Tag: mitch van yahres

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In brief: PACmen and women, Pharrell weighs in, Long checks out, and more

Michael Bills is narrowing his political focus to candidates who don’t take donations from Dominion with his Clean Virginia PAC. Submitted photo

Special interests

If you’ve got an agenda, you’ve gotta have a PAC. A political action committee is the device of choice for individuals, corporations, developers, teachers, and many others to further their interests by funneling money or other support to political candidates. While a PAC is limited by state and federal law on how much it can directly contribute to a campaign, because it’s not run by a political party or individual candidate, on its own it can spend an unlimited amount of money on elections. Charlottesville is home to several PACs that have raised— and contributed—millions for causes ranging from electing progressive candidates to keeping Delegate Rob Bell in office. Here’s our roundup:

Progressives for Cville

Founded in 2018 by UVA prof and Black Lives Matter organizer Jalane Schmidt and Jefferson School African American Heritage Center staffer Olivia Patton, Progressives for Cville wants small donors to support candidates who will work for affordable housing and against racial inequity. The PAC supports City Council candidate Michael Payne.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Charlottesville native Stephanie Taylor and UVA Law grad Adam Green co-founded Progressive Change in 2009, the largest locally founded PAC, with a million-member grassroots organization that’s raised $29 million. Its website is boldprogressives.org, and this national PAC was a fan of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s platform long before she became a presidential candidate.

Virginia First PAC

House Minority Leader David Toscano’s PAC has donated more than $1 million to help elect Democrats to the House of Delegates.

Clean Virginia Fund

Investor Michael Bills has poured over $2 million into state elections. Last year he founded a PAC to promote clean energy and thwart the influence of Dominion Power on the electoral process by supporting candidates who refuse to accept money from utilities they would regulate. Bills has put $205,000 into the PAC, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, and donated $166,000 to candidates.

Road Back/Democratic Road Forward PAC

The late delegate Mitch Van Yahres, who held the 57th District seat for 24 years, founded the Road Back PAC in 2002 to help other Dem candidates. The PAC was dormant for several years after his death in 2008, and was reborn as the Democratic Road Forward PAC in 2013 to train Democratic hopefuls and their staffs. “We don’t give them money,” says former vice-mayor Meredith Richards, but this year 19 candidates the PAC schooled in fundraising and fieldwork are running.

Virginia’s List

Former Charlottesville School Board chair and 17th Senate District candidate Amy Laufer’s PAC has raised almost $125,000 since 2015 to support Democratic women running for state office, according to VPAP.

Virginians for Rob Bell

This committee was formed in 2012, ahead of Bell’s unsuccessful run for the GOP attorney general nomination in 2013. It’s received $560,000 in contributions, and is currently sitting on $294,000, says VPAP.

Forever Albemarle

Maintaining the county’s rural areas and supporting farmers is the goal of Forever Albemarle, which donated to Republican  Board of Supervisors candidates Duane Snow and Rodney Thomas in 2009. The PAC has been less active since then, but it made a $545 donation to the White Hall Ruritans in 2017, according to Virginia Department of Elections.

Quote of the week

“To me, any legitimate conversation about reparations starts with education.” —Pharrell Williams, May 17 at UVA’s Valedictory Exercises

In brief

Trick-or-treat

Police Chief RaShall Brackney asked City Council on May 20 to repeal the 57-year-old ordinance that prohibits kids over the age of 12 from knocking on neighbors’ doors and demanding candy on Halloween. She’s also calling for a 10pm curfew on October 31, and council will vote on the matters in June.

Another A12 lawsuit

Bill Burke came to Charlottesville in August 2017 with a plan to protest a white supremacist rally, and left with a string of mental and physical injuries from being hit by James Fields’ car. Now, in a federal lawsuit filed in his home state of Ohio, he’s asking for $3 million in compensatory damages.

Free advice

The Charlottesville Albemarle Bar Association and Legal Aid Justice Center have hired their first pro bono coordinator. Kristin Clarens has already racked up “countless hours” of pro bono work on immigration, human rights, and refugee resettlement, according to a press release.

