Tag: miriam dickler

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Out and in: A turnover of top local leaders

Former Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas and current Chief RaShall Brackney. Former Virginia State Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty and current Superintendent Gary Settle. Former UVA President Teresa Sullivan and current President Jim Ryan. Former UVA Police Department Chief Michael Gibson and new Chief Tommye Sutton. Former Mayor Mike Signer and current Mayor Nikuyah Walker. Former City Manager Maurice Jones and current Interim City Manager Mike Murphy.

It was an unprecedented year for the city, but also one in which we saw a major shift among people in positions of power. Some heads rolled, some quietly retired, and the list of local leaders is almost unrecognizable from this time last summer.

Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas abruptly resigned in December, making way for Chief RaShall Brackney, who took her oath in June. Thomas wasn’t the most popular guy in town after Tim Heaphy released his independent review of the summer of hate, which alleged that Thomas deleted texts, used a personal email to skirt FOIA, and told law enforcement when white supremacists and counterprotesters went to war in the streets to “let them fight a little,” because it would make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.

That wasn’t the only law enforcement shake-up. After nearly 15 years as Virginia State Police superintendent, Colonel Steve Flaherty retired in December, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Colonel Gary Settle. At the University of Virginia, Police Chief Michael Gibson also retired this summer, and new Chief Tommye Sutton was sworn in August 1, the same day as new UVA President Jim Ryan.

Ryan took the reins from Teresa Sullivan, who was highly criticized for having prior knowledge that white supremacists planned to march across Grounds last August 11, not warning students, and initially denying that she was privy to any of it. She had plans to leave before last summer, and on her way out, Ryan said he admires that she stayed focused on what really mattered to the university. “These were turbulent times and I think she demonstrated remarkable courage,” he said. Nevertheless, the Beta Bridge was decorated with the words, “Nazis love T. Sully” as she left.

The university also appointed Gloria Graham as its first-ever vice president of safety and security after emboldened neo-Nazis in white polos and khakis encircled and beat several students with their torches.

Poor planning for the weekend of the Unite the Right rally also fell on the head of City Manager Maurice Jones, and City Council decided not to renew his contract on May 25. Jones took a job as town manager for Chapel Hill, and in came former assistant city manager Mike Murphy, who will serve in the interim—but not without a fight from Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who challenged the first person offered the job.

Walker wasn’t mayor, or even on City Council, last summer. She replaced then-mayor Mike Signer, whose leadership came under fire when it emerged that he threatened to fire Jones and Thomas during the height of the August 12 violence. He was also suspected of leaking emails and was publicly reprimanded by his fellow councilors. Vice-Mayor Heather Hill also joined the ranks in the November council election—Kristin Szakos did not run for re-election and Bob Fenwick got the boot in the June primary.

City Attorney Craig Brown said goodbye, and was replaced by John Blair, who most recently served as deputy county attorney in Albemarle.

And last but not least, city spokesperson Miriam Dickler stepped down as Charlottesville’s director of communications in January, and former Charlottesville Tomorrow executive director Brian Wheeler filled her shoes.

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In brief: Not a noose, mayor on ‘The View’ and more

Mayor Nikuyah Walker gets national exposure on "The View."

Nikuyah goes national

The first black female mayor of Charlottesville sat at the table with co-hosts of “The View” on Martin Luther King Day to discuss the current state of the city, which has pushed a narrative that Unite the Right participants brought their hate from out of town, she said. Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler are UVA alumni, Walker noted. “You have to be honest to move forward and we have been unwilling.”

We’re on edge

A photo of two thick brown ropes with eyelet holes hanging in front of the Central Library on the night of Friday, January 12, was picked up by multiple outlets—including C-VILLE Weekly—and circulated widely before police confirmed that the ominous ropes were rigging for the banners that go across East Market Street and not, in fact, nooses.

New editor

The Daily Progress has named Aaron Richardson its editor-in-chief. The former assistant city editor and reporter at the Progress has also reported for Charlottesville Tomorrow, and succeeds Wes Hester, who stuck it out for 15 months before taking a job as a deputy spokesperson for UVA.

“Literally speechless. In the greatest stroke of irony since Alanis Morissette wrote a song about irony that wasn’t about irony, I lost my voice at the beginning of this, my last week as a professional spokesperson.”—Miriam Dickler in her sign-off from the city last week

Oh, hoppy day

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a special use permit for expansion at Keene-based hopyard Greenmont Hopworks, where owners will build a new 10,000-square-foot facility to process the plant used to flavor beer.

