Author: Scott Weaver

Right from the start, the UVA women’s basketball team faces some stiff competition. After playing in the Rainbow Wahine Classic in Honolulu against teams like Texas, Kentucky and Minnesota, the Cavs will gear up for big games with Wisconsin and Connecticut.

For the women’s basketball team to get to the NCAA tourney, Monica Wright, last year’s ACC Freshman of the Year, will have to have an even better season.

And that’s all before UVA starts conference play in one of the country’s most competitive conferences, the ACC. Staring down the likes of Duke and Maryland, says head coach Debbie Ryan, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

"It prepares you for anything else you’re going to see the rest of the year," says Ryan. "In terms of postseason play, you get all types of styles, and you’re prepared for anything that might come down the pike…styles of play and physicality of play, quickness and speed. We have all of it in the ACC."

After a 2006-2007 season in which UVA went 19-15 on the season and 5-9 in the ACC, Ryan says this year the Cavs are ready to run.

"We’re going to be a very aggressive defensive team, a very aggressive rebounding team," she says. "We love to run with the basketball because we have a lot of athletes, so you’ll see a wide-open type of offense. We’re going to get up and down the court quickly."

The Hoos return the core of last year’s team, which missed the NCAA Tournament but made it to the Elite Eight in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament. UVA’s two big offensive guns are back—junior forward Lyndra Littles, who averaged 17.3 points per game last year, and sophomore Monica Wright, who scored 15.1 per game. Wright was also voted the ACC Freshman of the Year.

Controlling the offense, senior Sharnee Zoll is back at the point and is on pace to break Dawn Staley’s ACC career assist record. But one thing that the Cavs have this year that was missing last season is an inside presence—6′ 3" Aisha Mohammed.

Still, competition in the ACC is fierce. UVA has been picked to finish somewhere in the middle of the pack. But Ryan says some people might be surprised.

"We’re going to be able to do a lot of things that people don’t think we can do," she says. "A lot of people don’t think we can shoot the ball. We can shoot the ball. And we have some power inside, which is something we haven’t had in a while. We have some things that people aren’t aware of."

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It’s post-election November, and though three candidates are preparing to start new terms as city councilors this January, nothing has changed in the Council’s political makeup. All three of the election winners—incumbent mayor David Brown, Satyendra Huja and Holly Edwards—are Democrats.

Peter Kleeman and Barbara Haskins were the latest independents to take on the Democratic machine in the city.

Independent candidates Barbara Haskins and Peter Kleeman lost handily. Neither garnered more votes than the Democratic candidates in any city precinct. In a city that elects Democrats almost exclusively to Council—only one Republican, Rob Schilling, has been elected since the 1980s—is running as an independent a viable option or merely a fool’s errand?

"I don’t have any bad feeling about doing this," says Kleeman, who won 2,212 votes. Edwards, the lowest vote getter for the Democrats, won 3,711. Kleeman says that he and Haskins injected their ideas on issues that may have been given only cursory treatment without them, and that led to a broader discussion.

"I heard a lot more comments about regional transportation and supporting bicycles and better transit," he says. "I hear a lot more discussion about environmental issues than I recall hearing in the past, and part of the reason I think that happened is I was in the race, and I made those my issues.

"So my feeling is, a positive impact has been made, but there’s no way to measure it. It’s just that it was made more a part of the conversation."

Democratic candidates have a larger machine to plug in to for support, both strategic and financial. All three Democratic candidates received money from political action committees. They also campaigned as a single ticket. Brown, Huja and Edwards posed together for one photo for their collective poster.

Haskins, who ended Tuesday night with 2,111 votes, recalls getting e-mails from election officials addressed to herself, Kleeman, and the Democratic e-mail handler. "I was basically a campaign staff of one," she says.

Satyendra Huja, once planning director, will take a seat on City Council. He was the top vote getter in the city, with 3,797 votes.

