Fodderstack in the fall — fingers crossed!
The Rappahannock tradition was a COVID-19 victim last year
COVID-19 has not been kind to the Fodderstack 10K.
As recalled by Fodderstack race coordinator Jonathan Moore, rst came the postponement of the April 2020 race, scheduled ahead to the fall of 2020, but as soon realized “fall was not a lot better.”
So race o cials last fall instead set their hopes on April 2021, when surely the overall pandemic picture would improve enough for runners — and joggers and walkers — to tackle the hilly course from Flint Hill to Little Washington. As it turned out, the COVID numbers would only grow worse — especially here in Rappahannock County — while vaccine availability currently remains dismal at best.
Thus “with continued uncertainty regarding COVID-19, we have decided to postpone the 2021 Fodderstack 10K to the fall,” announce race organizers, who had hoped to hold the race two months from now on April 17.
Now with ngers rmly crossed, a new Fodderstack race date has been set for Saturday, Oct. 2.
“We’re working to open registration as soon as possible,” past, present and future runners are now advised.
As it stands, about 100 racers who were set to run last year or this spring have rolled over their registrations for the 2021 Fodderstack. Others signed up to run in the postponed races simply donated registration fees to the Rappahannock County Park, the bene ciary of the race since its beginnings 43 years ago in 1979.
“Registration [for 2021] is not open yet, we’re still working through some of the details, but we’ll let everyone know as soon as possible,” Moore told the News over the weekend. “We’ll have a more comprehensive update in two to three weeks, with a lot more information.”
Added Moore, who has been a liated with the Fodderstack for about 15 years, this being his fourth year as race coordinator: “We’ve made some big changes in the last couple of years, it always was a great race and it continues to improve every year.
“It is such a great community event, and hopefully we will have a great event in the fall. Mark your calendars!”
In fact, in glorious sunshine more than 300 competed in the 41st Fodderstack Classic in April 2019 — the last race held before COVID struck the county.
Twenty-four-year-old Leif Van Acker (Bib 59) was the overall winner of the 2019 classic, completing the hilly course with an impressive time of 37.56.4 (a 6:08 mile pace). “My best time was 35.46, but I was in high school then,” a hardly-outof-breath Van Acker had told this newspaper at the nish line.
As for the women, the rst place overall nisher was 47-year-old Katie Arnold (Bib 281), with a time of 42.24.0 (a 6.51 pace).
“This is my ninth victory,” said Arnold, a Rappahannock native who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She ran her
rst Fodderstack at age 7.
According to Superintendent Russel Gilkison, roughly a third of the sta at Rappahannock Shenandoah Warren Regional Jail have elected to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. But those 400 or so inmates are still waiting.
“We’re working with the local health department and Warren County’s emergency manager to gure out how the vaccinations are going to occur and when they’re going to occur,” Gilkison said. “Unfortunately I think there’s some accessibility [issues] to deal with.”
Incarcerated individuals at jails and prisons are included in Phase 1b, and according to the Virginia Department of Corrections, 13,256 of the roughly 22,000 prisoners in the state have received vaccines.
Colin Greene, director of the Lord Fairfax Health District that is responsible for administering vaccines to RSW, said that he and his colleagues are “presently discussing the process for vaccinating [inmates], along with the remainder of the people who qualify in the present phase, and including other congregated populations such as the homeless and certain occupations.” But he said the health district’s attention is focused on vaccinating the elderly, as they are at the greatest risk for bad outcomes. And small jails, like RSW, typically see high rates of turnover, with an average length of stay of between 8 and 10 days. RSW regional jail has experienced two major outbreaks since last March, fortunately with no deaths.
Still, accord to researchers, prisoners oners are 5.5 times more than the general population to get COVID-19, and 40 out of the 50 largest outbreaks in the country since the beginning of the pandemic have occurred in correctional facilities. And in Virginia, at least 54 incarcerated individuals have died of COVID-19.
“Incarcerated people were originally not going to be part of the 1b group in vaccine rollout which in itself was really hugely problematic because they are by de nition in congregate settings,” said Shannon Ellis, a civil rights and racial justice attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center.
“It’s very well known that incarcerated people have a notably higher incidence of chronic health conditions — multiple chronic health conditions — than the general public and thus are more likely to be at risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19,” Ellis said.
But as important as the vaccine is, Ellis said it is just as important to provide inmates with information and access to medical counseling about the COVID-19 vaccine and its side effects. Incarcerated individuals don’t have the same access to news and information that people enjoy on the outside.
“They can’t access the internet … and they don’t have an option of calling their doctor or making a tele-Med appointment to say to a primary care physician, ‘Is this safe for me? Should I take it?’
“But if you’re given that vaccine without someone warning you that you may have, for example, signi cant swelling and chills a er receiving it, that would be very frightening. So there are people who that has happened to who now are afraid to take their second doses.
“So what we’re seeing is really high rates in prisons of vaccine hesitancy and vaccine refusal,” Ellis said.
In an e ort to coax inmates to get the vaccine, the Virginia Department of Corrections implemented a controversial incentive program, o ering email stamps, care packages and even extra phone call vouchers.
