Author: shea-connelly

Upon entering the County Office Building yesterday evening, it was apparent that this year’s annual hearing over the $303.7 million proposed budget would be decidedly less festive than in past years. Gone were the mocking pizza and root beer the Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance brought last year (a jab at Supervisor David Slutzky, who said in 2007 that proposed tax increases that year amounted to only a six-pack and a pizza a month). In their place was a more somber tone reflective of the economic troubles the county is facing.

Albemarle Truth in Taxation Alliance Chairman Keith Drake, pictured here in 2007, was pleased with the supervisors’ decision to drop the 2.5-cent contingency fund but said there is still work to be done to ensure tax dollars are spent "efficiently and effectively."

In fact, the meeting began with sobering remarks from County Executive Bob Tucker outlining the reduced services the public will be experiencing in the coming year, including fewer hours at county swimming beaches such as Walnut Creek, and slower police response times in rural areas.

Still, even without the refreshments, ATTA was out in full force again; this year their orange signs read, “Think outside the tax box.” ATTA Chairman Keith Drake expressed appreciation of the board’s proposed 74.2-cent “revenue neutral” real estate tax rate while urging board members to “spend more efficiently and effectively.” Several supervisors, including Chairman Slutzky, originally supported a tax rate of 76.7 cents to finance a contingency fund, which was dropped following public outcry.

Aside from the ATTA supporters, the remaining attendees spoke for either Albemarle County Schools or Star Swimming, Charlottesville’s non-profit competitive swimming club.

School supporters urged board members to “fully fund” the Albemarle County School Board budget request of $176 million, about $900,000 more than the current proposed budget.

The award for the night’s most creative analogy goes to Crozet Elementary School parentDavid Oberg, who equated not fully funding the school budget with eating Top Ramen every day: it’s cheap and you can do it, but that doesn’t mean you should.
School supporters also produced the youngest speakers, Henley Middle School eighth graders Alexander and Eric Hahn. “Will you make a difference in a student’s life?” Alexander Hahn asked board members. “You can if you fully fund the school board budget.”

About five Star Swimming members and parents urged Board members to fund their proposed indoor competitive swimming facility, which would cost the county $100,000 annually for five years, while their supporters held up signs proclaiming “Save Star!” Swim team members’ and parents’ complained that the lack of a proper swimming facility forces students to attend swim practice as late as 10:30 on school nights.

The campaign seemed to persuade Supervisor Ken Boyd: At the end of the meeting, Supervisor Boyd appeared to be very interested in reconsidering the inclusion of the facility in the capital budget.

By the end of the meeting, around 20 members of the public had spoken. Supervisors concluded by thanking the audience for attending. David Slutzky, frequently the target of sneering complaints from budget hawks, said he always finds the public hearings valuable. “There hasn’t been a public hearing in the years I’ve been on the board where we didn’t learn something…that didn’t influence us one way or another,” he said.

The Board will officially vote on the proposed budget and tax rate next Wednesday. If this tax rate is approved, most homeowners can expect their bills next year to look essentially the same as this year’s.

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Most Charlottesville residents must drive several miles to the more rural corners of Albemarle County in search of farm-fresh eggs. For a few downtown Charlottesville residents, however, fresh eggs may soon be as close as their own backyard.

Matilda Matheson, 5, right, and Helen Matheson, 8, sit with two of their chickens. The Mathesons haven’t had complaints from their neighbors in the Rugby Road area. “Of course, handing out eggs helps,” says Susie Matheson.

On February 17, the city’s Board of Architectural Review will be considering the aesthetics of a chicken coop in the North First Street backyard of Lisa and Jason Colton, amid concerns from the president of the local neighborhood association over whether there is room Downtown to accommodate chicken coops.

“This project is a collaborative effort among neighbors,” Lisa Colton says. “We’re four families living very close to one another on First and Second Street who share a lot in terms of our community and raising our children.” All four families have young children and are hoping to use the coop and its five to eight chickens as a way to teach their children more about the origins of their food.

Elvira Hoskins, whose family is collaborating with the Coltons, says that beyond the educational aspect, “we’re trying to eat more locally, and you can’t get more local than your backyard.”

Though most of the families involved have little experience with farm animals, there is someone qualified to oversee each step of the project. “Our group is a fortuitous and amazing collection of people,” says Colton, including an architect, a veterinarian and a couple who have previously owned a coop.

The families involved in the project were partially inspired by chicken-raising Charlottesville residents such as Susie Matheson, who lives in the Rugby Road area. Matheson’s coop was featured in the winter issue of Edible Blue Ridge.

“Seeing the impact of the experience on [Matheson’s] children is pretty powerful,” Colton says.

In the several years that she’s had her chickens, Matheson has never heard a complaint from her neighbors. “I have great neighbors,” she says. “Of course, handing out eggs helps.”

Thus far, Colton has heard no complaints either. In fact, a few people have expressed excitement at the prospect of visiting the chickens.