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An independent candidate doesn’t have as many options or avenues of assistance. He is on his own for funds, for advice, for event planning—pretty much all the nuts and bolts of running a campaign. Kleeman admits that he was winging it for the most part, guessing about the best ways to get his message out.

"I bought 100 yard signs, and I discovered that really wasn’t enough," he says. "I needed more. I was going to need close to 100 signs just for election day when you figure there’s eight precincts, put eight to 10 of them out…and so on. You never know how much money you’re going to need because there’s no track record."

Haskins, who spent the summer studying city issues, says that she was surprised at the amount of campaigning that went on during election day, the signs at polling places, the sample ballots, the supporters greeting voters. "I thought, ‘How can campaigning on election day make any difference?’"

It does, as anyone who’s run a campaign, including Haskins now, knows. The sample ballots, the signs, the flyers, all the last-minute minutiae adds up. But it takes money to produce those, putting independent candidates  at a severe disadvantage.

While Democrats receive money from their party and PACs, the independent is left with the problem of how and where to find funds. All three Democratic candidates spent more than $5,500 each campaigning. Holly Edwards spent $17,663, the most of the three.

Kleeman, on the other hand, spent $1,763. Haskins dropped $1,285.

Schilling was somewhat of a dragon slayer in 2002, winning a Council seat as a Republican. He argues that the system fosters a one-party council, and notes that an independent hasn’t won since 1936. One way to fix this, he says, is for the city to adopt a ward system, which would break down the city into smaller neighborhoods. This is something he’s been advocating for years, with few results.

"The other thing that needs to happen here is nonpartisan elections," he says. "I think the School Board is an excellent model because you had a field that was essentially seven Democrats running, but they couldn’t say, ‘Here’s my team.’ What I would like to see is the conventions abolished, everybody get on the ballot by signature, and let’s have a battle of ideas."

Kleeman agrees that the system is set up to breed a binary choice for voters—status quo versus anti-status quo. This, of course, is nothing new in the country, let alone city. But because Democratic candidates can run as a team, as Schilling points out, the either/or nature of the election is intensified.

Holly Edwards, City Councilor elect, greets her adoring fans at the city Dems party.

Kleeman says that he tried to run on issues but found that it was hard for specific issues to gain tractions. Was a vote for him an acknowledgement of his ideas, or was it simply a vote against the Democratic machine?

"My feeling is that there’s a great deal of inertia in voters," he says. "They might not really be tuned into the idea that there’s an election and it’s important to them, and that it doesn’t take much time to actually discriminate among the candidates."

Haskins ran much of her campaign on a single, concrete issue—taxes. But she says that at candidate debates, she saw what she called "blue sky" politics: big ideas with little discussion of specifics.

"The typical Democrat is liberal and wants to think they’re doing good," she says. "But sometimes money isn’t the answer. The Democrats are making everybody feel good, but it doesn’t mean throwing money at [problems] is the way [they’re] going to change."

Unless you’re talking about elections. Issues are nice, but throwing money at problems like name recognition is a great way to solve them.

About two and a half years ago, John Jackson, the director of education technology at the UVA School of Medicine, came to the school’s facility committee with news that some members found a bit unsettling. He pointed out many medical schools—peer institutions—that were offering students more technological resources than UVA: online Power Point presentations and audio recordings of lectures.

He told faculty to anticipate pressure from their students to have access to these kinds of outside, online resources. He also warned that the lack of these things could soon be seen as a recruiting disadvantage.

iPods are cool and all, but some med school profs wonder if podcasting lectures is driving down classroom attendance.

"This news was not accepted very warmly amongst our faculty. They were not inclined to do this," says Jackson. "It’s always difficult to change, but there were also these concerns about classroom attendance. There were also some concerns about intellectual property issues and patient confidentiality."

As Jackson anticipated, students came forward and, in Jackson’s words "made a very strong and formal request for audio recordings of lectures to be made available. And they persisted."

Jackson laughs a little as he remembers this. "They wouldn’t go away."

