwilling listener’s interest in avoiding unwanted communication."

In response, Fogel raises the example of a politician collecting signatures for candidacy, and questions whether a difference exists between the two situations. “It is a fundamental and critical principle of the First Amendment law that the government may not discriminate between different kinds of speech based on their content.”

Local attorney running for city school board

Local attorney Jennifer McKeever has officially announced her candidacy to the Charlottesville City School Board. McKeever, mother of two Burnley Moran Elementary students and a nine-month old, has served on the Community Development Block Grant Task Force and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and seeks to continue “the current Board’s legacy of success,” if elected, she states in a news release.

Because McKeever says that teachers are “the key to creating a community ripe for student learning and achievement,” and their number is in constant decline, she "will champion initiatives that provide mentoring to new teachers and ongoing peer support for all teachers, in addition to professional development opportunities that inspire creativity and innovation."

McKeever also intends to ask City Council to expand internet service to allow students greater access to the schools’ technology initiatives and supports a school reconfiguration at Buford Middle School that will create “a modern learning environment.” Last year, the School Board approved the consolidation of Walker Upper Elementary and Buford Middle School. (For more on the configuration, click here.)

The Daily Progress reports that McKeever joins three other candidates: Ivana Kadija, School Health Advisory Board chair and proponent of a ban on sugars in city schools, Amy Laufer and interim member Guian McKee. 

RWSA receives permits needed for new earthen dam

Despite vocal opposition to a new earthen dam at Ragged Mountain, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) announced today that the Virginia Division of Dam Safety and Floodplain Management has given the green light for the construction of the dam.

The three permits issued deal with the dam’s construction and the controlled breaches for both the upper and lower Ragged Mountain Dam.

“We are very pleased to see the achievement of another milestone toward fulfilling the future water supply needs of this community, a project approved by both the City and County,” said Tom Frederick, RWSA executive director, in a news release.

“The Division of Dam Safety’s charge was to review the detailed design of the new dam in conformance with safety regulations, and their actions to issue permits acknowledge their approval.  While some citizens in our community would like to debate the dam over and over again, every federal and state agency that has completed permit reviews on technical issues regarding this project has acted favorably.”

For more information about the comunity water supply plan debate, click here and here.  

Piedmont Sierra Club endorses Blount and Smith for City Council

The Piedmont chapter of the Sierra Club has officially endorsed Colette Blount and Dede Smith for Charlottesville City Council.

In a press conference this morning in front of City Hall, the group’s president Tom Olivier said the Sierra Club endorses candidates “that we believe have the ability to simultaneously protect the environment and provide opportunities for better lives for people.”

The decision to endorse Blount and Smith, both Democrats, was based, in part, on the candidates’ responses to a questionnaire, whose topics included transportation, agriculture, population growth, the city water supply plan and city/county cooperation.

Both Blount and Smith oppose the Meadow Creek Parkway through McIntire Park and support a dredge-first approach for the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Independent candidate Brandon Collins has also publicly opposed both the parkway and the construction of a new, earthen dam at Ragged Mountain and has stated his views in his responses to the Sierra Club’s questionnaire. (For the complete list of the candidates’ responses to the questionnaire, click here).

More after the photo.

Piedmont Sierra Club’s Tom Olivier reads a statement detailing the reasons why the group chose to endorse Colette Blount and Dede Smith (pictured) for City Council. Chiara Canzi photo.

After thanking the Sierra Club for the endorsement, Blount said the group’s vision and work mirrors her own views on the protection of the environment. Blount, an educator, stressed the need to create “strong educational programs” and teach our relationship with the environment. 


Smith, whose ideas are also “in sync” with the Sierra Club’s mission, said she sees a correlation between environmental protection and social justice.

Asked about fellow Democratic candidate Kathy Galvin’s recent public statement about some candidates’ “bunker mentality about a particular issue or set of issues,” namely the Meadow Creek Parkway and the community water supply plan, Blount said that the desire to move forward without the most recent and proper information, “opens the door for bad policies.”

Smith, a member of Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan (CSWP) and supporter of dredging, told reporters that going forward, City Council needs to “be much more fiscally responsible” and environmental friendly. A new earthen dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir could cost between $16 million and $20 million. 
  

Categories
Living

August 2011: Real Estate

 In real estate, making the right investment is not an easy task, especially now that purchasing property isn’t the predictable money-maker it used to be. There are endless elements and amenities to consider before taking the ultimate financial leap of faith. Locally, buyers are of the careful and calculating kind. That pickiness allows Realtors to pinpoint what attracts buyers to an area or a neighborhood. In Albemarle, for example, people fancy convenience.

“People like access, access to shopping, they are looking for convenience, and that is why you are seeing a growth in northern Albemarle County, up by Hollymead,” says Daniel Rothamel of Strong Team Realtors in Palmyra. Better access to current and future shopping areas can also be credited for the increased activity in Western Albemarle and Crozet.

But access to transportation services and walkability are surprisingly not a priority.

“It’s not a huge thing,” says Rothamel. People who move here, especially to the county, know that the trade off for the tranquility and views involves driving.

