McIntire Skate Park, photographed at its opening last year, has been a popular destination during the pandemic.
PC: Tristan William
Grinding to a halt
Last week, a final warning was issued to all skaters: If more than 25 people were seen gathered at the Charlottesville Skate Park—or other city parks and recreation areas—over the weekend, the city would consider shutting down all of its outdoor facilities until the declaration of emergency is lifted.
Officials stopped by the skate park throughout the weekend, and noticed an immediate improvement, compared to the gathering of more than 75 people witnessed at the park two weeks ago.
The threat of closing was enough to spark outrage among young skaters.
“There are some ways we could keep it open COVID safe,” said 12-year-old Skippy Norton during public comment at Monday’s City Council meeting. Norton, who claimed they’ve been encouraging fellow skaters to comply with safety rules, said, “If I’m having a hard day, I can go to the skate park and I’ll be happy…And I know it means a lot to a lot of kids.”
“Skating helps a lot with mental health…it can put you in a much better mindset,” added 12-year-old Alice Christian. “I’ve met many people at the park who have made my life a little bit more happy.”
“There certainly was a lot more compliance” with mask wearing and social distancing, said City Councilor Heather Hill during the meeting. “But it really is going to be the onus of the skate community to ensure that they’re following the rules…so [it] can continue to be open.”
Several parents joined the kids in speaking out against closing the park, urging council to consider less extreme measures.
“It’s a lifeline for my children,” said parent Kerri Heilman. “The lack of things they’re able to do, and being able to get to the skate park and be outdoors, it is really great for their mental health.”
“Skating rules!” her 8-year-old child chimed in.
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Quote of the week
“I would not mind spending Christmas with my family.”
—UVA football player Joey Blount, on whether or not he wants to play in a bowl game over the holiday break
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In brief
Sally forth
Unsurprisingly, Charlottesville’s delegate, Sally Hudson, has announced her campaign for re-election. In 2019, Hudson took down former city councilor Kathy Galvin in a primary before running unopposed in the general election. She says her priorities for next session include COVID relief, as well as continuing the work of the last session on education and the environment.
Sally Hudson PC: Supplied photo
Tree time
Charlottesville’s Christmas tree sellers are seeing record sales this year, reports NBC29. With everyone gloomy about the virus and eager to get out of the house, firs and pines are flying off the lots. If you’re hoping to get your holiday decorations set up early, don’t wait around.
Oh, shit
Charlottesville has recently begun wastewater testing to detect coronavirus cases, reports The Daily Progress, in an effort organized in conjunction with the state health department and the CDC. It sounds nasty, but the testing has proven an effective way of detecting the presence of COVID early in the virus’ spread—UVA has been running a successful wastewater testing program at its residence halls since September.
It takes two to HueHuetenango
At Monday’s City Council meeting, counselors decided to begin the process of becoming sister cities with HueHuetenango, Guatemala. The 120,000-person city is located in the west of the country and is known for a distinctive set of Mayan ruins nearby. Familial bonds between municipalities aren’t formed overnight, though—for the first three years, the two cities will just be “friendship cities,” says the commission.
Dr. Tarron Richardson at his introductory press conference last April. After a year and change, he's out as city manager. Photo: Eze Amos
“What’s been the hardest part of this job?” is, to outgoing Charlottesville City Manager Dr. Tarron Richardson, “a loaded question.”
The city’s top executive tendered his resignation on September 11, and will finish his time at City Hall on September 30, after 16 months at the helm. (For reference, the three city managers before Richardson stayed in the role for an average of 16 years.) City Attorney John Blair will take over as interim.
On his way out, Richardson says he was hampered by city officials who didn’t respect where their authority ended and his began, and that the media portrayed him unfairly.
“The primary job of a city manager is to make sure the budget is done correctly,” Richardson says.
“My role as city manager, in this form of government, I run the day-to-day operations, but City Council puts the policy in place. You never heard me, in a City Council meeting, try to influence a policy one way or another,” he says.
It’s true that Richardson rarely spoke up at council meetings—he spent most of his time on the dais expressionless, silently watching city business unfold around him.
He attributes this reserved public demeanor to a desire, as a new member of the community, to listen first and act second. But he also concedes that communicating his budget philosophy—“having people see that we look at the budget from a holistic standpoint and not just one department”—was the biggest challenge during his tenure.
“It’s never a good topic of discussion when you’re talking about the budget,” says the man who spent the last 16 months crafting the city budget.
Richardson rejects a suggestion that he had a bad relationship with City Council.
“I worked well with Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, Mike Signer. I worked well with Sena Magill, I worked well with Lloyd Snook, and I worked well with Michael Payne.”
If you’re keeping track, that list includes every city councilor Richardson has overlapped with except Heather Hill and Mayor Nikuyah Walker.
Friction welled up between Richardson and those council members because “a lot of people were expecting me to come in and say yes to everything, rubber stamp it,” Richardson says. “But I’ve been doing this for a long time…So when you’re someone who says no to things that have been traditionally said yes to, you have issues.”
Hill declined to comment for this story, and Walker did not respond to a request for comment.
At Monday’s City Council meeting, Richardson’s last as city manager, Walker addressed his previous suggestions that she had micromanaged him. “The topics that I might have dug a little deeper with you are related to procuring supplies for the pandemic,” the mayor said, “making sure people had utilities during the pandemic, making sure we keep people employed during the pandemic.”
“In terms of micromanaging, if that means I strongly suggested that we take care of people in this community, then yes I did push a little harder,” she continued.
Two other notable city employees clashed with Richardson in the last year. Deputy City Manager Mike Murphy resigned suddenly last October, and penned a mysterious memo alleging mismanagement that has yet to see the light of day, according to reporting from The Daily Progress.
After a dispute over the timeline for the acquisition of new firefighters, Andrew Baxter, who had served as the city’s fire chief for four years, resigned in June. Baxter wrote in an email to a colleague that Richardson was a “transactional, unfocused, disengaged, dismissive bully,” and that his resignation was a direct result of Richardson’s management style.
That Baxter email was publicized by The Daily Progress in June, in an article co-authored by the Progress’ City Hall reporter Nolan Stout. Stout has repeatedly pulled back the curtain at City Hall by publishing employees’ verbatim email transcripts, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Richardson has some choice words for Stout: “He doesn’t report the entire story. He reports bits and pieces of it. And for the most part it always portrayed me in a negative light, no matter what I did. All the positive things I’ve done have never been reported.”
When asked why he thinks that is, Richardson implies that his race has played a factor.
“If you look at history of The Daily Progress, has it always shown people of color in a positive light?” Richardson asks.
