It’s the penultimate day before the end of the election season, and today’s edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement is another installment intended to help anyone who reads or listens know a little more about the decisions before elected officials and the legal framework within which we all live. This is the 456th edition of the program, not counting all those Week ahead summaries, and the goal is to prepare to get the 789th and beyond!
On today’s program:
An Orange County man has been arrested and charged in the hit and run of a cyclist on East High Street
Another lawsuit is filed against the city of Charlottesville for a land use decision, this time for a special use permit on Jefferson Park Avenue
The two candidates in the Fifth Congressional District answer more questions from the Chambers of Commerce in Charlottesville, Danville, and Lynchburg. This time around the focus is higher education funding and the role of government in broadband
First shout-out goes to Camp Albemarle
Today’s first subscriber-supported public service announcement goes out to Camp Albemarle, which has for sixty years been a “wholesome rural, rustic and restful site for youth activities, church groups, civic events and occasional private programs.”
Located on 14 acres on the banks of the Moorman’s River near Free Union, Camp Albemarle continues as a legacy of being a Civilian Conservation Corps project that sought to promote the importance of rural activities. Camp Albemarle seeks support for a plan to winterize the Hamner Lodge, a structure built in 1941 by the CCC and used by every 4th and 5th grade student in Charlottesville and Albemarle for the study of ecology for over 20 years. If this campaign is successful, Camp Albemarle could operate year-round. Consider your support by visiting campalbemarleva.org/donate.
Arrest made in East High hit and run case
An Orange County man has been arrested in connection with the hit and run of a cyclist on East High Street on October 18. The Charlottesville Police Department announced this afternoon that John Dean Sherwin, 31, has been charged with felony hit and run in the incident that took place at 2:52 p.m in the afternoon. The incident was caught on camera and many called upon the police to investigate.
At the time, a police spokesman said that neither the victim or the assailant had come forward. Eventually the person who was hit did come forward. Kenyon Barnes spoke with Courtney Stuart on WINA’s Charlottesville Right Now on October 25. (take a listen)
Charlottesville police obtained an arrest warrant for Sherwin on Friday. The video appears to show a motorist deliberately pull a car to the right to hit a person on a bicycle. There are no bike lanes on East High Street and some in the area have called for attention to the issue, especially at a time when a developer is seeking to build 245 apartment units along the Rivanna River.
Lawsuit filed against Charlottesville City Council for 2005 JPA permit
Over a dozen Charlottesville residents have filed suit against Charlottesville City Council and the city of Charlottesville against the September 19 approval of a special use permit for a multifamily structure at 2005 Jefferson Park Avenue. (read the complaint)
“City Council's authorization of the SUPs permits the construction of a building that will diminish the quality of life of all the Observatory Avenue and Washington Avenue plaintiffs in ways not shared by the general public and compromises their health, safety, and general welfare in a variety of ways,” reads paragraph 27.
The permit allows an increase in density under existing zoning for a total of 119-units as well as an increase in building height from 45 feet to 75 feet. Council made their approval after developer Aspen Heights agreed to increase the amount of funding they would contribute to the city’s affordable housing fund from $500,000 to $1 million.
The fourteen plaintiffs are acting as their own counsel and argue that the city failed to comply with Virginia code for zoning ordinances as well as city and state rules on special use permits. All live on either Observatory Avenue, Washington Avenue, or other nearby streets.
“Authorization of these [special use permits] short circuits the rezoning process,” reads a section of paragraph 21 of the complaint. “It undermines the ongoing deliberative, community-collaborative rezoning process to which the City is committed.”
That refers to the city’s ongoing Cville Plans Together process, which has seen the adoption of an affordable housing plan as well a new Comprehensive Plan with a revised Future Land Use Map intended to inform a future zoning ordinance which is not yet complete.
“The applicant justifies their request for increased height and density with reference to the [Future Land Use Map], as though the [Future Land Use Map] were already accomplished fact,” paragraph 21 continues.
Paragraphs 22 points out the staff report for the April 12, 2022 Planning Commission public hearing stated that "the scale and density of the development is not harmonious with the existing patterns within the neighborhood” in conjunction with the city’s entrance corridor review guidelines.
However, paragraph 23 indicates the Planning Commission’s public hearing was delayed to May 10 and the staff report was altered, despite an identical application.
“The revised report of April 27, 2022 stated: ‘No adverse impact on E[ntrance]C[orridor]; The impacts of increased height can be adequately mitigated by application of the design guidelines and addressed during the required ERB design review,’” reads paragraph 23. “No explanation was given for the change.”
