Turkey time Community is hard to come by these days, especially as we’re all hunkering down for a long winter indoors. But at the Jefferson School on Saturday, the community put on an impressive show. During the annual We Code, Too turkey drive, 200 birds were handed out to those in need ahead of the […]
A fond farewell Charlottesville superstar John Conover, 74, passed away over the weekend. Conover arrived in town in 1970 and started a printing press, before serving as a city councilor from 1980 to 1984. He later worked as an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center, served on the board of Live Arts, and helped […]
“What’s been the hardest part of this job?” is, to outgoing Charlottesville City Manager Dr. Tarron Richardson, “a loaded question.” The city’s top executive tendered his resignation on September 11, and will finish his time at City Hall on September 30, after 16 months at the helm. (For reference, the three city managers before Richardson […]
One down Johnny Reb, the bronze Confederate soldier who has stood, musket in hand, outside the Albemarle County Courthouse since 1909, has been replaced by a patch of hay. After the Unite the Right rally accelerated the national debate over Confederate monuments, Charlottesville finally took [...]
Cracking down Just days after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, sparking national outrage and protests, City Manager Tarron Richardson decided to crack down on gatherings in Charlottesville—targeting those organized by Black residents. While Richardson supports [...]
Pipeline defeated The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is history. In a surprise announcement on Sunday afternoon, Dominion Power called off the 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would have run from West Virginia to North Carolina. “VICTORY!” declared the website of the Southern Environmental Law [...]
Masked up On May 26, Governor Ralph Northam declared that all Virginians 10 years and older must wear masks while in public indoor spaces, including retail stores, buses, and restaurants (when you’re not eating, of course). Some have wondered how business owners would enforce such a rule with [...]
The City of Charlottesville was almost all the way through the always-laborious yearly budget process when the coronavirus crisis derailed its plans. City Council held an online meeting Monday night—its first meeting in a month—to discuss the city’s deeply uncertain finances. The most [...]
Making an IMPACT “It has been almost four years since the father of my kids was deported to Mexico due to his stay in the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail,” said Fanny Smedlie, reading a statement from her friend Karla Lopez. Smedlie, a member of the Executive Committee of the Church of [...]
Money talks City Manager Tarron Richardson presented his proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 at the City Council meeting on March 2. If that sentence made you yawn, we understand—but the tail end of the hours-long council meeting represents the beginning of the end of the budget cycle, some [...]
Charlottesville’s Office of Human Rights and Human Rights Commission have an intimidatingly broad mission: to reduce discrimination in the city. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the office and its volunteer commission, which are tasked with both investigating individual complaints of [...]
City Council introduced its pick to be the city’s top executive April 15, and Mayor Nikuyah Walker urged citizens to be open to moving past “the way things have been done.” Tarron Richardson, currently city manager of DeSoto, Texas, a Dallas suburb, was chosen out of 37 candidates in a process [...]
By Shrey Dua Three finalists, out of a field of 37, are vying for the job of Charlottesville city manager, and roughly 100 people showed up to see them at an open-to-the-public interview. City councilors questioned the candidates at a Jefferson School African American Heritage Center event on [...]