"Parents and other city residents fighting to keep the Jefferson Preschool at its Fourth Street NW location are not without allies on the city council.

'It's incumbent upon us (as the city council) to set a more realistic budget,' Councilor Kevin Lynch told the Charlottesville school board and city residents during Tuesday night's meeting. He said the council gives the school board about $1.2 million per year for capital projects but that doesn't go far when spread over 10 large buildings.

'I wish I was speaking for the entire city council,' he said.

'Jefferson school is a beautiful building and it needs to be preserved. The Jefferson Preschool program also needs to be preserved.'

Lynch's advice?

'Don't be bashful about coming to us as the city council to say you want this,' he said, adding that during the next couple of weeks they will be going over the budget for next year.

'The Jefferson Preschool is a source of great pride to our school system,' noted fellow councilor Meredith Richards. 'The prepoponderance of the evidence shows that Jefferson Preschool is better served as a centralized program.' She believes the historic building should be reserved and used for educational purposes.

Richards told the assembly that other schools across the Commonwealth have used a combination of federal and state tax credits for historic restoration, private contributions and grants to renovate their buildings.

'I would like to see the school board and city council consider working together with the community,' she said.

The school board voted in 1997 to no longer invest in repairs at the building, leaving it in need of plumbing and heating repairs as well as with much peeling paint. While lack of money is cited as the culprit behind the building's woes, one city resident doesn't buy it.

'We bombed Berlin (in World War II),' Wyatt Johnson told the board. 'We tore it down (but through) the Marshall Plan we built it up. When we say we can't do it, I don't buy it.'

And Johnson had a warning for the board.

'Every time one of your names comes up what do you think people are going to say?' he asked. 'Who's going to get the blame?' " (Bill Dolack, The Observer, January 16, 2002)