Author: Eshaan Sarup

Rebecca Reilly was one of five Charlottesville residents to sign a petition urging FEMA to reconsider regulatory changes made to allow real estate development on the floodplain of the Rivanna River. 

“Unfortunately, we weren’t aware of the change in the map within 90 days,” said Reilly. “So FEMA’s response was we didn’t respond quickly enough.”

The piano teacher remains determined to stop this development. She is the president of Circus Grounds Preservation Corporation, a new nonprofit that describes itself as a “group of neighbors” raising funds for the city to buy the land and preserve it for recreational use.

Reilly worries that the construction of a 19-foot wall on the floodplains could permanently disrupt the natural environment.

“But our top concerns right now have to do with the actual safety of the people that currently live there,” Reilly told C-VILLE.

Kirk Bowers, a licensed professional civil engineer and environmental activist, called the land “the worst place around here” to build housing, citing flooding concerns and traffic congestion.

“That whole intersection will need to be rebuilt in order to accommodate vehicular movements,” he said.

Reilly also noted that the developers, local real estate firm Seven Development LLC and Shimp Engineering, declined a request by the Office of Community Solutions to allot 10 percent of the units as affordable housing.

“One- and two-bedroom luxury units that have been clearly stated to not be affordable housing are not going to solve the problem that our city is facing right now,” she said.

In a press release sent to local media on February 16, the group claimed that Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook “has been made aware” of the new nonprofit. Reilly said she had not spoken to the mayor directly, but the group’s pro bono lawyer had “a few conversations with [Snook] … and some email exchanges as well.”

When C-VILLE first contacted Snook for an interview, he curtly replied “I don’t know anything about [Circus Grounds Preservation Corporation].” When the group’s objective was explained to him, however, he was receptive.

“We’re talking about trying to build in a floodplain, which as a general proposition, we don’t want to encourage. It may be a particularly appropriate time and situation for [the city to buy the property].” Snook noted that funding could be a limiting factor.

“If a private entity, nonprofit of some sort, is saying we’re gonna raise the money to help make this a park then that makes it a whole lot easier. I would be very interested in a proposal like that,” he said.

City Councilor Michael Payne argued that the development conflicts with long-term plans made by the city.

“Under our Future Land Use Map, the density in this area is substantially lower than what the developer is currently proposing,” he said. “In addition, they’re currently avoiding our inclusionary zoning requirements, which would require affordable housing at 60 percent AMI [area median income] or below to be included in the development.” 

Payne noted that the Urban Rivanna River Corridor Plan calls for the city to “carefully guide development to ensure that no damage is done to the Rivanna River watershed, and that the area is preserved as a public space.”

“Ultimately,” he said, “the question in my mind is: Do we envision any areas in the city we want to protect as public parks and accessible natural areas? Do we want to create any public areas where the community can come together without needing to pay money? Or do we want to privatize our entire city?”

From coronavirus outbreaks to school shootings, parents are more worried than ever about their children’s safety and well-being at school. While Gov. Glenn Youngkin continues to push for school resource officers in all public schools, both Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County Public Schools ended their contracts with local police departments in 2020, amid nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Criminal justice reform advocates have long pointed to police in schools as fueling the school-to-prison pipeline—which Black and Latino students disproportionately fall victim to—and failing to prevent school shootings.

CCS and ACPS have replaced armed police officers with trained unarmed community members—referred to as “safety assistants” and “safety coaches,” respectively—tasked with building relationships with students, monitoring hallways, de-escalating conflicts, addressing mental health concerns, assisting with security issues, and upholding the school’s code of conduct. While the school divisions have not yet collected formal data on student arrests due to the new programs only being a year old, administrators say their initiatives have been well received by both students and parents.

When asked what goes into hiring a safety coach, Jesse Turner, director of student services for ACPS, stressed the importance of finding applicants who can build close relationships with students.

Jason Lee, supervisor of facilities, safety, and operations for CCS, echoed this sentiment. “We hire people who are from Charlottesville that love Charlottesville and just have a vested interest in seeing students grow, and keeping our students safe,” he says. 

Nate Kuehne, a safety coach at Monticello High School in Albemarle, noted that building trust with students takes time and effort.

“I’m fair and consistent and I speak to people the way I’d want to be spoken to,” Kuehne says. He also emphasized the importance of providing students with structure and ensuring that they attend all their classes.