The Progress drew criticism for a 2017 piece about then-council candidate Walker, though the reporter who wrote the story left the paper in 2018.
Daily Progress Managing Editor Aaron Richardson says: “I stand behind Nolan’s coverage of and reporting on the city.”
The media made his job “very hard,” Richardson says. “What was said impacted me from a community standpoint.”
At his final appearance before the community at Monday’s council meeting, Richardson did not address any community matters but did take one last opportunity to reaffirm that he felt the Progress’ coverage had been unfair, specifically regarding the dispute between himself and the fire fighters.
Looking back, Richardson says he feels he did make positive changes during his time, listing a handful of bureaucratic reforms:
“What really went well was the reorganization of the various departments. Streamlining processes. And this was primarily to get departments that were similar within one portfolio,” he says. “We got our triple-A bond rating reaffirmed. We didn’t increase the tax rate…We had a lot of good hires. CAT, human resources, we just hired a new public works director. Overall we’ve been moving in the right direction.”
Richardson also points to his work in public housing communities as a successful element of his tenure.
And he does leave with some admirers in town. “You were out there feeding people when no other members of council were out there,” said local activist Tanesha Hudson to Richardson at Monday’s council meeting.
The resignation announcement didn’t come as a total surprise: City Council held an 11-hour closed session in June to discuss Richardson’s job performance, a meeting long enough to suggest that council members weren’t just heaping praise on their chief executive.
Richardson will walk off with a lump-sum payment equivalent to a year’s salary—$205,000. Hefty severance packages are not unheard of in the city. When Murphy resigned in December 2019, he took home almost a full year’s worth of his $158,000 salary.
Richardson says there wasn’t a specific incident that drove him out, nor a single moment when he knew he was finished.
“I ended up resigning for the simple fact that I was working a lot of hours. Day in and day out. And it just became a little too much for me… it just got to the point where I said okay, I’ve done my best, I’ve made a significant number of changes, and it’s time for me to move on.”
Asked if he has any hobbies that have been put on the back burner while he’s been working, Richardson says, “No, not actually. One thing I haven’t had a chance to do here is get a rest.”
Does Richardson have any advice for someone considering stepping in to this job? He takes a long pause before answering. “I would say really understand what you’re getting into,” he says.
Updated 9/24: NBC29 first published a selection of emails between Baxter and Richardson in February. The email quoted in this story was first published by the Progress in June.
Activists stand outside the police station during a protest this weekend. PC: Eze Amos
Tenure trouble
UVA’s “Great and Good” strategic plan lists “recruiting and retaining excellent and diverse faculty” as a central goal. But this year, two black scholars who have been denied tenure claim the decision process was significantly flawed, possibly due to racial bias.
Paul Harris PC: Virginia.edu
Paul Harris has worked at UVA’s Curry School of Education since 2011, studying identity development in black male student-athletes and underrepresented students’ college readiness. For the past six years, Harris’ annual reviews indicated that he was meeting or exceeding expectations. So he was shocked to learn in January that an all-white, college-wide promotion and tenure committee had recommended against giving him tenure. Instead, he was offered a promotion—for a non-tenure-track position.
Harris says the committee claimed his research in the Journal of African American Males in Education in 2016 was “self-published.” (In fact, the peer-reviewed journal has a 23 percent acceptance rate.) The committee also got his citation counts wrong—they’re five times higher than the committee claimed.
Tolu Odumosu PC: Virginia.edu
Sociologist Tolu Odumosu has been on the tenure track at UVA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science since 2013. He’s co-written and co-edited two books, and helped write a $3 million National Science Foundation grant. After his third-year review suggested he expand his editing experience, he also became an associate editor of two journals.
But the engineering school’s tenure committee did not grant him tenure this year. It claimed that Odumosu hadn’t written enough work by himself, and was not the principal investigator named on the NSF grant. Like Harris, Odumosu had not been warned that his work was not up to par.
Both men appealed the decisions to UVA’s provost, but the appeals were rejected. The scholars are now appealing to the Faculty Senate’s grievance committee—their last option.
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Quote of the week
“This is a moment to step boldly into our future…We have to work together to decide what kind of Virginia we’re going to be. I’m ready for the challenge.”
—State Senator Jennifer McClellan, announcing her campaign for Virginia governor
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In brief
Still on the march
Charlottesville activists continue to mobilize the community to protest police brutality. Large marches and demonstrations have taken place in town at least once a week since the death of George Floyd in late May. Last weekend, protesters marching downtown also directed some of their energy toward patrons of the mall’s outdoor restaurants: The demonstrators chanted “Shame” at diners who were sipping beer and chewing on burgers.
Convention contagion?
Denver Riggleman’s campaign claims that several delegates who participated in the recent drive-thru Republican convention have contracted coronavirus, reports CBS19. The local Republican Party denies the accusation. Riggleman continues to criticize the drive-thru convention format that saw him lose the congressional nomination to challenger Bob Good. “Voter fraud has been a hallmark of this process,” Riggleman tweeted on election night.
Donor debate
Community members have noticed that the Charlottesville Police Foundation—dedicated to fundraising for the “advanced training, new technologies and equipment, [and] housing assistance” that isn’t covered by the department’s $18 million budget—posted a list of donors on its website. The list featured several local restaurants and other businesses, as well as individuals, including City Council members Lloyd Snook and Heather Hill.
Heather Hill PC: Eze Amos
Exposing abuse
Tweets about allegations of sexual assault and harassment directed at dozens of UVA students and staff appeared on an anonymous Twitter account last week. The alleged incidents once again drew attention to students’ calls for reform—in April, student advocacy group UVA Survivors created a list of demands for institutional change in sexual assault policy, reports The Cavalier Daily. The list has garnered around 1,700 new signatures in the past week.
Lloyd Snook PC: Supplied
Immigration action
UVA will now allow students to enroll and graduate “regardless of citizenship or immigration status,” the university announced last week. Previously, only DACA recipients—not other “undocu+” students—had not been allowed to matriculate. The decision represents a long-sought victory for activists around the school community.
New Year’s is a time for resolutions, but this year, we decided to focus our attention on city improvements, not self-improvement. So we asked a bunch of community leaders about their hopes for Charlottesville (and added a few of our own). Here’s to a new year, a new decade, and new visions for a community that’s bigger and better than ever.
Kari Miller, executive director and founder, International Neighbors
1. That employee income increases as fast—or faster (imagine that!)—as housing costs rise.
2. That each resourced resident (most of us) connect with one neighbor in need (many of us) in order to make Charlottesville/Albemarle the best place for all of us.
