Neighborhoods voice their concerns in a Smart Cville survey. Courtesy of Smart Cville
Chief of economic development splits
While Albemarle County is all about economic development these days, Faith McClintic lasted 19 months before departing, and cited frustration working with the Board of Supervisors as one reason for taking a job with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership in Richmond, according to Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Not Republican enough?
Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville co-chair George Benford faces fire again, this time from state Senator Tom Garrett, the GOP candidate for the 5th District, for being featured as a lifelong Republican in an ad for Dem Jane Dittmar. Garrett says Benford has contributed to Democrats the past 15 years. Benford defends his GOPness and says he supports Donald Trump—and Dittmar, the Daily Progress reports.
Understanding the Greene County threat
Sheriff Steve Smith stepped into hot water when he posted that his office would host a November 5 seminar on Islam called Understanding the Threat. Critics were unappeased when he renamed it Understanding the Jihadist Threat, and they claimed it would be biased, especially after learning there are no Muslims on the panel. PVCC, where the event is being held, has joined in the outrage.
The talk of the town
Charlottesville’s open data cheerleader, Smart Cville, founded by resident Lucas Ames, surveyed representatives of 16 local neighborhoods about residents’ biggest concerns and the rate of responsiveness of local government to those issues.
According to Smart Cville’s findings, traffic, development/zoning, crime and pedestrian/biking issues top residents’ list of concerns.
Which public problems seem the most pressing based on association meetings, public comment and your own personal opinion?
Ranked in order, residents are also concerned about:
Parks/public spaces
Other
Parking
Gentrification
Education, affordable housing and environmental/sustainability
Economic equity
Economic development, beautification and public transportation
Participating neighborhoods
Rose Hill
Johnson Village
Venable
Greenbrier
Lewis Mountain
Little High
Woolen Mills
Starr Hill
Belmont-Carlton
Ridge Street
North Downtown
Burnet Commons
Fry’s Spring
Robinson Woods
Meadows
Martha Jefferson
City staff is responsive to problems
Agree—70%
Disagree—25%
Don’t know—5%
City Council is responsive to problems
Agree—45%
Disagree—40%
Don’t know—15%
Quote of the week:
“People going to court aren’t necessarily in a shopping or movie-going mode.” —Supervisor Norman Dill on Albemarle’s discussions to move its courts from downtown to spur economic development, Charlottesville Tomorrow reports.
Ousted chair George Benford watches the drama play out that results in his new job as co-chair on the DBAC with the woman who wanted him gone.
Staff photo
George Benford wasn’t chair at that point early in an August 17 DBAC board meeting, but within 45 minutes, he was elected co-chair, and Joan Fenton, who had prompted his August 8 resignation when she told him his election in March may not have been legal, survived a vote to remove her from the board because her opponents couldn’t muster a two-thirds majority.
The feud between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center owner Mark Brown over the Water Street Garage seeped into the DBAC, with factions forming and accusations from Fenton that Benford and other DBAC board members were in Brown’s pocket.
After last week’s public airing of DBAC grievances, Fenton took charge of Wednesday’s board meeting and explained her discovery that a decision to amend the bylaws and move the membership year to begin January 1 had never been made official, and therefore Benford’s election after former chair and former CPC general manager Bob Stroh resigned was invalid.
“I didn’t do this easily,” said Fenton. She said she’d consulted Tuel Jewelers’ Mary Loose DeViney, who in fact is a professional registered parliamentarian. DeViney agreed the elections held at the March meeting were not in accordance with the bylaws. Fenton waited to break the news until after an August 5 meeting of the bylaws committee, she said, because “I didn’t want it to look like I was doing anything improper.”
An angry board challenged Fenton when she passed out the bylaws and an e-mail with DeViney’s opinion. “Why are we just receiving this?” asked Will Van der Linde, manager of the Main Street Arena, which is owned by Brown.
Attorney David Pettit, who represents Violet Crown Cinema, which has lobbied the DBAC to tell the city it wants the Water Street Garage to be a public utility, said he came to the August 17 because Fenton asked him to weigh in on the bylaws situation, not on behalf of Violet Crown, which is also a DBAC member.
The calendar year could be changed in the bylaws by a two-thirds vote of the board, he said, but he found no evidence that occurred in the minutes. And if the board doesn’t follow its bylaws, the result is “chaos,” he said.
Fenton wanted to have an election in September at the annual members meeting, 90 days after the June 30 end of the membership year under the old bylaws. It didn’t work out like that.
Van der Linde proposed a motion to change the membership year to January 1 and make it retroactively effective January 1, 2016.
“I will question the validity of that motion because we do not know who our board was,” said Fenton.
That brought up another issue. Some of the board’s 17 members had been elected, like Benford, under the unofficial new bylaws. In a vote of only those who had been on the board before the contested election, a 9-1 decision was made to change the membership year in the bylaws, with Fenton the sole “no” vote.
Van der Linde made another motion: “I move to fill the vacancy of [co-chair] Bob Stroh with George Benford.” That passed 8-2, with Fenton and Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder, who had been in the ax-Benford faction and who has plans to start a new business association, voting no.
Van der Linde had yet another motion, the most dramatic yet. “I make a motion to remove Joan Fenton from the board,” he said. That 6-2 vote, with two abstaining and two absent, failed to get the two-thirds necessary to oust Fenton.
“I think I really upset a lot of people by publicly stating my issues and by refusing to have an emergency meeting,” said Fenton, who remains co-chair, after the meeting. “I think there was a lot of anger at me and I hope we can move past that and work together.”
In a final motion, Van der Linde moved to reinstate the nine people who had been elected to the board earlier in the year.
