Matt joined C-VILLE Weekly as a news reporter in June 2019. He's a graduate of James Madison University, where he served as the editor-in-chief of The Breeze for two years. Matt's full portfolio can be found at mattweyrich.com or on his LinkedIn page. You can contact him at news@c-ville.com.
Clockwise from top left: Kim Daugherty, RD Huffstetler, Cameron Webb, and John Lesinski have all expressed interest in running for the 5th District seat.
(Daugherty photo: Ralph Alswang, Huffstetler and Webb: provided, Lesinski: Ray Boc)
Labor Day has traditionally represented the start of the presidential and congressional election seasons, providing candidates a window of one year and two months during which they campaign, meet with voters, and raise money. With the federal holiday now in the rearview mirror, that season is underway in the 5th District of Virginia.
Three (potentially four) Democrats are seeking the nomination to challenge Republican Denver Riggleman for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. So far, only one other Virginia district has at least four candidates running, making the 5th one of the most highly contested seats in the commonwealth. Here’s a look at the Dems who’ve either announced or are actively considering challenging incumbent Riggleman.
Kim Daugherty
Lawyer, Fauquier County
Daugherty, the only woman in the race thus far, is making her first run for office. Raised in Stafford after moving around a lot with her military family, Daugherty attended Longwood University for her undergraduate degree, graduated from the Florida Coastal School of Law, and has spent her entire professional career practicing law in Virginia.
A family law attorney in private practice, Daugherty says she doesn’t have a “cushy” job. “I work [what feels like] 80 hours a week advocating for families…and on top of that I make time to be with my own family,” she says. “This is the type of lifestyle and these are the types of challenges that so many people in the 5th District face, and I understand it.”
Focused on serving working-class citizens, Daugherty believes many in the 5th haven’t felt economic success and she hopes to advocate in Congress for people who have to work countless hours a week.
“In traveling the 5th District and talking with voters, it’s clear to me that they are really one step away from financial ruin,” she says. “We need to make sure that we’re working for working-class families and working-class people, and not so much giving tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and the elite.”
Roger Dean “RD” Huffstetler
Entrepreneur, Charlottesville
Huffstetler is making his second bid for the 5th District seat after conceding the Democratic nomination to Leslie Cockburn in the 2018 election. The former owner of a startup tech company who grew up in a rural family, Huffstetler spent four years in the Marines before attending the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with help from the G.I. Bill.
“My campaign is not going to take a dime of corporate PAC money; we don’t believe in that,” Huffstetler says. “And if you have a business in my district, I’ll meet with you, you just don’t have to pay me to do that. That’s literally the job of a congressman to try and meet with their constituents.”
Huffstetler says the three distinct issues most important to voters are: health care, education, and infrastructure.
“People just really want to know that they’re going to be able to have quality, affordable health care in their hometown…they want to know why their young people are going away—they’re not getting the skills they need at their local high school or community college to compete in the changing economy—[and] if you go to Buckingham County, 90 percent of the residents do not have broadband internet,” he says.
Cameron Webb
UVA physician, Charlottesville
Another first-timer like Daugherty, Webb graduated from UVA before obtaining a medical degree from Wake Forest and studying law at Loyola University. He was a White House fellow from 2016-17 and now works at UVA, where he’s an assistant professor of medicine and director of health policy and equity.
“It’s a critical time, it’s a critical year, there are critical issues, and there’s just a lot of need for good representation,” Webb says. “I think people remain very motivated to vote for folks who are going to help press for change that’s going to help improve lives.”
Webb’s biggest area of concern is health care, having talked to patients who say the current system hasn’t helped them obtain the coverage they need. He plans to advocate for combating climate change and racial prejudice, but says health care is the top issue on the minds of district voters he’s spoken with since launching his campaign.
“As a physician, I see every day in that role how critical health care is,” Webb says. “I hear every day from my patients how [the healthcare system] is not serving them well.”
John Lesinski
Real estate broker, Rappahannock County
Lesinski hasn’t officially announced, and says he is “still exploring” the idea of putting together a campaign.
Currently an executive vice president at the Northern Virginia branch of the real estate services organization Colliers International, Lesinski’s resumé includes 26 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, chairman of the Rappahannock County Public Schools’ Board of Education, and a spot on the county’s Board of Supervisors.
“In addition to being an elected official and a businessman, I’m also a veteran,” Lesinski says. “I [did] four years of active duty in the reserves. I currently serve on the Board of Veterans Services and the Veteran Services Foundation Board, and I still remain active in trying to support our veterans in a lot of their needs, from mental health to homelessness to suicide prevention.”
Lesinski says he’d focus on expanding broadband internet access to the entire district, boosting employment, and supporting local military veterans.
“Being a businessman and having some experience working with companies that are creating jobs, I think those are the issues that if I was running, we’d give a lot of attention,” he says.
CORRECTION (9:15 a.m., September 5): A previous version of this article said Huffstetler is the owner of a startup tech company. He sold the company and no longer owns it.
Tyler Davis hit DeAndre Harris in the head with a tire thumper, causing a laceration that required eight staples. (Photo: Zach D. Roberts)
Just a little over two years after white supremacists marched through the streets of Charlottesville, the final criminal court case opened as a result of the events that unfolded August 11-12, 2017, came to an end Tuesday evening.
Tyler Davis, 51, was sentenced to two years and one month in prison for his role in the assault of DeAndre Harris in the Market Street Parking Garage, despite pleas from his lawyers for Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore to consider alternative punishments, citing his attempts to reconcile and his family’s dependence on him.
“My main goal is not what’s best for Mr. Davis,” Moore said when he delivered his verdict. “It’s not what’s best for his family. It’s about what’s right…If you consider all the impacts on families, no one would be punished.”