3. That special immigrant visa holders, or SIVs, receive the official status of U.S. veterans of war for their service and sacrifice for the U.S. military during conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many SIVs live in Charlottesville—they are our neighbors—and deserve our respect and support. The presence of these people of unparalleled patriotism makes Charlottesville/Albemarle a stronger community, and yet they struggle to survive, despite having put themselves at great risk to protect our common values.
Deborah McLeod, Photo Amy and Jackson Smith
Deborah McLeod, Chroma Gallery
1. A pedestrian bridge across the Rivanna joining River View with the Darden trail on the Albemarle side.
2. A better designed bus system that responds to the needs of the users (present AND potential) that is hub based rather than the current over long circuits that make commuting take so absurdly long—and add more buses.
3. Create a charming enterprise business zone at the Friendship Court stretch along Second Street leading toward IX.
Michael Payne, City Council member
I love Charlottesville, but I canhardly afford to live here! Three improvements:
1. A more robust public transit system with more frequent stops.
2. Achieving carbon neutrality and local climate resilience.
3. Expanding affordable housing opportunities, including public housing and community land trusts.
Sean Tubbs, resident and public transit advocate
1. The creation of a Charlottesville Karaoke League.
2. The establishment or promotion of an all-ages social gathering space to break down generational silos.
3. More reporting from more sources on more issues. There are so many stories that need to be told.
Stephen Hitchcock, executive director of The Haven
1. More affordable housing.
2. More affordable housing.
3. More affordable housing.
Peter Krebs, community outreach coordinator at Piedmont Environmental Council
1. A Connected Community: I would love to see safe and comprehensive bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure that links homes to jobs, schools, shopping, and recreation, and that supports area-wide transit. Progress to date has been much too slow and I would like to see it accelerated.
2. A Thriving Community: I would like to see everyone, regardless of age, ability, or any other factor be able to move about and pursue their dreams in a vibrant urban area that is healthy, sustainable, rich in opportunity, and surrounded predominantly by intact forests, farms, and ecosystems.
3. A Community that Works Together: I would like to see Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA working together systematically and methodically on transportation, housing, economic development, and environmental protection and conservation. The existing memoranda of understanding are a great start but I’d love to see a much more ambitious level of cooperation.
More than a parking lot
The City Yard, a 9.4-acre municipal works lot in the heart of Charlottesville is, as we wrote last year, “large, central, under-used and under government control”—so why hasn’t it been developed?
The yard, home to black and mixed-race residents more than a century ago, was also the site of the city’s gas works. For decades, concerns about possible contamination kept its use limited to public works vehicles and maintenance facilities.
But faced with a growing population and an increasingly urgent affordable housing crisis, the city is taking a second look.
“I think with City Yard and a few other places near downtown, you could afford to do some unconventional experimentation,” former mayor Maurice Cox told us this spring. “I think it’s too valuable to stay fallow, but it’s too big and difficult to use a conventional set of tools.”
In November 2018, City Council awarded $500,000 to New Hill Development Corporation, an African American-led nonprofit group, to study redevelopment in the Starr Hill area, which includes the City Yard. This fall, they presented their plan, proposing to develop the City Yard into a mixed-use area with 85 to 255 majority affordable housing units and flexible business/commercial spaces focused on workforce development.
It’s part of a larger push to revitalize the area and, with the proposal’s emphasis on open, pedestrian-friendly streets and the transformation of the Jefferson School into a “public square,” it feels like a way to right some of the city’s historic wrongs. After the razing of Vinegar Hill and the walling off of 10th and Page, a redevelopment of the area would reconnect one of the city’s last remaining African American neighborhoods with its increasingly vital downtown. So while many big hurdles remain—most notably whether the site needs environmental cleanup, and if so how much it will cost—it’s a vision worth pursuing. –Laura Longhine
Hunter Smith, founder and CEO, Champion Brewing Company
1. Elimination of food insecurity in the greater Charlottesville-Albemarle area. We have way too many restaurants per capita and disposable income in this community to have hungry neighbors. In 2020, I’d like to challenge myself and fellow restaurateurs to find a way to fight food waste and instability together.
2. More public/private initiatives. As long as the Dillon Rule stands, there are many things the city can’t do that residents expect it to do when it comes to affordable housing and other community priorities. With more projects like New Hill Development, the city can leverage its resources and staff to support not-for-profits that are capable of doing the work the city often cannot.
3. Dewberry Hotel (formerly the Landmark). Good lord, what an eyesore. It’s kind of amazing that the Downtown Mall is still such a destination with that hulk looming
around. There’s a lot of opportunity for a decade-old, derelict structure to be put to better use.
Alan Goffinski, executive director of The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative
My wish for the city is that Charlottesville might institute an Office of Getting Sh*t Done within city government that supports individuals and nonprofits with good ideas by identifying resources, connecting like-minded folks, streamlining procedures and application processes, and navigating the intimidating aspects of government bureaucracy.
Heather Hill. Photo: Eze Amos
Heather Hill, City Council member
1. Public meeting spaces that are welcoming and respectful of different perspectives, inviting collaboration versus division.
2. A community commitment to investing public and private resources in our schools’ infrastructure.
3. A more regional approach to taking tangible steps that address priorities, including connectivity and housing.
Walt Heinecke, associate professor of Educational Research, Statistics, & Evaluation at UVA
1. I would like to see the new City Council replace the watered-down bylaws and ordinance for the Police Civilian Review Board recently passed by council in Novemberwith the original bylaws and ordinance submitted by the initial CRB in August. The latter bylaws and ordinance provided the strongest model for community oversight and complaint review allowed by state law.
2. I would like to see all racist statues in Charlottesville, including the George Rogers Clark statue at UVA, removed.
3. I would like to see UVA establish a Center for the Study of Race and Social Justice and acknowledge that the university exists on stolen Monacan land; establish a formal and respectful relationship with the Monacan Nation; establish a fully funded indigenous studies center with adequate faculty hires, a substantive effort to increase Indigenous student enrollment, and a physical building for the center.
Jeff Dreyfus. Photo: Martyn Kyle
Jeff Dreyfus and partners, Bushman Dreyfus Architects
1. City Council devises a proactive, achievable plan for increasing affordable housing in the city.
2. The city and county begin incentivizing the production of solar energy.
3. City and county governments merge services and programs that overlap or are redundant to better utilize the limited resources we have.
