Tag: joan fenton

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A moral map: The city budget is a chance to show what matters to us

The city has proposed a 1 percent increase in the meals tax in its 2020 budget. Photo: Robert Llewelyn

It’s budget season. For four months every year, council and staff hold public meetings about the coming year’s priorities. For four months, I sit through what I am absolutely certain is the exact same PowerPoint at least a dozen times. Much of it remains inscrutable to me. I am growing comfortable with the idea that I’ll never be entirely sure what it means in the real world to move money around on paper. What I do understand, though, is that the city, like most of us, can’t pay for everything it wants.

“The city has better ways of getting income,” Joan Fenton, president of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, said at a March 4 council meeting of the possibility of raising tax rates. Better ways than taxation? Localities too afraid to raise taxes (because of the ire of business owners like Fenton) often rely on fees and fines to increase revenue. That means raising court costs and turning the city into a speed trap to fill the holes in our budget, which would disproportionately impact the poor. It is regressive and unreliable and relies on a weaponized justice system.

While a truly progressive tax is an avenue not available to the city under the Dillon Rule, there are revenue streams that don’t literally rely on criminalizing poverty. Raising tax rates provides a reliable, steady revenue stream to tackle the problems the alternative would only exacerbate.

While much about the budget process remains opaque to me, it is bewildering to see what feels like intentional misrepresentations about what it would mean to raise meals and lodging tax rates. Business owners have appeared at public comment to make the case that increased meals and lodging taxes would hurt their business. One restaurant owner said he would have to raise prices to account for the “loss,” but failed to explain how an additional one dollar in tax on a $100 meal at his pricey establishment would drive down business to the point that he would have to raise prices to make a profit.

The restaurant experiences no loss here. The tax is paid by the consumer and only passes through the business. The hysteria is puzzling to me.

When you make your personal budget, you have to make hard decisions about what’s important to you and what things you can do without. It’s the same when a city makes a budget, except we’re deciding what our neighbors should do without. The real hurdle in balancing the budget is not a column on a spreadsheet, but in the public understanding of what the budget is. A budget is more than just a balance of revenues and expenditures—it’s a moral document, an agreement about what is important to us.

Beyond the public protestations of business owners about the meals and lodging rates, there has been a lot of uncertainty about the real estate tax rate, whose increase would fund affordable housing. At a March 16 budget forum, Councilor Kathy Galvin was vocally in favor of a 1-1-1 increase. By Wednesday night, she was expressing relief that the real estate tax would remain steady for another year. While the higher rate was advertised, it seems we won’t know the fate of the tax until the March 27 work session.

At the first reading of the final 2019 budget in April of last year, the meeting went into an hour-long recess due to threats of violence from an armed neo-Confederate. A woman had just commented that the Downtown Mall was the jewel of Charlottesville. That jewel sits in a crown forged by centuries of racial inequity. The violence isn’t always as overt as an angry racist with a gun in council chambers. Sometimes, it creeps insidiously into our lives, in the form of a budget that doesn’t value the lives of our most vulnerable community members.

UVA professor Walt Heinecke offered us a positive reframing at a recent public comment period: When the national press returns to Charlottesville this summer to ask us what we’ve done to address the conditions underlying the violence of the summer of hate, let this budget be the jewel in our crown, he said. He urged council to move forward with the real estate tax increase to put money into affordable housing and to publicly frame the meals and lodging tax increases as a public good—even going as far as proposing a campaign to put signs in restaurant windows advertising the meals tax increase as a micro-investment in equity. I’m not sure this budget goes far enough to deserve to be called a crown jewel. But it has the potential to be a down payment on a crown this city never earned.

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Mall rats: Does the Downtown Mall have a rodent problem?

Yes, Virginia, there are rats on the Downtown Mall.

Many Charlottesvillians spent the last few weeks enjoying a festive holiday season on the Downtown Mall. But have we been strolling, shopping, and dining in the company of species Rattus?

No question the mall has rats—the place is packed with restaurants, which means food waste, which means rat heaven. And just so you know, the term for a group of rats is a “mischief.”

Are mall rodents on the rise?

“We receive on average less than one report a year to the city manager’s office regarding rats,” says city spokesperson Brian Wheeler. A very unscientific survey of mall vendors, restaurants, and others garnered responses ranging from “no” to “not really” to “not anymore” to “OMG yes” and “cat-sized.” Commonly mentioned problem areas include restaurant patios, tree grates, and garbage pick-up sites along Water and Market streets.