Davis entered an Alford plea February 8, admitting that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him of malicious wounding after he struck Harris on the head with a tire thumper while other Unite the Right protestors kicked and beat him on the ground. Born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, Davis, who had been living in Florida at the time of the rally, says he has since denounced white supremacy and dissolved his former allegiance to the League of the South.
“By lashing out at my perceived enemies, I was, without realizing it, lashing out at myself—I hated everyone,” Davis said during his lengthy remarks to the court. “I did a lot of damage, so this is an ongoing process that I will be working on for a long time, probably forever.”
The court determined that the blow Davis delivered was the most damaging to Harris, requiring eight staples in his head to mend. He was, however, given the lightest punishment of the four co-defendants because, Moore said, he only hit Harris once and wasn’t involved in the “group beating” that unfolded after Davis struck first.
Daniel Borden, who struck Harris three times with a large stick, was sentenced to three years and 10 months in January. Jacob Goodwin and Alex Ramos will serve prison sentences of eight and six years, respectively, in August 2018. Goodwin knocked Harris to the ground and Ramos sprinted into the garage to join him in hitting the African American man while he was down. Both Goodwin and Ramos have appealed their cases and are awaiting hearings in September.
Davis’ full sentence is for 10 years with seven years and two months suspended, and nine months credited to his time served for the three months he spent in jail and year that he submitted to electronic home monitoring. Davis was the only defendant in this case who was allowed out on bond; he was permitted to live at home with EHM in order to help take care of his now-19-year-old Autistic son.
Matthew Engle, Davis’ attorney, declined to comment after the verdict.
Joe Platania and Nina-Alice Antony from the commonwealth’s attorney’s office didn’t recommend a specific sentence, but both acknowledged that Davis deserved a lighter sentence than his co-defendants and recognized that he took ownership for his role in the attack.
Although the Charlottesville Police Department is still working to identify two other assailants from the attack, Platania and Antony hope the conclusion of these open criminal cases allows Charlottesville to gain a sense of finality and closure now that the trials are behind it.
“As prosecutors that did six of these cases…we tried to be careful not to make it about message,” Platania says. “We tried to look at the conduct of each individual and focus on each individual case and not prosecute ideology but prosecute conduct. Having said that, we are hopeful that those six prosecutions speak loud and clear about how this community and our office feels about individuals that come here from out of the area to perpetrate hateful acts of violence on others.”
Denver Riggleman hasn’t hosted an in-person town hall since taking office, but says he’s made himself accessible in other ways. (Photo courtesy of Denver Riggleman)
Amid complaints from local residents that he hasn’t made himself available to constituents, Congressman Denver Riggleman has scheduled his first in-person town hall meeting for August 28—in Danville.
The Republican representative of Virginia’s 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives took office in January, when he published a pledge that said he would “conduct town halls throughout the district” once he was settled in. Seven months into his term, Riggleman has only held one town hall, by phone, but says he’s met with constituents in other ways.
“I don’t know if you want to call them town halls, but we certainly have been doing listening tours with every type of constituency we have, so I think the town halls, listening tours, roundtables, all those are pretty much the same thing,” Riggleman says. He says he plans to hold a town hall in Charlottesville “in the next four to five months.”
Craig DuBose is a Charlottesville resident who grew disgruntled with Riggleman’s lack of town hall meetings. The carpenter, who similarly pursued Riggleman’s predecessor, Tom Garrett, decided to organize a “constituent day” with other voters on August 26 at Riggleman’s office.
The event was promoted by Indivisible Charlottesville—an anti-Trump group that advocates for holding public officials accountable—with the idea that residents could visit Riggleman’s local office to voice their concerns about what’s going on in the district. The congressman says he wasn’t aware of the constituent day prior to it happening.
“How many times do we have to show and ask you to respond to this before you either respond to it or tell us you’re not going to?” DuBose says. He started making regular visits to the office in July with a group of fellow residents to try and speak with Riggleman, with no success.
Fourteen people marked on Facebook that they stopped by the office Monday, and 37 said they were interested. A Riggleman staffer confirmed multiple people had visited that morning but wouldn’t disclose a number.
As it turns out, the congressman was in fact in Charlottesville on Monday, meeting with local farmers and lawmakers at Roslyn Farm. He also attended a roundtable at the crop processing company Nutrien Ag Solutions in South Hill. Richard Fox, the owner of Roslyn Farm, says local farmers feel like their voices are heard by Riggleman, who co-owns a distillery with his wife Christine in Afton.
“Over the last couple years, building those relationships with local farmers has definitely helped him just hit the ground running,” Fox says. “At the end of the day, you can talk with Denver and he actually knows what you’re saying. He can talk some farm stuff and he gets it just because he’s at least had to be on the other end of the commodity industry.”
In his weekly newsletter sent to subscribers July 26, Riggleman wrote that he was “excited to visit with constituents” during Congress’ yearly August recess. He spent a majority of the first two weeks of the month visiting facilities at the U.S.-Mexico border and taking a congressional delegation trip to Israel before making a business tour across the district.
“It’s just not true, I mean that’s ridiculous,” Riggleman says of those claiming their voices aren’t being heard. “Instead of screaming all the time, just maybe look at what I’m doing…I think most of the people complaining are just specifically in Charlottesville with a certain group of people, and that’s fine. But don’t be disingenuous. That’s just absurd.”
Paul Bostrom is a Charlottesville resident who visited Riggleman’s office as part of the constituent day. He hoped to ask Riggleman about his stance on some of President Trump’s recent comments. Although he can’t attend Riggleman’s town hall in Danville on Wednesday, because it’s two hours away, Bostrom wants to hear from Riggleman directly about Trump and some of the issues pertinent to the district.