Devin Floyd, founder, director, principal investigator at the Center for Urban Habitats
1. Environmental education: I would like to see schools not only put a greater emphasis on the arts and sciences, but also afford our youth opportunities to leave the classroom and learn more about local natural history. The more they get the chance to explore the plants, animals, and ecosystems that they share the land with, the more informed and compassionate they will be as stewards of the natural world. Children must be allowed the chance to get close enough to a salamander to see their own reflection in its eyes.
2. Daylighting streams: Natural springs, creeks, and rivers are the heart of our region’s biodiversity. I want the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County to ban the practice of burying streams for development. Furthermore, I call for action toward creating a strategic plan for daylighting all springs and creeks that have been buried, and restoring a portion of the wetlands, grasslands, and forests they should be associated with. This will have the effect of creating a network of urban and suburban wild spaces, with associated parks and trails.
3. The new all-American lawn: I want to see our city and county governments take more responsibility for supporting sustainable landscaping practices. To this end, I dream of a new type of lawn, one that is beautiful, handles its own storm water (slowing it and cleaning it before it reaches local streams), requires but one trimming a year, supports wildlife, keeps its fallen leaves, and inspires young and old to explore. In this vision lawns become extensions of nature, and urban areas become bastions for biodiversity. I want people to have hope again. All is not lost; not even in an urban landscape. Nature is resilient, and powerful. We can each have a positive impact on the environment, even in a tiny lawn.
Patsy Chadwick. File photo
Patsy Chadwick, outgoing president, current board member, Piedmont Master Gardeners
1. Eliminate invasive species throughout Albemarle County. As I drive around the area, I am mortified by the vast numbers of invasive species along our roads, including ailanthus trees, Russian olive shrubs, English ivy, and kudzu, among others. It would be a herculean effort to eradicate these plants and replace them with more environmentally beneficial plantings, but we could begin to address the problem with a cooperative effort of state, county, and city government, private homeowners, and groups such as Piedmont Master Gardeners, Master Naturalists, PRISM, local garden clubs, and others.
2. Greater emphasis in our communities on planting trees—particularly, native species—to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and provide more shade during heat waves. I don’t think people realize just what an impact trees can make in helping to offset the effects of climate change.
3. Wiser management of water resources, including: 1) capturing rainwater in barrels and cisterns; 2) planting drought- and heat-tolerant plants that can survive with less water; 3) using drip-irrigation systems to put water where it is most needed; 4) not wasting water on lawns that have gone dormant.
Sunshine Mathon, CEO, Piedmont Housing Alliance
This next year could have remarkable impact if we come together with common purpose. Yet this work cannot be accomplished in a single effort or a single year. The strata of power, the scaffolding that frames our systems and institutions, took us 400 years to construct. With layer upon layer of root, flesh, and stone, we have laid beaten paths of opportunity and exclusion. And yet, though we may be overwhelmed by the scale of what must be undone, or what authority we must emancipate, this work is made imaginable when we laugh and breathe together, when we sweat hand in hand as we yoke ourselves to the labor, and when we cast our gaze to what we can accomplish in this single year.
1. Redevelopment begins: For years-decades-generations, community members from historically excluded neighborhoods have called for investment in their communities…but on their terms and in their interest. Within this next year, all the activism, the tears, and the planning will culminate in a remarkable, near-simultaneous achievement—the ground-breaking of redevelopment for three communities: Friendship Court, public housing, and Southwood. By this time next year, their foundational aspirations will become manifest in the bones of buildings, the homes they themselves designed.
2. A Strategic Housing Plan: Over the coming year, Charlottesville will develop a new strategic housing plan, a community-based process that can and will dig deep into our history, preparing us for future interventions. This housing plan will inform and guide the completion of the city’s comprehensive plan and a land use zoning code revision, culminating in a plan of action. Some aspects of the implementation will require strong political will, and a willingness to look inward to fulfill our collective responsibility, reprioritize resources, and redress past trespasses. These actions cannot be incremental. The accrued legacy is too deep and pervasive. Only bold action will enable our convictions.
3. A Common Analysis: Centuries of policies, incentives, and race-based decision-making have calcified the strata of power and advantage across the nation with people of color accruing the least of it. In the coming year, if our community is to accomplish some authentic progress, we must engage the work with a common analysis—specifically, an analysis of the institutional racism that permeates our systems, by intention and by neglect. By this time next year, our community could achieve a critical threshold. Research suggests that only 3.5 percent of a population must become actively engaged on a singular goal to reach a cultural tipping point. Through shared trainings, deliberate conversations, and active partnership, just 5,000 of us could lead our community to the fulcrum of change.
The Landmark/Dewberry/Laramore. Just call it an eyesore. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
The biggest joke in town
I’ve read a lot about John Dewberry recently and, man, he is a funny guy. Not funny “ha-ha,” but funny, like, “Dude, really?” For the uninitiated, Dewberry is the do-nothing developer who owns the largest urinal in town. It’s eight stories tall and holds down the corner of Second and West Main on the Downtown Mall.
The vision for a boutique hotel on the site reportedly originated with developer Lee Danielson, all the way back in 2004. Construction ceased in 2009, and Dewberry swooped to the rescue, or so we thought, in 2012. But so far, all he’s done is change the concept from luxury hotel to luxury apartments (just what we need) and the name from The Landmark to The Dewberry and, recently, The Laramore—an insult to the late local architect Jack Laramore, who designed the black granite street-level façade.
I wasted about 25 phone calls and six emails trying to contact Dewberry so he could tell me his plans for the vacant property in 2020. A spokesperson replied on behalf of the busy boss: “Hello, Joe. No updates at this time, but thank you so much for reaching out.”
Brian Wheeler, our fair city’s director of communications, indicated that Charlottesville has given up on trying to rectify the blighted blunder. Citing Dewberry’s “personal property rights,” Wheeler said, “He can own that structure [and] as long as it’s not a harm to others, he can keep it in that condition for as long as he likes.”
Whether Dewberry will ever do anything with the downtown carcass is unknown. But history isn’t comforting: Bloomberg Businessweek chose the headline “Atlanta’s Emperor of Empty Lots” for a 2017 profile of Dewberry, who has sat on valuable vacant land on that city’s Peachtree Street for 20 years. In Charleston, South Carolina, he bought a vacant government building and waited eight years to transform it into the luxury hotel that bears his name.
