City Council voted last night to cut the real estate tax rate down to $1.00, the lowest that it’s been in some years, John Yellig reports in today’s Daily Progress. That cut is a result of skyrocketing assessment rates, requiring lower tax rates in order to maintain (or increase) income for the city. Even with the cut, there will still be an effective tax increase for most residents.
Archive for April, 2006
There’s been a lot of discussion of the knowns, the unknowns, and the what-the-hells? in the case of the four teenagers convicted in the school bombing conspiracy case.
On Wednesday, the Daily Progress‘ Liesel Nowak wrote about the now-named 15-year-old convicted in the case, Alan Newsom, talking with father Fred Newsom about the boy. The name will ring a bell for many: the boy sued Jack Jouett in 2002 after they refused to let him wear his NRA t-shirt at school. The school system’s case was terrible, and Newsom defeated them in court in early 2004, which was a public embarrassment for the Albemarle schools. I have to wonder if he was targeted in this matter as a form of retribution.
Nowak also identified the 16-year-old who pled guilty, WAHS student Dominc Hawranke, saying that he may be in prison until he’s 21. She wrote that she couldn’t learn how the case of the two 13-year-olds ended, because “authorities have said privacy laws prevent them from disclosing the outcomes of the cases.” The very next day, though, Nowak wrote that the two 13-year-olds were found guilty, with the court apparently having changed their minds on what could be released.
Sheila Pell has a piece in this week’s Hook for which she interviewed Fred Newsom and noted local children’s attorney Andy Block, speculating as to what these kids’ futures hold.
Also, Lisa Provence also has coverage of Jim Camblos’ bungling of the case in the current Hook, complete with Camblos denying that he ever said there was a gag order. I have to wonder if Camblos will make good on his threat to go after reporters who print any details of the case.
Finally, Rick Sincere has a thoughtful blog entry on Alan Newsom, what “conspiracy” really means, and about what the lesson is to other students. I’m inclined to agree with Rick’s conclusions.
The Virginia Film Festival has announced this year’s theme: “Revelations: Finding God at the Movies,” Jessica Kitchin reports in today’s Progress. No specific films have been named for the October 26-9 event; on the contrary, festival director Richard Herskowitz has established a a blog to solicit ideas for what films should be shown. There are no comments posted yet, so now’s your chance to influence the line-up.
UVa’s Board of Visitors has presented their plan for the first phase of the South Lawn Project, 
the $105M extension of the Lawn across JPA, Melanie Mayhew reports in today’s Daily Progress. UVa has a webpage about the project, complete with sketches of what the new buildings will look like, a useful press release, and the audio of UVa architect David Neuman explaining what will make the project so challenging. Work is set to start next year and wrap up at the end of 2009.
Coran Capshaw plans to create a pretty sizeable development on the land immediately surrounding the coal tower on Water Street, Lisa Provence reports in this week’s Hook. He intends to keep the coal tower standing, but to surround it with 64 townhouses, 118 condos, restaurants, retail, and 506 parking spaces both under and above ground. One building is slated to soar nine stories, quite high by Charlottesville standards.
No story about the coal tower can avoid recounting the 2001 coal tower shootings, in which 20-year-old Craig Nordenson murdered 16-year-old Katie Johnson and 20-year-old Marcus Griffin, followed by a tense standoff between Nordenson and police [1, 2, 3, 4] that ended with him being taken into custody and, ultimately, pleading guilty and being sent to prison.
Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week.
Patience, tracking the renovation of her Belmont home, explains why so many houses in the neighborhood are stuccoed and about her efforts to de-stucco her own dwelling. Turns out stucco is basically concrete, and a real bummer to remove.
Bill Emory’s weekly “day of rest” photograph features his hands and those of his twin daughters on the grave of Rear Admiral William Hemsley Emory (1846-1917). I look forward to his Sunday photo every week.
Dave Norris isn’t happy about the second cross street on the Downtown Mall, pointing out that Council chose to ignore the Planning Commission’s 5-2 opposition to the street back in January. The new street will eat up $0.03 of each property tax dollar.