“I want to hear more from his mouth about what’s going on in the district and what’s going on in Congress,” he says.
With no firm date set for a town hall in Charlottesville, Riggleman invites city residents to follow him on social media and subscribe to his newsletter in order to stay informed on what he’s doing in Congress. DuBose, who is an active commenter on Riggleman’s Facebook page, claims some of his comments have disappeared from the congressman’s official Facebook page, an allegation Riggleman denies. He stresses that constituents can schedule meetings with him at his local offices, but that representing such a large district pulls him in many different directions.
“I think what people need to understand is we have a district that’s 10,000 square miles, 21 counties, and Charlottesville specifically is 1/1,000th of the district geographically,” Riggleman says. “So it’s great that they’re planning a constituent day, but I’m meeting with constituents in multiple counties every month. It’s a challenge with a district bigger than New Jersey [and] hopefully people understand that.”
Pearl Outlaw competed in the Paralympic World Rowing Championships just five years after she got in a boat for the first time. (Photos courtesy of Ruth Ellen Outlaw)
Pearl Outlaw was 9 years old when she found out she was going blind.
One of the brightest students in her class, Outlaw shone during discussions but baffled her teachers with surprisingly low test scores. Looking for answers, her parents decided to have her eyes checked—perhaps she needed glasses. And it was true, her eyesight was failing her. But the diagnosis was far more shocking than her family expected.
The Charlottesville native had retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disorder that causes a gradual loss of peripheral and night vision. While Outlaw was already struggling to differentiate plus signs from division symbols, her vision would only get worse.
Eyesight is a luxury often taken for granted, and no one would’ve blamed her for being terrified at the thought of going blind.
But fear isn’t what drives Outlaw.
Twelve years after her diagnosis, she isn’t absorbed in self-pity. Outlaw doesn’t see her disability as a roadblock to living a successful and happy life—it’s just an opportunity to find another way to even the playing field.
That drive for success has fueled her rise from a half-blind teenager who was falling down the stairs at Tandem Friends School to a world-class Paralympic athlete representing her country in the 2019 World Rowing Championships, which will be held in Linz-Ottensheim, Austria, beginning August 25.
“The feeling of getting in a boat and being able to use your legs and really push yourself…It really makes you feel really strong and powerful and just like a badass,” Outlaw says. “And that’s so hard to find when you have a disability. We rarely have moments where we feel in control and like we’re accomplishing something that not everybody can accomplish.”
Outlaw picked up rowing on a whim, attending a clinic the summer following her sophomore year at Tandem after hearing about it at an end-of-the-year assembly. Despite having to be on the water by 5:45am twice a week, she fell in love with it almost instantly.
Cathy Coffman, her coach at the Rivanna Rowing Club, saw her potential and—after some pleading on the part of Outlaw—offered her a spot on the Albemarle High School team the following school year. Outlaw couldn’t participate in races since she still attended Tandem, but she trained hard enough to earn a place on the Ithaca College rowing team by the time she graduated.
“She was just so positive when she was training with us that we decided that we really just wanted to have her a part of our team,” says Coffman, who’s coached rowing in Charlottesville since 1996. “She just worked extremely hard…and she got stronger and she decided she wanted to go to college and row and so she went to Ithaca and the rest is history.”
So far, Outlaw is still working on writing that history. Now a senior at Ithaca, she’s competed in several national races and last year placed fifth in the PR3 mixed double sculls alongside her partner, Josh Boissoneau, for the U.S. Paralympic national team.
The PR3 category of para-rowing is for athletes with full mobility and is therefore the most challenging to compete in. Outlaw and Boissoneau will be paired up once again later this month, and the duo has its sights set on a much better finish than 2018: At the national trials in July, they topped their personal record by 20 seconds, despite Outlaw fighting a fever.
Boissoneau is a former international hockey player whose career on the ice was cut short when he contracted a neurological auto-immune disease that initially left him confined to a wheelchair. Now a fully dedicated para-rower, Boissoneau is in charge of steering of the boat and must yell commands to Outlaw so that they can “move as one” during races.
“The chemistry, a lot of it has to do with just being comfortable with one another and being open to listen and take constructive criticism,” Boissoneau says.
After Austria, Outlaw will finish up her final year at Ithaca. She plans to have a long career in rowing, and hopes this year’s world championships won’t be the last that she attends. Although her eye condition worsened last September, and she’s no longer able to discern people’s faces, she’s learned how to adapt to her disability and not allow it to define who she is.
“Don’t feel sorry for her, she doesn’t want that,” says Ruth Ellen Outlaw, Outlaw’s mother. “She wants to be a part of this community and just be somebody who’s capable and smart and doesn’t want any special favors done for her.” Being independent “really is something that’s part of her identity,” she says.
Pearl Outlaw is a competitor. Despite knowing that she’ll probably be completely blind, rowing has given her a reason to get up and work hard every single day.
“It’s so easy to fall into, ‘I can’t do the things I used to be able to do’ or ‘I can’t stay active’ or ‘I can’t go out and be social,’” Outlaw says. But in a world stocked full of “I can’ts,” rowing has “really given me something that makes me feel strong.”
Bev Catlin hopes changes to Charlottesville City Schools’ gifted program will better serve all students. (Photo: Eze Amos)
Less than a year after Charlottesville City Schools were called out in the national press for longstanding racial disparities, the city is paying nearly $500,000 to help remake its gifted education program.
City Council approved the appropriation of $468,000 on August 5 to pay the salaries of six new gifted education teachers for the 2019-20 school year. It’s part of an overhaul of Quest—Charlottesville’s gifted program—that’s centered around establishing a more inclusive approach to both instruction and selection.