“Albemarle County is so rural that there aren’t many places where you can be next to little stores and grocery stores,” says Deborah Rutter, local broker with Nest Realty.

In her experience, clients are willing to take the walkability concept and adapt it to their own needs, whether that means walking to a local park or a community pool, “maybe not to their employer, maybe not to the grocery store, but at least some part of their life is walkable,” she says.

According to Neil Goldwein, Realtor with Better Homes and Garden Real Estate III, one group sees it differently. Seniors are more dependent on transportation options and are “very concerned about the location” of where they are moving, he says.

According to Walk Score, a website that tracks the walkability of American cities, Albemarle County is car-dependent, scoring just 20 out of 100. The City of Charlottesville, on the other hand, is one of the most walkable cities in Virginia (along with Alexandria and Arlington) and unsurprisingly, Downtown is the city’s most walkable neighborhood, earning 98 points on the index.

More important to buyers than larger lifestyle choices, Rutter says, are the amenities that come with an individual house, like specific floor plans.

“More people are starting to talk about first-floor bedrooms,” she says—a must for the aging Baby Boomer population. In addition, Rothamel says finished basements and overall well-maintained properties are in high demand.

“People are less willing to have to move into a house where they have to make a lot of changes,” he says. “People are gravitating towards the more turn-key houses.”

Rutter agrees. In fact, Rutter says that one of the “big turnoffs” for buyers is “functional obsolescence,” a property that is outdated both in amenities and feel.

“[A house] could be in great shape and it could be in a great location, but because of its age, it is structured in a way in which people don’t live their lives anymore,” she says.

At the end of the day, if you’re a seller, maintaining and upgrading your property to current standards should pay off—even if your neighborhood isn’t walkable at all.

Categories
News

Albemarle road race

Both candidates for the county Board of Supervisors’ Rivanna District—Democrat Cynthia Neff and incumbent Republican Ken Boyd—agree that northern Albemarle needs a bypass around 29N. They simply don’t agree on the definition of “bypass,” a word that may well define their race for Boyd’s supervisor seat.

Cynthia Neff, Democratic candidate for the Rivanna District, says the plan for the Western Bypass is outdated and lacks vital information. “I think that a traffic study at a bare minimum should be done and an environmental protection agency study should be done before we decide to go ahead,” she says.

“We have to deal with the transportation issue in this county. We can’t just keep growing and not build any roads,” says Boyd, one of four supervisors to vote in favor of the roughly $300 million Western Bypass. Following a July 27 vote by the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the decades-old road project is slated for $230 million in state earmarks, and carries a pledge from the Commonwealth Transportation Board to fund additional local transportation priorities.

“We do need a bypass. It would be great if there was a bypass, but this is not a bypass,” says Neff. “This is a little connector road, 6.2 miles for $300 million. And I would bet a year of my salary that the cost will be closer to $400 million by the time it’s done.”

During a town hall meeting in Forest Lakes last week, Neff told Boyd that he’d made the Western Bypass a political issue. Boyd, who called the meeting to discuss the Bypass design and engineering with three representatives of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), said that wasn’t the case.

“I am not here politicking tonight,” he said, microphone in hand. “I am here as a Supervisor. This is not the political event that you are trying to turn it into.”

However, the same project decided a previous Board of Supervisors contest in 1994 and has returned as one of the most divisive issues in county government—enough political context to ask whether the road may decide the fates of Boyd and Neff.

Boyd explained to C-VILLE that his decision to support the Bypass has not been driven by local politics, but by politics at the state level. He says he is not concerned about the political fallout on his campaign.

“As an elected official, I have to do what’s right,” says Boyd. “I have never tried to be someone that I am not. I don’t go out and tell people that I am going to do something and then legislate some other way. This is something I believe is good for our community and I am voting in favor of it because I feel that way.”

Neff, who announced her candidacy for Boyd’s Rivanna seat days after county supervisors voted to support the Bypass, tells C-VILLE that the road is one of the reasons she decided to enter the race. She believes the project lacks basic environmental and traffic information, as do the residents she spoke with during her campaign.

“[People] are very concerned about the Bypass, and I would say that it is the No. 1 issue,” she says. “How can we go forward and approve this when we don’t have all the information? The plan is ancient in planning circles and in the world of business.”

Scott Elliff, a member of the Forest Lakes Community Association, believes too much has changed in his part of the county, the general vicinity of the Bypass’ northern terminus, to vote on a project without current traffic flow data.

“Fifteen years ago Forest Lakes south was farms and there weren’t any developments around here,” he says. “I am still concerned, I suppose, cautiously optimistic. The train is running very fast on this.”  

City Council meeting roundup

Just a few days after members of the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park held a press conference calling on the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to publicly release new designs for the McIntire Road Extended (MRE), one of the city portions of the now infamous Meadow Creek Parkway, City Manager Maurice Jones informed City Council at last night’s meeting that VDOT is building a bridge to cross the stream in McIntire Park.