Elisabeth Epps posted a Flickr set of her recent accident on Millmont St., when she was hit by a car that crossed the center lane. I love that she took the time to snap a mirror photo during the ordeal.
Another Flickr series comes from Zion Crossroads EMT-E Jason See, who provides some great photos of a FedEx truck that caught fire in Louisa [1, 2, 3].
Colten Noakes speculates that the Preston Ave. Bodo’s is getting WiFi, though admits that he might just be starting a rumor.
Anoop Ranganath continues reviewing his dining experiences of the week. Bodo’s always good, el Puerto not so great, Basil pretty good, Amigo’s mediocre, South Street improved but uninteresting, Tea Time Desires enjoyable, Marco and Luca’s dumplings newly-questioned (they’re frozen?), China King Buffet not good, and Foods of All Nations the best of the week.
When I spot a great sunset or an amazing cloud formation, I can always count on Trish to snap a picture so I don’t have to. She doesn’t disappoint this week, with a lovely picture of the crazy storm that rolled into town Monday evening.
Jennifer is unhappy that the city is tearing down trees on Locust Ave. and that they’re not even going to replace all of them.
Dan Kachur just can’t hold back: he hates the Kroger on Hydraulic. Having worked in a grocery store, he knows: that place sucks.
Finally, Sally’s head just exploded when she had a realization: Bert & Ernie = Larry & Balky.
Charlottesville’s Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression has announced the winners of their 2006 Jefferson Muzzles, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Daily Progress. The dubious honor goes to thirteen people and organizations this year, most notably President Bush and the Department of Justice.
My favorite winner would have to be the UConn students who heckled Ann Coulter to the point at which her presentation was drowned out by shouting; Coulter is an idiot, but that’s best proved by sitting back and letting her blabber on, not shouting at her.
A year after submitting their proposal to the Charlottesville School Board, backers of a character school have withdrawn their proposal, Sarah Barry writes in today’s Progress. Bobbi Snow and Sandy Richardson had planned for a grade 5-8 arts-based school for at-risk kids. Twice the Charter School Review Committee rejected the proposal (wanting to see a curriculum defined and a proper budget), leading the school board to ask the pair to enhance their plans and resubmit the proposal. Citing frustration, they’re looking to propose the school to the Albemarle school system.
Council passed the city’s annual budget last night, John Yellig writes in today’s Daily Progress. In the process they further cut the real estate tax rate from the planned $1.00 to $0.99, the biggest rate cut in city history. That’s thanks to the 18.8% spike in real estate assessments this year. No services were cut with the new budget.
Republican Rob Schilling voted against the budget, as always, preferring not to participate in the process. He demanded more tax cuts but couldn’t locate any corresponding services to eliminate. Sounds like a lot like our leadership in Richmond and D.C., don’t it?
As the trees turn green and my wife and I prepare to transfer our seedlings into the garden, I’ve found myself wanting to sign up for a share in a Community Supported Agriculture program. Having a weekly supply of fruits, vegetables, herbs and meats would be great. I see that Best of What’s Around is full up for the season, so they’re out. Does anybody have any experience with area CSA programs? Any recommendations?
The Hook reports on the 15-year-old would-be bomber’s punishment:
Amid the sobbing of family and friends, Judge Susan Whitlock committed the Albemarle High student found guilty of conspiring blow up two high schools to the Department of Juvenile Justice for 60 days, with a review May 23.
And in another development, sources revealed that the conviction was based not on any physical evidence or online communications but on a lawyerless interrogation between police and the 15-year-old boy. In court, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Darby Lowe asked that the boy be committed, citing his statement to the police that “We were just going to go to school and kill everybody we saw who wasn’t our friends.”
One would think that 60 days would include time served, but apparently not.
PVCC students have long been told that there’s an unofficial standard of UVa accepting all applicants who have completed the “transfer module,” the set of courses that UVa wants to see transfer students have under their belts. Now the schools have made it official—UVa will guarantee admission to any Virginia Community College System student that meets a basic set of requirements, Melanie Mayhew reports in today’s Progress. Those requirements include a 3.4 GPA, a grade of C or better in every course, and 54 transferrable credits distributed among seven types of courses.