“For us to be able to be in classrooms with the frequency and regularity that we want [in order to] really have an impact for all children, the decision by the superintendent…was that we needed to add more gifted resource teachers,” says Bev Catlin, coordinator of gifted instruction.
Prior to this year, each of the city’s six elementary schools had one full-time gifted education teacher on staff; the new hires will now split duties with the existing instructors in an effort to provide more hands-on learning and attention to individual students.
As part of Quest’s new approach, students identified as gifted will no longer be pulled from their classroom for separate instruction. Instead, lessons traditionally given to these students will be extended to the rest of the class as well.
In October, The New York Times and ProPublica co-authored an article that highlighted the city schools’ racial achievement gap (one of the highest in the nation), and pointed out that white children made up more than 70 percent of Quest despite representing only 43 percent of the student population. The story linked these disparities to Charlottesville’s history of school segregation, and declared that the current system “segregates students from the time they start, and steers them into separate and unequal tracks.”
CCS became the target of heavy criticism, prompting Superintendent Rosa Atkins to admit in a press conference that the school district still had work to do in order to make “consistent or satisfactory progress for all our students.” She said at an ensuing community forum that while CCS didn’t believe the divide to be rooted in racism, “we have not fully lined up with the values that we have communicated.”
“We were very sensitive to the reaction of that article, and it has never been our intention as a program to not serve a group of students or to hurt a group of students,” Catlin says. “So what I think has happened—and we are very excited about it—is the agenda has moved very quickly…because we could’ve talked about this for a while and we had been talking about making changes [but now] we’re making them. We’re ready to go.”
In addition to providing enrichment education to all children in their classrooms, the district is also changing how it identifies students as gifted. Before, students were identified in first grade as eligible for Quest, but that process will now extend into the third grade to create a more inclusive learning environment and avoid labeling specific kids in the eyes of their classmates.
“We are going to have even more collaboration with the classroom teachers than what we saw with the previous model, which I think is really exciting,” says Ashley Riley, a gifted education specialist at Clark Elementary. She says the schools will be able to serve students more “thoughtfully” and in “intentional ways.”
The school district also hired UVA education professor Catherine Brighton as a consultant to help guide its continued reconfiguration of Quest. Brighton, who’s worked in Charlottesville since 2001, says her role will involve acting as a “sounding board” and helping the district analyze the best practices for providing gifted education.
“I’m in terrific support of the work that they’re doing,” she says. “I think that the idea of serving all the students in the classroom and the geography of the services happening in the general education classroom is squarely in line with the research in the field.”
The Brick Oven’s Dino Hoxhaj says his restaurant makes its own takeout deliveries, but larger companies have strategically put systems in place to direct customers to their services instead. (Photo: Sanjay Suchak)
It’s a slow Wednesday afternoon at The Brick Oven, where owner Dino Hoxhaj slides into one of his brown upholstered booths and heaves an exasperated sigh as he looks around his restaurant in the Rio Hill Shopping Center.
“All the third parties suck,” he says, shaking his head.
He’s talking about food-delivery services like DoorDash and Postmates, and Hoxha, who purchased his pizza shop in January 2018, is one of dozens of Charlottesville restaurant owners who’ve become increasingly frustrated with them. The problem? These billion-dollar companies are listing local restaurants on their mobile apps as eligible for delivery, despite never receiving permission to do so.
On July 26, a Postmates driver pulled up to local Italian restaurant Tavola expecting an order of food to be ready for him to bring to a customer. Tavola, which is co-owned by C-VILLE Weekly arts editor Tami Keaveny, doesn’t accept take-out orders, so employees turned him away.
Three days later, a Postmates representative reached out to the restaurant and spoke with wine manager Priscilla Martin Curley, who asked for Tavola to be removed from the app. As of press time, Tavola’s listing is still live, and the restaurant continues to receive calls from customers complaining their orders were canceled.
“It’s crazy, I really have been trying and I can’t contact them,” Martin Curley says. “It’s really frustrating because…I have specifically said on the phone that we don’t consent.”
Brick Oven and Tavola are very different types of restaurants, but employees at both say third-party delivery services are bad for business—and they’re not alone. Postmates, which didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, also lists several other local restaurants that say they’ve never been contacted by the company, including Paradox Pastry, Lampo Neapolitan Pizzeria, and Ace Biscuit & Barbecue.
Andrew “Wolf” Autry is the manager at Ace Biscuit & Barbecue, which doesn’t participate in delivery services because he says its food is better served hot. After he turned a Postmates driver away, a company representative called to ask why.
“I told him that every Postmates order that came in here I was just gonna laugh at them and tell them no,” Autry says. “He laughed and was like, ‘Good luck with that.’”
This isn’t an issue that’s unique to Charlottesville. In 2015, Vox Media’s food site Eater wrote that Postmates uses the personalized search-engine app Foursquare to compile lists of restaurants and businesses, and automatically uploads them to the app for users to select from.
And Postmates isn’t the only food-delivery service to do it.
In February, Paradox Pastry issued a cease-and-desist letter to DoorDash. Owner Jenny Peterson says that not only did DoorDash list the bakery on its mobile app without her permission, it misstated some prices as well. She also struggled getting in contact with the company and ultimately decided to send the letter through a lawyer.
“Apparently that’s the guerrilla tactic for these delivery services,” Peterson says. “They just put [listings] on there and show up for orders.”
Although it’s been a few months since Paradox or Lampo had any trouble, employees from both restaurants say this approach has been a common complaint across the local restaurant scene. Some worry that customers will form poor opinions of their businesses because of a bad experience with delivery services the restaurants never signed up for.