Lock your doors

City police say they’ve taken several reports from people in the Rosser Lane, Blue Ridge, Hessian and Rugby Road areas who say their unlocked vehicles were ransacked between 11pm and 4am late January 14 and early January 15. In one case, cash was stolen.

McAuliffe’s greatest hits—and misses

Photo John Robinson

When Terry McAuliffe first ran for governor in 2009, many saw him as a carpetbagger with stronger ties to the Clintons than to the commonwealth. Despite being edged out in the Democratic primary by state Senator Creigh Deeds, McAuliffe ran again and won the governor’s mansion in 2013, and even won the grudging respect of some of the Republicans who controlled the General Assembly during his term—but not all. Vetoing a record 120 bills, many on social issues, probably didn’t help.

As Governor Ralph Northam begins his term, we took a look back on the record of the man whose name keeps popping up as a Dem presidential candidate for 2020—along with another Virginian, Senator Tim Kaine—and who kept touting accomplishments right up through the morning of Northam’s inauguration.

Hits

  • Restoring voting rights of 173,000 felons
  • Unemployment down from 5.4 percent to 3.7 percent
  • Revitalization of the Port of Virginia, which was on the chopping block
  • Used economic development to ward off divisive social bills like the transgender bathroom bill North Carolina passed—and for which it suffered boycotts
  • $20 billion in capital investment, including Facebook and Amazon facilities in Virginia
  • Functional end to veteran homelessness in Virginia

“I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today: Our message is plain and simple. Go home. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth.” Terry McAuliffe on August 12

Misses

  • Unsuccessful at getting Medicaid expansion through the General Assembly, despite having Republicans over for beers
  • Sued by the GOP leadership for the blanket restoration of felon voting rights
  • Support of natural gas pipelines irked environmentalists and citizens whose properties are in their paths
  • Duped into a state grant of $1.4 million to a Chinese company that failed to open a plant in Appomattox, while repayment of a $5 million loan to another Chinese company, Tranlin, to build a paper plant in Chesterfield has stalled
  • In a radio interview on his way out the door of the governor’s mansion he blames Charlottesville officials for the events of August 12 because they granted a permit
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In brief: City departures, a random drawing and Coran’s cannabis (or lack thereof)

Former Police Chief Al Thomas is still collecting a paycheck. Photo by Eze Amos

City departures

Besides the abrupt retirement of former police chief Al Thomas, City Attorney Craig Brown will head out the door after 32 years for a new gig as Manassas’ first city attorney. In addition, Charlottesville’s spokesperson Miriam Dickler will sign off early next year, and Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman is filing his final briefs after six terms as the city’s prosecutor.

Another retirement

Virginia State Police Superintendent Steven Flaherty will leave the post he’s had for 14 years early next year, a move he says is unrelated to scathing reviews of state police August 12. Governor-elect Ralph Northam has named Lieutenant Colonel Gary Settle to succeed Flaherty February 1.

Random drawing

Virginia’s House of Delegates could see a 50-50 Democratic-Republican split—or not—following the December 19 recount of a Newport News race that put Dem Shelly Simonds up by one vote. The next day, Republican Delegate David Yancey picked up another vote to tie the race, and now the winner will be determined by drawing lots.

Quote of the Week:

“They put two names in, somebody shakes it up and they pull it. It’s that or it’s straws.” -State Board of Elections member Clara Belle Wheeler tells the Richmond Times-Dispatch how the winner in the tied race in the 94th District will be determined

Unpopular move

Albemarle County General District Court. Staff photo

Albemarle supes put a moratorium on discussions about moving county courts from downtown until March 2, but directed their consultant to continue exploring relocating the County Office Building and developing a performing arts and convention center in the county.

Shelling it out

The city will most likely be ordered to pay $7,600 in legal fees to attorney Pam Starsia, who represented Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy when white nationalist Jason Kessler unsuccessfully attempted to remove him from office in February. Starsia, who is a former Showing Up for Racial Justice organizer, told the Daily Progress she plans to donate the money to local anti-racism causes, though she has relocated to Texas.

Coran Capshaw. Photo by Ashley Twiggs

RLM disavows high-profile summit

On November 27, the Aspen High Summit website was touting music/development mogul Coran Capshaw of Red Light Management as a headliner for its invitation-only December 11-13 meeting of the minds for visionaries in the music and cannabis industries.

At least it was until a C-VILLE Weekly reporter called, and then Capshaw’s name abruptly disappeared from the Aspen High website.