This is a part of a statewide restructuring of higher education, so that more students can start off at a less-expensive community college before moving on to a four-year university. It saves students money, it saves colleges money, and it saves the state money. One likely effect will be students that would otherwise have started at a state university choosing to spend their first two years at their local community college, and those community colleges will need to have their capacity increased accordingly.
Seventeen student living wage activists are in their second day of staging a sit-in at Madison Hall, Stephanie Fees and Sarah Peeden report in the Cavalier Daily. It was just a month ago that UVa agreed to raise their minimum wage from $8.88 to $9.37/hour, but the newly reestablished living wage campaign at UVa is demanding $10.72 for the 809 UVa workers below that threshold. The students claim to be prepared to stay for the next couple of weeks. A rally was held at the rotunda, featuring NAACP chairman Julian Bond, and Professor Wende Marshall was arrested for trespassing yesterday evening when she attempted to enter Madison, the building that houses the office of President John Casteen.
The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has debated what to do about the Central Virginia water shortage for years. Expand the reservoirs? Build a new reservoir? Pipe water from the James River? Do nothing at all? In today’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin breaks the news that the RWSA has decided to expand the Ragged Mountain reservoir and build a pipeline between it and the South Fork Rivanna reservoir. That will capture the 97% of the precipitation that flows right over the dam on the Rivanna and store it in the 133-acres-larger Ragged Mountain. No timeline is described in the article; presumably this will take many years. At $130.5M, it’ll certainly be expensive.
Here are some of my favorite Charlottesville blog entries from the past week.
Dan Kachur discovered that we’re not as jaded about celebrities as we like to think that we are, demonstrated by Steve Carell and Molly Shannon.
Chuck Beretz reviews “The World’s Wife,” currently playing at Live Arts. He rules it good, but not great, but still recommends going.
Trish visited Orange and took lots of pictures. It’s a nice town, and often worth a Saturday visit. (I live as close to Orange as I do to downtown Charlottesville.)
C.R. is signing off—he’s graduating and moving home to Northern Virginia. It was a good run. I’ll keep reading, even if he’s not a Charlottesville blogger.
Anoop Ranganath continues his food reviews. Christian’s delicious. Café Europa great. Arch’s hit the spot. Take It Away OK. Amigo’s still uninteresting. La Taza average. Oakencroft wine worth buying, Hilltop Berry a lot of fun. Wine, Anoop? Sounds like you’re taking things up a notch. You should get together with Wineona.
David is pissed off about MLB steroid use, writing that they’ve deliberately turned a blind eye towards the problem. He prescribes five steps that must be taken to clean up baseball, some of which are both startling and smart.
Sean Tubbs podcasts an interview with The Thomas Jefferson Center’s Robert O’Neill about this year’s Muzzle Awards. Bob is absurdly intelligent. Listening to him speak for more than two minutes makes me feel like a drooling moron.
Marijean has an open letter to the woman at Harris Teeter. I got a good laugh out of it.
Rick Sincere reports on his birthday weekend in London, complete with birthday pictures and promises of show reviews, natch.
Jeannine doesn’t understand why Walker Square lets a homeless woman live in the utility closet next to her apartment. Having followed her blog, I think this may just be par for the course for Walker Square. That place is sketchy.
Zoe Krylova blogs about the Burning Spear concert at Starr Hill, finding its aromatheraputic aspects beneficial.
Darlene and Chris make a typical American meal. Typical chickpea gravy and typical pan-fried tofu. You know, regular stuff.
Finally, Laura took part in the UVa living wage protest, leading the protesters in “We Shall Not Be Moved” and “We Shall Overcome.” Complete with photos.
UVa president John Casteen and several other high-ranking UVa officials have met with the seventeen living wage protesters staging a sit-in, Chris Hall reports for The Cavalier Daily. Between 1:15am and 2:55am the parties engaged in negotiation talks, after which food was allowed to be given to the protesters, who have begun to run out. Casteen has posted a letter to the students on his website in which he proposes that they leave Madison Hall and that they work together in addressing the matter in a less disruptive manner. The students were given until 2pm today to provide a counterproposal; there’s nothing on the students website about that just yet.