Both Paradox and Brick Oven have made agreements with GrubHub (yet another food-delivery service), which contacted them and received their approvals before including them on its app, with the opportunity to deactivate their listings whenever they like. Both owners have since deactivated their listings, and are skeptical that turning them back on would be profitable.
“At first it seems like you’re making [more] money,” Hoxhaj says. “But when I see that the delivery driver is making more money than me per order…It’s my food and my reputation and I pay the rent and everything; they’re just driving around and making more than the restaurant.”
GrubHub takes a 15 to 30 percent commission on all orders. This has become problematic for Hoxhaj because in March 2018, GrubHub signed a deal with the crowd-sourcing review site Yelp to integrate the food-delivery service’s restaurant network into Yelp’s server. Although Brick Oven’s phone number is listed on its Yelp profile, the “order takeout or delivery” button above it takes users to another screen that allows them to complete the order through GrubHub.
A similar scenario unfolds on Google, where an “order delivery” widget appears under the restaurant’s name in a search. However, the link doesn’t direct users to Brick Oven, which makes its own deliveries. It opens up another site through DoorDash instead.
Hoxhaj is planning to reactivate GrubHub when UVA students return to Charlottesville in a week, to help meet the higher demand. But between sharing his profits with the delivery service and turning away unwanted Postmates and DoorDash drivers—sometimes “five or six a day”—there’s no escaping the constant reminder that he’s not in control of how his customers order his food.
Despite his food costs being relatively low, Hoxhaj says that on “80 or 90 percent of orders, I break even.”
“This is the life we live in,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”
MyCville allows users to identify the location of a problem using a map, attach a photo, and write a description with any pertinent information.
A common gripe in Charlottesville among residents and city officials alike is how long it takes local government to get things done. But keeping track of complaints isn’t easy: Deputy City Manager Mike Murphy says the city receives so many emails that it can take a while to review them, and sometimes officials miss them altogether. That can make it tricky to resolve these issues, especially when there’s no database to manage service requests submitted by phone, email, or in person.
Enter the MyCville app. When it comes to small-scale issues, MyCville, the city’s web portal and mobile app, may be the most efficient way residents can alert local government to problems—though so far, a large percentage of complaints have been logged by city officials themselves.
The city manager’s office launched the app in April 2018 and has since fielded 2,131 requests. However, at a Charlottesville City Council retreat July 31, Murphy reported that 41 percent of those were submitted by city officials for residents who reached out with an issue some other way.
City spokesman Brian Wheeler says the quickest way to have an issue resolved is by contacting the department that directly handles the problem. But it’s not always clear which department is responsible for a particular issue. This can result in residents being bounced around between departments before they find the right people.
With the MyCville app, “you don’t have to worry about what department needs to handle that problem,” Wheeler says. The submission form, which is available on both smart phones and a web browser, includes a list of common requests users can choose from, such as snow removal or trash pickup, as well as a general question field in case a particular issue doesn’t appear on the list. Requests are then automatically routed to the appropriate department. And, unlike a request made by phone or email, users can track the progress of their submissions.
According to Murphy, three particular issues have made up 42 percent of all submissions: overgrown landscape (412), litter (248), and dead animals (227). A whopping 81 percent of requests have been handled by either the Department of Public Works or Neighborhood Development Services.
Local activist Kevin Cox frequently contacts the city government about issues pertaining to sidewalk usability and landscape maintenance. He prefers to reach out to Charlottesville officials through phone or email and doesn’t find MyCville to be user-friendly.
“I’m not impressed,” Cox says. “It’s a little unwieldy, too much information…I’d like to see the city take care of things on their end before working on new ways to get the citizens involved.”
Cox notes, however, that his wife used the app to report a dead deer in the road and the city’s response was “very prompt.” He says the idea is encouraging, but doesn’t want city officials depending on resident requests for action to be taken.
The city decided to develop the app as a cost-efficient alternative to a 3-1-1 customer service center, which would’ve required a paid staff to field calls, and funding to keep the service up and running. Murphy says the city manager’s office looked into creating such a center twice over the last seven years, but both times the idea failed to gain momentum. He doesn’t dismiss revisiting the topic again.
For now, the biggest issue may be getting residents to use the app—or even realize it exists. MyCville only has two ratings on Apple’s App Store. The city says it plans to add more items to the request list, to make it more versatile.
Wheeler acknowledges that not everybody has access to a phone or computer, so the city still keeps other avenues open for residents to use in order to have their voices heard. But for “issues of concern in the community,” he says the city will solve problems most efficiently when the relevant department is made aware directly—starting with MyCville.
Larry Bowles didn't always want to be a taxi driver, but he's come to love the job after 15 years behind the wheel. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
When he was 50 years old, Larry Bowles was a disgruntled car salesman who didn’t see eye to eye with his boss. After getting into a heated argument with his superior, he quit his job in a fury and whipped out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a taxi cab as he pulled onto the road.
As he drove off, the image Bowles had stuck in his mind wasn’t the close call—it was the phone number printed on the side of the cab. Bowles took the near-miss as a sign, and decided to take the advice of his uncle (a D.C. cab driver) to get into the taxi business. His outgoing personality and familiarity with cars made him a perfect fit for the job, and he’s been doing it ever since.
Bowles has now been a taxi driver for 15 years, putting over 400,000 miles on his 2005 GMC Yukon XL Denali for Yellow Cab of Charlottesville and rising to the position of driver manager.
“I think the taxi cab business is a good business,” Bowles says. “You can really make good money and you just drive. I don’t know where you can make this kind of money and all you got to do is drive.”
And yet, Bowles, like other taxi drivers in the city, often hears this question: “So what do you think about Uber and Lyft?”
