"Craig Brown seemed a little nervous. He shuffled a stack of papers, wearing the apprehensive expression of someone unaccustomed to dropping bombs.

“There’s no shortage of opinions in this community about the Meadowcreek Parkway,” Brown said, bracing for the uproar he was about to set off as City Council began its meeting on Monday, December 15.

In the most recent chapter of the Meadowcreek Parkway saga, Brown, who is the City Attorney, has found himself the reluctant center of a fierce game of legal brinkmanship that could pit Councilors against each other in court and cost the City hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I’ve been directed to ask the State Attorney General for an advisory opinion on easement by a simple majority,” Brown announced to Council at the start of the meeting.

“Directed by whom? This is the first time I’ve heard about this,” replied Councilor Kevin Lynch, seeming indignant. “Jerry Kilgore is the expert now? This is the same Attorney General who opposes providing contraception for college students.”

Councilor Meredith Richards apparently had spearheaded this particular escalation of the McIntire Park easement question, which these days is at the heart of the never-ending Meadowcreek Parkway problem. A nine-acre strip of City-owned parkland is the last obstacle blocking the Meadowcreek Parkway, which first came onto Council’s agenda in 1967. Albemarle County and the Virginia Department of Transportation want the City to grant right-of-way through McIntire Park so VDOT can build the Parkway, which would run through City and County lands. But a State law designed to protect public space requires a four-fifths supermajority for Council to sell parkland.

Only three Councilors––Richards, Rob Schilling and Blake Caravati––favor the Parkway, however. So in November they asked Brown whether the three of them could legally ease the land to VDOT for free, instead of selling it. Brown says an easement is legally feasible, while State constitution expert A.E. Dick Howard has opined that such a move blatantly violates the spirit––and probably the letter—of Virginia law. After Mayor Maurice Cox and Councilor Kevin Lynch went public with their vehement disapproval of an easement, Vice-Mayor Richards and her allies directed Brown to seek Kilgore’s advice. It was a transparent attempt to bolster their easement arguments, but not transparent enough. Lynch and Cox learned about the Kilgore idea for the first time on December 15, which apparently infuriated the Mayor.

“I had lunch with you today,” he stormed at Richards. “We talked on the phone this weekend. The idea that you were seeking the Attorney General’s opinion never crossed your mind? I’m appalled.”

Richards suggested that she was merely following the people’s will, as she had received many requests to contact Kilgore.

“No one’s asked me that,” Cox snapped. “Please forward them, so we can share in this sentiment you seem to have found among Charlottesville residents.”

After campaigning against the Parkway in 2000 and receiving more votes than any other current Councilor, Cox remains intent on blocking the Parkway; he continues to speak of the road in the subjunctive. Lynch, who also campaigned as an anti-Parkway “Democrat for Change,” has lately adopted a more compromising tone, by contrast, saying he would support selling the McIntire Park land if the City could secure usable replacement land from Albemarle. His other conditions include State appropriations for a Meadowcreek Parkway interchange at Route 250 and McIntire Road, and for proposed eastern and southern connector roads.

“I think we’re really close to a compromise and commitments that would put the Parkway in a context where it is an asset to the City,” said Lynch in an interview prior to the Council meeting.

But the newly combative Richards says she doesn’t buy Lynch’s diplomacy: “These claims are intended to kill the road, not improve the road.”

On December 15, Richards said she would be “happy” to see a court battle over the proposed easement. After the meeting, Schilling, who ran on a platform of fiscal conservatism, said he would have no problem with a lawsuit, either: “If that’s the way it has to go, then so be it.” Caravati wasn’t at the Council meeting, and was unavailable for comment.

The December 15 meeting ended with Cox telling Richards she should be “ashamed,” Richards accusing Cox of “bullying tactics” and Schilling threatening to walk out. Afterward, Brown sat alone among his stack of papers in the empty Council chambers.

“That’s not the way anyone would like to see a Council meeting end,” he said later. “I was spending a few minutes trying to reflect on what happened, and my role.”

Brown says this is the most intense conflict he has witnessed in his 18 years in City Hall. If Richards, Schilling and Caravati order an easement, Brown says, a lawsuit will probably ensue, and he stands ready to defend the majority’s decision.

“It’s not the easiest position to be in, but that doesn’t affect my analysis of the issue,” Brown says. “I approach it as unbiased as I can. My job is to present options available to Council, and the risk. Obviously, the risk here is being sued.” " (John Borgmeyer, C-VILLE Weekly, December 23-29, 2003)