Interestingly, none of these goings-on qualify as “The Latest News About the University of Virginia”—the university makes no mention of the protest on the site.
Out of curiosity, I’ve crunched the numbers on the cost of the living wage. I used Melanie Mayhew’s numbers on full-time and part-time employees at UVa that would be affected, assumed that part-time employees average twenty hours a week, and that all employees are paid for 51 weeks of work each year on average. That’s an additional cost of $42,120 each week, or $2,148,120/year. That’s less than the combined salary of just five UVa employees: Prof. Arthur Garson, Dr. R. Edward Howell, Prof. Irving Cron, Prof. Robert Harris, and Dr. Robert Cantrell. (The five best-paid employees at UVa, as of 2004.) Perhaps that provides a sense of scale.
All seventeen students protesting the living wage by staging a Madison Hall sit in have been arrested, Andy Mullan reports in The Cavalier Daily. Their refusal to leave was a planned act of civil disobedience, since the building has to close during off hours. They had recently provided their counterproposal to President John Casteen, and were described as being in the midst of negotiations. Some of the students wouldn’t leave under their own power, and were hauled into waiting police wagons.
The entire thing made for quite a spectacle. Assuming that media were present, or at least will use the student photos, this is not going to look good on Monday’s news. On the other hand, the idea might be to get it in the news tomorrow, on Easter, when few are likely to be watching. Who knows where things will go from here?
There are some good photos of the now-finished living wage protest and sit-in on Flickr, notably Billy Hunt’s pictures (you know him for his work in The Hook) and P. Hugh’s pictures. This is the first area event that has produced some decent Flickr documentation, at least that I’ve noticed.
For those who don’t know, Flickr is a venue for photoblogging. You can take pictures, post them to Flickr (for free), and others can view them there. For those who choose to make their photos available under an appropriate license, blogs like this one can then publish your photos, which is a great collaboration. It’s wonderful tool to facilitate citizen journalism.
Yesterday’s installment of WNRN’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call featured The Hook’s Fearless Consumer columnist, Barbara Nordin, discussing the 1986 disappearance of UVa student Patrick Collins. The entire show is available on-line thanks to Charlottesville Podcasting Network, as every week’s show is. The topic begins at 05:11 into the show. I have to admit that I was wholly unfamiliar with this case before listening, but it’s certainly an interesting story.
Sean Tubbs, of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, has begun a great new series on his site: conversations with Central Virginia bloggers. The first installment is a 20-minute long discussion with Chris and Darlene Bruce, who run Eat Air: A Vegan Food Log. Since November, the pair have posted daily blog entries about how to prepare meat-free, dairy-free dishes along with frank assessments of how they turned out.
For the past couple of months I’ve posted a “blog round up”—a weekly listing of my favorite recent Charlottesville blog entries. Now that I’ve got everybody used to the concept, this show is going on the road. That transforms this into what’s known as a “blog carnival,” a regularly-scheduled best-of listing that travels between member blogs. At first I’m going to reproduce the contents of the carnival here, but eventually I’ll just post a link. Jennifer boldly agreed to kick things off this week:
Waldo’s post on the Al Weed flyer leads to equally fascinating and thorough fact analysis via the comment section; reminding us all why the blogosphere rocks as a forum for discussion and analysis.
Politickchick column was linked on Salon.com. Politickchick also posts some hilarious responses to her Cav Daily columns. What a great idea for columnists to react to comments submitted in response to their columns.
I was reminded by Johnny Metro why I love cville, the ever changing, never boring views.
Outskirts despises most things about the village; complains yet again about the music from the downtown mall. The changes in sound should be coming in two weeks, so complain after the James Brown concert. City Mouse has a different perspective on the pavalion.
City Mouse’s ongoing saga with her neighbor living in the closet continues with an answer from the myopic property management company.