The growth of ridesharing services in Charlottesville over the last five years has posed an unprecedented threat to the taxi industry. Mobile apps, a flood of new drivers, and a young generation drawn to accessibility has allowed companies like Uber and Lyft to corner a significant chunk of the market and begin to render the traditional taxi cab obsolete.
Uber made its way to Charlottesville in 2014, and Lyft followed two years later, both quickly becoming the top choices of UVA students and visitors to the area. This left many local taxi companies scrambling to stay afloat; they lost both customers and drivers to the ridesharing services and were forced to revisit their business models.
But five years after Uber first came to town, local taxi services have shifted their focus and adopted new approaches to the business. It’s a seismic change that’s occurred as a result of the reshuffle in priorities among different players in the transportation industry.
Prior to the ridesharing companies’ debuts, transportation businesses typically focused on one of three areas: taxis, limousines, or paratransit services. Each was profitable and there wasn’t much overlap, allowing all three segments to thrive in their individual markets. But when Uber siphoned off a majority of local taxi drivers’ cash-based trips, their dispatchers were forced to broaden their view.
“The industry is far more diverse than it ever has been,” says John Boit, executive vice president of the Transportation Alliance trade organization (formerly the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association). “Basically, if it involves moving people around from A to B, these companies are looking at everything. Whereas 30 years ago, taxi companies would’ve just said, ‘Well, we’re just going to run taxis and pick up people who hail us on the street or call us directly for a ride.’”
‘Either deregulate us…or regulate them’
When Will van der Linde got into the taxi business in 2012, he bought out a company still stuck in the analog era. The Charlottesville native had never worked with taxis before, but alongside partner Mark Brown, he sought to help Yellow Cab catch up to the 21st century. The partners ditched ham radios in favor of a digital GPS-based dispatch system and added credit card machines in all the company’s vehicles. They also launched an app, called Taxi Magic, that they used for about a year.
Van der Linde, who’s a member of the Transportation Alliance, says he saw Yellow Cab experience tremendous growth in his first few years as part-owner. Even after he bought out Brown and his other investors in 2015, the taxi company remained profitable thanks to its contracts with UVA and social services, particularly by providing non-emergency medical transportation. It’s since merged with eight other Virginia taxi companies to form the Old Dominion Transportation Group.
But when Uber and Lyft began to erode his customer base, van der Linde became weary of the restrictions preventing his company from competing with the ridesharing services.
“The thing that we’ve always petitioned for is either deregulate us as a taxi business or regulate them,” van der Linde says.
Yellow Cab has shifted its approach under owner Will van der Linde. Photo: Eze Amos
In order for a taxi dispatch service to operate in Charlottesville, it must first purchase Virginia operating authority registration and license each vehicle as a taxi with the state, which requires specialized license plates. Before you can install those plates, however, each vehicle must be insured through 24/7 commercial liability insurance. This is an expensive policy that requires the company to cover a significant amount of damages regardless of whether or not a customer is in the car.
Once the dispatch service has its fleet licensed and insured, it can lease vehicles to drivers. But those drivers can’t start giving rides right away.
First, they have to pass a background check with the Charlottesville Police Department and complete a taxi driving test. Many companies like Yellow Cab also require drivers to take a drug test with the Department of Transportation. If they’re using their own car or the company hasn’t done it for them, drivers also must have their vehicle inspected by the police department in addition to getting the standard state inspection sticker.
The driver then can hit the road, but if he wants to participate in the lucrative non-emergency transit contracts, many medical accounts require drivers to pass a passenger safety course. Finally, once drivers begin collecting fares for their services, they’re responsible for paying taxes to both the state and city of Charlottesville and paying Yellow Cab leasing and dispatch fees.
Even for people who purchase their own car and operate as independent taxi drivers rather than work with companies like Yellow Cab, the entire process is expensive and can take up to a month. Although taxi drivers earn a much higher commission on rides than Uber or Lyft operators do, it’s a significant investment.
Uber and Lyft drivers also have to pass background and driving record checks, but they aren’t required to pay for any driving tests or register with the Virginia DMV.
Murphy McGill and Gerald Harvey work for both Uber and Lyft. They each say they were approved by Uber to drive within two weeks, and that Lyft took only one or two days.
It’s been frustrating for van der Linde to see customers choose ridesharing services over his taxi company despite the regulations he has to abide by. It makes sense to him when someone chooses one of the popular apps because they’re quicker for completing a short-distance trip, but sometimes that’s not even the case.
“It’s really sad. I’ll show up at the Charlottesville airport and we have two taxis sitting right…in front of arrivals and we have a $25 flat rate [to anywhere in town],” van der Linde says. “But somebody will stand there on their app in front of our drivers and they’ll wait 10, 15 minutes for an Uber to come up when they could just ride with us.”
There are also times when taxi cabs are cheaper than ridesharing services, such as holidays and some weekends. Uber and Lyft benefit from surge pricing (higher fares at busy times), but taxi companies in Charlottesville must let the city know 30 days in advance when they want to change their prices.
As for drivers, McGill says he would never drive a taxi cab because “it’s like a full-time job and I’m a family man, I can’t do that.” Harvey, who’s been driving since December 2016, enjoys the flexibility as well. Taxi drivers can certainly make more money, but it takes a level of commitment to driving that not many people are willing to make.
‘If you do your job at the best of your ability, you have no competition’
On average, Yellow Cab’s Bowles works six days a week, 13 hours a day—sometimes making as much as $2,000 in a week. He’s built up a base of regulars who still choose him over ridesharing services because he’s respectful and friendly, he says. Bowles says some people also don’t trust Uber or Lyft because of the sheer number of drivers they employ—it’s tougher to monitor that many drivers, and recent cases of ridesharing operators in different parts of the country being arrested on murder or rape charges have left some people uneasy.