This August the UVA School of Medicine took a large step forward in addressing the changing technological landscape in education. It started putting 80 to 90 percent of its lectures in basic science courses—attended by first- and second-year med students—online in the form of mp3 podcasts, despite the concern from some faculty that making entire lectures available online would decrease attendance.

"There was a lot of hand wringing about how it would affect classroom attendance," says Jackson. "Preliminary data suggests that it has dropped our attendance by four or five people per day out of a class of 140."

Along with providing students podcasts—which Jackson says about half of the students use as supplementary material—course directors also post most Power Point presentations online. It’s a move that signals a shift in how today’s students learn and acknowledges changing student expectations of faculty. It also opens up new questions of how technology is best used in the medical classroom and whether new online resources will lead to students simply skipping lectures.

"When we started with lecturing notes, people didn’t have a problem with that," says Dr. Robert Bloodgood, a faculty member. "Putting up the Power Point presentations maybe was considered a bit more risky in terms of encouraging people not to come to lectures. We had a lot more discussion when we started talking about audio recording and video recording of lectures. There, people did start worrying about whether this would start to become a correspondence school, whether we would really incentivize students not to come to lectures."

The decision to provide students podcasts comes as the school is seeing a decline in second-year-student attendance at lectures that preceded to posting of audio content to the Internet. "Course directors have a very mixed response about whether [declining attendance in the second year] concerns them or doesn’t concern them," says Bloodgood.

The drop in attendance since the implementation of recording lectures has been slight—less than 4 percent—and anecdotal; faculty are still collecting data to see if podcasting lectures result in lower attendance. But Jackson says the School of Medicine is moving forward with its recording program. He anticipates installing a new automated recording system that doesn’t require paying students to stop and start the recording devices, as they currently do.

The use of technology, though, remains an open debate.

"I don’t think faculty should be pandering to students in cheap ways to get them to come," says Bloodgood. "You should be using things in the lectures because they’re going to enhance their learning."

"Sometimes technology is a good solution," says Jackson, "and sometimes ‘Read the book’ is a good solution."

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Even as the UVA men’s basketball team is gearing up for its season opener November 22 against the University of Vermont, the Cavaliers have been busy shoring up recruits for the 2008-2009 season. And with verbal commitments from three high school players, the 2008 recruiting class is shaping up to be one of the best—if not the best—group of players that Coach Dave Leitao has brought to the University.

On October 23, the Cavs snagged 7′ center Assane Sene, a native of Senegal with the potential to become a dominant inside force in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), arguably the best basketball conference in the nation. Sene joins two four-star recruits who have made verbal commitments to UVA: 6’11" John Brandenburg of St. Louis and 6’6" Sylven Landesberg from Queens, New York.

Men’s basketball Head Coach Dave Leitao might have landed his best recruiting class ever for 2008.

Because the three haven’t officially signed letters of intent to play at UVA (the early signing period begins November 14), the Cavs’ coaching staff is unable to comment on the recruits. But Chris Horne, a recruiting analyst for the TheSabre.com, says, "I think this is his highest-rated class that he’s brought in," says Horne. It helps, he says, that the Cavs surprised many people by winning the ACC conference title last year. "Winning speaks volumes. What they did in the ACC really gives them more credibility to be able to go to recruits."

Brandenburg, who verbally committed on October 14, chose UVA over Stanford University. Horne says he’s a solid low-post defender and rebounder, two things that the Cavs need. Both Brandenbrug and Sene can expect to see a lot of playing time the minute they step on campus. Both current Cav centers, Tunji Soroye and Ryan Pettinella, are seniors.

The real find, though, might be Landesberg, who’s a senior at Holy Cross High. Horne says that he’s a combo guard who can handle the ball and see the floor as well as score. The recruiting website Rivals.com ranked Landesberg the nation’s 55th best player of his high school class.

UVA was dealt a recruiting blow on November 1, though. Elliot Williams, considered by many to be one of the top high school guards in the nation, verbally committed to Duke University last Thursday.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.

