The City of Charlottesville and the Virginia Department of Transportation nominally won in a circuit court hearing last week over a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop the Meadowcreek Parkway, but the victory may be pyrrhic depending on what Judge Jay Swett decides during a May 19 hearing over the merits.
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Meadowcreek Parkway opponents tried to get a judge to stop work on this parcel off Melbourne Road, which used to be a softball field. VDOT said a stoppage would cost $20,000 daily. |
Though Swett denied the injunction filed by the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park that would have halted work immediately on the Albemarle County portion of the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP), he found that the group has standing to bring suit and will hear the merits of the case.
“That is wide open,” said Swett, referring to the merits, where there is little case law to guide the court’s decision. “Basically, we are on new ground.”
The Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park, a loosely defined group that includes longtime MCP foes Rich Collins, Stratton Salidis and Peter Kleeman, contends that the city illegally granted VDOT easements for the road. Those easements are on a parcel that had been a softball field used by Charlottesville High School, but the city voted 3-2 in June 2008 to grant VDOT the easements. A deed was recorded in January; VDOT paid the city $43,120 for the perpetual right and easement across nine acres. The Coalition argues that that transfer was as a sale, and therefore required a three-fourths majority.
During the hearing, Swett politely but unflinchingly grilled each attorney, turning the courtroom into a de facto law school class as the lawyers stumbled in their replies to get at the issues. In the end, he ruled that at this point, with full-blown construction going on at the site, an injunction wouldn’t be meaningful and the $20,000 per day cost it would levy on VDOT (and ultimately on taxpayers) was too much.
“The harm has been done already,” Swett said, wondering why the suit wasn’t filed many months before work began.
That decision didn’t deter MCP opponents. “I don’t really feel like this is a loss,” Kleeman, who took the stand along with Collins, Salidis and John Cruickshank, told C-VILLE afterwards. “It’s a good airing of the issue, and I just hope that the issue is really taken fairly and on its merits totally.”
Kleeman admitted that “most of the damage has been done. We were screwed by the calendar more than anything else. Once the deed was filed and we discovered it, I think we were pretty prompt at getting together a claim.”
City Attorney Craig Brown challenged the ability of the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park to bring suit, pointing out that the Coalition—which struggled to define its membership—didn’t have group hiking trips or softball games on the land in question. Though Swett ruled in favor of the Coalition, he warned that his decision would likely be challenged on appeal.
But that might not matter for the Coalition, which thinks it has other ways to stop the Meadowcreek Parkway. If it can’t get enough pressure on City Councilor Julian Taliaferro—who is facing a primary battle for re-election and who, despite previous votes for the road, has recently made waffling comments on the MCP—the Coalition will likely pursue legal action on the two city segments of the Meadowcreek Parkway.
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