Anoop had to tell the world about the noodle bar on the Corner. I appreciate the weekly updates on where to eat since I never get to go anywhere (ok I did get to go to Mas, I recommend it highly to Anoop).
Brian Wheeler & Charlottesville Tomorrow provide a great service to the community with this particularly interesting post regarding Albemarle Place; shopping, traffic, gentrification, the future is now.
Eat Air got interviewed and made a delicious brunch- all with no meat, cheese, eggs um and other things. I enjoy the recipes because generally it makes the vegan life seem accessible. I am not a convert but I enjoy the idea of the alternative.
Fatuous Observations believes people don’t respect teachers because they talk over children’s presentations. I want to assure her that people are just rude.
There are a lot of new cvilleblogs from people who recently moved here. Matt Fotter is content and needs people to drink beer on the street with him (I have someone in mind); Rob adds some humor with this great post of a mangled subtitle. Rob & Matt might have a heck of a time together.
Finally StlWorkingmom posts some review haikus on recently watched DVD’s.
Thanks for reading, enjoy.
Next week, Duane Gran hosts.
John Grisham and George Garrett kick things off while the press looks on.
The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression unveiled their privately-funded, long-awaited free speech monument on the Downtown Mall this morning. The monument consists of a large Buckingham-minded slate chalkboard and a speaker’s podium, located in front of City Hall. Blog coverage is extensive, with The Hook, Outskirts, 2300 Days, Charlottesville Tomorrow, and Mayor David Brown all weighing in thus far. And Sean Tubbs has the audio at the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, natch. My mother’s got a Flickr set of the proceedings, as well as some of what was written.
From the photos, it looks like somewhere north of a hundred people attended, with John Grisham, David Brown, Boyd Tinsley, Dahlia Lithwick, and George Garrett speaking. At the beginning of the event, the chalkboard was blank; by the end, it was totally covered.
Disclaimer: I’m on the TJ Center Monument board, but it’s just a volunteer gig. But I missed the unveiling because I have the flu. Feh.
I must emerge from my influenza-haze long enough to acknowledge the Thursday death of Gene Worrell, which I learned of this morning. I worked for his grandson, Zack, in the late 90s, and I’ve long admired the musical and filmmaking talents of his granddaughter, Shannon. It’s through them that I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Worrell on several occasions. He was the very model of the American dream—he was self-made man, amassing a $170M fortune through his business enterprises. At one point he owned dozens of newspapers, radio, and TV stations across the state; his son sold the Daily Progress to Media General in 1995, 25 years after his father bought it from its founding family. Mr. Worrell was also well-known for his charity, giving enormous sums of money to causes large and small throughout his life. The phrase “pillar of the community” doesn’t quite do him justice. I can attest that he was a kind man and a gentle soul.
He was 86 years old.
After forty years, The Prism shut down last night, The Hook reports on their blog. The venue had planned a move to Gordonsville, but The Hook reports in this week’s issue that the plans had apparently fallen through. In an angry letter, Fred Boyce explains the shut down, describes his plans to “concentrate upon organizing and editing the extensive archive of live concert recordings we have made here since 1992,” and blames The Hook (who wrote about trouble at the Prism in 2004), Westminster Presbyterian Church (who owns their building) and WNRN (by allusion, for not mentioning Prism concerts) for the venue’s demise.
I enjoyed many a concert at The Prism. It’s a shame to see it go down like this.
Still not sure of who the three City Council candidates are, or what differentiates them from one another? See John Yellig’s handy candidate guide in today’s Progress.
I’ve been in bed with the flu / sinus infection / pink eye for over a week now, but now that I’m able to sit up straight, I’ll get all caught up on the news for your discussion pleasure. Sorry for the delay.
DMB manager / real estate mogul Coran Capshaw has made a deal to buy the Jefferson Theater from Hook editor Hawes Spencer, John Yellig reports in today’s Progress. Hawes bought the nearly century-old building back in 1992, running it as a two-screen second-run theater, renting out the upper stories as apartments, and renting out the two storefronts as retail. The space has an amazing history, Houdini and the Three Stooges being two of its most famous vaudeville shows. Hawes says that Coran intends to continue doing basically the same thing with it, only probably making money on it.