Previous coverage: 100 doorbells in 90 degrees VOP workers canvas neighborhoods, fighting predatory lending

Back in 2004, Belinda Carter and her husband borrowed $600 from a payday lender. Their van, the couple’s only means of transportation, needed emergency repairs. Two years and nearly $2,000 later, she’d finally paid off the principal and its soaring interest.

"You make the mistake of getting into something. And then you can’t get out of it. When you don’t have credit, you turn to anything. And it’s worse than going to a loan shark. Because a loan shark probably will let you out…they might kill you first," says Carter, punctuating her words with a rueful laugh. "So you might as well be with a loan shark."
 

If the General Assembly doesn’t cap payday lending interest rates, City Council will consider ordinances that would limit businesses like this one on Carlton Avenue.

Last month, Charlottesville City Council joined other Virginia cities to petition the state General Assembly to cap the annual percentage rate (APR) of payday loans at 36 percent. Currently, most lenders charge borrowers, who are predominantly poor, $15 interest for every $100 borrowed—per week. The APR on these loans can balloon to 391 percent, trapping borrowers in a vicious cycle of debt.

At its October 15 meeting, Council put a request to cap payday lending at the top of its Important Policy Positions sent to Richmond. On November 5, it considered going a step further by sending to the General Assembly a resolution requesting that the state cap interest at 36 percent and prohibit lenders from gaining access to customers’ bank accounts. Seven other Virginia cities have adopted this resolution, while Norfolk has put in place zoning ordinances to limit the number of lenders.

"I think Council completely agreed that the current situation with payday lenders being able to charge such outrageous rates of interest can really put people in a big bind," says Mayor David Brown. "A short-term solution is to try to put some restraints on the payday lenders. The long-run solution is to make sure everyone, including low-income residents, has access to mainstream banking."

If the General Assembly votes against the cap, which it did last year, Brown says that the city will consider trying to regulate lenders through zoning laws, a la Norfolk.

But that does little to help people like Carter, who says that she was forced to take out another payday loan last December. Unable to pay the balance in full, she tried to work out a payment schedule with the lender, offering to pay $100 installments.

The lender refused and instead ran her check they’d been holding as collateral, knowing that Carter didn’t have the funds in her account to cover it. Because she still has an outstanding loan, Carter would not identify the Charlottesville company.

"Why would you refuse my money and not work it out with me?" she asks, incredulous. "But that’s what they did."

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In the end, the Charlottesville City Council moved the Piedmont Family YMCA proposal for a $12 million facility at McIntire Park one step closer, but not before grilling YMCA executive director Kurt Krueger. Councilors agreed to move the proposal to its second reading, which will most likely occur months from now as city and YMCA staffs negotiate terms of the lease and use agreements.

In order for the Piedmont Family YMCA proposal for a building in McIntire Park to go forward, the city still needs reassurance about swimming pool lanes.

Previous coverage: City not happy with proposed YMCA pool But likes free membership for residents below poverty line Without facility, local YMCA cramped Staff have high hopes new home will connect community Council asks for draft lease for YMCA Wendel not alone—anti-YMCA arguments connected to national organization Whom would YMCA serve? ACAC questions whether a Charlottesville Y would serve its mission City must decide on YMCA Councilors debate implications for Parks and Rec

Councilors expressed concerns about the proposed facility, namely the lack of priority swim lanes dedicated to the Charlottesville High School swim team. After listening to questions from other councilors for a little more than 10 minutes, Councilor Julian Taliaferro zeroed in on Krueger.

Taliaferro said that he was concerned about the city’s lack of immediate representation on the YMCA board, the lack of concrete plans and costs, as well as the practice of residents having to show tax returns and pay stubs to prove that they qualify for financial assistance.

"I have a real problem with the way this thing’s presented right now," he said to Krueger. The audience, many of whom expressed opposition to a YMCA in McIntire Park, burst into applause.