George Benford and Joan Fenton kiss and makeup after last week’s ugly business. Staff photo
Several members seemed shaken by the events of the past week. David Posner, an investor with Davenport & Company and a board member whose election was questioned, said everyone had been “very happy” with how things were going at the DBAC, and that he found it alarming “all of a sudden to see this coup go down.”
“What we’re trying to do is bring this ship back to port,” said Amy Wicks-Horn, whose membership and allegiances Fenton had questioned. Although COO for the Piedmont Family YMCA, Wicks-Horn says she’s not a DBAC member in her work capacity. Fenton had pointed out that neither Wicks-Horn nor Benford owned businesses on the Downtown Mall.
“In the past week, our reputation has suffered,” when it was “only one or two individuals” leading the charge to oust Benford, said Wicks-Horn.
“It’s been very disturbing,” said Roy Van Doorn, a partner at City Select. “It’s been very personal. When motives get questioned in a public way, it’s really out of place. I ask the leaders of DBAC to temper their comments. It’s been very disturbing to the board. It’s been very disturbing to the members. [The DBAC] has to be focused on its members and its issues.”
And with that, Van der Linde moved on to talk about DBAC plans to put lighting in trees for the mall’s 40th anniversary.
Afterward, Fenton said, “Sometimes the best thing is to have an open and honest discussion. When you clear the air, you can move past that and work together.”
The issues that had been “festering” were not discussed at the meeting, she said, but people did get to express their displeasure.
She added, “I do sincerely think [Benford] and I can work together.”
Joan Fenton ousted George Benford as chair of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville.
Photo Eze Amos
Simmering undercurrents from the parking war between the city and Charlottesville Parking Center over the Water Street Garage have splintered the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, whose chairman abruptly resigned August 8 after being told he was illegally elected. The move leaves some members confused about who’s in charge and one who is working to start a new downtown business alliance.
Benford says he was in New York on business August 8 when he got an e-mail from DBAC vice-chair Joan Fenton, who owns Quilts Unlimited & J. Fenton Gifts. According to Benford, Fenton said his election was illegal because the bylaws had never been officially approved to allow an election in March, and that she would take over in the interim.
“I said I’d just make this simple and resign,” says Benford. “There’s been a lot of dissent from one or two people. This is a volunteer job. Nobody gets paid.” He adds, “I don’t have energy for this.”
In his resignation letter, Benford listed his accomplishments during the five months he was chair, including DBAC membership being at an all-time high. What he didn’t mention was the parking dispute between CPC owner Mark Brown and the city that has roiled the organization and had it sending conflicting messages to City Council.
Benford came under fire from Fenton and others for an April 17 letter to City Council that said the DBAC would not take sides in the dispute between Brown and the city. It urged a quick resolution and for the city to come up with a long-term plan to deal with parking.
Fenton contends that Benford went to the city and said the DBAC was in favor of it selling its shares of the garage to Brown. She also accused him of not being transparent, and of stalling a DBAC vote on a resolution to keep the garage a public utility.
“From my perspective, [Benford] has done so much damage to the organization and now he’s continuing to damage it,” says Fenton.
“He has a large group of people beholden to Mark Brown,” she says. “There’s a perception CPC is running DBAC.”
Certainly the two organizations have always been intertwined, with downtown booster Stroh holding leadership positions in both. CPC has provided office space and support to DBAC, says Benford, and CPC employee Sarah Mallan is DBAC’s secretary and treasurer.
“DBAC records are kept at the parking garage,” says Fenton. “I think that’s a conflict.”
Brown says that two people out of 17 on the DBAC board work for him. “Didn’t the DBAC encourage the city to fight me and not settle with me?” he asks.
Fenton also questions board members who don’t own businesses downtown, such as Benford, who used to own the restaurant Siips on the mall, and Amy Wicks-Horn, who joined DBAC when she was director of the Virginia Discovery Museum.
Benford says he offered to resign when he sold the restaurant. “Everyone, including Joan, asked me to stay on,” he says.
And Fenton questions the link between Wicks-Horn, who currently works for the Piedmont Family YMCA, which received funding for the new Y from the Jessup family, a member of which also sold Brown his shares in the Water Street Garage Condominium Association.
“I categorically deny that,” says Wicks-Horn. She says she’s not representing the Y with her DBAC membership, and she volunteers because of her passion to support downtown.
“DBAC is a strong partner with CPC and it’s also a strong partner with the city,” she says, and both entities are concerned about the issue of parking downtown. “That doesn’t mean we’re in the city’s pocket and it doesn’t mean we’re in CPC’s pocket.”
Spring Street owner Cynthia Schroeder sees the need for a new business group, an idea she’s had plans for since 2012. “I’m starting a new, honest, open organization to increase business on the Downtown Mall,” she says. “It’s fresh, it’s going to be very active.”
Schroeder doesn’t believe Benford should be chair of DBAC. “It’s unraveling,” she says. “I’m going to put my energy into my effort,” which she says she’d like to have in place by January.
After submitting a resignation not only as chair, but as a member of the DBAC executive committee, board and association itself, Benford reconsidered August 10. “I have received numerous requests to rescind my resignation letter,” he says, and he will remain on a member of the DBAC and its board of directors.
The legality of Benford’s chairmanship was raised at a bylaws committee meeting August 5, says Fenton. Some have questioned whether her interpretation of the bylaws, which the board had talked about updating but she believes never did, is correct.
“I can’t swear to one or the other,” she says. “But if he resigned, it doesn’t matter. He’s got copies of the bylaws, and he could have said, ‘I think you’re reading this wrong.’”
Fenton says she’s been asked to hold an emergency meeting, but with a regular DBAC meeting scheduled for August 17 and the annual meeting in September, she wants the entire membership to vote on who leads the group. “We can start with a clean slate,” she says.