The summit brings together the “Music Tribe and the Cannabis Tribe” to “finally consummate their long relationship,” according to the website, over hot toddies and “first class cannabis” in Colorado, where toking is legal.

The Arcview Group, a cannabis investment organization in Oakland that boasts more than 600 high net-worth investors who have pumped more than $140 million into 160 cannabis-related ventures and raised more than $3 million for the legalization effort, according to its website, sponsored the event.

Despite being billed as invitation only, the Aspen High website appeared to offer tickets to anyone who wanted to pony up $1,150.

In a rare response from Red Light Management, Ann Kingston writes in an email that Capshaw “was never attending this event. We called them due to your inquiry and they took down any reference to RLM.”

Correction December 28: Albemarle supervisors put a moratorium on court relocation until March 2, not March 1, but will continue to explore development of government offices and performing arts and convention centers in the county, but not the courts as originally reported.

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In brief: More white nationalists, more arrests and a drought warning

About 40-50 white nationalists attended the October 7 tiki torch flash mob, most wearing khakis and white colored shirts. Photo by Jalane Schmidt

 

They said they’d be back

UVA alumni/white nationalist Richard Spencer, who was maced by police the last time he was here August 12, showed up at Emancipation Park under cover of dark October 7 for a tiki-torch flash mob that police say started around 7:40pm, lasted approximately five to 10 minutes and consisted of about 40 to 50
people—most wearing what’s become the uniform of neo-Nazis, khakis and white collared shirts.

Witnesses identified his alt-right buddies Mike Enoch and Eli Mosley among the mix, but homegrown whites-righter and Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, whose August event drew white supremacists from 35 states, according to the Anti-Defamation League, was nowhere to be found.

Counterprotest photo by Eze Amos

Activist Jalane Schmidt, who saw the flames as she was walking home from work, says the “goons” put out their torches and hopped into vans. Police say they followed them to make sure they left the city.

Then came the response. Dozens of UVA students, faculty and community members marched from Emancipation Park to Carr’s Hill, President Teresa Sullivan’s residence, to protest the return of the extreme right-wingers and ask the university’s leader to revoke Spencer’s diploma. Police declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, and attendees dispersed without incident.

Quote of the Week:

“This is not business as usual or a classroom exercise where every threatening public utterance or assembly is met with ‘freedom of speech.’” —City Councilor Bob Fenwick, who calls the October 7 reappearance of white supremacists “a clear and present danger to the community.”

 

Buford lockdown

Days after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, terrified Buford Middle School seventh- and eighth-graders hid behind and under desks October 5 for part of the nearly hour-long incident, according to school officials. Police requested the lockdown because a person believed to be carrying a knife and involved in a rape was seen in the vicinity. Johnson Elementary also was on lockdown.

UVA protest. Photo: Rachel Coldren

Bicentennial arrests

UVA police arrested three student protesters for trespassing at the university’s bicentennial celebration October 6. As alumna Katie Couric was introducing the next act, they took the stage and unveiled a banner that read “200 years of white supremacy.” Hannah Russell-Hunter, Joshua Williams and Lossa Zenebe face Class 1 misdemeanors.

Spokeswoman departing

Miriam Dickler, city director of communications, will leave her nearly $91K a year job early in 2018 after five years. During the preparations for Unite the Right in August, Mayor Mike Signer accused her of bordering on “insubordination” for balking at working with a PR firm he wanted to hire. Dickler says she wants to “take some time and consider other opportunities and avenues.”

Arrests, white supremacy cont’d

Photo: © Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press

An iconic photo from the deadly August 12 rally shows Deandre Harris on the ground in the Market Street Parking Garage, surrounded by a group of white men kicking and beating him. Now, someone has alleged that Harris started the fight, and city police have issued a warrant for his arrest for unlawful wounding.

Robo World

Paul Perrone and Governor McAuliffe. Staff photo

Perrone Robotics will invest $3.8 million in driverless car research in Crozet, which will create 127 jobs. An elected official-studded announcement October 6 drew Governor Terry McAuliffe, Congressman Tom Garrett and Delegate Steve Landes, as well as a quorum of Albemarle supervisors.

 

Shallow waters

The last time Charlottesville saw a major drought was in 2002, when water was so scarce that restaurants started using paper plates and plastic utensils instead of washing dishes. We’re not there yet, but the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority bumped its drought watch to a drought warning October 5, when water storage at the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir hit 42 percent capacity—which was 100 percent August 3. That’s 370 million gallons, down from 880 million two months ago, and now the city has spoken: Conservation is no longer voluntary.

