Charlottesville city manager

Under new management

Charlottesville announced that Marc Woolley will become the city’s next interim city manager. Woolley has spent the last four years as the business administrator of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“Right now there are certain acute issues that need to be taken care of, namely the budget and the comprehensive plan,” Woolley said at a virtual introductory press conference on Friday. “My role is to sit down with council and stakeholders and plot a course forward for the short term.”

The last city manager, Chip Boyles, resigned in October amid community outcry over his decision to relieve police chief RaShall Brackney of her duties.

“I’m not here to upset the apple cart, unless it’s called for, but I don’t see that as my main charge,” Woolley said.

In Harrisburg, Woolley said he helped get the city’s finances back on track. Harrisburg is Pennsylvania’s capital, a majority Black city with a population of 50,000 and a metro area population of 590,000. Before that, he worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Delaware River Port Authority, and the Hershey Trust Company.

Woolley will become the sixth person to serve as city manager since 2018. On Friday he said the high turnover doesn’t phase him, and that he’s accustomed to “high-stress environments.”

“I’ve been doing this for many, many years, and I’ve been in almost any type of situation.” Woolley said. “Virginia does not have the monopoly on complicated or arcane versions of government. Pennsylvania is right up there.”

The 52-year-old says he helps cope with the stress by spending time with his wife and kids, training German shepherds, and making cheese.

He’s left multiple previous posts under contentious circumstances. Woolley was named in multiple lawsuits against the Philadelphia Housing Authority, though was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. And he clashed with the board of directors at the Hershey Trust Company, resigning after the leak of a memo he wrote describing dysfunction within the organization.

That apparently didn’t bother the Charlottesville City Council too much—Councilor Lloyd Snook encouraged those on the call to read past “the first page of Google” when looking at Woolley’s background.

Woolley was a finalist in council’s search for a deputy city manager for operations job, a position they ultimately went to Sam Sanders in July 2021. Council had previously indicated that it intended to give the community an opportunity for input on the interim city manager hire. Mayor Nikuyah Walker said she still believes that’s the best approach, but “this particular time presented us with some unfortunate circumstances” that made such a process difficult.

The city plans to conduct a search for the permanent city manager in April 2022, and Woolley says he intends to apply for that position. In the meantime, he’ll make $205,000 per year, and will begin on December 1.

Parcel credit

For months, area residents have reported going weeks without receiving mail, largely due to staffing shortages and poor management at the Charlottesville Post Office. Last week, Virginia Senator Mark Warner met with USPS management to discuss recent improvements.

“I think we got their attention,” said Warner during a press conference on the Downtown Mall last Thursday. “From the back office of operation, it looked much more organized, much cleaner, much different from before.”

Since Warner’s last visit on August 15, 22 new employees—four clerks, eight city carriers, and 10 rural carriers—have been hired. Twenty applicants are currently waiting to pass background checks. The office has also recently brought in a new acting postmaster and two additional senior officials.

Senator Warner works to address post office issues before holiday surge. Staff photo.

To handle the holiday surge, the office has recruited 11 retirees and 21 postal employees from around the state.

During a “mail surge” in October, management brought in around 45 additional mail carriers, who helped deliver around 90 percent of backlogged mail. It’s since seen a 90 percent decline in complaints about mail delivery at the post office window.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Warner. “It felt like walking around the facility, there was a different attitude, but the proof is going to be in the reaction. I need to hear [from] the community if this is not taking place.”

In brief

Local kids get vaxed

Children ages 5 to 11 are now eligible for COVID vaccination, and there are plenty of opportunities for families in the Charlottesville area to have their kids inoculated. The Blue Ridge Health District is offering vaccines for children by appointment at its Seminole Square space. Both city and county schools are planning to hold drive-through vaccination clinics on their campuses, and some pediatricians’ offices have begun vaccination events, starting with high-risk patients.

Pulling out all the stops

In a bizarre election footnote, Glenn Youngkin’s 17-year-old son attempted to vote for his father in last week’s election, even though the minimum age for voting in Virginia is 18. The poll workers at the Great Falls Library turned the boy away, reports The Washington Post. He “honestly misunderstood Virginia election law and simply asked polling officials if he was eligible to vote,” responded the Youngkin campaign. “Election integrity” was a major plank in Youngkin’s campaign platform.