Colette Hall, president of the North Downtown Residents Association, however, has some reservations.
“There’s no city ordinance preventing it,” she says, “but if they build it and the neighbors don’t want it because of the smell and the noise, I will definitely hear about it.” Though city ordinances don’t prohibit chickens, they do ban roosters as well as free-roaming fowl.

Chickens are permitted within the confines of a private yard, but Hall is doubtful that there would be ample space for the coop.

“I can’t imagine where they can build it that isn’t going to be seen and heard by neighbors on Second Street,” she says.

Due to the shape of her lot, however, Colton says the coop will be virtually invisible to neighbors. “It’s a pretty buffered space, intentionally,” she explains. “Neighbors won’t really see it or hear it.”

Mary Joy Scala, city preservation and design planner, says she thinks some misinformation is circulating about the plans, citing a letter from a nearby property owner who was surprised that chickens are permitted in the city.

“Now that local food is such a priority, I would think people would be more accepting of having chickens in the yard,” she says.

Scala said the BAR will simply be reviewing the design for the coop.

“Obviously, they don’t want it to be unsightly, but if it looks fine, they should approve it,” she says. “I don’t think there are any problems from what I’ve seen.”

Meanwhile, the children, who are naturally oblivious to all neighborly concerns and city meetings, are excited to welcome their new feathered friends.

“My kids want to keep them in our house,” Hoskins joked. “They want to sleep with them.”

UPDATED 02/18/09: The BAR unanimously approved the chicken coop design at its February 17 meeting.

 

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For what seems like the hundredth time, UVA students are currently voting on an Honor-related referendum, proposed by Hoos Against Single Sanction (HASS), and like the HASS referendums that came before it, this referendum proposes the abolishment of the single sanction.

UVA’s Honor code, which has been in place for over 165 years, states that any student convicted of lying, cheating or stealing by a student jury will be subsequently expelled from the University, the one and only way of dealing with an infraction.

Voting will end this Sunday, which means tensions between HASS and the Honor Committee are high. For the past few weeks, UVA students could hardly move around Grounds without being confronted by fliers and passionate editorials related to the referendum.

Currently, the panel of jurors in an Honor trial not only votes on the guilt of the student, but also on the triviality of the offense. If an offense is deemed trivial, the student is not punished.

Under HASS’ referendum, the default penalty for nontrivial offenses will remain expulsion. If a student commits a “trivial offense,” the proposal creates a tiered penalty system, under which a panel of three Honor Committee members would choose from a student-approved list of sanctions.

According to HASS, the proposal would ensure that student jurors would no longer have to choose to either expel a student for a minor Honor offense, or to allow the student to escape punishment entirely.

In a 2008 survey of students conducted by the Honor Committee, 22.6 percent of students said they would not initiate an Honor case against a student whom they believed was guilty of an Honor offense because they do not believe in the single sanction.

Additionally, in a 2006 Honor Committee survey of faculty, 31 percent of faculty and TAs said they didn’t report infractions because the “single sanction was too strong a punishment for the level of the infraction” and 21 percent said they “did not want to be responsible for having a student dismissed from the University.” HASS hopes their proposal will ensure that lying, cheating and stealing are not tolerated at UVA.

Most, if not all, of the students who have spoken out about the current referendum have not had the unfortunate experience of being the defendant in an Honor trial, and as fourth-year Architecture student Emily Bauer will tell you, the Honor trial procedure looks very different from the inside.

Bauer’s summer 2008 trial revealed to her that the current Honor system “is full of holes,” she says in an e-mail. As an accused student, Bauer had the right to choose one of three types of jury panels: a panel of Honor Committee members, a panel of her peers or a combination of both.

She originally wanted to have a jury comprised of a combination of Honor Committee members and peers, but because “not enough Honor reps could make it” to her summer trial date, she faced a jury of her peers, several of which may not have been in an appropriate state to judge an hours-long trial.

“In the bathroom, my mom heard one juror complain [about] her hangover and another agree,” she says. If her fate had been left entirely up to Honor Committee members, however, Bauer says she is convinced she would have been expelled.

“A large problem is the stigma of an Honor trial. Like an impeachment, once people hear that you have been accused, they assume you’re guilty before proven innocent,” she says.

“The only reason I am still in school is because my mom took the time to help me and, most importantly, took my side.”

Though she calls her experience with Honor “heinous,” Bauer says she does not blame the Honor Committee.

“They are students, and unpaid students at that,” she says. “They are basing their actions off an archaic rulebook which fails to take flexibility and human error into account.”

Bauer feels that the Honor constitution is due for a major overhaul, and though this current referendum won’t fix all of its problems, it’s a step in the right direction.

“They need to redo their constitution,” she says. “I think [Honor and HASS] should work together, and they do to a point, but with the attack ads [related to the referendum], the relationship has become strained.”
 

New year, same legislative agenda. At least that’s the story when it comes to payday lending regulations. New laws targeting payday lenders went into effect January 1, extending repayment periods and limiting the amount of sequential loans a borrower can obtain. Lenders, however, have quickly discovered ways to get around the new law, putting frustrated Virginia state legislators back at square one.