In early July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew the permit that was required to build a box culvert for MRE. The withdrawal came just a day before Judge Norman Moon was set to hear arguments in a preliminary injunction filed by the Coalition to halt the road’s construction.

According to Jones, the bridge is in the very early design stages and its preliminary design will be completed by the end of the month and City Council will have a chance to look at the design in its September meeting.

In other news:
-In a presentation to Council, Virginia Dominion Power reported that Charlottesville is within the fastest growing area in the mid-Atlantic with 14 percent demand growth in our area alone compared to a few years back. However, Virginia is the second highest importer of energy after California. The representation also touched on the recent power outages and Dominion officials acknowledged this area’s reliability issues. Mostly, they said, it’s due to old or damaged trees. In fact, 38 percent of power outages in 2010 were tree related and 65 percent of that occurred outside the right of way. To curb the problem, Dominion is working with homeowners in an effort to identify and remove damaged trees.

-During its June retreat, City Council approved a new priority, children, that will be added to the seven already in place and will focus on reducing infant mortality rates, on early childhood education, or learning outside the school and outside of school hours, on expanding after-school activities and reduce the achievement gap.

-Downtown Mall vacancy rates have decreased to 3.9 percent from around 5 percent in January of this year, but Charlottesville is still below the national average of about 7 percent. The highest vacancy rate in July 2009 was 9 percent. According to Chris Engel, Assistant Director of Economic Development, the rate decrease is due, in part, to the city’s business spirit.
 

Galvin says local debate is too much like Washington

Kathy Galvin, Democratic candidate for City Council, thinks the tone of the local political debate has become divisive and its substance has over-emphasized a handful of hot-button issues.

“Our citizens want us to debate the issues, they want public input, but they also want us to get to work, make strategic decisions and get things done,” Galvin said in a press conference today at the Transit Center on the Downtown Mall. “But we have come to a low point, I believe, in our local discourse that sadly mirrors the rhetoric … and the paralysis at the federal level in Washington D.C.”

To Galvin, some candidates have adopted a “bunker mentality about a particular issue or set of issues.” Unsurprisingly, those issues are the construction of the Meadow Creek Parkway through McIntire Park and the controversial community water supply plan debate. (For the most recent updates on both projects, click here and here).

At a recent City Council Democratic candidates forum, the ‘Greener, Smarter, Stronger by Design’ candidate, threw her support toward the parkway and also endorsed the construction of a new, earthen dam as opposed to a dredge-only approach for the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

More after the photo. 

Democratic candidate Kathy Galvin and her supporters on the Downtown Mall. Chiara Canzi photo.

Candidates Colette Blount and Dede Smith were the sole opponents of the Meadow Creek Parkway. Blount and Smith also supported a dredge-only approach, along with Brevy Cannon and James Halfaday. Just like Galvin, Incumbert Satyendra Huja and local developer Paul Beyer support the construction of a new dam. (For more on the forum, click here).

By being so “single-issue oriented,” candidates are missing an opportunity to discuss other more important issues in the city, says Galvin, which range from poverty to affordable housing to the construction of a new school for middle schoolers to the improvement of public transportation.

Although Galvin was surrounded by Democratic heavy-hitters–– among them former Charlottesville mayor Kay Slaughter–– Stratton Salidis, a member of the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park and vocal opponent of the parkway and of a new dam, came to the event to protest Galvin’s stance on both issues.

“I am here because it’s easy to say green, but I don’t think that voting for a road through a school and a park is not a very green thing to do,” he told C-VILLE.


“This notion that somehow talking about these issues is distracting from meeting these more important social justice issues, well, I think that these are very important social justice issues and the money that is going towards these projects could go to these other needs.”

Local advocate Stratton Salidis opposes the construction of an earthen dam at Ragged Mountain and the construction of the Meadow Creek Parkway. 
"To say that you are for building for people rather than cars and to support a road through a central park, I think it’s a major discrepancy," he says. Chiara Canzi photo.
 

Coalition to VDOT: Release new McIntire Road plans, or face new injunction

Last week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers withdrew the permit required to build a box culvert and sewer crossing needed for the construction of McIntire Road Extended (MRE), one of the city portions of the Meadow Creek Parkway, after the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) decided to change the road’s design to avoid disrupting local waters.

Today, the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park publicly called for VDOT to make new plans available before construction begins. In a press conference on the Downtown Mall, Coalition member Rich Collins told reporters that the group wants City Council to prevent any action on the road before the plans are reviewed and before a public hearing is held.

Despite multiple requests, VDOT has not released any information regarding their plans, says Collins.

“Are they going to build a bridge?” he asked. “Or something else?”

More after the photo.

Coalition members Peter Kleeman (left) and John Cruickshank show reporters a map of McIntire Road Extended.

According to fellow Coalition member Peter Kleeman, if VDOT decides to construct a bridge to cross the stream, it will have to follow environmental regulations and, given the strict rules, could potentially be a minimum 100′ tall—which he calls “pretty substantial.”

If construction on MRE starts before the new designs are made readily available and before City Council has had the time to review them, the Coalition will file an injunction in state court, says Coalition member John Cruickshank.