City grants protected status to six more trees

the issues that Chief Brackney did,” responded CRB vice-chair Will Mendez.

Both Councilors Michael Payne and Sena Magill pointed out that the board’s investigations may not be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, which could discourage community members from coming forward with complaints.

“Right now we cannot promise that members of the public that their personal information can be protected. That is definitely a detail that needs to be worked out,” said Acting City Attorney Lisa Robertson.

Several councilors expressed concern over the operating procedures for the board’s investigations, but CRB chair Bellamy Brown explained they could better address these specific concerns once an executive director is hired. The city is actively searching for a board director, and has received 64 applications for the position.

Mayor Nikuyah Walker questioned what a proper collaboration between the board and department would look like. “When we’re talking about transforming a system, there’s only so much that the individuals already a part of that system can bring to the table,” she said.

During public comment, initial CRB member Rosia Parker criticized the councilors for their unfamiliarity with the new legislation and focus on the rights of police officers. “City Council has had plenty of time to have investigated and done the research to find out what models would work for Charlottesville,” she said.

“I’m not sure why there is fear for breaking ground and why you should have any fear of creating oversight of the police,” said lawyer Teresa Hepler. “People of color being followed, harassed, and injured by the police are afraid. So how can you be scared to do something different?”

Walker responded that she is “not against anything,” but that she wants to know exactly how the revamped board is going to work before she votes on the ordinance. Payne and Magill agreed that the city must get the ordinance right the first time around, or other localities may be deterred from creating their own powerful review boards.

After further discussion, council and the board agreed to have multiple full-day work sessions to go over each specific power in the draft ordinance with the board’s legal council and Robertson.

Moving forward, initial CRB member Sarah Burke hopes that council will get “up to speed” on the new legislation, and will listen to the community as it works with the board to provide meaningful police oversight.

“What I saw the other night was the City Council grilling the CRB on the model without seeming to have a lot of their own background and research on the issue,” says Burke. “I [also] don’t understand this idea that somehow the CRB should be chastised for failing to listen to the police officers who haven’t engaged with the work.”

Parker also urges council to be openminded, transparent, and willing to change.

“We as the people, we’re going to keep pushing,” she says. “It’s time for change, and the time is now.”

Fine specimens

Get to know Charlottesville’s six newly protected trees

By Erika Howsare

Charlottesville wouldn’t be Charlottesville without its trees. When the city adopted a Tree Conservation Ordinance in 2013 to allow special protected status for certain trees, it was an acknowledgment of all their many benefits: beauty, history, a sense of place, and all the “ecosystem services” that trees provide for free. They cool the air and make oxygen; they filter water and hold soil in place. They’re the quiet heroes of the city.

The ordinance has previously been used to protect only 11 trees, but in early April, City Council used it to designate six more— individuals, all on public land, that are now protected from removal unless council specifically authorizes it.

“These were obvious trees to designate,” says Brian Menard, chair of the city’s Tree Commission, which worked with the Charlottesville Tree Stewards, a volunteer group, to make nominations. “Five of the six were specimen trees”—that is, protected because of their outstanding size and quality—“and that was for a reason, to showcase the best of the species.”

One of these, an American elm, stands outside Clark Elementary School in Belmont.

Charlottesville’s newly protected trees

 White ash behind the Albemarle-

Charlottesville Historical Society  American elm at Clark Elementary  Post oak in Maplewood Cemetery  Sycamore by Riverview Trail  Shumard oak by the 250 Bypass  Red oak in Oakwood Cemetery

It anchors the top of a steep bank that separates the schoolyard from Monticello Avenue, and it’s regularly treated by the city against Dutch Elm Disease. In the materials prepared by the Tree Commission, a photo shows a group of young students lining up with their teachers under the elm’s generous shade. Maybe some of the kids looked up into the canopy as they gathered there, or maybe not. Whether they noticed it or not, the tree set the stage for that moment in time.

Another is a bur-post oak with a trunk five feet across in the center of Maplewood Cemetery. Menard knows it well, since he lives near the cemetery and has, he says, “spent many hours under it.” In Riverview Park, a sycamore along the trail sprouted naturally on the riverbank, as sycamores do, and is now 65 feet tall, one of the largest in the park.

JOHN ROBINSON

The stately white ash behind the Albemarle-Charlottesville Historical Society.

At the north end of Oakwood Cemetery, a Southern red oak earned specimen status in part for its 80-foot crown spread—a truly resplendent reach that creates, for anyone standing underneath it, a sort of magical outdoor room. The oak, with so many souls interred beneath it, feels as though it ties different eras of Charlottesville history together. Two headstones, dated 1876 and 1898, seem to mark graves that are actually underneath the tree’s titanic base. Leaves whisper and wave throughout its whole muscular, elbowed structure.

You can get close to the white ash behind the Charlottesville-Albemarle Historical Society, too, if you walk into the diminutive brick-walled garden at the building’s rear entrance. Right up next to the tree’s base, you can examine its bark—deep, close-set ridges that seem almost frosted, white on sepia, perhaps giving the species its name. But even if you don’t have time to really commune with the tree—if you’re hurrying past the Central Library, or through Market Street Park—you can see the ash; it’s a giant that’s visible all around the block. The sixth tree is harder to visit; it stands within the loop of an off-ramp from the 250 Bypass onto Rugby Road, so you’re more likely to see it while speeding past in your car. It’s a Shumard oak that is now officially a Memorial Tree, honoring Leroy Snow of Snow’s Garden Center.

Look for more trees to be designated in the future, Menard says. “This is certainly not the last batch,” he says, adding that citizens can nominate trees, too. “The more we designate, the more we call attention to the overall importance of trees.”