The Planning Commission voted 4-3 to recommend the approval on May 10 and Council voted 4 to 0 to approved the permit on September 19. The complaint for declaratory judgment was filed on October 19, just in time to file an appeal in court.
There are eleven counts in all. The first one states that Council failed to consider the health, safety and welfare of existing residents.
“Four of the plaintiffs on Observatory Avenue are over the age of 65 and are concerned that sudden health problems will require ambulance transport to the hospital,” paragraph 27 continues. “Both the bustle of construction and increased traffic when the construction is finished will compromise ambulance access. Additionally two of the plaintiffs on Observatory Avenue suffer from asthma and would be harmed by the dust and fumes of demolition and construction which are projected to take 18- 24 months, as stated by the architect at the December 7, 2021 community meeting.”
Read the rest of the complaint to learn more. (download the complaint)
A city spokesman confirmed that the city has been served with this lawsuit but has not yet responded.
Council and the city are already facing a lawsuit related to the adoption of the Comprehensive Plan filed by a group of plaintiffs who filed anonymously. Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Claude Worell threw out three of the four counts in late August but did agree to hear further arguments about whether the city gave sufficient notice for the November 15, 2021 vote to approve the plan and whether the term “updated density” was adequately explained.
There’s another open land use case that remains active. Cabell Marshall of Stribling Avenue sued City Council in May over the rezoning of 240 Stribling Avenue this past April, as I reported at the time. The city responded with a motion asking seven items to be added to the record for the case (motion craving oyer) as well as a demurrer seeking dismissal of the case.
“The Rezoning Decision is a legislative action of the City Council that is presumed valid, and a court may not alter or invalidate the legislative action absent ‘clear proof’ that the action is unreasonable, arbitrary, and bears no reasonable relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare,’” reads the introduction to the demurrer. “The Complaint does not state a cause of action against the City, and fails to state facts upon which the relief granted can be granted.”
Stay tuned.
Second shout-out: Visions of Progress with Dr. John Edwin Mason
In today’s second subscriber-supported shout-out, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society continues its speaker series on November 10 by welcoming Dr. John Edwin Mason for a discussion of the "Visions of Progress" photography exhibition which is on display at UVA's Small Special Collections Library. Mason teaches African history and the history of photography at the University of Virginia.
The exhibition showcases portraits that African Americans in Central Virginia commissioned from Charlottesville's Holsinger Studio during the first decades of the twentieth century. This is a hybrid program, meaning that you can attend either in-person at Northside Library, or remotely via Facebook Live. Learn more at JMRL.
Fifth District candidates answer questions on Pell Grants, broadband
All across the United States, registrars will begin counting up the ballots cast on Tuesday and in early voting. In Virginia, 930,017 people have already cast ballots according to the Virginia Public Access Project. That including 88,035 in the Fifth Congressional District.
That leaves a lot of people who may not yet have decided how to vote. I conclude this installment with the final in a series of segments from candidate interviews conducted by the Chambers of Commerce in Charlottesville, Danville, and Lynchburg with the two people vying for the Fifth District seat in Congress.
Here are the previous segments with Republican incumbent Bob Good of Evington and Democratic challenger Joshua Throneburg of Charlottesville:
Fifth District Chambers of Commerce have questions for Good, Throneburg: Opening statements
Good, Throneburg offer differing visions on defense’s role in local economy
Good and Throneburg explain positions on taxation to Chambers in the Fifth District
Now, the final installment which begins with a question from Rebecca Ivins, the chair of the Public Policy Committee of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“From Charlottesville to Lynchburg to Danville and even over to Farmville, private and public, the Fifth Congressional District is home to the largest concentrations of institutions of higher education in Virginia,” Ivins said. “Summer, we saw a $400 increase in the discretionary portion of a Pell Grant, which was successfully included in the Omnibus Funding bill last month. With the increase, the maximum Pell grant would be $6,895 for the coming academic year. The Biden administration has plans to double the maximum Pell Grant by 2029. Where do you stand on this proposed increase in federal resources for our neediest students and families to help them attend public and private colleges in the Fifth Congressional District?”
“I would support that for sure,” Throneburg said. “I want to make sure that we are increasing the opportunity for students to… We have very high institution costs. We know that, and I think there is work for us to do on addressing that. One of the proposals that I have put forward is free community college because I do want to make sure that students have access to a good education and practical education that can move them into well paying jobs.”
“I think there are a number of solutions, a number of proposals that we can have here to really increase opportunity and increase access to higher education, learning the skills and getting into good paying jobs… But yes, I would, I would absolutely support that. I want to, I want to make sure any, any person who's willing to work hard and go out there and get an education and put in the work, can then you know, see the benefits of that. So I would be, I would be very supportive.