After I asked what the funny antennae on the traffic lights are here on cvillenews.com, Mayor Brown broke the news that traffic would be getting synchronized. In Monday’s Daily Progress, John Yellig explained the plan for lights to get synchronized across the city, and it sounds pretty impressive.
Right now West Main is synched up, but soon Emmet and Preston will likewise be synched up. Three employees will sit in the city’s Intelligent Transportation System Center on Fourth Street, watching traffic on closed-circuit TVs, and adjust the lights in real time during peak traffic hours. Later in the four-phase, $2M project, all 69 traffic signals in the city will be wired into the ITS. Councilor Kevin Lynch wants to see the buses wired into the system, giving them priority at traffic lights.
I, for one, welcome our new traffic overlords.
School Board and City Council elections are on Tuesday. I have to admit that I don’t even know enough about the School Board candidates to even pick from amongst them. For City Council I favor Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro, of course. Dave, in particular, I’ve known for years and admire greatly. It’s rare that such a fine human being can be persuaded to run for office. But I live in Stony Point, so I don’t even have a vote.
But that’s just to stir y’all up into writing something of your own. Who do you support for City Council and School Board, and why? I get the sense that a lot of people don’t know one School Board candidate from another at this point, so a compelling argument could well yield a good number of votes.
With the weekly blog round up gone mobile, Duane Gran hosts this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival:
[Jim Duncan] wrote this week about the various policies surrounding connected communities in central Virginia and Trish writes about the propensity of developers to burn organic refuge when clearing space.
In political news, the big fuss around town is the May 2 elections, with voter guides from Charlottesville Tomorrow and The Daily Progress (by way of cvillenews). Additionally, Brian Wheeler’s Charlottesville Tomorrow has a podcast of 4th City Council Candidate Forum. If local politics aren’t your thing, The Hook notes that Cindy Sheehan will be coming to town, but I expect that it won’t please our more conservative bloggers like Whitney Blake, who has been recognized for sowing “chaos, dissent, and apathy.”
Social justice made big news with the Living Wage campaign at UVa, but David Swanson puts it into larger perspective. C’ville News covered the unveiling of the free speech monument while also stimulating a pretty good discussion on the site. Who needs chalk? We have weblogs.
Too much time on your hands? Sean Tubbs would like a volunteer to help with our local podcasting network and Jennifer suspects that The Paramount will need volunteers next year.
Local cartoonist (comic-maker?) Jen Sorensen has taken up the issue of food safety laws in her latest strip.
In school news, School Matters discusses the value of teenagers serving on school boards and Dean Jeannine talks about the implications of a myspace.com account in the admissions process.
Finally, if you enjoyed not paying extra for the bandwidth used in this posting (which is made with 100% recycled zeros and ones) you may wish to follow the advice of Bleeding Edge Tech and try to save the internet.
Next week’s host will be Jim Duncan. Want to host? Contact me.
Things are getting a bit snippy in the Council race, John Yellig writes in today’s Daily Progress. Republican candidate Rob Schilling is upset and on the defensive, accusing Democratic candidates Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro of attacking him and claiming their campaign mailings and automated phone messages are a violation of campaign finance law, while disagreeing with their portrayal of him as an absentee councilor in their radio ads. (You can hear the ads on Jim Duncan’s blog and make up your own mind.)
The central point of contention is Schilling’s approach to the budget: he’s voted against every annual budget during his term on Council, demanding reduced spending, but never proposed any service cuts. He uses this position to claim credit both for popular services and for lower taxes; he’s trying to have his cake and eat it, too. The Democrats’ assertion that his votes against the budget are votes against funding all city services — schools, public safety, etc. — is no less logical than Schilling’s claim. When a congressman votes against funding the War in Iraq, isn’t he failing to support the troops? So what do we call it when a city councilor votes against funding the police?
Yellig’s got details about the rest of the points of contention in his article. The good news is that there’s only another 48 hours of this to go.
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