Long goodbye

Two-time Super Bowl champion with deep Charlottesville roots Chris Long is hanging up his helmet after 11 NFL seasons. The UVA and St. Anne’s-Belfield grad chosen as the league’s 2018 Walter Payton Man of the Year is also known for his humanitarian work: Since starting his Waterboys charity, he’s funded approximately 60 wells (and counting) in Africa.

Body found, arrest made

Police say 24-year-old Cody Jason Cappel, whose body was found on the Rivanna Trail behind Peter Jefferson Parkway May 16, was shot multiple times. He appeared to have been living in a tent along the river near 49-year-old Allan Ray Via, who has been charged with second degree murder and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signs of change

Vincent Kinney was the first black student to graduate from Albemarle High. staff photo

Despite the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which found public school segregation unconstitutional, Albemarle County didn’t integrate for another nine years.

In 1963, 26 black students enrolled in three county schools for the first time: Stone-Robinson Elementary, Greenwood, and Albemarle High. And on May 17, county administrators unveiled new signs at each location that honor the first black attendees  of those schools.

Superintendent Matt Haas thanked local historian and filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson, who spearheaded the project.

In attendance at the unveiling were multiple members of the Albemarle 26, including the first black AHS graduate Vincent Kinney, who donned his cap and gown in 1964.

“I get a little bit of angst at things like this because it focuses attention on us and it does not emphasize the fact that we were overcoming something in the community,” said Kinney. “By the time I came to Albemarle [High], I had already been scarred…by the white privilege that existed and still does to a lesser extent today.”

When students see the new sign, he says he hopes they don’t take it for granted.

Adds Kinney, “I hope they see that the level of near equality that’s shared by all now has been fought for.”

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Circle theory: Two roundabouts in Crozet’s future

U.S. 250 west near Crozet has new circular traffic patterns coming in the next few years.

Every few years, the idea to put a roundabout at difficult intersections pops up—and usually disappears. Charlottesville’s former mayor and longtime delegate, the late Mitch Van Yahres, was a big roundabout fan, and he supported the one installed at the airport, one of the few bandied about from the early aughts that actually got built.

Two roundabouts eligible for federal funding are on the horizon for U.S. 250 around Crozet—one at its intersection with Route 240 and another 10 miles farther west at Alcohol Alley—Route 151 in Afton. Both locations “have a history of crashes, all related to turning,” says VDOT’s Stacy Londrey.

U.S. 250 near Crozet could get two roundabouts for the crash-prone intersections at Route 240 and at Route 151.“For several years, VDOT has looked at alternatives to traffic signals,” she says.

That’s why North Pointe on U.S. 29 North will have something called a super-street intersection, one of the first in the state, rather than eight stoplights.

“Often roundabouts are a better solution to keep traffic moving rather than coming to a complete stop,” says Londrey. “You’re pretty much able to roll along without completely stopping. We don’t see the backups that we see with signals.”

One factor in the roundabout rollout is legislation the General Assembly passed in 2014 called Smart Scale to take the politics out of a formerly closed-door process (ahem, Western 29 Bypass) and make it more transparent.

It allows Albemarle County and the Metropolitan Planning Organization to apply for funding, and projects are scored for safety, accessibility and keeping traffic moving, explains Londrey.

“Localities are getting on board with roundabouts,” she says. “It was the county that recommended the Crozet roundabout.”

Both projects will go to the Commonwealth Transportation Board in June, and if it okays the funding, design work will begin in July. “It’s a two- to three-year process before we see dirt moved,” says Londrey.

Bill McKechnie, who is building Mechum’s Trestle restaurant on a tight lot at Route 240, favors the roundabout at that location. “I think people need to slow down,” he says.

Not everyone is a roundabout fan, however. Helen Maupin acknowledges that 250/240 is a “dreadful, dreadful intersection,” but thinks it has way too much traffic volume for a roundabout, unlike the one at the airport or the two in Old Trail.

Maupin grew up in the U.K. and admits she hated the roundabouts there, and she fears people here don’t know how to use them.

