After 80 years of business, C’ville furniture business Gilmore, Hamm & Snyder is shutting down this month. Owner Greg Hamm died of cancer earlier this year, and his wife, Ann, just can’t do it alone. Of its history, Annie Johnson writes in today’s Daily Progress:
Gilmore, Hamm & Snyder was created in 1925 when Strothers F. Hamm and William H. Snyder became partners in a furniture business with John Gilmore, who had founded the business in 1902. The company moved to its current location in Seminole Square from the Downtown Mall in 1989, seeking a better space to display furniture.
The store is closed now, but it will reopen on Friday morning, selling off all of their furniture and they close down.
I wonder if there are any future Gilmore, Hamm & Snyders just now starting up, companies that we’ll look back on fondly in 2085, or if the rise of niche megacorporations in the past few decades has made such companies a thing of the past.
Train whistles will be silenced once again, WINA reports. In June, the Federal Railroad Administration enacted new regulations on the use of train horns, requiring Norfolk Southern to blow their whistle at all public grade crossings in 13 communities around Virginia, including Charlottesville. The loud whistles annoyed people across the state, particularly folks living near tracks who found themselves woken several times each night by the whistling. The return of quiet in town is a result of Charlottesville gaining status as a quiet zone, which takes effect on August 12.
The question of whether the Charlottesville School Board should be elected will be on the November ballot. A press release issued today by the folks who have spearheaded the movement says that the Charlottesville registrar, Sheri Iachetta, certified that 10% of registered voters had signed the petition, validating its place on the ballot. Virginia referenda generally pass, so this is likely the first major step towards moving to an elected school board.
The concept of an elected school board is one that started among Republicans a few years ago. They were unable to get any traction until the Scottie Griffin saga, which left many community members unhappy with the school board. From there, the floodgates opened.
Coincidentally, it was just this week that the news emerged that Portsmouth is looking to move back to an appointed school board, in an effort to repair the combative, racially divided board. The board has recently been caught up in a legal battle over their choice of superintendent. If they succeed, they’d be the first Virginia municipality to revert to an appointed school board since elected school boards became an option in 1992.
(Via Rick Sincere)
08/10 Update: James Fernald has a story in today’s Daily Progress.
Last week, 18-year-old Kelly Watt died of the effects of heat stroke, a result of going running on a recent 100° day in Free Union. The surprising death of a healthy, young individual has drawn attention to the dangers of training in such high temperatures. In Saturday’s Daily Progress, Jerry Miller wrote:
“Kelly’s death gave us all cause to consider, ‘Are we doing everything we can?’” Isaacs said. “You can tell area coaches are conscious about it. It’s not the olden days anymore. We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had any deaths [in football locally], but that’s because we are all overly cautious about things.”
Albemarle football coach Rick Vrhovac added, “It certainly changes your awareness without a doubt.”
Kelly was an intern at The Hook last summer and their sports columnist (”Sports Wrap”) for the past year. Here’s one of his last columns.
Eight Central Virginia candidates for House of Delegates spoke at the Senior Statesmen of Virginia forum yesterday afternoon: Delegate Watkins Abbitt, Jr (I-59), Delegate Rob Bell (R-58) David Cox (D-24 challenger) Peter deFur (D-56 challenger), Steve Koleszar (D-58 challenger), Delegate Steve Landes (R-25), Tom McCrystal (R-57 candidate) and David Toscano (D-57 candidate). The only really notable bit was when the forum took a turn for the weird when Del. Abbitt said that having Del. Mitch Van Yahres moderate “was something like getting Osama bin Laden to negotiate a peace between the U.S. and Iraq.” Bob Gibson has the story in today’s Progress.
Thanks to the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, you can listen to the whole thing on-line. It can be downloaded as a 21MB MP3, or simply streamed. It’s an hour and a half long.