Kim Malone, a manager at Chaps, was emphatic: “I see rats outside in the morning when I come in. They’re all along the alley behind the store, next to the Paramount. And they’re in the outdoor cafés—it’s worse in the summertime.”

According to Malone, last year the mall merchants complained, and the city’s parks and recreation department, which handles animal control, responded. “They poured something down into the tree grates. The smell was horrible—people wouldn’t eat out there.” She shares an exterminator with Sal’s Caffe Italia next door.

A mall shop manager, who asked not to be identified, saw signs of rats in her store about a year ago. “We sell some food products, and they had chewed into the bags—and into one of our blankets to make a little nest,” she says. “We have a basement, and we’re in between two restaurants. And people just pile trash in the alley behind the stores.” She bought plastic bins to store her food products, and hired an exterminator to plug every possible hole.

Realistically, no city is vermin-free. Wheeler says a third-party contractor manages bait traps at “numerous locations on and around the Downtown Mall.”

But can those bait traps make a difference, given great hiding places, humans who litter and drop food, and garbage buffets? And then there’s the biggest rodent bonanza of all—the Landmark Hotel, aka the Dewberry. Most people view the derelict eyesore as a veritable Rats-Carlton.

David McNair, a journalist and publicist, says late at night a few months ago he was walking along Water Street behind the Landmark, “and I saw rats pouring out of the hotel, swarming the garbage cans there…it looked like the bins were covered with flies.”

Heather, who works at a mall restaurant and didn’t want to give her last name, says she was headed home one night past that same spot. She saw what she first thought, in the dark, was “a herd of rabbits, because they were leaping around. Then one of them brushed against my leg—it was a rat, a large one, with a roll in its mouth. The rats were so busy feasting they were literally bouncing up and down.”

Joan Fenton, chairman of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville and owner of Quilts Unlimited, minces no words. “The Landmark Hotel is a problem, and the city should address that. They have a responsibility to finish that deal.” But she says all restaurants face this problem and downtown business owners have been responsible in addressing it.

Brandon Butler has perhaps the worst story. He and his family were on the mall one recent Saturday morning for a Christmas parade. Afterwards, his 8-year-old daughter and her fellow Girl Scouts were hanging around near the Jefferson, when they started giggling and crowding around a large gray plastic garbage bin. Then “my wife screams, and I hear this high-pitched squealing coming out of the bin. I walked over and looked in, and there were two or three huge rats, live ones.”

“The size of cats,” his wife contributes.

Seth Wispelwey, who lives about two blocks from the mall’s Market Street side, has put traps inside his closed outdoor shed and checks them daily. He’s now up to 20 rats. He recalls walking to Live Arts one night last January. “There were two massive rats right there on the sidewalk, rather boldly walking along.” He told his spouse and friends—but he didn’t contact the city. Neither did any of the other rat-sighters we talked to.

Store owners and managers know they can call the city with rat complaints, but mall workers and residents who have seen rats seem clueless. Wheeler says Charlottesville Parks & Rec got fewer mall rat complaints in 2018 than in 2017. And without complaints, there’s no reason to step up efforts to “eraticate.”

“In total, in our MyCville database for 2018, there are six reports related to rats this year,” Wheeler says. MyCville, an online and smartphone application to request services and report issues, was just launched this year. No one interviewed for this story knew about it.

Proposed New Year’s Resolution: Get the city’s rat stats in line with actual rat sightings. In the meantime, when it comes to rats on the mall—or anywhere else—if you see something, say something.

 

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Dire straits: Business association wants $250,000 for mall recovery

DBAC chair Joan Fenton says the Downtown Mall has suffered after this summer, and the city needs to pitch in for what’s one of the area’s top tourist attractions. SKYCLADAERIAL.COM

The Downtown Mall is not faring well, at least according to the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, which wants the city to pump up the maintenance and provide DBAC with $250,000 for advertising, staff, rent and holiday lighting.

Business in the entire city of Charlottesville dropped $14 million—nearly 12 percent—in September, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce reports. And while August 12 is cited as a reason people aren’t coming downtown, so is parking, shoddy maintenance and safety concerns.

DBAC chair Joan Fenton points to the bricks on the mall that are sticking up and hazardous, despite the city’s $7.5 million rebricking project in 2009. “It’s an easy maintenance,” she says. “You need someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Loose brick on the mall, photographed in late August. Staff photo

Lighting is another big concern and the “biggest complaint from employees walking at night,” she says.

Fenton wrote a letter to City Manager Maurice Jones and City Council January 2 asking for increased mall funding in the upcoming budget for fiscal year 2019. She says the city’s budget has grown 17 percent over the past four years while the mall’s maintenance has declined 20 percent.