It’s funny, because the Bloomberg story quotes Charles Rea, who was once Dewberry’s director of operations, as saying: “He’s not going to put his name on anything that’s not superior, in his point of view.” Another former colleague said that Dewberry “…used to talk about Dupont Circle, Rockefeller Center. He wants his projects to stack up against the best.” You see? John Dewberry really is funny. –Joe Bargmann
Wilson Richey, partner and founder, Ten Course Hospitality
1. Double down on support of local businesses: Charlottesville’s small, independently owned businesses—shops opened and operated with great passion, meaning, and thought—are collectively one of the city’s most defining and important assets. As a local small business owner, I am worried that our current leadership has not been able to grasp this as they struggle to handle the many challenges of guiding a city that is growing so quickly. I believe our elected officials must show greater support for existing small businesses, and incentivize startups, so that these entities can make our city a stronger, more wonderful place than it already is.
2. Ditto, support for local artists: I grew up in a sleepy suburb of Washington, D.C. When I arrived in Charlottesville, I quickly realized the importance of the local artists and musicians. They lift our spirits, strengthen our cultural fabric, and make our city a happier, livelier, and more colorful place. In 2020, I’d like to see more support for the arts, both by Charlottesville’s leaders and each and every one of us.
3. Double-ditto, support for local agriculture. This is such an important issue, culturally and environmentally. It is a global issue in which Charlottesville has historically been a regional leader. But I believe we need to renew and increase our commitment to supporting sustainable, local agricultural efforts. We would all be healthier and happier for having done so!
Matthew McLendon, director ofThe Fralin Museum of Art
Matthew McLendon. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
1. I’d love to see an expanded, more robust, efficient, and reliable public transport system in Charlottesville that ties the surrounding counties to the city and makes getting around Charlottesville easier. Reliable and efficient public transport is the thing I miss most from my experience living in major cities. If done right, it is an important tool for greater equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
2. Following on with this theme (holiday traffic is on my mind, I guess), I wish that there would be a wide-scale overhaul on the timing of the traffic lights. I never feel that they are synced in the most efficient manner.
3. Finally, I am continuing to work with my colleagues on the vision and realization of a new center for the arts at UVA that would include greatly expanded university art museums, co-locating The Fralin and the Kluge-Ruhe to better serve not only UVA but also Charlottesville and central Virginia. With the intellectual and creative resources of UVA and the wider communities invested in our work, we have the ability to lead in creating the dynamic museum of the 21st century—a convening space for all who are curious and want to be engaged in the discussions art and artists can help to ignite.
Jody Kielbasa, Vice Provost for the Arts at UVA, director of the Virginia Film Festival
1. I would like to see the city and the county make a greater investment in the arts so that our arts organizations and artists can continue to enrich and bring us together as a community while serving as a catalyst to drive tourism and economic development.
2. I would like to see our public schools fully embrace the acronym S.T.E.A.M. over S.T.E.M. to recognize, foster, and celebrate the arts impact on our children’s well-being, learning, and self- expression. The arts make the world a better place.
3. I look forward to the development of a creative nexus on the Emmet/Ivy corridor as part of UVA’s 2030 strategic plan that would welcome the Charlottesville community to better engage with the arts at UVA.
Beryl Solla, gallery director, Piedmont Virginia Community College
My big issue is climate change. I would love to see the city make young trees available for people to plant in their yards. I know the city is working on this for public spaces, but we need to use every space available to help turn climate change around.
I would love to see all city buildings outfitted with solar roof panels and/or green roofs.
I would love to see our city make decisions based on a better, healthier quality of life for all of our citizens, with an emphasis on inclusion and sustainability.
If allowed another big wish, I would move the questionable sculptures in town out of public parks/public spaces and replace them with beautifully made, figurative sculptures that tell everyone’s story. The agenda would be historical accuracy, racial inclusion, and fair payment for the artists.
Brian Wimer. Photo: Eze Amos
Brian Wimer, Amoeba Films
Before we start changing anything, it might help for us to understand who we are. A cohesive vision for the future would certainly be beneficial, if not just pragmatic. But not the future of five days from now. That’s parking lots and like buying stock in Blockbuster. How do we want to live 50 years from now? A hundred years? Can we use our collective imaginations and make the bold, innovative choices that bring our community closer? Sure, I can name three things we could work on: multi-modal transportation, multi-cultural programming, and a new Charlottesville identity (can we please drop the “World Class City” nonsense and try to be a world class village?).
Part of that identity is pride. Ever arrived at the Amtrak station and wondered if you were home—greeted by a concrete tunnel and a chain link fence? Not much pride there. Do I hear someone say “mural?” Something that shouts welcome.
But regardless of what projects and programs we initiate, they won’t be effective if we don’t start at the basic foundation of what makes community: trust and gratitude. I think we have a long way to go there. Some folks don’t even want to discuss such esoteric and sticky principles. But without trust and gratitude you might as well shut down this whole social experiment—Netflix and Trader Joe’s will likely not provide what our souls are searching for. Nor will more parking lots or business incubators or beer festivals. We have an opportunity to promote a new paradigm based on unifying principles. Failure to do so would demonstrate not only bureaucratic sloth and a wasted potential—but also a lack of collective imagination. If we want a better city, we need to ask “What if?”
Editors’ note: Since publication, some readers have rightly called out the fact that none of the respondents in this piece are people of color, and that there are far more men than women represented. While we reached out to a diverse range of sources, many did not respond to our repeated requests (or said they would get back to us, but didn’t). And in a shortened production week due to the holidays, I didn’t notice how skewed the group we ended up with was until it was too late.
While this was meant to be a fairly casual survey (unlike, for instance, our 8/12 anniversary feature), we regret that the responses don’t reflect our entire community. As editor, I’m particularly sorry to have made such a careless mistake, which is not typical of our sourcing or our work in general, as I would hope any regular readers would recognize. We try hard to elevate marginalized voices and stories, and we will continue to do so.
An onlooker at the City Council meeting shows their support for Walker. Photo: Eze Amos
Loud and Clear
Nikuyah Walker begins a second two-year term as mayor of Charlottesville, after being re-elected at the January 6 City Council meeting. Councilors Michael Payne and Sena Magill voted for Walker, while Lloyd Snook and Heather Hill (who made her own bid for mayor) abstained.
Hill opened the meeting with an impassioned speech offering her services as mayor. “I really have gained a deep affection for the city, this region, and the people we share it with,” Hill said. During her time on council, she says she’s “developed a new lens from which I now view our community, its diversity, and its disparities in its harmony.”
Lloyd Snook did not mention any candidates specifically, but returned to the theme of civility that he’d emphasized during his campaign, saying “the selection of a mayor should be about how things will be done, not what will be done.”
“Council can start by not displaying open contempt for people coming to speak to us,” Snook said. “We can start by not displaying open contempt for the people on the dais.”