Livestock escape from the Albemarle Stock Yard every so often. This morning, at 4am, officers were dispatched to handle an escaped steer. So one officer — I swear I’m not making this up — decided to tackle the cow. Impressively, he managed to knock the thing down, but it came back up and was understandably unhappy. It came after the officer, knocking him down. A couple of well-placed darts put the steer to sleep. Presumably, it’s home now. If I was him, next time, I’d wait for the guy with the darts to show up.
Venton Blandin has the story at the CharlottesvilleMegaSuperNewsPlex.
Twenty-four year-old Erin Crowe has gained national fame in the past couple of days as word has spread about her oil paintings of Alan Greenspan. Cable news networks and major newspapers have been profiling the UVa grad and the surprising popularity of the works, which she created for a local art show a couple of years ago. She told the Post “He has a great face for portraiture. Each painting I did, I wanted to do more…. It’s fascinating, his hands, the wrinkles in his face, his forehead, his combover.” CNN’s got the skinny, or you could just turn on your TV.
From the Charlottesville Podcasting Network:
Does Central Virginia have enough water to quench the thirst of everyone who wants to live here? The community pulled together during the drought of 2002 to help conserve water, but will there be enough the next time weather patterns shift to deny rainfall? On the Sunday, August 14th edition of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wakeup Call, a panel of experts debate plans to increase storage capacity, and the prospects of more pipelines bringing more water in from surrounding communities. Guests include Morgan Butler from the Southern Environmental Law Center, Liz Palmer from the League of Women Voters and John Martin with the Friends of the Moormans River. The governmental perspective comes from Charlottesville Mayor David Brown.
Available as a streaming MP3 or as a downloadable MP3.
By the way, David Hendrick had a nice article in the Daily Progress a few weeks ago about Sean Tubbs’ Charlottesville Podcasting Network that well worth the read for anybody wondering what the heck this thing is.
In the Progress a few days ago, Kate Andrews had the amusing story of a Rt. 66 sign gone awry. Were it not on the wrong side of 250, they could have just covered the thing up for a decade until the sprawl runs clear to Gainesville, making the sign actually useful.
In June, the Daily Progress and WINA reported two different versions of the same story — in one, a police officer collided with two cars, while in another, two cars collided with her car. The family of the 17-year-old girl blamed in the accident accused the police of a cover-up, saying that the police officer was at fault. They’ve now been vindicated, as John Yellig reported in the Progress this weekend:
Traffic charges against a Charlottesville teen who crashed into an Albemarle County police cruiser were dismissed Friday, supporting the girl’s assertion that the officer was at fault, her family said.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Richard A. DeLoria declined to prosecute Alicia Parolisi, 17, on the charge of failing to yield to an emergency vehicle.
[…]
Two other charges, driving outside of restrictions and driving while not licensed, were dismissed at Parolisi’s hearing, which was held in Albemarle Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
Score one for the little guy.
Branching out from their evening newscasts, new C’ville TV stations CBS-19 and ABC-16 debuted a new morning show last Friday, “Good Morning Charlottesville”. The two-hour long broadcast apparently appears on both networks (I don’t get either station, so I really don’t know). To make the show happen, the staff has to arrive at work in the middle of the night, which is either “torture” or it leaves the anchors “chipper,” depending on who you believe.
The two new stations are trying to chip away NBC-29’s decades-old market share. With the recent addition of Fox, it’s increasingly clear that the Atlanta-based Gray Television is trying to bludgeon NBC into losing market share through sheer number of stations.
Thanks to Jim Winthrope for the tip.
David Sewell writes: “There has been a lot of grumbling about the fact that Panera uses the SonicWALL Internet content filtering service to block access to sites that patrons might deem objectionable. Problem is, it doesn’t just block graphic porn sites: it blocks, for example, sites that SonicWALL categorizes as “Cult/Occult”. These include innocuous sites like the parodic Church of the Subgenius, and freethought sites like the Brights Network and the Universist Movement. On the other hand, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family website is for some unknown reason currently put into “Category 46 - Vehicles”!