Here’s how you can help:

  • Don’t serve water at your restaurant unless asked
  • Don’t water your plants or grass
  • Don’t wash your car
  • Don’t fill your swimming pool
  • Don’t run your fountain
  • Don’t wash your street, driveway or parking lot
Click to enlarge.
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Water Street construction closure affects businesses

Ashley Williams, the general manager and marketing director at Water Street restaurant, says the partial closing of the road with the same name has been bad for business. Rammelkamp Foto

Anyone attempting to drive east down Water Street over the past couple weeks has noticed a large traffic sign intercepting her mission—and some business owners in that area aren’t happy about it.

Construction of a seven-unit mixed-use building at 550 E. Water St. (called 550 Water Street) will cause intermittent lane closure for the next nine months, according to city spokesperson Miriam Dickler.

“It’s difficult to quantify exactly how much the partial closing has impacted our business, but I can definitely say it is significant,” says Ashley Williams, the general manager and marketing director at Water Street, the eatery located at 117 Fifth St. SE in the former Tempo space, which has only been open since the end of September.

There have been several instances when customers have wanted to eat at her restaurant for dinner, she says, but they were driving in from the west on Water Street or tried to make a left-hand turn after crossing over the Downtown Mall on Fourth Street, and were not able to do so.

“It is far from an easy one-block detour, and I have talked to many potential diners who have said that they ended up giving up because they got turned around or got stuck in traffic and just decided to go somewhere else,” she says.

A small parking lot once leased by C&O Restaurant, which sold to 550 Water Street developers for more than $1 million, is also blocked by the closure.

“When Dave [Simpson] sold me the restaurant, he said that parking lot could go at any time,” C&O chef and proprietor Dean Maupin says. “Of course, that day came and went, but honestly it has not affected anything at all.”

Though it has been more inconvenient for patrons, Maupin says “everyone seems to be taking it in stride and we really appreciate that.”

As a way around the detour, he says his crew has started offering complimentary valet service to guests on Friday and Saturday evenings.

“I’m just thankful the construction noise ends at 5 every day,” he says.

Dickler says the city is working on a plan to open the street to two-way traffic once the current utility work in the roadway is complete, which should happen on February 3. After that, the detour will only be in effect during the day, and two-way traffic will resume on nights and weekends. This will last for about four weeks.

At the beginning of March, the concrete barriers will return, but two-way traffic will be maintained by using the loading and valet parking spaces along Water Street. Two valet spaces will be moved one block down on Water Street, and two will move around the corner on Fifth Street. There will be one additional detour toward the end of the project to install gas to the new building and repave the roadway.

“Unfortunately, road projects often come with unavoidable impacts to businesses and property owners,” says Dickler. “Our staff works with those owners and the project team to mitigate those impacts as much as possible.”

Though the road closure is temporary, one business owner says blocked views of the mountains and Charlottesville favorites such as the Pink Warehouse are forever.

Nora Ayala, the owner of Low—vintage clothing, records and antiques, says before she moved into her Fifth Street location in 2010, she knew 550 Water Street would be built, but “I really, really dislike that every open space on Water Street is going to be gone,” she says. “It’ll be so cold.”

This isn’t the only inconvenience downtown visitors and workers can expect on Water Street, and perhaps it foreshadows the construction and detours stemming from West2nd, the fleet of luxury condos going in at the current City Market site later this year. Stay tuned.

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Two parking spaces removed two years after request

South Street has two fewer parking spaces near Midway Manor. Staff photo

In a town where parking is already sparse, two unlimited-time parking spaces have been removed from South Street to “improve traffic operations and safety,” according to the city—two years after residents complained about the sight lines there.

Residents from the Midway Manor neighborhood approached the city May 20 with concerns about the parking spots, says city spokesperson Miriam Dickler. Vehicles parked on the street west of the Midway Manor driveway blocked the line of sight of drivers coming out of the parking lot and prevented them from seeing oncoming eastbound traffic, says Dickler. Traffic engineers concluded the two spaces violated the city’s intersection visibility standards.

“These violations presented unsafe conditions to road users and were corrected in a timely manner,” Dickler says.

In 2014, a Midway Manor resident told City Council it was difficult to cross South Street because of traffic coming around a blind curve and because of the poor sight lines, according to the Daily Progress. That same year, the crosswalk was installed.