And Fenton is being vigilant about the budget after a walk on the mall last spring with city department heads. “I pointed out that the plants look awful,” she says. “[Assistant City Manager] Mike Murphy said I should have paid attention to the budget.”

The DBAC letter has a laundry list of wants: Seven-day-a-week policing, particularly at 2am when bars close, cameras, trash cans and public restrooms. The business association wants the city to hire a person to oversee mall decisions and an extra staffer to maintain and clean the mall as well as West Main to the Corner and side streets.

And it wants the city to provide $100,000 for DBAC to hire its own staffer and to pay rent for an office, along with $100,000 for advertising and $50,000 for lighting and decorations as part of the mall recovery program.

Charlottesville Parking Center used to provide a part-time employee and office space for DBAC—before the parking wars of 2016 distanced the center from DBAC, and CPC owner Mark Brown sued the city and threatened to close Water Street Parking Garage, which he owns with the city.

Spring Street Boutique owner Cynthia Schroeder, a DBAC member who also started the Downtown Business Alliance, says more mall maintenance is warranted, particularly with the city’s $9 million surplus, but she is skeptical about the DBAC request. “I would think a quarter million dollars with $100,000 for salaries is a bit high,” she says.

She supports a marketing plan to bring locals back downtown, and not just for one-time, alcohol-themed events like this fall’s Heal C-ville Beer Garden.

“Locals have a bad perception of the mall,” she says—that it’s “dangerous, dirty and filled with homeless people asking for money.”

Chamber of Commerce head Timothy Hulbert suggests there’s another big reason city revenues are down from a year ago. “Last September, last October, there was no 5th Street Station,” he says. And while the Unite the Right rally could be a factor, so could the weather or the timing of football games. “A month or a quarter doesn’t make a trend.”

North downtown resident Pat Napoleon, who is petitioning to remove three city councilors remaining from last year, says areas near the mall like Emancipation Park are filthy. “I don’t think it’s an inviting place.”

With erosion at the park, people sleeping there and a proliferation of cigarette butts tossed on the ground, she says, “A lot of people feel uncomfortable. It’s not a clean-looking place.”

Napoleon doesn’t think the city needs to give money to DBAC for staffing. “When I hear about a surplus, I think the city needs to use it more wisely. I think downtown business people need to put screws to the city.”

Former city spokesperson Miriam Dickler says of DBAC’s request, “There has been no decision on this. The budget is in process. Like all requests, this will be considered.”

Vice-Mayor Heather Hill says the request has to be evaluated against other priorities, but safety—of surfaces and lighting and cameras—are infrastructure expenditures “I’d certainly consider.”

Fenton wants the Downtown Mall to be in its own business improvement district, and says that appeared possible until commercial property assessments skyrocketed last year. “Once taxes increased, there was no way you could ask people to pay extra,” she says.

Because the mall is an income generator, she says the city should be investing in it. “People don’t drive from Northern Virginia to go to Barracks Road,” she says. “When UVA has new faculty prospects, they bring them to the Downtown Mall.”

Word on the mall is that some businesses are struggling. “If there isn’t a strong effort, I think we’re going to see a lot of businesses close,” says Schroeder. “The Downtown Mall clearly needs the support.”

Spring Street had busy days this fall, she says, but she will continue to re-evaluate her business. “When you put your heart and soul into something and traffic is down because of where you are…” She leaves the alternatives unspoken.

DBAC Letter to Council on the Budget (7)

Correction January 30: The $14 million/12 percent decline in retail sales for Charlottesville was in September, not for the first three quarters of 2017 as originally reported.

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Downtown visitors get a parking break

Lynelle Lawrence, co-owner of Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, says business owners hope the holiday parking promotion will welcome patrons back to the Downtown Mall after a stressful summer. Photo by Amy Jackson

Some business owners say the Downtown Mall hasn’t been quite the same since shield-wielding white supremacists and neo-Nazis invaded it over the summer, followed immediately by the onset of a pilot parking meter program that required drivers to pay to park for what was once a free space.

So what better way to welcome back its patrons than offering free holiday parking?

“The timing [of the parking meter pilot] made it so people who perhaps were feeling a little skittish to come down after the summer just kept that feeling,” says Lynelle Lawrence, co-owner of Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, a Downtown Mall institution of 24 years. “The idea is just to allow the downtown area to welcome people back and have nothing be a deterrent.”