If you want to play with checking different sites’ SonicWALL rating: http://www.sonicwall.com/products/cfs.html (form on right-hand side)”
I see that my personal site is a “Usenet News Group,” and that cvillenews.com is, sadly, “Gambling.” In fact, every single site that I checked is wrongly listed. Good for Panera for offering free WiFi. But I could do without the censorware.
An odd coalition of urban designer Gary Okerlund, Delegate Mitch Van Yahres, and former deputy city manager and Council candidate Bern Ewert has proposed the establishment of a new 16-mile road paralleling Rt. 29, in place of the $350M western bypass. As Kate Andrews reports in today’s Daily Progress, Ewert has come up with a way to link up parts of 606, Earlysville Road, and Hydraulic to create a contiguous two-lane path that avoids much of the sprawl of 29 North, taking traffic from south of UVa to north of Ruckersville.
New construction would be needed in a couple of places: a bridge over the bypass at the new North Grounds Connector, and a strip of asphalt between 641 and 33. They figure it would cost between $70M-$140, and could handle 20,000 cars each day. At this point, it’s nothing more than three people tossing around an idea, but the vastly reduced cost may make it a tempting alternative to the near-mythical western bypass.
I ran against Bern Ewert for the Democratic nomination for C’ville City Council back in 2002. I thought at the time that he’d make a much better city manager than a city councilor, but he had some pretty interesting ideas for our transportation infrastructure. This looks like another interesting idea from him.
Albemarle County has bought a some new fleet vehicles: a pair of Ford Escape hybrids. Jessica Kitchin (who is seems to be new — welcome!) writes in today’s Progress:
The sport utility vehicles will be used for county business, mostly for those who need four-wheel drive to visit construction sites or navigate dangerous weather. Rising gas prices and an opportunity to be an environmental model to the community were the main forces behind the county’s decision to purchase the fuel-efficient vehicles.
[…]
The county also plans to add two Toyota Priuses to its nine-car fleet within six months.
[…]
County spokeswoman Lee Catlin said that the vehicles, as well as the recent green roof planted on the County Office Building, demonstrate the county’s environmental mindset.
“We want to put our money where our mouth is,” she said. “If we’re going to encourage members of the community to make environmental changes, we need to demonstrate that these options are viable.”
Hybrids generally pay for themselves in a few years, in gas price savings. As gas prices continue to rise, with little reason to think that they’ll drop in the foreseeable future, this is both a good financial move on the part of the county and a fine example for them to set.
Lori writes to point out that Wednesday’s USA Today reports on a study by the National City Corp. that names Charlottesville in their list of housing markets where “prices are 30% above where the study estimates they should be based on historic price data, area income, mortgage rates and population density.” On the list of “metro areas that are extremely overvalued and vulnerable to price correction” we’re the 71st most severe in the nation, ranking just behind Asheville and Cambridge, with our residential property overvalued by an estimated 24%.
I’m just waiting for Jim Duncan to weigh in.
Folks outside of Charlottesville and central Albemarle are out of luck when it comes to broadband. Practically speaking, it’s dial-up or nothing. So yesterday’s news of coming change must come as happy news to thousands of Virginians. David Hendrick wrote in yesterday’s Progress:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development office has awarded a roughly $19 million loan to International Broadband Electric Communications Inc., an outfit specializing in delivering broadband Internet over existing power lines.
Customers of Central Virginia Electric Cooperative in 11 Virginia counties are expected to benefit, including those in Albemarle, Buckingham, Nelson, Fluvanna, Louisa and Orange.
The technology is already being beta tested by 80 households in Nelson, apparently with success. It’s scheduled to be available by the end of the year, with speeds from 256kbps up to 3mbps. BPL is just one of many proposed “last mile” solutions, which is the method of getting data from the nearly-ubiquitous fat pipes zigzagging the country to each and every home in the nation. Orange County is considering solving this problem with wireless, but Nelson’s mountainous terrain makes BPL far more attractive.