“These concerns are obviously related in the same area, but are not the same issue,” says Dickler.

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Mosquito madness? The buzz on construction site infestations

A photo taken from a neighbor’s back deck June 11 shows standing water in the construction site’s retention pond. Courtesy of Mary Huey

As the Zika virus spreads, a homeowner in a city neighborhood says her last utility bill included a list of tips to reduce mosquito-attracting water on her property. Across the street from her, however, workers at a residential construction site have dug a retention pond that might be filled with just that.

“It seems ironic that I am furnished [with] tips like emptying flower pot plates to cut down on mosquito breeding water and a huge pit of stagnant water is allowed to be installed,” says Mary Huey, who lives on Village Road across from the construction site. At the beginning of mosquito breeding season, too, she adds.

Epidemiologist Kerry Morrison from the Charlottesville/Albemarle Health Department says the neighbors won’t have to worry about the Zika virus spreading on the site. Only two types of mosquitoes found in Virginia—the Asian tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito—are capable of transmitting the virus, she says, and both species lay their eggs exclusively in containers of water, such as dog bowls or bird baths. They don’t lay eggs in ground bodies of water such as puddles, ponds or streams.

But the Virginia Department of Health’s “mosquito guy” and entomologist David Gains says non-Zika carrying skeeters are still attracted to stagnant groundwater. However, floodwater mosquitoes are generally only drawn to ponds with floating vegetation (unlike the new retention pond) and a one-acre pond generally draws fewer mosquitoes than a container of stagnant water that’s three inches in diameter, he says.

Back in the city, another concerned Village Road neighbor, Todd Wielar, who says his home is “quite literally right behind” the construction site with the pond that he describes as “half a football field long” and sometimes a foot deep, reached out to the site’s developer, Adam Swartout.

After cursory research, Wielar says he proposed to the developer a product called Mosquito Dunks to get rid of the pests, though he hadn’t yet noticed their presence. Huey agrees that she hasn’t noticed an increase in mosquitoes in the neighborhood, and she would “like very much not to,” she says.

Shortly after Wielar’s recommendation, Swartout instructed the construction crews to purchase the products. They were dunked into the pond earlier this month.

Mosquito Dunks are EPA-registered, palm-sized disks made of chemicals that kill the pesky insects before they’re old enough to lay eggs; the chemicals are non-toxic to all other wildlife, pets, fish and humans. They can also be used in containers of water.

Swartout, with Castle Development Partners, says his group has “very much tried to be good neighbors there,” and that he is required to manage and control all of the rainwater on his site, which is a residential construction zone for 241 upscale apartments called Beacon on Fifth. The retention pond will be turned into a stormwater management facility.

City spokesperson Miriam Dickler says the site is monitored every 14 days and 48 hours after a runoff-producing rain. While there is nothing explicitly about mosquitoes in the city code, one section declares it unlawful for any person on private property to allow a “public nuisance,” such as stagnant water.

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Partial demolition underway on West Market

A partial demolition is underway at 206 W Market St. after a January 25 roof collapse. Staff photo

An owner of the two-story brick building on West Market Street says a partial demolition is currently underway after a January 25 roof collapse.

“It would’ve happened one way or another,” owner Josh Rogers says. He and his partners had plans to renovate the 206 W Market St. building for their proposed private club, called Common House. He doesn’t think the roof collapse will significantly interfere with the club’s construction because it was previously ahead of schedule.

“It accelerated our production schedule,” he says, though he hasn’t made any permanent plans for after the demolition.

The building’s roof also collapsed in 2010 when snow cracked one of the trusses supporting the rafters, according to the city’s building code official, Tom Elliott.

While Rogers says he was aware of the initial collapse, the back right corner truss that failed this time was not the one repaired six years ago. He and his partners are paying for the selective demolition, he says, which will require removing loose bricks and wood from the roof and second floor of the building.

According to the Neighborhood Development Services website, specific design criteria for Charlottesville requires buildings to be designed to withstand temperatures of 16 degrees with a ground snow load of 25 inches per square foot. According to principal planner Brian Haluska, that doesn’t translate exactly to number of inches of snowfall.

Rogers says the demolition could take between two and three days and the strip of West Market between Old Preston and 2nd Street NW is projected to stay closed during that time. City inspectors want to be sure engineers have confirmed that falling debris will not be a threat, he says.

Even though the damage is on the backside of the building, city spokesperson Miriam Dickler says, “We want to know the structure is stable and sound before the road opens,” adding that it could stay closed until Saturday.