Due to his consistent enforcement of the rules, Kuehne says students went from seeing him as a “jerk” telling them to go to class, to someone who cared about them. He soon earned the affectionate nickname “stairway wizard” for his ability to seemingly appear out of the blue and find students hiding out in one of the school’s many staircases. By the end of the school year, he says, many of the students he had reprimanded the most became the closest to him.

When it comes to stopping physical altercations among students, CCS’ new safety model focuses much of its effort on preventive measures. “You create a relationship, you learn how to identify situations that may look like they could become a crisis,” explains Lee, “you learn how to identify students who had some kind of a level of trauma, and you try to understand how those things dictate or determine behaviors.”

Having someone in school who students trust is a significant advantage, adds Kuehne. Students often come to him when they hear rumors of potentially dangerous activity.

When safety assistants do have to physically intervene in a situation, the safety of students is always the number one priority. While assistants are trained to de-escalate and avoid physical intervention if they can, there are ground rules for intervention that are strictly followed. 

“If you are going to touch a student, you start by saying ‘excuse my touch,’ and explaining why you are intervening,” says Lee. “We do not teach any skills where a student is on the ground … you only restrain when they are upright.”

Last year, the Arlington County School Board also voted to remove SROs from schools, and the City of Alexandria briefly joined them before reinstating the SROs a few months later. While Youngkin’s proposal to require a cop in every public school was struck down in the General Assembly earlier this year, he continues to be a major advocate for SROs—in June, his administration awarded a $6.8 million grant to fund school resource officer programs across the state.

As the catastrophic effects of climate change continue to worsen every year, the City of Charlottes­ville has vowed to reduce its carbon emissions to 45 percent below 2011 levels by 2030, and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Last week, the city hosted a listening session to gather input from the community on its plan to address climate change.

Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s climate protection program manager, told attendees that the city “has a commitment to addressing equity as part of their climate action plan” and knows there are “some voices that have not necessarily been a part of these conversations before.” 

“We are hosting these listening sessions to specifically try to bring those voices and those perspectives to the forefront so that we can bring all that input and have that as part of what we end up putting forward,” she added.

To ensure these new voices were given a platform, first-time participants were told to put an “n” next to their name as well as what group they were associated with. While many were associated with climate change nonprofits, such as Taproot Earth and the Sierra Club, some concerned residents with no particular affiliation also participated.

When polled on what climate issues were most important, there were a wide range of answers, from climate justice and natural disasters to public transportation and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions.

Elliott emphasized that the city’s climate plan, instituted in 2006, focuses not just on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also on “climate adoption,” which recognizes “that climate change is happening, is going to continue happening, and the effects we feel are going to be getting worse.” 

When asked for their ideas on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Charlottesville, attendees suggested a range of potential solutions, from switching to more sustainable energy sources to making composting more accessible. Transportation, however, was an area that was brought up consistently, with one person suggesting the University of Virginia set up the proper infrastructure to bus in all its employees.

Kirk Dower, conservation chair of the Sierra Club, echoed these concerns. “We really need to reduce transportation needs around here and figure out a way to help people use buses and commute instead of driving,” he said.

Jeanette Abi-Nader, executive director of Cultivate Charlottesville, emphasized the importance of setting up public transportation in ways that can build food equity. “We should ensure that these routes are going directly to grocery stores, especially in low-wealth neighborhoods that might not have access to that,” she said.

Unfortunately, Charlottesville is just one city, and greenhouse gas reduction can only be solved through worldwide efforts, as many people pointed out.

“It’s nice to talk about reducing greenhouse gases around here but that’s not going to do anything on a global scale,” noted one participant, who stressed that Charlottesville should strive to set an example for other cities.

When asked what the main challenges would be to reduce greenhouse gases, funding, education, and convincing people to make major lifestyle changes topped the list.

“We really need to think about the way that the climate crisis is going to affect global migration patterns,” said Kendall Dix, national policy director of Taproot Earth. “There are creative ways that the city could look towards being really proactive in terms of developing public and affordable housing.”

The city will be having another virtual listening session on August 10 at 7pm, as well as a virtual town hall community workshop on August 17 at 6pm. To stay up to date on Charlottesville’s climate action events, visit charlottesville.gov/notifyme and sign up for alerts.