Rich Collins, erstwhile candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 57th HoD race, has filed suit against Shoppers World over his arrest for campaigning there in May. Collins was introducing himself to voters in the parking lot in front of Whole Foods when Shoppers World manager Charles Lebo asked him to leave. When Lebo said that he’d let others campaign there, just not Collins, the Democrat refused to leave. Though the resultant arrest for may have actually helped his support at the ballot box a few weeks later, he still lost to former mayor David Toscano.
The suit against Lebo and Shoppers World has being filed jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Rutherford Institute (strange bedfellows), who argue that shopping centers are substantially public for purposes of protected first amendment expression, such as conversation between a candidate and a voter, and that, subject to “reasonable time, place and manner” restrictions, they should not be permitted to bar candidates. One of Collins’ attorneys points out roadways in shopping centers are regulated as public; not such that VDOT maintains them, but it is illegal to drive under the influence of alcohol in a shopping center’s lot. The purpose of the suit is not money — Collins wants the right to return to the shopping center to campaign for David Toscano.
Central to the suit is the matter of the loss of public space. The Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead says: “As corporations and shopping centers get bigger, where do people go? They go to the shopping centers. It’s the only place where people can congregate, where people can exchange ideas, leaflets.”
Liesel Nowak has the story in today’s Daily Progress. There’s also the ACLU’s press release and the suit itself (36k PDF).
WINA has announced the creation of a new daily sports show, “The Best Seat in the House.” The 6pm-7pm talk show will be hosted by WINA sports director Jed Williams and a rotating panel of guests, with Al Groh, Dave Leitao and Howie Long already named as regulars. It starts on Monday.
There’s so little local talk radio these days, I figure any new show deserves credit.
WINA reports:
City Council is seeking applicants for appointment to one of seven boards. Those include the Planning Commission, JAUNT, JABA, the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority, the Community Block Grant Task Force, the Personnel Appeals Board and the Social Services Advisory Board. City spokesman Maurice Jones says those interested should call Clerk of City Council Jeannie Cox at 970-3113 or send an e-mail to coxj@charlottesville.org. Applications are due by September 1st.
Become a part of the solution — apply for a board position.
Yesterday and today, Annie Johnson has had a trio of articles [1,2,3] in the Daily Progress on the topic of illegal dumping.
The materials being dumped tend to be large objects that need to be taken to the Ivy Landfill. But the high costs of the tipping fees ($66/ton for construction debris; compare to an average of $40.32/ton in the rest of the state) seem to be deterring people, leaving landowners footing the cleanup bill when they discover washing machines and couches in their stream. Very rarely do people get caught, and it’s not altogether clear of what the solution is.
I’ve had a gnarly old mattress sitting in a spare bedroom for the past eight months. After all, it’s a long drive to the Ivy Landfill. If I were just a slightly less-decent individual, I can see how that mattress would be neither here nor at the landfill.
From tomorrow until Sunday the 11th, I will be turning the site over to a pair of guest bloggers: Cari, of Drunk on Democracy, and Duane Gran. Cari is a fourth-year at UVa and one of my favorite bloggers. Duane has been a cvillenews.com reader and poster (username: “ragnar”) since the site’s earliest days, and is much smarter than me. I read each of their blogs daily, as I have for a long time, and I think y’all will enjoy their writing as much as I do.
I have asked them, simply, to write about Charlottesville. Outside of that, they’re welcome to ignore how I have long done things. Maybe they’ll write essays, maybe they’ll spend their time linking to Charlottesville blogs, maybe they’ll upload videos of interpretive dance about Sally Hemmings. I have no idea. And that’s what I like about it. I’ve long considered having other people contribute to the site, and made no secret that I feel the weakest part of this site is that I run it, so I look forward to the results of this experiment.
I leave for the Outer Banks on Friday. My fiancee and I will be wed there on Sunday, and spend a week vacationing. I won’t have the faintest idea of what’s going on on the internets, so y’all play nice.
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