The city announced November 14 that the newly metered spaces surrounding the mall would be available at no cost from Friday, November 17, until Monday, January 1, and parking in the Market Street Parking Garage would be free on the weekends for the holiday season, starting at 5pm each Friday.

Lawrence says her coffee sales have certainly declined since the onset of the parking program, and Joan Fenton, chair of the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville, says that seems to be a trend for other business owners.

“I know that there are a lot of businesses that are very upset by the meters and think it’s a bad idea,” says Fenton, who also owns Quilts Unlimited & J. Fenton Gifts. “We haven’t seen the figures but, anecdotally, people have told us that they don’t want to park because of the meters.”

Local writer and downtown frequenter Elizabeth Howard is one of those people.

“The sun was shining on the meter, so the prompts were a little hard to read and it took me several tries to make it work,” she says, adding that she had to take a few trips back to her car during the parking process, including when the computer system asked for her license plate number, which she doesn’t have memorized. “It was frustrating, plus I was in a hurry.”

Adds Howard, “I would still come downtown, but I would avoid the meter.”

Fenton’s personal qualm is that the rate is too high. “I’m not sure that we’re in a community that will accept a $1.80-per-hour rate,” she says. “At this point, I don’t think it works.”

But Fenton says when the businesses called for help this season, Charlottesville management acted fast.

“The city has been through a great deal since August 12,” says parking manager Rick Siebert. “There have been a lot of hard feelings expressed by a lot of people about what went on, and perhaps what mistakes were made, so I think this is the city partnering with the businesses on the mall to say ‘come on back.’’’

And while the parking meters are a hot topic, he adds, “I don’t think this is all about the meters. I think this is all about the mall and the need for the city to support the efforts of the business community and to remind everybody what a great place it is.”

Siebert says the meter pilot program will likely run through May (the holiday parking promotion ends at the beginning of the new year), and would then go before City Council for recommendations. Despite all the backlash, he says the program has helped improve turnover and create available spaces.

“There are certainly a number of people who are upset, and not happy about the elimination of the free parking, but there are other business owners, property owners and customers that I’ve talked to personally who have talked about how great it is that they can now actually find a place to park on-street without driving in circles, and I think the $1.80 per hour is worth that convenience.”

And he says he’s heard from several satisfied Market Street garage parkers because their rates have decreased since the pilot was implemented—instead of paying $2.50 an hour, it now costs a dollar less with the first hour free.

Lawrence says she expects to see another dip in Mudhouse sales in January, but that happens at the beginning of each year, so she won’t necessarily be able to attribute it to the reinstated meters. For now, she’s enjoying what she calls “this beautiful moment” of business collaboration, where employees are saying, “Let’s see what we can do to create a holiday spirit downtown. This is a lovely place to be and we’ve got you.”

Adds Lawrence, “It’s never been this tight and strong, and the city is right with us. It’s given us energy and focus.”

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Feelin’ the squeeze: Hundreds appeal new commercial tax assessments

Bob Archer says he’ll pretty much have to eat the $12,000 increase in property taxes because he can’t pass that on to his customers. Photo by John Robinson

No one likes paying taxes. And Charlottesville property owners who saw their commercial assessments go up 65 percent, 90 percent or 100 percent really don’t like it—and they’re letting the city know with a record number of appeals.

“Totally outrageous,” says Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville president Joan Fenton, who owns a “little bitty” parcel on Third Street where “there’s nothing you can do with it.” That .032-acre parcel went up 30 percent, the average commercial increase, compared with the 4 percent residential real estate bump.

A Water Street property Fenton owns went up 50 percent. “I appealed both,” she says.

Bob Archer has owned Bob’s Wheel Alignment on Market Street for 36 years, and says, “I’ve never seen a jump like this.” His assessment went up 65 percent—nearly $1 million. “That’s quite a jump,” he says. “I can’t raise my prices. I’ll have to absorb it.” Archer, too, is one of the appealers.

Keith Woodard owns a number of rental properties, including the cache of affordable housing he bought from Dogwood Properties in 2007, and says he’s submitted several appeals. “It’s upward pressure on rents for those with low incomes,” he says.

Management Services Corporation, which dominates the student housing rental market, saw staggering increases of 147 percent and 190 percent on two Corner area parcels, and its Preston Square Apartments jumped 83 percent and Cambridge Square Apartments soared 70 percent, according to vice chair Rick Jones. “Our increased tax is just under $400,000,” he says.

His point to the city: “Hey, if you have people’s assessments going up 68 percent, 90 percent, 100 percent—you’ve kind of messed up.”