Harvey, the Uber and Lyft driver, says Charlottesville police officers do conduct “courtesy checks,” pulling over ridesharing drivers at random and checking their credentials in an effort to keep the public safe.
However, Bowles says “there’s people [now] driving for Uber and Lyft that we had to stop dispatching to for serious reasons.” Yellow Cab has decommissioned drivers who were caught attempting fraud or treating riders poorly. Bowles says he’s also concerned about the amount of rider information Uber and Lyft drivers have.
Yellow Cab uses an app called iCabbie to dispatch rides to its drivers. Using a tablet set up in the vehicle (another expense for drivers), the taxi driver can accept rides but isn’t given any of the personal information for the customer other than their name. When the driver arrives at the pick-up point, he presses a button on the tablet that lets the customer know the car is outside. If he needs to contact the rider, that’s done through the dispatcher so the driver never gets the customer’s phone number.
But many riders, including UVA students, either don’t know about these safety features or are more concerned about accessibility and convenience. Yellow Cab’s Riide app, which customers can download to book a trip, isn’t user-friendly, and some riders have complained about long wait times before being picked up.
To make up for the loss in customers, Yellow Cab has signed contracts over the last few years that allow it to provide non-emergency medical transportation. They serve riders like 67-year-old Hortensia Cruz, a former nurse from Puerto Rico who moved to Charlottesville nearly two decades ago to be treated for a rare medical condition at UVA’s Emily Couric Clinical Cancer Center. Cruz has ridden with Bowles several times and is charged a $6 flat rate every time she takes a Yellow Cab to or from one of her appointments.
“I ride Yellow Cab a lot,” Cruz says. “I have lots of appointments, sometimes more than I can handle.”
There are many Charlottesville residents like Cruz, and they’ve provided a stable number of daily customers for Bowles and other Yellow Cab drivers.
So despite the number of students and visitors who have ditched cab companies in favor of ridesharing services, Bowles isn’t worried about the future of taxi services in Charlottesville. Like many independent drivers, he relies on his network of regular customers.
“I’m going to tell you something my dad taught me when I was a kid: If you do your job at the best of your ability, you have no competition,” he says.
‘There is a threat to this funding’
As important as non-emergency medical transportation has become for taxi services like Yellow Cab, there’s no guarantee that it’ll stick around forever. Medicaid laws currently require states to set aside funding for such rides, but Congress has discussed removing that requirement, and allowing states to decide whether or not to provide it.
Although the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has pushed back its plan to consider stripping the requirement to 2021, the Transportation Alliance has lobbyists on Capitol Hill who are aiming to persuade lawmakers to continue providing this funding.
Ridesharing companies are also trying to get their piece of the pie through programs like Uber Health and Lyft Concierge. As a result, many taxi companies are expanding to multiple services like shuttles and luxury vehicle rides to help broaden their customer base as much as possible.
“Many companies have moved away from thinking of themselves as taxi companies, and they’ve moved into looking at themselves as transportation companies—and that really is a big distinction in this…industry,” Boit says. “I’m seeing an increasing number of companies who are not even using the word ‘taxi’ in their name. They’ve completely rebranded.”
In Charlottesville, Jefferson Area United Transportation (JAUNT) has provided shuttle service for disabled residents of the city and surrounding counties for both medical and recreational trips since 1975. Chief Executive Officer Brad Sheffield says he’s seen the demand for paratransit rides spike over the last few years, paving the way for both JAUNT and taxi services to have success in the market.
As taxi services continue to try and adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the transportation industry, their biggest focus is staying ahead of the technology. Uber and Lyft took advantage of a lack of forward-thinking among the thousands of taxicab companies around the world.
Now that they’ve shifted their approach in favor of new business models, taxi services are hoping to change the narrative around ridesharing services’ control of the transportation industry. Perhaps when riders get into Uber and Lyft vehicles, they’ll start asking a new question.
“So what do you think about taxis?”
Fare value
On a recent weekday afternoon, we took the same 1.5-mile trip across Charlottesville with Uber, Lyft, and Yellow Cab. Here’s how the services stacked up.
Uber:
Booking fee: $2.90
Trip fare: $5.20
Total: $8.10
Driver receives: $4.88
Wait time: 5 minutes
Lyft:
Base fare: $2
Minimum fee: $2
Trip fare: $4.66
Total: $8.66
Driver receives: $3.63
Wait time: 8 minutes
Yellow Cab:
Base fair: $2
Convenience fee: $1
Trip fare: $4.40
Total: $7.40
Driver receives: $7.40
Wait time: 11 minutes
Driver ID
Each service also lets riders know how to identify the car that will pick them up. Uber and Lyft send push notifications to the rider’s phone, while Yellow Cab shoots them a text.
Rocket League is one of the three games students will be able to play as part of VHSL’s eSports pilot program. (Photo captured via PlayStation 4)
Virginia high schools will put a new spin on the word “athlete” when they launch an eSports competitive video gaming league this fall.
The Virginia High School League announced earlier this summer that it’ll be rolling out a one-year pilot program for the 2019-20 school year that includes three different video games: League of Legends, Rocket League, and SMITE. Schools can put together teams to participate in any of the three games, with one match played each week during both the fall and spring semesters. Matches happen, and are watched, online, so student competitors may never meet each other in person (so much for the “good game” handshake).
Billy Haun, executive director of VHSL and a former Monticello High principal, sees an eSports league as an opportunity to engage students who might not be involved in other school activities, and doesn’t see them replacing traditional sports.
The digital era has seen a rapid rise in the popularity of eSports worldwide. A study conducted by Goldman Sachs found that eSports’ monthly viewing audience averaged over 167 million people in 2018 on streaming platforms like Twitch. That’s a bigger audience than those for the last Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals, and Stanley Cup—combined.