And here’s the response from Congressman Good:
“We want to reform the Pell grant system on the Republican side and the Education and Labor Committee,” Good said. “I don't favor doubling that for a number of reasons. Number one, the cost of four year colleges and traditional colleges is astronomically going up faster than inflation and anything else, especially the non academic investment in the colleges, the positions that are multiplying that have nothing to do with academics or classroom, but other administrative functions, lots of diversity, equity and inclusion positions that are being added.
“And we're subsidizing the massive increase on the taxpayer of college,” Good said.” And you could argue that while this is the local government's responsibility for K to 12 education, is it the government's responsibility to educate people into college degrees, graduate degrees, you even have some Democrats now talk about K to 20, instead of K to 12, which isn't even K to 16. We're supposed to subsidize graduate degrees now, for people…
“I had to work my way through school, I grew up in a lower income family, I grew up on food stamps, I grew up on free lunch, when, when most folks in school didn't have that, of course, now, everybody has that, because we don't want to feel stigmatized because of it. And you heard people say something we were poor, we didn't know. I knew it. My brothers and I knew it, we had to work all of our lives.
“I was the beneficiary of a Pell Grant I was, I was the beneficiary of student loans and I'm thankful that helped me to work my way through school, I kind of worked and wrestled my way out of partial wrestling scholarship. But I think we ought to be making these colleges in return for federal assistance to use these massive billion dollar plus endowments to reduce the… If they're going to take federal dollars, then they ought to have to use these massive indole and damage to reduce the cost of their tuition. These colleges are getting wealthier and wealthier and the salaries are going up exorbitantly. And now we want to double the amount of Pell grants to them, which will make them just raise their prices, because they're getting more money from the federal government.
“Same thing will happen with the student loan transfer scheme. It's not canceling the dad is not forgiving the debt. As we know, we're making taxpayers who didn't go to college, those who maybe went to a trade school, those who are working a blue collar job, those who didn't go to college, those who work their way through college, or those who were, I guess, chumps, and paid off the student loan for some reason, making them pay for thethe student loans for people, families making up a $250,000. Individuals making up to $125K? What's the average income in this country, and we're going to allow those making up 225 to have their student loan debt transferred to people who didn't borrow it? It's unbelievable.
“So I don't know, until we deal with the rising costs of higher ed, generally, until we begin to put some things in place from a federal government influence standpoint to do that, I don't believe in further subsidizing the rising rapid costs, because I think they're just gonna raise the prices in return for the additional dollar. Oh, students can afford more. Let's just spend more.
Let’s turn next to economic development and this question from Anne Moore-Sparks of the Danville-Pittsylvania Chamber of Commerce.
“Congressman, how should Congress address the digital divide in regard to broadband access and affordability?” Moore-Sparks asked.
“Great question,” Good responded. “I think there's a growing bipartisan recognition of the need to try to help in that respect at all levels of government. There may not have been, you know, obviously, exact agreement on how to do that. But I advocated this as a county supervisor, for example, I was in the [Campbell] county government from 2015 to 19, before I ran for Congress,
“While I was a spending Hawk, and I was tough on limited government and low taxes, and Campbell County had among the lowest real estate tax rates and the county that I live in outside Lynchburg there, and I was proud of that but I did believe that we needed to invest on the county level to try to bridge the profit gap between private providers. And you know, when the economies of scale didn't work, because if if the economies of scale work and the profit incentive was sufficient, everybody would have broadband access and internet access across the country, everybody would be connected…
“But in some cases, of course, there's just not enough people to make it work financially for a company that even though the Biden administration doesn't seem to understand this, but a company that has to try to earn a profit to stay in business, and that's the requirement, you know, to follow the interest of their shareholders. So I supported investment in that on the county level and Campbell County, I voted for that. And we did that and we're making progress in Campbell County.
“I liken it to be similar to like post office that connectivity now because as you know, if we just said okay, we're gonna go just with privatization of mail service, then the FedEx’s and the UPS’s would never deliver to the most remote parts of the country. For 50-something cents like the post office does, they would have to charge exorbitant prices to do that, or they just wouldn't service areas that didn't make sense for them financially to service.
“And we all know connectivity, Internet access broadband is like electricity today. We saw that as more during the pandemic shutdowns and lockdowns forced on by the government school closures forced home by the government. And it's more people are working from home, as we know, working remotely. So I think there's a federal role to play. It's a local, state and federal role to play.
