Author: Kayla Eanes

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Business owners worry as city proceeds with pilot parking meter program

Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder started a petition against the city's parking meter pilot program. She says lack of parking will harm her business. Staff photo

While the city is moving ahead with plans to install more than 150 parking meters around the Downtown Mall, some local business owners are expressing their displeasure.

The city intends to contract with IPS Group, a major national parking meter vendor, to install meters for a six-month pilot program and expects to have the program up and running by September, city parking manager Rick Siebert says.

A petition from the Downtown Mall Alliance, which is against the parking meters, recently circulated, garnering about 325 signatures.

Cynthia Schroeder, executive director of the Downtown Mall Alliance and Spring Street owner, says it was easy to get people on board with the petition, but she was unable to speak on its behalf at a City Council meeting because of the lottery process for public comment.

“The people, they just don’t want it, and it’s coming anyway,” Schroeder says. “I would do more, but I don’t know what else to do.”

Since the city has finalized a contract with IPS and is working on the logistics of the pilot program, Schroeder says presenting her petition seems hopeless.

The initiative mainly targets areas directly adjacent to the Downtown Mall between Second and Sixth streets. Of the 157 on-street parking spots included in the program, 97 currently offer free two-hour parking during most times of the day, according to the city’s parking information website.

The metered spots will also have a two-hour parking limit, and will operate Monday through Saturday from 8am to 8pm with a rate of $2 per hour.

The metered parking would make it harder for people to work on the Downtown Mall, Schroeder says, and could also limit the time customers spend in her store for fear of being towed.

“The rotational parking is just not going to work,” Schroeder says. “I think that the metered parking is gonna be the demise of the mall.”

City Council voted 4–1 in favor of the parking meter six-month pilot program in April 2016.

Councilor Bob Fenwick, who called the measure “governance by resolution,” at that time, cast the only dissenting vote.

Siebert says four separate parking studies conducted by the city since 1986 have all recommended the management of on-street parking near the Downtown Mall.

“I recognize that people may have legitimate concerns,” Siebert says, “but we believe that this program will help the businesses and customers of the Downtown Mall, not hurt them.”

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Express distress: Locals say post office is not performing to the letter

Alakazam Toys and Gifts owner Cassandra Mathis calls her postal service “unpredictable,” leaving her unsure each day if a mail carrier will stop by her store. Staff photo

From the Downtown Mall and beyond, some Charlottesville businesses and residents are concerned with their mail delivery—explicitly the lack thereof. A few have not received their mail until well into the evening, while others have gone days without any kind of postal service.

Verdigris owner Mazi Vogler says her postal service is irregular when it comes to shipping packages. When she needs to ship a package the same day, she says her postal carrier often does not return to pick up the boxes.

“I’m not even waiting for him,” Vogler says. “I’m running to the post office every day.”

Alakazam Toys and Gifts owner Cassandra Mathis has also had issues with mail delivery to her Downtown Mall toy shop. She says the consistency of her postal service has been getting worse since her business’ regular carrier retired about a year ago.

“Some days we don’t get any mail,” Mathis says.

Those days, Mathis says, pose significant problems for sending of bills and financial mail. The longest period of time she has gone without postal service is two days.

“It’s so unpredictable,” Mathis says. “I can’t rely on if the postal carrier is going to stop by.”

And when a postal carrier does deliver mail to Mathis’ store, it’s not always the same person.

Standing in contrast is a recent USPS commercial that communicates the company’s pride in its service to business owners, especially for e-commerce and online deliveries. The May 18 commercial emphasizes the important relationship between business owners and the USPS—a relationship with which Vogler and Mathis have been having a few trust issues.

But not every business on the mall has complaints with its mail service. Joan Fenton, owner of J. Fenton Too and Quilts Unlimited, says her postal service is “awesome.”

She says the store’s heavy volume of packages for online delivery sometimes slows mail service, but her USPS carrier is very accommodating in picking up the large number of packages.

Tension around mail service has even provoked rumors: One example is that the Southern Environmental Law Center had installed a camera to monitor its mail, although the center expressly denies this rumor and provides no complaints about its postal service.

The hit-or-miss service extends beyond the Downtown Mall. Matt Murray, who lives on Wayside Place, says he recently did not receive any mail at his home for three days straight, nor did his neighbors, a situation he says has never occurred before.

