Kirstjen Nielsen – C-VILLE Weekly

Infighting implodes council

The hiring of an interim city manager, an event that usually takes place behind closed doors, has become heated and public, with reports of shouting at a July 20 closed City Council session. Mayor Nikuyah Walker has gone on Facebook Live twice to express her concerns that the process is part of the old boys’ network because someone suggested a candidate for the position to Vice Mayor Heather Hill, which she calls a “white supremist practice.”

On July 23, councilors Hill, Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin issued a five-page response to Walker’s Facebook Live video. “We regret that our rules requiring confidentiality about closed session discussions for personnel choices—which are in place under Virginia law, to protect local elected officials’ ability to discuss and negotiate employment agreements—were broken by the mayor.”

The search for an interim city manager became more urgent when Maurice Jones took a town manager job in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, leaving the city without a chief executive as the anniversary of August 12 looms.

Chris Suarez at the Daily Progress reports that three sources have confirmed U.S. Army Human Resources Command Chief of Staff Sidney C. Zemp has been offered the job.

In the councilors’ response, all three say they’ve never met the candidate, and that review panels are not used when filling interim positions.

In her July 20 video, Walker walked back a comment she made on Facebook and Twitter July 19: “We might have to protest a City Council decision. Are y’all with me?” She said she didn’t want supporters to shut down a council meeting, but did want them to pay attention to the process.

Walker was back on Facebook Live July 23, blasting her fellow councilors for their “very privileged” backgrounds and questioning their integrity.

She says she favors an internal candidate—the two assistant city managers and a department head have been floated—which councilors Wes Bellamy and Signer initially favored.

Bellamy issued his own statement: “Elected bodies agree and disagree all of the time” and that can lead to “healthy debate.”

Will council actually vote for an interim city manager at its August 6 meeting? Stay tuned.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker expressed concern in a July 20 Facebook Live video about the hiring process for an interim city manager.

In brief

Too much heritage

The Louisa County Board of Zoning Appeals said the giant Confederate battle flag on I-64 must come down because its 120-foot pole is double the county’s maximum allowable height. Virginia Flaggers erected the “Charlottesville I-64 Spirit of Defiance Battle Flag” in March and argued that after putting up 27 flags across the state, they wouldn’t have spent $14,000 on this one without confirming county code.

Controversial hire

A petition with more than 2,000 signatures of UVA faculty and students objects to the Miller Center’s hiring of Trump legislative affairs director Marc Short as a senior fellow. The petitioners are opposed to Trump administrators using “our university to clean up their tarnished reputations.”

Presidential paychecks

New UVA president Jim Ryan commands a higher salary than his predecessor, but can’t touch Brono Mendenhall’s paycheck. Photo UVA

Outgoing UVA prez Teresa Sullivan’s base pay of $580,000 and total compensation of $607,502 last year makes her one of the higher paid university chiefs, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her successor, Jim Ryan, starts with a $750,000 base pay, but to put those numbers in perspective, remember that UVA football coach Bronco Mendenhall makes $3.4 million—with a possible $2 million-plus bonus. At this week’s ACC Kickoff event, media members predicted—for the fifth straight year—that UVA will finish last in the conference’s Coastal Division.

New tourism director

Adam Healy, the former CEO of online wedding marketplace Borrowed and Blue, which closed abruptly last October, will now serve as the interim executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Standoff on Lankford

A state police vehicle on the outskirts of the standoff.

About 50 city, county and state police and SWAT team members were on the scene of a four-hour standoff with 29-year-old Alexander Rodgers, who had barricaded himself inside a Lankford Avenue home on July 19. Someone called police around 8am and reported shots fired. Rodgers, who has a history of domestic violence and was wanted on six outstanding warrants, eventually surrendered and was charged with three felonies and a misdemeanor.

Quote of the week:

“The fish rots from the head.”—Senator Tim Kaine, after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and UVA alum Kirstjen Nielsen said about last summer’s violence in Charlottesville at a July 19 press briefing, “It’s not that one side was right and one side was wrong.”

County crime report

The Albemarle County Police Department released its annual crime report for 2017 last month. Here are a few things that caught our eye.

-Police misconduct has been reframed in a new “cheers and jeers” section, where police complaints are compared side-by-side with commendations.

Complaints: 57
Commendations: 69

-The award section may come as a surprise, because Detective Andrew Holmes, who faces five lawsuits for racial profiling, was granted a community service award.

-Albemarle County had the second-lowest crime rate in the state while Charlottesville had the highest. Crime rate is measured by tallying the number of crimes committed per 100,000 people.

Fairfax: 1,273
Albemarle: 1,286
Prince George: 1,334
Arlington: 1,355
Prince William: 1,370
Chesterfield: 1,450
James City: 1,611
Roanoke: 1,638
Henrico: 2,548
Charlottesville: 2,631

-County police officers made 2,296 arrests and used force “to overcome resistance or threat” on 14 occasions.