Michael Payne endorsed Walker by name, citing feminist academic theory and Walker’s record of “historic and unprecedented investment in housing.”
“I’ve walked in rooms the past three years where no one really took me seriously,” Walker said. “They didn’t think they had to. They discounted the abilities of black women. It wasn’t until the election that people understood the value I bring to rooms.”
“The individuals who have the least are heard the most when I am in the room,” Walker said.
Sena Magill, who received a $225 donation from Hill during her campaign, did not tip her hand during the initial comment period. “Whatever decision I make on this dais today will disappoint people who voted for me,” Magill said. “That’s inevitable. I have to vote with my heart. Where deep deep down I know I’m fighting for what’s right.”
Magill was elected vice mayor by a 4-1 vote, with Snook casting his vote for Hill.
Mayor Walker. Photo: Eze Amos
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Quote of theWeek
“We got a new council here. We put y’all in those seats. Y’all got something to say? Respond to us.”
—Local resident and activist Mary Carey, speaking at the first meeting of the new City Council.
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In Brief
Cut loose
Supervisors at Charlottesville’s Trump Winery fired at least seven employees for their lack of legal immigration status–but only after the workers completed the annual grape harvest. The firings come nearly a year after The Trump Organization vowed to remove undocumented workers from its properties, which have long relied on low-wage, illegal labor, and after a harvest that included 60-hour weeks and overnight shifts, according to The Washington Post.
More chicken
Soon, you’ll be able to fil’ up without getting out of your car. This week City Council granted a special use permit for Chick-fil-A to open a two-lane drive-through location where the Burger King in Barracks Road currently sits. “It’ll be a great meeting place and community center,” one speaker said during the public comment period. Councilor Michael Payne voted against the permit, citing a hesitancy to approve “car-centric development” given the city’s emissions reduction targets.
Helping hand
Beginning on January 27, Cville Tax Aid—a partnership led by the United Way of Greater Charlottesville—will be offering free tax preparation services for most taxpayers with household incomes of $55,000 or less. The program will be offered at sites in the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, and Nelson counties until April 15. To schedule an appointment, call the United Way or visit CvilleTaxAid.org.
Scooters be gone
After spending only a year in Charlottesville, Lime will remove all its e-scooters due to new city regulations, including a requirement to provide at least 50 e-bikes. The company says the bikes, which are often vandalized, are not cost-effective. Bird also called it quits in Charlottesville last summer, but newcomer VeoRide is here to stay (for now, at least).
On January 1, three new Charlottesville City Council members will officially begin their terms. Michael Payne, Sena Magill, and Lloyd Snook will join current councilors Heather Hill and Mayor Nikuyah Walker as Wes Bellamy, Mike Signer, and Kathy Galvin ride off into the sunset.
Magill and Payne say their priorities continue to be the issues that they built their campaigns around—housing reform and environmental policy.
“Something that I really want to get to work on immediately is climate change,” Payne says. “The city set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target—carbon neutrality by 2050—but how do we create specific plans within each emission sector, and reach out to nonprofits in the community, to develop specific plans that can actually help accomplish that goal?”
“We need to look at how we are going to be incorporating protecting our environment and continuing our work in affordable housing,” Magill says.
That’s easier said than done, of course. “Housing is a combination of federal, state, and some local. We don’t have the control over it that people think we do,” Magill says.
Snook did not respond to resquests to be interviewed for this article.
Incumbent councilor Hill emphasizes that the first challenge facing council is getting everyone on the same page.
“I’m looking at some very foundational things that need to happen for both this council and this administration to be successful,” Hill says. “Alignment among our council is just so critical to any path forward on any other priorities that any of us individually want to pursue.”
“I think that right now, the way we’ve historically operated, nothing gets done,” Hill says. “Truly, some things are never getting done, and a lot of money and resources are being spent on them.”
Hill’s comments come on the heels of a council session that strained interpersonal relations between members. Those disagreements were put on display at a team-building retreat in December 2018, when The Daily Progress reported that the councilors “aired their grievances with each other, the media and the community members who address them at meetings.”
“No one has to be friends with each other, but we have to be committed to working with each other and hearing each others’ perspectives,” Hill says.
Magill says that all her fellow council members are “in it for the same reason.”
“There is no thought that anyone is using this as a stepping stone to something else. We’re all in this because we live in this community and want to do right by this community,” she says.
The stakes are high. Payne points out that mistrust between councilors exacerbates long-standing issues of trust between city residents and local government. “If we’re consumed by infighting, that only makes it harder for us to take action on affordable housing, climate change, all these issues,” Payne says.
For Magill, rebuilding the city’s trust in government comes down to openness and honesty. “Try not to make promises you can’t keep. Try to be clear and open with your abilities and what you can and cannot do,” she says.
One of the first tasks council members will face will be electing a mayor and vice-mayor. Walker (who did not respond to a request for comment) has just completed her first two-year term as mayor, but is eligible for another. Before her, Mike Signer served one term, but the three mayors before him each served two. The council members declined to speculate on the 2020 selection process.
“It’s historically been a pretty opaque process, a lot of behind-the-scenes discussions and negotiations and jockeying,” says former mayor Dave Norris, though Walker’s election two years ago was a notable exception. Of the new councilors, Magill received the most votes in the general election.
“I think that’s going to be very telling, who the new mayor is,” Norris says. Norris describes Payne and Walker as being “of the progressive, change kind of camp,” and Hill and Snook as “a little bit more moderate.”
“And then you have one Sena Magill,” he adds. “It’ll be interesting to see what kind of councilor she’s going to be. The vote on the mayor will be one sign of that.”
The beginning of the new session means that all five councilors who were on the board during the summer of 2017 will have concluded their time on council.
“We lose a lot of the experience of those councilors, who did sit on the dais during a very difficult time in our community, and I hope they continue to be resources to all of us,” Hill says of the outgoing group.
The fresh faces in government might help the city move forward, however. “Hopefully, without the baggage, it’s easier to trust that the decisions we’re making are in what we feel is the best interest of the community,” Magill says.
“I don’t think it’s a turning point that changes everything,” Payne says. “It’s important that we don’t fall into a mindset of, ‘Let’s go back to how things were five years ago’…There’s a lot of work to be done. It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.”
A community group called The People’s Coalition held a rally and press conference outside City Hall to protest City Council’s proposed changes to the CRB bylaws. Photo Credit: Staff Photo
Nearly two years after appointing the initial Police Civilian Review Board, Charlottesville City Council inched closer to making a permanent oversight board a reality at their October 21 meeting, with a first reading of the CRB’s ordinance and bylaws.