Brackney’s back

In a downtown press conference on Tuesday, former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney revealed that she has filed formal complaints with CPD’s human resources department, the local Office of Human Rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the NAACP, concerning her firing in September. She says city leadership defamed, harassed, and discriminated against her for her efforts to dismantle systemic racism within the department. She is demanding $3 million from the city. If the city does not respond to the complaints soon, Brackney and her attorney say they will take her case to federal court.

Earlier this year, Charlottesville City Manager Chip Boyles was brought in to stabilize a shaky local government, but after eight months on the job, he resigned last week.

Following a closed session with City Council, Boyles said he believes he shored up city leadership and boosted employee morale during his tenure, but that his process was “disrupted” when he fired former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney last month.

“I continue to support my decision taken on this matter,” wrote Boyles in a letter to City Council, “but the public vitriol associated with this decision of a few vocal community members and the broken relationship with Mayor Walker have severely limited my ability to be productive toward the goals of City Council.”

Boyles claimed the backlash against Brackney’s termination—along with Mayor Nikuyah Walker’s pushback—negatively impacted his personal health and well-being. “Continuation of the personal and professional attacks that are occurring are not good for the City, for other City staff, for me, or for my family,” he wrote.

In an additional email to the city staff, Boyles explained that he had planned to stay in his position “much longer,” and believed Charlottesville was going in a “collective positive direction in morale.”

During his brief stint as city manager, Boyles hired several senior-level officials, including Deputy City Manager for Operations Sam Sanders and Deputy City Manager for Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Ashley Reynolds Marshall.

Since 2018, Charlottesville has had a total of five interim or full-time city managers. Last September, Tarron Richardson resigned from the position after just 16 months on the job, claiming he had been restricted and disrespected by city officials. A search firm was hired to find a new city manager, but the firm’s manager told Councilor Lloyd Snook that he had “never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here,” and that it would be impossible for the firm to recruit a high-quality candidate.

Chip Boyles has resigned as city manager.
Photo: City of Charlottesville

Following a series of emergency closed sessions, council appointed Boyles, the former executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. The councilors emphasized that Boyles would bring much-needed steadiness to local government until they begin a public city manager search.

In a Facebook live after Boyles’ resignation, Walker said Boyles’ actions surrounding Brackney’s firing should have been cause for his termination. She also criticized other councilors for casting blame on her for the manager’s resignation, and not holding him accountable.

“No one is speaking up. Everyone is okay with everything that’s happening. And the only issue is the Black woman who is the mayor,” she said. “They qualify that I’m the issue by saying there’s other Black people in this community who have an issue with me.”

“Chip is not the only issue,” she continued. “There were other issues in the city’s attorney’s office, his office, communications, the police department—there were all people who played a role, and who are protected by at least three of my colleagues and the silence of Councilor Payne,” she added.

Walker defended herself and her record, claiming she has never lied and has stayed committed to her values. She accused Boyles of wrongfully blaming her for the city’s internal issues, and said the city attorney should have alerted her about Boyles’ letter before it was published.

“You all should be ashamed that you are more concerned with your whiteness, white privilege, and upholding those systems than peoples’ lives being changed for the better,” she said.

However, Snook says he is “really disappointed” in Boyles’ resignation.

“He has been doing an excellent job of trying to get senior level management hired,” like Marshall and Sanders, he says. “He got Lisa Robertson on board as the city attorney—all good moves.”

“I saw us heading in the right direction, and then all of these little fires turn into big fires, and all of a sudden everyone’s attention gets turned away from governance,” he adds.

Snook still supports Boyles’ decision to fire Brackney, citing the fact that some of the officers she hired, including Black officers, have left the department.

“We have created in Charlottesville in the last few years…a really toxic culture of what I call the politics of personal destruction,” says Snook. “Any mistake is made, all of sudden [it’s] a cause for termination, heads must roll. We just can’t function that way.”

If any more critical city staff decide to jump ship, Councilor Michael Payne is afraid the city will “reach a point where we can’t maintain even basic functions.”

“City government is in a state of crisis,” he says. “In my less than two years on council, I’ve counted turnover in 20 top leadership positions alone.”

After the city finds an interim city manager and begins the process of hiring a permanent manager, Payne says council will need to work with the city manager’s office to list critical policy priorities—including affordable housing, school reconfiguration, public housing redevelopment, zoning rewrites, and a climate action plan—and create a strategy to get them implemented.

Council is deliberating interim city manager options. Boyles’ last day is October 29.