“It was one of those occasions when I was expecting something of importance, and I was wondering where it was,” Murray says. “It reminded me of how dependent we are upon a reliable postal service.”

When Murray’s mail service did resume, he says his carriers told him they were coming from outside of the area, from Troy to Bridgewater.

“I heard through the grapevine that 16 mail carriers had quit,” Murray says.

However, Freda Sauter, from USPS corporate communications, says, “There seems to be confusion and misinformation about staffing at the Charlottesville post office.” She says only one career letter carrier has recently retired, with two other employees currently out on requested leave.

“We do have transitional employees and that fluctuates,” Sauter says. “Typically the Postal Service employs a smaller supplemental workforce in the summer, when mail volumes are lower, and larger temporary staffing during the fall, our busiest time of the year.”

The Charlottesville post office currently lists openings for two part-time mail carriers on its website.

Charlottesville USPS Officer-In-Charge Victoria Brinkley did not respond to C-VILLE’s request for comment.

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Statue standoff: Group suggests park names

Stonewall Jackson. Staff photo

While a court injunction currently prevents the statue of Robert E. Lee from being moved, the city is moving full speed ahead in an effort to change the names of local parks named for Confederate heroes.

After fielding suggestions from almost all committee members, the Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee decided on four names each for both Lee Park and Jackson Park to recommend to City Council.

For Lee Park, the committee recommended Community Park, Central Park, Market Street Park and Festival Park. For Jackson Park, it suggested Court Square Park, Courthouse Park, The Commons and Memory Park.

Most committee members agreed it was important to suggest names that had conceptual or geographical connotations to promote inclusivity rather than names referring to a single person or historical figure.

Committee member Margaret O’Bryant, who served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Monuments and Public Spaces, suggested names such as Community Park and Central Park, saying that each “expresses a centrality of our community” and in their neutrality apply to all facets of the Charlottesville population.

Committee co-chair Edwina St. Rose abstained from each vote, however, and said at the beginning of the meeting that she thought the committee should not make a recommendation.

“I believe the council has already seen quite a number of recommendations,” St. Rose said.

City Council recently received more than 2,000 suggestions through an online survey, which showed the top results as Lee Park and Jackson Park, although the survey allowed more than one submission per person and some suggest it was loaded with those who oppose any kind of name change.

Committee member Dede Smith said any future survey effort would have to be formulated in a way to allow one vote per person, calling the City Council survey a “good idea” but “flawed.”

“I don’t think we can put a lot of weight on what actually we saw,” Smith said.

St. Rose also called for a more “democratic” selection process that would be powered by Charlottesville residents, such as a referendum. “I don’t understand this process,” she said.

While the meeting was open to the public, the committee did not field any public comments because that will take place at an upcoming City Council meeting.

After the meeting, some attendees said they were disappointed by the lack of opportunity to comment. Karenne Wood, a member of the Monacan Nation, said she attended because she heard that Monacan Park—one of the more popular suggestions from the online survey—would be one of the names discussed, but she was unable to offer the tribe’s support of the name during the meeting.

Charlottesville resident Jalane Schmidt also wanted public comment and said she thought the suggestions offered at the meeting did not confront the history of each park.

“The recommendation of the [Blue Ribbon Commission], which the City Council did affirm, was that these parks were to be transformed,” Schmidt said, “and the full history…of how these spaces bolstered white supremacy was supposed to be revealed.”

Lisa Woolfork, another attendee, similarly called the selection process “tepid” and said it did nothing to recontextualize or challenge each park’s history.

“If all we might get is a renamed park, that name should be potent,” she said. “It should not be vague. It should not be general. I found this entire process frustrating and only in effect reinforcing the power dynamics that brought this problem to a head in the first place.”

Even with this process moving forward, there are those who still disagree with renaming the park. Historian and Charlottesville resident Arthur Herman says remembering the history of why the Confederate generals were commemorated in the first place is important.

“The sense of duty, the sense of honor, the courage, the sacrifice that they and other Confederate soldiers and veterans served were important virtues irrespective of the nature of the cause they served,” Herman says. “These men were not men who donned white sheets and marched with the KKK. These are not monuments dedicated to men like that.”

City Council will decide on the renaming of both parks at its June 5 meeting.