Advance America, a payday lending company with three Charlottesville stores including this one at Rio Hill Shopping Center, roused the General Assembly to take action by offering open-ended loans after new restrictions went into place.

On January 22, Senator Mark Herring (D-Loudoun) introduced Senate Bill 1490, which would place car title lenders under the Consumer Finance Act, subjecting them to a 36 percent annual interest rate cap, as well as a 25-day interest-free grace period.

Car title lenders have thus far been operating under Virginia’s open-end credit law, which allows companies to charge any amount of interest as long they don’t require payment for the first 25 days. Recently, at least one payday loan company, Advance America, also began offering open-end lines of credit.

According to Herring, some car title lenders have charged “an unconscionable rate” of 30 percent interest per month, which annualized is 360 percent.

“People don’t understand the terms,” he explains. “Many think it’s 30 percent a year and some don’t understand the magnitude. …It’s usurious and unconscionable by anyone’s standards.”

When last year’s payday legislation was passed, Alex Gulotta, executive director of the Legal Aid Justice Center, said, “To even call it payday lending reform does an injustice to the word ‘reform.’”

According to Herring, legislators neglected to subject payday lenders to the 36 percent cap earlier partially because they did not anticipate lenders choosing to offer open-end credit.

“It’s a breach of trust,” he said. “We never expected that to happen if they were licensed under the payday lending statute.”

As of press time, Herring’s bill was awaiting a vote in the Commerce and Labor Committee. A similar bill died in House committee last week.

A second bill, SB 1470, would forbid any company licensed under the Payday Loan Act from offering open-end lines of credit. The bill, which doesn’t address car title lenders, already passed the Senate.

Surprisingly, the bill is sponsored by Senator Richard Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who has been one of the payday lending industry’s biggest defenders. Between 2007 and 2008, Saslaw received donations worth a total of $5,750 from Advance America, the largest amount they donated to an individual candidate in Virginia.

If the company was expecting Saslaw to continue promoting the lax regulations he had supported in the past, however, it appears they were mistaken. By finding a loophole in the compromise Saslaw supported last year, payday lenders may have finally pushed the envelope too far.

Though the Senator told The Washington Post he does not “believe in sending messages,” he did say rather ominously, “I corrected a problem, and we’re not finished yet.”

Advance America spokesperson Jamie Fulmer says that in offering open-end lines of credit, his company is not attempting to dodge regulations.

“We understand the concerns legislators have,” he says, “but surely we’re not evading any payday loan law, because we continue to offer the [traditional] payday product.” Regardless of the bills that are currently on the table, Fulmer says his company has no plans to surrender their payday loan licenses in favor of open-end credit.

“There’s a marketplace for both products,” he says.

“Unfortunately, compromise solutions…often result in the game of whack-a-mole,” says Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director of U.S. Public Interest Research Group, by e-mail. “The payday lenders have proven successful at writing loophole-ridden compromises that treat them as if they are special. They are not.”

There are no bills left alive that would cap payday lenders at 36 percent annual interest rates, but if the Assembly did pass such a law, most payday lenders would likely leave the state: When Oregon legislators imposed a 36 percent annual interest rate cap on payday lenders in 2007, Advance America closed all 53 stores in the state.

Though Mierzwinski says U.S. PIRG does not necessarily believe payday lenders must be banned entirely, the organization does believe payday lenders must comply with the same laws and regulations that other small lenders are subject to.

“If they want to continue to use unfair practices, then they should be thrown out,” he says. “We support legislation that would give them the choice of complying with the same laws…but they usually whine and leave the state when other states have done that.”

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Despite the apparent halt in construction on the site of the future Hydraulic Road Whole Foods, the project is still progressing, says Alan Taylor of Riverbend Management, Inc., a company in the Coran Capshaw empire.

“We’re still working with the city on getting final site plan approval,” he says. “Once we have that, we’ll continue construction again.”

When the dust settles on the new Whole Foods on Hydraulic Road, will it still resemble this rendering, or might the grocery chain scale down its ambitions? A spokesman refused to comment.

City Planner Nick Rogers confirms that the city is reviewing the site plan for the project. Since it was first submitted in October 2007, Rogers said the plan has “gone through a pretty thorough review.” Rogers added that the Planning Commission gave the current application preliminary approval after a July 2008 meeting.

Though Taylor says he hopes to receive final approval within the next 60 days, Rogers says he does not know when the city will give final approval.

“It’s difficult to say, so I’d rather not speculate one way or another,” he said. “Each project is different. It depends on how fast we get the plans back, and it depends on the skill of the engineer responding to those comments.”

The city is currently waiting for Riverbend Management to review its most recent comments and resubmit the application, Rogers says.

Regarding the progress of the project, Whole Foods spokesman Fred Shank says, “I really have no updates at this time,” and would not comment on whether the project is still moving forward. In 2007, the grocery chain backed out of an agreement with Albemarle Place developers when that project stalled.

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