Mike Comer, president of Glenmore Country Club, is missing after taking a walk at Wintergreen, CBS 19 reports. He owns property at Wintergreen, and left on a walk at noon yesterday. When he didn’t return by early evening, his wife contacted the police. Search crews have checked the thirty miles of trails that web Wintergreen, so presumably they’ll now start checking off-trail.
10:10 PM Update: Police have called off the search for Comer, Liz Nagy reports for NBC 29, and they say that they don’t intend to resume it. The Nelson sheriff is a bit cagy in his description of the matter, implying that Comer has disappeared of his own accord.
- The now-defunct Dew Drop in, on Scottsville’s main drag, the iconic restaurant of the town. (Nannette Saunders / CC)
Scottsville Town Council has voted down a plan to hike their meals tax, Jason Bacaj writes in today’s Progress. In a 3-3 vote they decided not to increase the tax by 1%, to 5%, with one councilor saying that it “sends a bad signal” while they’re “trying to get new restaurants to town.” The increase would have brought in an estimated $20,000 annually. The price of gasoline is high enough that I can’t see that it would have made a difference from the perspective of a customer; if you live in Scottsville, it’s not worth the drive to C’ville, and if you don’t, then the cost of driving there is going to exceed significantly the additional pocket change that the tax would run you.
Bacaj, incidentally, is a recent hire at the Progress. He’s a newly-minted graduate from Washington & Lee University, where his bio at the school newspaper indicates that he was a member of their football team, he’s a skiier, he double-majored in biology and journalism, and he hails from Morgantown.
Well, here’s a can of worms: The city is beginning the process of redeveloping its public housing, Hawes Spencer writes for The Hook, and everything is on the table. A series of community meetings are scheduled to determine what to do—demolish and rebuild, fix them up, or nothing—and no doubt they’ll be contentious gatherings. There’s no mistaking that our public housing stock is in rough shape, but with residents that are, for various reasons, often not engaged in the larger community, the road ahead for any redevelopment is perilous for everybody involved.
Judge Jay Swett has ruled against the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park in their lawsuit to halt the Meadowcreek Parkway, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. He found that four of the six parties bringing the lawsuit have standing, but ruled that the state constitution’s requirement that a supermajority of City Council vote to sell any land isn’t applicable here, because use of the land is being provided via an easement and not actually sold. Therefore the 3-2 City Council vote that’s already been held is sufficient to proceed with construction.
Those who are legally inclined can read Judge Swett’s ruling.
Scottsville’s Mink Creek flooded a bunch of Scottsville on Friday evening, Liz Palka reports for CBS-19. Apparently it rained a lot there on Friday (though I can’t find any record of that from nearby weather stations), which was enough for the downtown creek to jump its banks and leave some homes and businesses with the stream running across their floors.
The odd thing about this is that Scottsville spent millions of dollars to prevent this very thing from happening. Though obviously the James River is the real danger for Scottsville, Mink Creek has been a source of flooding problems for more than a century. That’s why Mink Creek was dammed up in 1975, as a part of the larger project to protect Scottsville from the periodic floods that devastated the town. What with the lack of a hurricane on Friday, it’s tough to understand what happened here. Thanks to “TrvlnMn” for the tip.
Slade Woodson has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, the Daily Progress reports. One of the pair of teenaged route 64 snipers, Woodson pleaded guilty to fourteen charges related to firing a .22 into homes and vehicles on the night of March 26, 2008. The total sentence was actually 150 years, but Judge Cheryl Higgins suspended 135 years. This is apparently on top of the two years he was already sentenced to on six other charges.
In today’s Daily Progress, Brandon Shulleeta writes about a pair of rural landowners with a family subdivision who are upset that they can’t divide their land one more time. Ronnie and Janie Matheny had seventeen acres, but they divided it up to give some land to their various kids. Now they want to carve off two of their 4.9 acres for their grandson, but they’re all out of development rights. So they had to appeal to the Board of Supervisors for special dispensation to break the rules, who turned them down in a 4-2 vote, Lindsay Dorrier and Ken Boyd dissenting. Boyd says that an exception should have been made. Republican Rodney Thomas, who is challenging incumbent Democrat David Slutzky, is making a campaign issue out of it, saying that he “more than likely” would have granted an exception to the Mathenys.
The trick here is that all family subdivisions are for family members, so allowing anybody to build more houses than zoning permits because “it’s for family” basically eliminates the notion of limiting the number of development rights in a family subdivision. There may well be criteria under which exceptions should be granted, but if those criteria run counter to the notion of family subdivisions, then they cease to be a logical way to divide up land.
By way of acknowledging conflicts of interest, I a) own land in a family subdivision and b) recently had Ronnie Matheny and his son come out to my land about drilling a well, which I expect to hire them to do.
Neighbors of the new public pool on Meade Park aren’t thrilled about its lack of parking, Gordon Block writes for The Hook. The pool complex can accommodate 225 people, but the parking lot—which appears to basically use all of the available land—can only fit 36 cars. There’s plenty of on-street parking, but folks who live in houses on and around Meade Avenue use those spaces to park their own cars. No problemo, though—City Council intends to limit some spaces to residents, and provide permits to folks who live nearby, once they’ve observed how much strain the pool places on existing parking. But some residents are angry that the pool will open this weekend without the permitting program already being in place.
Given that Council already has plans to solve the problem, it’s not clear that there’s anything to be done here. It’ll be interesting to see if this is actually a problem tomorrow.
An independent candidate is running for city sheriff, Christine Mora reports for NBC-29. Charlottesville Police Department detective Paul Best works on the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, and says that if elected he’d implement the Gang Reduction and Intervention Program in Charlottesville. The only other candidate in the race is Democrat James Brown.
- The Lewis and Clark statue, photographed by Alexander Kurashev / CC
A plaque was dedicated to Sacajawea at a ceremony at the Lewis and Clark statue today, Dave McNair writes for The Hook. The statue has been the subject of protest for its depiction of an apparently cowering Sacajawea—in fact, the Shoshone teenager served as a translator and, at times, a guide—which is what motivated the city to commission the plaque honoring her.
Anybody interested in the context of how this statute came to be will appreciate Michie Company-printed 1919 booklet detailing the unveiling exercises. Mayor W.M. Forrest spoke—thanking Paul Goodloe McIntire for providing the sculpture—UVA President Edwin Alderman presented the statue, Miss Virginia McIntire unveiled it, Judge R.T.W. Duke accepted it on behalf of the city, and Armistead Churchhill Gordon gave a rather lengthy historical discourse on the honored explorers.
Recent Comments