But members of the initial CRB were not pleased, saying councilors had severely weakened the proposal they’d spent a year crafting. In a press conference held outside City Hall and during public comment, they and supporters criticized council’s changes, including limiting the board’s authority and removing transparency in the selection process.
“For us to give them the proper bylaws and ordinance but for them to water it down, after so much work…I’m very disappointed,” says board member Rosia Parker.
After the CRB presented its proposal on August 5, City Council members met in small groups with the city attorney and published their own version on October 16. At the October 21 meeting, Mayor Walker noted that it was the first time all the councilors had met together and reviewed the complete proposal.
“It’s a little bit frustrating,” CRB member Guillermo Ubilla told council at the meeting. “All of the questions and things you talked about tonight we spent a year tackling. And we have ideas and suggestions for all of them, and they’re in the packet that we sent you, so I really really hope you guys take a second look at that, maybe a third look, just to kind of see what’s in there.”
Local attorney and longtime CRB supporter Jeff Fogel says the board had created its proposal to accommodate anticipated concerns from the city, as well as state law. “I don’t think the city understands that that document already represents somewhat of a compromise,” he says. “[The council] is now looking for a compromise when it’s built into this proposal.”
City Council created the initial CRB with a resolution on December 18, 2017, in the wake of the Unite the Right rally, in an effort to improve trust between the Charlottesville Police Department and the community.
CRB members met for a year to create bylaws and an ordinance establishing the permanent board’s composition, staff members, and authority. “We did our homework,” says CRB member Gloria Beard, noting the board researched other civilian review boards to inform their work. Its proposal included two staff positions (a police auditor and an executive director), as well as a budget of no less than 1 percent of the police department’s budget. The board would have seven members, four coming from historically disadvantaged communities or public housing.
The initial proposal also allowed the CRB to review any complaint against the Charlottesville Police Department, review the internal investigation into the complaint, and (in certain circumstances) conduct an independent investigation, having access to personnel files, internal investigation files, and other department data.
The board would send any disciplinary recommendations to the police chief and city manager.
City Council’s version differed from the CRB’s initial proposal in multiple ways.
“There was an expectation that we were going to basically take exactly what was given to us,” says Councilor Heather Hill. But she says councilors, who met in small groups “for the sake of efficiency,” had some concerns.
In the new proposal, board members would be appointed by the council in a closed session, rather than the originally proposed public process. Hill says councilors feared a public interview process would deter candidates.
Instead of hiring an auditor right away, the council proposed requiring the board’s executive director to present a report about whether the city should hire a full-time (or part-time) auditor, or contract with an auditing firm instead. And the council’s proposal did not include a budget for the CRB.
Hill says the council understands the auditing role must be filled and a budget created, but that these steps can come later.
“Right now we have to agree on an ordinance and bylaws. That’s going to help them determine our budget,” Hill says.
The council’s ordinance also changed the board’s membership requirements, proposing that it has three members from disadvantaged communities and one from a racial or social justice organization, and eliminating the initial proposal’s requirement that a councilor serve as an additional nonvoting member. And it specifies that the board would only be able to review internal affairs investigations that are ruled as unfounded, exonerated, or not resolved (not those that are sustained). It would also be able to review an investigation if a request is filed with the executive director, and initiate its own review of internal affairs investigations.
The councilors will take into account all of the comments made during the meeting, says Hill. They plan to make revisions to their proposal before next month’s meeting.
“We hope and pray they are going to change their minds,” says Beard. “We need transparency between the police force and the community…to create relationships with the people, so they can have real trust again.”
Belmont resident Rick Barnett says glaring lights are degrading residents’ quality of life, and he calls the new ones at Tubby’s “obscene.” Photo by Martyn Kyle
On a night with a full moon, Rick Barnett can see pretty clearly outside his Belmont house. The problem is, he can also see clearly on moonless nights—thanks to an array of lighting, mostly commercial, blazing up into the sky behind his house.
On a recent drive around the neighborhood, he points out a shielded fixture over the back door of a business on Carlton Avenue. “That’s a good light,” he says. Around the corner on the same building, another shoots a bright light up into the trees. “And that one is bad.”
That’s one major sign of light pollution: when the bulb blasts up into the sky rather than illuminating the ground below. Looking south from Barnett’s elevated Chestnut Street backyard, where he’s lived since 1995, he can see dozens of lights, including those of Sentara Martha Jefferson and State Farm on Pantops.
But the worst offenders are in his backyard, on Carlton Avenue, where the lighting on some businesses looks like a landing strip. It’s gotten worse in the past two or three years, he says.
Charlottesville’s light ordinance is pretty much a copy of Albemarle’s, according to light designer Mark Schulyer, who wrote the ordinance in 1998 with UVA astronomer Phil Ianna. Ianna raised the issue of lights obscuring the night sky and making McCormick Observatory useless for serious astronomy.
“The first ordinance was a significant challenge,” recalls Schuyler. It required approval from the General Assembly before the county could adopt it, and buy-in from the community to protect the science being done that requires dark skies.
The limit at the time, 3,000 lumens, came from an Ianna idea. At a meeting of around 300 people, many in the lighting field, he displayed different wattages and asked people to “raise your hand when this is really unpleasant,” recounts Schuyler. That’s what the cap was based on.
The ordinance requires outdoor luminaires to be shielded to avoid spillover into adjoining residential properties—and into the night sky. “Light that bounces up in the sky is wasted light,” says Schuyler.
All of that happened before the biggest revelation in lighting since the invention of the light bulb: the light-emitting diode. The LED saves so much energy, its three Japanese inventors won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2014. It’s also contributed to “a measurable increase in light pollution worldwide,” says Schuyler.
Before LEDs, which are not mentioned in the ordinance, electricians and electrical supply houses were aware of the ordinance and had displays of shielded lighting, he explains.
Now, people are ordering brighter LEDs without shields off of Amazon, and they have no one saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that,” says Schuyler.
In addition to blocking the stars, glaring lights at night may have a harmful effect on vision and health. The American Medical Association warns that artificial lighting can disrupt circadian rhythms, which can lead to health risks including diabetes, mood disorders, and cancer.
Ordinance enforcement is a “tricky business,” says Schuyler, because of limited staff resources and the fact that someone has to work overtime to check lights at night.
Lighting enforcement is complaint-based, and the city averages fewer than one complaint a year, says Assistant Zoning Administrator Craig Fabio. Zoning staff works with offenders to bring them into compliance, and fines are possible, he says.
City Councilor Heather Hill has been to Barnett’s place. “It was eye-opening to me,” she says. While she believes the bleed over from commercial lights that affects residents is unintentional, “I do think we have a lot of opportunity to enhance our lighting ordinance.”