But civil rights advocates like Ellis are troubled by the incentive program, which they argue unfairly rations contact with loved ones during an extraordinarily di cult time when many inmates haven’t been able to physically see their loved ones for nearly a year.
At RSW regional jail, Superintendent Gilkison is not planning to o er incentives. “I understand some people making the decision to do that but I can also see that if for some reason there was an adverse e ect from someone receiving the vaccination and we coerced them to do that, then we could be opening ourselves up for liability,” he said.
“I’d rather let people make their own decisions at this point and let them choose what they want to do.”
Until inmates are inoculated themselves, Ellis said sta pose the greatest health risks to jail and prison populations. “If it weren’t for sta people coming in and out, [inmates] would not be exposed to whatever it is in the community, so the sta members are the risk. Obviously they’re also necessary, you need them … with everyone in lockdown, [inmates are] a lot more reliant on sta ,” she said.
When asked if he would mandate vaccines for his employees, Gilkison said he would not. “It’s a personal health decision so it’s not really my place as an employer to pressure them to make a decision one way or the other,” he said.
“Everybody has their own health decisions that they make based upon their history of health and things like that.”
A proposal to rezone 35 acres of land along Woodward Road in Sperryville was back on the agenda of the Rappahannock County Planning Commission for its regularly scheduled meeting last night (Wednesday) at the Rappahannock County Courthouse.
If Tom and Cheryl Taylor’s Mt. Airy Field LLC application is approved (the print version of the Rappahannock News went to press before the start of the meeting, but there is full coverage of the meeting on the newspaper’s website) the property’s current ve-acre minimum lot size would be reduced to two acres. Mr. Taylor rst presented the rezoning idea to the Planning Commission in 2020 when the body was revising the county’s comprehensive plan.
Since then he has applied for the rezoning and made known his desire to build up to 13 homes on the property.
The Planning Commission has taken up the application three times to date: Nov. 18, 2020, when members conducted a preliminary review of the application; Dec. 29, 2020, when a public hearing was held and the application was tabled; and Jan. 20, 2021, when the planners heard from the Taylor’s attorney Mike Brown, who presented a dra site sketch showing a possible layout of 13 residential lots.
A er Brown’s presentation, Commission Chair Keir Whitson suggested the planners schedule a work session to discuss the points that had been
brought up in the meeting. “My idea,” Whitson said, “is to hash out the issues in a work session and then decide on this application in February.”
Speaking during previous public comment periods, county residents have voiced overwhelmingly opposition to the proposal.
On Tuesday, Zoning Administrator Michelle Somers forwarded to the Rappahannock News 95 pages of comments and other materials she received regarding the application. Of the 23 citizens who wrote letters — some more than once to the Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, and County Administrator Garrey Curry — only two were in favor of the rezoning and subsequent subdivision.
One of the most informed and eloquent statements came from James Hoben, who owns property on Pearl Lane in Sperryville. Hoben is a professional city and regional planner with almost 50 years of city rural planning experience. His Dec. 8, 2020 letter has been referenced many times in written and public comments from local residents.
Hoben takes issue with Taylor’s claim that he can provide a ordable housing on two-acre lots. “A ordable housing isn’t feasible nancially… without gi ed land or larger densities,” he says.
He also feels that “two-acre homes would be very di erent from Sperryville’s current development character. Think suburban sprawl.”
And he wonders about the impacts to the county budget and the Sperryville sewer capacity. The Rappahannock County Water and Sewer Authority has negotiated with an engineering rm to conduct a system capacity study, but the results will not be known for some time. (Also among the documents provided by Somers is a letter to then-chair of the Planning Commission David Konick from Alex Sharp, chair of the RCWSA, reporting that the Authority “has capacity for 13 more dwelling units” — the maximum number that studies indicate the Taylor property could accommodate.)
Woodward Road residents and property owners, such as Chip and Susan Johnson, Lisa Jones, Jeb and Kate Wofford, Bethany Bostic, Bob and Kathy Tra on, Michael Phillips and Julia Bucknall, and Keith Hansen, have also written to the county in opposition to the rezoning.
They cite concerns about pedestrian and vehicular safety caused by increased tra c on the narrow gravel roads that access the property, as well as the e ects on Rappahannock’s rural viewshed and water resources.
“This is one of the most iconic views in our county,” the Wo ords wrote. “The view across the rolling farmland to the Blue Ridge of the Shenandoah National Park is nothing less than extraordinary.”
They and others also cite the increasing number of people who use narrow Woodward Road for “walking and bicycling this beautiful stretch of road … so they can enjoy the views and the limited tra c it a ords.”
Bostic brings up the question of precedent: “If this is approved, why wouldn’t others’ rezoning applications be approved as well? Wouldn’t that be fair?”
Although some would like to subdivide to provide family homes, she says, others might have the opportunity to subdivide “to ultimately make a bigger pro t.”
Other Sperryville residents also oppose the rezoning, including Sperryville businessman Kerry Sutten of the Sperryville Community Alliance.
“I would request you deny this application at this time,” he wrote, “to allow time for a community planning process to help de ne what we, the residents of Sperryville, want to be our future. This approach is commonsense and particularly appropriate given a vast majority of the residents of Sperryville oppose this zoning change.”