Krueger seemed taken aback. It took him a couple of seconds to begin to respond. But when he did, he explained that the reason the YMCA proposal lacks certain specifics—namely a hard dollar amount, architectural drawings and site plans—was that it has been cooperating with the city’s Parks and Recs department, which asked it to hold off on more solid plans until it is able to create a master plan for the park.

Of the 13 people who spoke during public comment, eight of them opposed the YMCA in its current form and location in McIntire Park. Downtown resident Colette Hall said that the YMCA should be built at Piedmont Virginia Community College, a site that has already approved plans for a YMCA facility.

Of the eight that opposed the Y, almost all of them expressed concerned that the city would give up three to five acres of green space in McIntire Park, though councilor Kevin Lynch pointed out that the space where the YMCA would be built is currently a softball field.
 
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In the early 1980s, Virginia Germino’s 12-year-old daughter, unbeknownst to her parents, wrote a letter to the newspaper opposing the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP). Twenty-five years later, Germino sat in the Albemarle County Office Building, studying the three design options for the 250 Interchange, an integral part to the still-controversial MCP.

In those 25 years, Germino’s opinion of the MCP hasn’t changed.

And then there were two: The public has until November 13 to offer comments on the final two designs for the 250 Interchange.

Previous C-VILLE coverage: Council makes final step towards MCP Norris forced to choose between principle and pragmatism Meadowcreek Parkway to-do list in city Council approves two designs for 250 interchange MCP may have future legal problems Parkway project’s segmentation could be illegal Commission approves MCP interchange Commissioner Lucy frustrated with final review Parkway interchange design gets support Committee likes roundabout design as new city gateway State funding problems affect local roads Meadowcreek Parkway could be stalled County approves road priorities Meadowcreek Parkway tops the list

"Fifty years from now, Charlottesville will look back on this as the worst decision it’s ever made," she says. "Because it’s raping the landscape. Because it’s providing laundry chutes to get people from one end of town to the other side. Because this is a city that’s had vision and imagination and should have been able to see we should have been directing all our education towards getting out of the ‘one person, one car’ mentality and into group transit."

Germino was one of the few members of the public that showed up at the November 1 public hearing for the 250 Interchange. The hearing was a chance for the public to provide comments on the three design options for the interchange. The two preferred alternatives both would be above-grade intersections, meaning that a bridge would be built over McIntire Road for traffic on Route 250. The major difference between the two options—named G-1 and C-1—is a oval-shaped roundabout. C-1 features the roundabout; G-1 is a more traditional diamond-shaped interchange with stoplights.

While the public hearing on November 1 included three design options, only two are feasible. The third option, an at-grade intersection, was killed last month by the Charlottesville City Council when it attached the specification of an above-grade interchange to the easement for the actual roadway through the park. Sound complicated? It is.

The 250 Interchange is a federally funded project. The actual roadway—running through parkland—that would connect the interchange to Melbourne Road is a state-funded project. Because they are funded separately, they are considered independent projects. And because of that, the two projects will undergo different levels of environmental review, something that has raised questions of the MCP’s legality when considered the way potential drivers will experience it—as a single road.

Stratton Salidis walked into the public hearing with a sign taped to his back. It read: "Ask how they plan on evading Federal historic and parkland law by pretending the Meadowcreek Parkway and the 250 Interchange are separate projects now that Council has formally linked them."

"You see that?" asks Salidis—a long-time transportation activist—pointing to a map of the at-grade intersection, the option council has prohibited. "That’s the no-build option. On the no-build, they show the Meadowcreek Parkway as built already. And that is the central fantasy by which they are hoping to evade the historical and parkland protections."

If it seemed like everyone there opposed the Meadowcreek Parkway, it may have been a case of the opposition being more vocal. Other members of the public declined to talk about their opinions as they considered the two designs.

The design options will be presented to City Council at its November 5 meeting. A decision can’t be made on the final design, however, until the public comment period closes on November 13.

C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.