Both she and Schuyler say the PLACE Design Task Force is looking at the issue.
Barnett has had some luck working with neighbors himself. A year ago he approached Tiger Fuel and “got a very good response,” he says. The company put up new fixtures on the front of its building, and “now it’s nothing like the locomotive lights that were coming toward me.”
He also cites success with City Walk apartments, which shielded its lights after neighbors complained. Barnett says Beer Run now cuts off the lights on its sign after it closes.
He’s less pleased with Tubby’s new lights, which illuminate the back of Richmond Camera. “It’s obscene. Obscene,” says Barnett. Tubby’s owner, John Fargale, did not respond to a call from C-VILLE.
Some people mistakenly believe that the more lights, the safer a property is, says Schuyler. He calls it “security theater.”
Police Chief RaShall Brackney agrees that lighting doesn’t necessarily deter crime. “People become immune,” she says. And the International Dark-Sky Association says that glare can decrease safety by creating deep shadows that make it harder to see a lawbreaker from constricted pupils.
Barnett counts seven sources of light that intrude into his bedroom windows or yard during winter months, and that doesn’t include the streetlights shining on the front of his house.
Before, “It was all delightfully dark,” he says. “I could sit on the roof and see the stars.”
Correction May 2: Barnett lives on Chestnut Street, not avenue.
The parents of Bennett McClurken-Gibney, who died of spinal muscular atrophy in February 2018, will now build an all-abilities playground at Pen Park in his honor. It’ll be modeled after his favorite park in Richmond, where Bennett’s mom says he loved to lay in the saucer swing. Courtesy Kara McClurken
A place for all to play.
That’s the goal of Bennett’s Village, a proposed playground for children and adults of all abilities in Charlottesville, which City Council approved April 1. The parents of Bennett McClurken-Gibney, a child with spinal muscular atrophy who died in February 2018, now have permission to build a $5-million playscape at Pen Park. The city has agreed to maintain it as part of the deal.
Kara McClurken says she would like to model the playscape after Richmond’s Park365, which used to be her 5-year-old son’s favorite place to play. He loved to be rocked on the saucer swing and to climb the wheelchair-accessible treehouse.
“Almost every kid—they love heights, they love wind on their face, they love movement,” says McClurken. “That idea of really being able to look down [from the treehouse] across a landscape is something that he didn’t get very many opportunities to do, because he couldn’t use most equipment.”
Though the proposed three-acre space at Pen Park hasn’t been designed yet, she says it will include similar equipment that provides height and movement—such as the saucer swing, treehouse, or a merry-go-round with an option to lock in wheelchairs.
McClurken and a friend, the mom of another child with special needs, started to discuss the development of an accessible playground before Bennett’s death, she says. But the day after he passed, McClurken says her mission became more clear.
As she and her husband were leaving Johnson Elementary—where Bennett’s class was celebrating Dr. Seuss week, and the parents had already committed to bringing the eggs for green eggs and ham—“We were walking back through the playground and we just sort of looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s build that playground,’” she says. “‘Let’s make that his legacy.’”
So far, the parents and supporters have raised nearly $100,000 through their GoFundMe website and other donations. They also plan to apply for grants, and McClurken says she doesn’t anticipate the hefty price tag being much of a barrier.
“People just believe in the dream,” she says. “I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t understand why this is a good idea.”
Not only will it provide a space for children with limited mobility, but also for family and friends with similar disabilities who’d like to be able to play with the children in their lives.
“Bennett is certainly our inspiration and our light, but there’s just so much need,” she adds.
Vice-Mayor Heather Hill is in favor of the project. “I certainly support the concept of an all-abilities playground and bringing it to life through a public-private partnership,” she says. “Based on what we have heard from the community and what was presented to us at our [March 18] council meeting, this is clearly an unmet need in our immediate region.”
City staff will now draft a memorandum of agreement to define the partnership between the city and the folks of Bennett’s Village.
McClurken says she wishes she had her son’s help with bringing the playground to life.
“Bennett would probably be able to advocate for the park better than we can,” she says. “You could see him in his power chair and you could see his energy. We are poor substitutes for telling his story.”
A desperate mother needed to get her 5-year-old daughter out of Sierra Leone in 2003, and asked a stranger at the airport to take her child to her grandmother in the U.S. Fifteen years later, Zee Sesay learned that the man who brought her daughter to safety was former congressman Tom Perriello, according to BuzzFeed. Perriello calls it “one of the crazier experiences” of his life.
Another renaming?
City Councilor Wes Bellamy pounced on the last few moments of the December 17 City Council meeting to suggest renaming Preston Avenue, which gets its moniker from Thomas Preston, a Confederate leader, slaveholder, and former UVA rector. Is Jefferson Street next?
Big bucks
Local philanthropist Dorothy Batten—yes, the daughter of Weather Channel co-founder and UVA grad Frank Batten—will donate $1.35 million to a Piedmont Virginia Community College program called Network2Network, which trains volunteers to match community members with open job listings.
Quote of the week: “I have never been disrespected the way I have been here in Charlottesville.”—Police Chief RaShall Brackney
Bigger bucks
Following the Dave Matthews Band’s recent announcement that it, together with Red Light Management and Matthews himself, will give $5 million to local affordable housing, came the news that another $527,995 in grants will be doled out to 75 local nonprofits through the band’s Bama Works Fund, which awards similar grants twice a year.
Remains IDed
Police arrested and charged Robert Christopher Henderson with second-degree murder December 20 in connection with the death of Angela Lax, who was reported missing in August. County detectives, who found skeletal remains in the woods along the John Warner Parkway’s trails in November, suspect that Henderson killed Lax in June and dumped her body.
Clerk’s Office closing
Hope you don’t have any important deeds to file or a marriage license to pick up during the first week of the new year, because the Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk’s Office is moving to new temporary digs during a massive courthouse renovation and will be closed December 31 through January 4 for the holiday and for the move.
Maybe a little bit of “vitriol”
What happens when City Council has a daylong retreat, and two people live tweet the gathering? Here are some excerpts from the December 18 event with Mayor Nikuyah Walker, councilors Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, Heather Hill, and Mike Signer, as narrated by Molly Conger, aka @socialistdogmom, and Daily Progress reporter Nolan Stout. Click to view their threads.
while “retreat” is often used to mean an all day work session on something like the budget, it appears this time “city council retreat” means the worst, silliest kind of waste of time — ice breakers and trust building exercises pic.twitter.com/fntn4CqUrn