Jones contends Management Services’ older rental properties are being assessed at the same capitalization rate as newer rentals like The Flats, which sold for $77.5 million in November and which doesn’t have the same maintenance expenses as the 50-year-old buildings he manages.

The cap rate is a ratio of sales price and net operating income. The city, says Jones, uses a cap rate of 6.25 percent, but for older properties, 8 percent might be more appropriate.

No one budgets for increases like that, says Jones, and with rentals, “You’re locked into a lease for a year.”

Jeff Davis is the city assessor taking the heat for the skyrocketing assessments. He worked for Albemarle County for around 30 years before moving to the city in December 2015. Davis brought in his former boss, Bruce Woodzell, former president of the International Association of Assessing Officers and a man who’s gotten his own share of flak in the county, to help with the commercial assessments and the 400 appeals.

And although Jones isn’t happy with the assessments, he is pleased to see Woodzell, a nationally known figure in the real estate valuation world, working for the city.

Davis explains the jump: “We had an overwhelming amount of sales evidence showing we were low on our assessments.”

He also says cap rates are low around Charlottesville, but says the city uses different rates for different types of properties. “We do give consideration, we do recognize older properties have greater expenses,” he says. “We do allow more for older properties.”

Says Davis, “This is not one size fits all.” At the same time, land values in Charlottesville are soaring. “It’s very expensive,” he says.

And while a lot of people are upset about the amount of the assessment increase, he says, “We have not heard people say, ‘My property is not worth that.’”

For those contesting their assessments, the first stop is Davis’ office. “If the appraiser is not able to satisfy them, they file an appeal form,” he says. His office will either affirm, reduce or, in some cases, increase the assessment, he says. If that still doesn’t placate the property owner, the next steps are the Board of Equalization and circuit court.

Management Services’ Jones sees a disturbing correlation between the spike in assessments and the city’s nearly $6 million surplus last year and $4.3 million surplus in 2015.

Not related, says Mayor Mike Signer. Last year’s surplus was 2 percent of the budget. “It was a reasonable surplus,” he says, and the city is required to spend it and close out the books for that fiscal year. “You don’t, like, stash the cash,” he says. Instead, the city put it into the capital budget, the Robert E. Lee statue fund and public safety employees’ salary increases.

Signer is aware of the sting of the increased tax bills, and he proposed lowering the property tax rate from 95 cents per $100 of value to 93 cents—a proposal that drew no support from his four fellow councilors.

“I’m principally interested in the effects of the cost of doing business for small businesses and medium-sized businesses,” he says. “The question is what you do as a policy when you have historic jumps.”

A 2-cent reduction in the tax rate would give back $1.4 million out of this year’s budget and means it would go up 5 percent rather than 6 percent, says Signer. “I think you could get that without too much pain,” he says, and give a “modest but significant amount back.”

For Jones, it’s all too much. “I wish there had been an assessor who said, ‘Wow, there’s a problem here, let’s raise rates gradually.’”

Rent forecast: Going up

The Flats

  • 2016 assessment: $38,509,000
  • 2017 increase: $73,864,600 or 92%

Preston Square Apartments

  • 2016 assessment: $2,784,300
  • 2017 increase: $5,157,400 or 85%

Bob’s Wheel Alignment

  • 2016 assessment: $1,440,200
  • 2017 increase: $2,381,634 or 65%

Barracks Road Shopping Center

  • 2016 assessment: $123,353,400
  • 2017 increase: $166,813,200 or 35%
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Parliamentary push-back: Benford reinstated, Fenton nearly ousted

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

 

Chaps owner Tony LaBua spoke for those not in the thick of last week’s Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville coup: “I’m confused. Is George not president?”

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 nastiness. Staff photo
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.”

 

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DBAC meltdown: Downtown business org in disarray; chair resigns

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.

George Benford was elected DBAC chairman in March after former chair Bob Stroh retired from both the business association and CPC, where, as general manager, he’d helped found the DBAC.

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.

At a May 25 DBAC meeting, Violet Crown Cinema’s Robert Crane called for a petition to City Council that it not sell the Water Street Parking Garage to Brown. Violet Crown, which had hired DBAC member Susan Payne’s public relations firm to represent it, held a June 2 meeting on parking and attendees unanimously agreed that the garage should be a public utility. Days later, council passed a resolution to make an offer to buy Brown’s shares of the garage.

That was followed by a June 23 letter from downtown association board member Mary Beth Schellhammer on DBAC letterhead asking both the city and CPC to knock off the heated rhetoric—the city threatened eminent domain and CPC to close the garage—and come to a quick resolution.

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.

Resignation letter (1)