-Assaults on police officers have gone up and down.

2015: 3
2016: 10
2017: 7

Hot topic

In 2012, the Local Energy Alliance Program floated a low-interest loan of $280,000 for Mark Brown to install solar panels on top of the Main Street Arena using a $500,000 grant from the city. Now that he’s sold the building and it’s slated for demolition, some are wondering what will happen to the panels on the roof.

The loan was paid in full when Brown listed the property, confirms LEAP spokesperson Kara West.

“The only reason we put those panels in was because the city wanted us to,” says Brown, who says he broke even on the panels. “Most of the savings came from them shading the building from sun on that side of the building.”

Solar expert Roger Voisinet says some parts of the system, such as the inverters, can be recycled more easily than others. As for the panels, “It depends,” he says.

There’s plenty that can be recycled from the building, he observes, such as the copper roof and the equipment that makes it an ice rink, which current owner Jaffray Woodriff pledged to donate to a business venture that would create a new ice rink in a different location.

Woodriff’s Taliaferro Junction LLC bought the property in early 2017 for $5.7 million, and the arena, as well as the building that houses Escafé, are all coming down to make way for a tech center. That won’t happen until the Board of Architectural Review approves the site plan, probably not before this summer, according to city planner Brian Haluska.

Details are not final on what will happen with the solar panels, according to a Woodriff spokesperson.

The solar panel loan was controversial at the time, says Brown. “I don’t think there were any real losers. It wasn’t an Omni bailout deal.” That’s a reference to the city pumping $11 million in taxpayer funds to the hotel in the ’80s and secretly forgiving the loans in closed executive sessions a decade later.

Says Brown, “I’d assume [the panels] will be thrown in the garbage.”

“There are people in Virginia history that I think it’s appropriate to memorialize and remember that way, and others that I would have a difference of opinion on.”—Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax speaking to reporters after he declined to adjourn the Senate January 22 to honor General Stonewall Jackson

New city flack

Brian Wheeler, executive director of Charlottesville Tomorrow, will take over as spokesperson for the City of Charlottesville, a position Miriam Dickler most recently held. Wheeler starts the $98,000-a-year-plus-benefits job (more than $5,000 above Dickler’s salary) February 20. He co-founded the online news nonprofit in 2005 and implemented a groundbreaking partnership with the Daily Progress. He will devote the remainder of his time with Charlottesville Tomorrow to finding a fundraising successor.

Paw patrol

The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA is housing a group of canines that Humane Society International rescued from a dog meat farm in Namyangju, South Korea. Many of the animals suffered eye infections, skin disease and have leg and paw sores from standing and sitting on thin wire mesh. HSI rescued 170 pups in total, but it’s unclear how many are up for adoption locally.

Police Academy director dies

Albemarle resident Hugh Wilson, creator of “WKRP in Cincinnati,” died January 14 at age 74. He was a writer for “The Bob Newhart Show,” and he broke into directing with Police Academy in 1984. He also directed Guarding Tess and The First Wives Club, and in 2001 made Mickey with fellow Albemarlean John Grisham.

#metoo for UVA board member

First lady of New Jersey Tammy Murphy says she was sexually assaulted while a second-year student at UVA. Murphy, who graduated in 1987 and sits on the Board of Visitors, revealed the attack at a January 20 Women’s March event in Morristown, New Jersey. She says she was pulled into the bushes walking home alone and managed to escape. Her attacker was later jailed for a different crime.

Another counterprotester arrested

Six months after the Unite the Right rally, police arrested Donald Blakney, 51, for malicious wounding near the Market Street Garage melee. He was released on $2,000 bond.

Worst headline about a UVA alum

“Another sycophant trashes her reputation” was Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank’s January 16 piece about UVA law’s Kirstjen Nielsen, now secretary of Homeland Security, who denied hearing President Donald Trump use the term “shithole” to describe the countries he doesn’t want immigrants from in the infamous meeting at which she was present.

Killed bills

Here’s what legislation has died in the General Assembly so far.

SB360 would allow localities to ban firearms at permitted events.
SB385 limits handgun purchases to one a month.
SB444 allows localities to remove war memorials, and it died in Senate committee on party line vote 7-6 January 16. House Minority Leader David Toscano has a similar bill in the House of Delegates.
SB245 prohibits conversion therapy for LGBTQ youths.
SB665, carried by state Senator Creigh Deeds, adds Charlottesville and Albemarle to the list to localities where it’s unlawful to carry certain firearms in public places.
SB744 makes not wearing a seatbelt a primary offense and requires backseat passengers to be belted. Currently police can’t pull over a driver for being seatbelt-less and can only ticket if they observe another primary violation.