The Charlottesville Democratic Party held a candidates’ forum yesterday afternoon, with incumbents Meredith Richards and Kevin Lynch, and newcomer David Brown discussing the Meadowcreek Parkway and affordable housing. (Candidate Kendra Hamilton was unable to attend.) Reportedly, Brown came off as unassertive and muted, with Richards and Lynch presumably offering no surprises in the way of presentation. Richards took the opportunity to renew her suggestion that a referendum be held on the topic of the Meadowcreek Parkway. The next forum is scheduled for 7:30pm on Thursday night, at City Council chambers, and is sponsored by the Virginia Organizing Project and the Public Housing Association of Residents. See Liz Nelson’s story in today’s Progress for the skinny.
Archive for February, 2004
Jim writes: The holiday continues for Albemarle County school children. What is the argument for Spring Break? Will the kids be able to make up these days? A colleague argued yesterday that because public school is “free,” then the system has to accomodate everybody. Is it right to allow children to stay home, rather than face a wee bit of adversity in getting to school?
What amazes me is that, in every year in memory, there are more snow days than expected, and school officials are scrambling to figure out what to do, come spring. You’d think they’d see a pattern emerging.
In this week’s Hook, Lisa Provence has a review of all four Democratic nominee candidates — David Brown, Kendra Hamilton, Kevin Lynch, and Meredith Richards — including a brief Q&A with each and a bit of background, for the unfamiliar. By way of reminder, the Republican nomination convention is tonight (I think; their website doesn’t say) and the Democrats nomination convention is Saturday, at the County Office Building at 12:30. City residents, please be sure to show up and cast your vote.
Big_Al writes: The Senate Transportation Committee passed a bill calling on the state to build a 29 bypass around Charlottesville “as soon as practicable.” County Board vice-chairman Dennis Rooker remarked “There is no precedent for this kind of punitive legislation against localities,” while city councillor Blake Caravati commented “we believe that if this is kept local, it can be solved locally.” The Progress has the article.
Belle writes: Federal prosecutors yesterday dropped capital murder charges against Darrel Rice for the May 1996 slayings of two women in Shenandoah National Park. There are stories in the Progress and the Post.
I hiked the AT that year, and was quite relieved when Rice was caught. I have a hard time believing that Rice didn’t kill Lollie and Julianne, but I figure that the feds know more than I do.
In this evening’s meeting of the Charlottesville Republicans, they nominated two candidates for Council, Kenneth Jackson and Ann Reinicke, WINA reports. Jackson is the president of the Ridge Street Neighborhood Association, and has been talking about running for Council since November. Reinicke is a block captain for Prospect-Orangedale, and has worked at UVa for 20 years. 02/10 Update: Liz Nelson has the story in the Progress.
On Saturday, Al Weed officially launched his campaign for U.S. Congress, running against Republican incumbent Virgil Goode. Weed spent the day making a series of kickoff announcements in Martinsville, Danville, South Boston, Farmville, Rustburg, Lovingston, and ending up in Charlottesville. The Democrat is a Nelson County farmer who has spent 42 years on active and reserve duty in the army (including serving in special ops). David Dadurka has the story in today’s Progress.
Disclaimer: I volunteer for Al Weed’s campaign.
Charlottesville plans to upgrade its 20-year-old computer system to a unified SAP-based structure, in an effort to streamline processes within the city and make it easier for the public to interact with the city on-line. Within the next year, they intend to offer the sort of web-based services that Boston does, and the plan is to have everything integrated within 2-3 years. CityLinks, as they’re calling the system, will cost $6.6M, and is being paid for entirely out of city coffers. Elizabeth Nelson has the story in today’s Progress.
After Meredith Richards’ failure to secure the Democratic nomination earlier this month, there has been a lot of discussion about what it means. Is it because of her support for the Meadowcreek Parkway? Was eight years simply enough? Did newcomers Kendra Hamilton and David Brown simply present more attractive options to the nomination convention? In an extensive article (by Daily Progress standards), Liz Nelson considers the causes and potential impact of the ousting of Richards.
Louisa Police Chief John Wilson, who has been charged with assault and battery of a town police officer, has resigned from his job. Wilson is scheduled to appear in court in two weeks to face the charges. In a posting on Louisaonline.com, Wilson wrote that he plans to move back to Hampton Roads and continue to work in law enforcement. Braxton Williams has the story in today’s Progress.
A couple of weeks ago, the much-debated Hollymead Town Center project, a huge shopping center under development in Hollymead (which is not, in fact, a town) was the victim of some $30,000 in vandalism. But it wasn’t your regular vandalism — the perps left a banner reading “Your construction = long-term destruction — ELF.” The Earth Liberation Front describes themselves as “an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the natural environment.” They estimate that they’ve done $100M in damage to those businesses who “profit from the destruction of life and the planet.” ELF issued a press release taking credit for the attack, describing the action as “part of the ELF’s ongoing actions against large-scale developments going up at the expense of what little green space is left in North America.” Lisa Provence has the story in The Hook.
One year after Fridays After 5 became a paid event, they’re reverting to being free of charge. This comes after the Charlottesville Downtown Foundation, the organization that runs Fridays After 5, lost two thirds of its sponsorship budget from Virginia State Lottery (had its budget cut), Adelphia Cable (declared bankruptcy, in serious legal trouble), SunCom (slackers?) and Technicolor (fired 750 people, moved to Guadalajara). It didn’t help any that it seemed to rain mightily last summer, but only on Fridays — a third of the year’s concerts were rained out. The organization intends to return to featuring local acts, the city has agreed to lower their usage fees, and things are a bit cloudy beyond that, because of the planned extension of the east end of the Downtown Mall. Lisa Provence has the story in this week’s Hook, and Liz Nelson has the story in yesterday’s Progress.
In a startling revelation by Liz Nelson and Reed Williams in the Daily Progress, Republican City Council candidate Kenneth Jackson has been found to have been convicted four times for assault and battery, with a knife on three of those occasions. In 1985, the 18-year-old Jackson stabbed a classmate several times; in 1990, he got in a fight, assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest; in 1993, he went after a coworker with a knife; and in 1994, he cut a man in the torso after the man slapped him. Jackson sees no reason why any of this should concern voters. “They were years ago,” he said. “That’s one of the great things about our society. It gives you a chance to change.”
cvillenews.com has a new neighbor — CvilleIndyMedia, a local iteration of the the Independent Media Center family of sites. The site is run by Alexis Ziegler, and should be familiar-looking to anybody reading this site. The major feature of CvilleIndyMedia is that it’s democratically-run: instead of having submissions run through an approval process, anybody can post a story about anything, making it a truly open site. Assuming that CvilleIndyMedia sticks to the approach used by most Indymedia sites, its focus will be on progressive social change, such as environmentalism, sustainability, peace, equality, animal rights and, of course, politics.
It was one year ago today that UVa Student Council president candidate Daisy Lundy reported that she had been the victim of a racist assault perpetrated to force her out the running for office. Lundy was elected after her opponent withdrew from the race, shortly after the FBI opened an investigation into the attack. In October, the case went before a grand jury, but nothing has come of that thus far. On cvillenews.com, Lundy’s story was poked full of holes and generally met with great skepticism (and elsewhere, too), so the news that the case remains open with no known leads will come as little surprise to many. Kate Andrews has the story in today’s Progress.
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