“I'm glad that President Trump invested in that, President Biden's continue to invest in that, unfortunately, though, when the federal government has done it recently, we passed the $1.2 trillion phony infrastructure bill, a year ago, only about ten percent of it was true infrastructure, roads, bridges, airports, things like that. And a lot of it had nothing to do with true infrastructure.
“You had this administration said we're going to fix racist infrastructure, whatever that is, that was Pete Buttigieg, [Biden]’s transportation secretary who had no experience in transportation, by the way.
“And then you also had a lot of green raw deal stuff in there climate, environmental extremism, stuff that has nothing to do with infrastructure. The fact is 99 percent of infrastructure in this country is done by private entities anyway, it's not primarily done by the federal government, and we don't have an infrastructure crisis in the country…
“But in the problem to your question, though, is we don't get broadband by itself, we get it massive for a few billion dollars for broadband would make a difference, we get folded into a trillion dollar spending bill to try to force you to vote for the thing you like, like the broadband, so you don't get criticized for that. Or you have to choke down the trillion dollars that you don't agree with in order to get a few billion dollars that you do agree with. That's unfortunately, how Washington works. It's not how Washington should work.”
And the response from Throneburg.
“My perspective is I think we should instate broadband as a public utility and treat it as such,” Throneburg said. “As you all may know, one of the interesting realities that has emerged over the last few years is Nelson County. [Nelson] worked really, really hard as one of the more rural counties to bring broadband into every home, and they have really brought it into almost every single home in the county.
“At the same time, Nelson County was just ranked as the highest work from home county in all of Virginia. And there's, I think, an obvious connection between the fact that broadband exists in those homes, and the fact that people can work from their home that has just brought tremendous opportunity to that county, I think that's what we need to push all over the district to make sure that anyone who wants to who is in a home can have access to broadband. And that presents, you know, opportunity for work from home.
“But it also presents business opportunities across the district that you know, folks aren't going to always go into spaces if they don't have reliable internet. And so, yeah, that's that's been a big priority. For me. It's actually one of the things that I hear on the campaign trail the most from folks, especially as you go out into some of the rural parts. But, you know, I think we want to really build up the economic opportunity that comes with broadband, and it goes beyond just the economic opportunity.
“We know that for people who are trying to access health care, telehealth options are a wonderful option, both including mental health. But if you don't have broadband, you can't do that. We watched during the pandemic, what happened to students who didn't have access to broadband, you know, sitting in the parking lot of McDonald's trying to access their school assignments and do their homework?. And it's just a, it's a deeply inequitable reality.
“In our current world, if somebody has lots of access to broadband, and someone has none, it provides such a deep inequity across our system. And so for that reason, it's an absolute priority for me to see homes and businesses across this district…. And I think once that happens, then the economic opportunity that kind of proceeds from that reality is incredible for us.
“So I would treat it as utility, I would want to see the Congress, you know, pushing to get that done. On our side, that's, you know, we have, we have the purse strings and so we have the economic ability to to make those investments and to see that happen. And that's what I would be advocating for. pretty passionately, I think this is not just an economic opportunity. It's a justice issue.
To see the closing statements and the rest, do go visit the rest on the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s website.
What other people have written recently on some of these same topics:
‘We’re still going’ - Jefferson School provides update on Lee statue, Maryann Xue, C-Ville Weekly, November 3, 2022
The 5th District’s up for grabs in Tuesday’s election, but so are mayors and school boards across Central Virginia, Charlottesville Tomorrow, November 4, 2022
Virginia has a ‘Victims of Communism Memorial Day’, Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, November 7, 2022
Couric announces $1M scholarship donation, NBC29, November 7, 2022
Telling you newsletter-related things for episode $456
Goodness! It’s another week! There was to be another segment today on Albemarle County’s legislative agenda, but it got the bump tomorrow. I also got the bump from WINA’s Charlottesville-Right Now with Courteney Stuart but I’ll be on tomorrow at 4 p.m. Tune in! I’ve been doing the show on Mondays for nearly a year now, and it will be nice to meet with Courteney tomorrow for a change.
All of this work is paid for by many of you readers and listeners via Substack, in addition to the various individuals and entities who pay me through Patreon. More details on that later, as you don’t need to read that every time.
But, I do want you to know I appreciate the one in four who pays to keep my attention focused on a wide variety of things. You support my beat reporting which allows me to see patterns and incongruities.
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But for now it’s time to prepare for Election Day. There will be another installment out tomorrow. Until then, please drop me a line if you have questions!
November 7, 2022: Arrest made in East High hit and run of cyclist; JPA-area residents file suit against Charlottesville over permit for seven-story building