“A roundabout doesn’t slow traffic,” she says. “It creates frustrated drivers edging out into traffic, making it more dangerous. I feel a stoplight is the only solution there.”

Others have concerns about the intersection at Route 151 with trucks coming down Afton Mountain on U.S. 250.

“VDOT thinks that tractor trailers and heavily loaded/oversized vehicles will have no issue slowing down coming off of Afton and the road grade to drive into a roundabout,” says frequent traveler Whitney Jones-Allen.

VDOT says speed reduction would start far enough back for safe braking on the downhill.

And once the CTB approves the projects, there will be public hearings, says Londrey.

“I do think there’s some hesitation, especially in the rural areas,” she says. But they’re “not as confusing as people seem to think.”

Other pluses: Roundabouts require less maintenance than traffic signals, she says. And once they’re installed, the number of crashes seems to go down.

“The great thing about roundabouts is you have to slow down, so if there is a crash, it’s not as severe because of the lower speeds,” says Londrey.

Roundabout roundup:

U.S. 250/Route 240 intersection

  • 11,000 vehicles a day on U.S. 250
  • 5,800 vehicles a day on Route 240
  • $3.5 million cost, funded from the Federal Highway Administration’s High-Risk Rural Roads program

U.S. 250/Route 151 intersection

  • 6,700 vehicles a day on U.S. 250
  • 10,000 a day on Route 151
  • $5.8 million cost, funded from the FHA’s Highway Safety Improvement Program

Other area roundabouts:

  • Hillsdale Drive Extended (underway now, a city project)
  • Routes 15/53 in Fluvanna (underway now)
  • Routes 53/600 in Fluvanna (built in 2013)
  • Routes 53/618 in Fluvanna (in design)
  • Routes 20/231 in Orange (in design)

—Courtesy VDOT

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Hemp happens: A new flag flies at City Hall

Jason Amatucci, the founder of the Virginia Industrial Hemp Coalition, holds the American flag made of hemp that now hangs at City Hall. The flag was flown over the U.S. Capitol building on Veterans Day. Photo by Eze Amos

A proud group of industrial hemp supporters hoisted an American flag made of the crop on the Downtown Mall May 25, announcing that it would be presented to Willie Nelson—another major advocate for its legalization—at his concert that night.

“We’re trying to end this insanity of prohibition,” Mike Bowman, a Coloradoan and chair of the National Hemp Association, said before cranking the lever that raised the flag. Calling hemp the “crop of our founding fathers,” he noted that about 30 states have already legalized that variety of the cannabis sativa plant.

Virginia is one of those states. Last year, Governor Terry McAuliffe signed a bill allowing Virginians to legally grow industrial hemp, which has a minimal level of THC and a different genetic makeup than marijuana.

Mike Lewis, one of the first in America to privately farm hemp, grew the materials used for the flag and noted at the ceremony that his flag flew over the U.S. Capitol building on Veterans Day.

Supporters are now gathering signatures for HR525, a resolution called the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, which amends the Controlled Substances Act to exclude industrial hemp from the definition of marijuana. They will present the signatures to Congress on July 4, Bowman says.

Mitch Van Yahres, a former mayor of Charlottesville who served as the city’s delegate in the General Assembly for 12 two-year terms, was a hemp advocate who pushed legislation to study the economic benefits of the cash crop in the ’90s. He passed away in 2008.

“Mitch really led the charge to legalize industrial hemp,” former mayor Dave Norris said at the flag raising. “I really, really wish Mitch had been here today to see the fruit of his labor.”

Even our beloved Thomas Jefferson can be traced back to the plant. It is widely known that he grew hemp, which can be farmed as a raw material that can be incorporated into thousands of products, including clothing, construction materials, paper and health foods.

“Some of my finest hours have been spent on my back veranda, smoking hemp and observing as far as my eye can see,” Thomas Jefferson is often quoted as saying, but researchers at Monticello, who have consulted many of his papers and journals, say they have never validated the statement and there is no evidence to suggest the third president of the United States was a frequent hemp or tobacco smoker.

Less contested is the TJ line: “Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country.”