After receiving several calls over the last few years about eSports, VHSL decided to try a pilot program in conjunction with PlayVS—the official eSports league of the National Federation of State High School Associations. According to VHSL Assistant Director Darrell Wilson, over 30 Virginia high schools have expressed interest in participating this year, including Monticello High.
Three teachers have volunteered to lead the team at Monticello this year, and 20 students have already expressed interest. The high school will pay for the program under its athletics budget.
Although there’s a $64 licensing fee per game, Albemarle County Public Schools spokesman Phil Giaramita says the overall cost of the program is relatively low compared to other sports. Monticello will use an existing computer lab for gaming, and all competitions will be played online, so there are no travel fees. As of now, Monticello is the only area high school committed to the league, but Western Albemarle and Charlottesville High have said they’ll both consider joining for the spring season if enough students express interest.
Haun admits he expects some pushback from parents who might oppose public high schools providing opportunities for students to play more video games, but he says “a lot of kids are already playing eSports, they’re just not playing competitively or under guidance of adults.” VHSL hopes to encourage students who wouldn’t be playing organized sports anyway to get involved with an activity that caters more to their interests.
While eSports may appear unproductive, one researcher has found that most studies about the cognitive effects of video games show the games can help with mental focus.
Marc Palaus Gallego is a Ph.D. graduate in cognitive neuroscience with the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, who conducted a study on the neural basis of video gaming in 2017. He found that while results aren’t always consistent, there appears to be an overall positive effect on brain development—as long as kids don’t spend too much time in front of the screen.
“Apparently, those who are experienced in video games are more efficient in optimizing the mental resources to focus on a task, specially tasks with strong visual components,” and that can be observed when the difficulty in a game increases, Gallego says in an email. He believes that as long as kids balance extended video gaming with some other kind of activity, there’s no major risks to their brain development.
And while some studies have found negative effects from video gaming, Gallego doesn’t put too much stock in their results.
“These detrimental effects seemed to affect attention, inhibitory control, the processing of social information, and lower verbal IQ,” Gallego says. “However, there are numerous examples of other studies which found improvements in the same areas, so it’s difficult to generalize.”
The three games VHSL is offering each require varying levels of strategy and collaboration. Rocket League, which is a soccer-esque game using rocket-boosted cars, requires players to be in constant communication with one another to set up shots and play efficient defense. League of Legends and SMITE are arena-style battle games, where players concoct strategies and think quickly to best opponents both individually and as teams.
Giaramita says that “engagement in school activities correlates with academic success” and gamers represent an untapped group of students that schools typically struggle to get involved. An eSports league gives many students who have difficulty finding friends a new avenue for breaking the ice with classmates and securing a more enjoyable high school experience, he says.
They’re not your typical jocks, but the number of students interested in competitive gaming will only continue to grow. With the pilot program, Haun and VHSL are hoping to help young gamers bring their passion with them when they go to school.
Paige Rice leaves the Charlottesville courthouse with attorney Andrew Sneathern (center) and her husband Joe. (Photo: Matt Weyrich)
Carolyn Paige Rice, a former Charlottesville chief of staff and clerk of council, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge Wednesday for failing to return an iPhone X and Apple Watch that were paid for by the city during her tenure.
As part of the plea agreement, Rice was charged with a misdemeanor instead of a felony and was sentenced to six months in prison; the sentence is suspended two years with the opportunity for her to avoid doing time contingent on good behavior. Rice, 37, is also required to complete 200 hours of community service.
“We [originally] charged it as a felony because [reducing] a charge shouldn’t have happened behind closed doors,” Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania says. “We wanted it to be transparent and wanted the public to see what the initial charge was. A grand jury heard the evidence and then it got reduced in a public open courtroom so transparency was very important to me as part of this process.”
Rice resigned from her post in September, citing a pay cut she received just two months after the city gave her a raise. Her last day as a city employee was October 5, when Platania says she also called AT&T and asked for her iPhone to be unlocked so that she could switch it to another provider.
Four days later, Brian Wheeler, Charlottesville director of communications, contacted Rice to ask for the watch, phone, and an iPad to be returned. Rice told Wheeler that the screen on the iPhone was broken and had no trade-in value, and that she’d paid for the Apple Watch herself.
In an email conversation between Wheeler and Rice later that week, Rice claimed that she’d mailed the iPhone in to AT&T’s recycling program but agreed to return the iPad. Wheeler tried to confirm with AT&T that the phone had been received.The cell phone provider told him in late December that it had been transferred to Verizon and was never returned.
The Charlottesville Police Department opened up a criminal investigation in January and found that the phone had been added to the Verizon account of Carol Barfield, Rice’s mother. Wheeler also located a December 2017 AT&T bill that confirmed the Apple Watch was purchased by the city itself.
CPD obtained a search warrant March 14 for Rice’s home and confronted her that day. When Detective David Stutzman approached Rice, she was wearing the Apple Watch and using the iPhone X. A month later, she admitted to police that she had not paid for the watch nor did the phone screen break.
A grand jury indicted Rice on felony embezzlement charges June 7 but her attorney was able to negotiate the charge being lowered to a misdemeanor as part of the plea agreement. Rice, who’s now the chief of staff of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, declined to comment through her lawyer Andrew Sneathern.
Rice’s made $72,842 as clerk of council, and her salary was raised to $98,328 as clerk and chief of staff before the pay cut. Platania says Rice’s motive for keeping the devices is “unclear” but that the city felt it needed to pursue a criminal investigation because “there were multiple attempts made to get the devices back and the requests to have it returned were not met with truthful responses, and so we sort of didn’t feel like we had any other options.”
