In today’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin looks at the impact that the Charlottesville Tomorrow website has had in its seven month existence. There are very few local websites (I could stop this sentence right here) that have any real impact off-line, but Charlottesville Tomorrow has got to be the best at this.
Archive for May, 2006
Remember, kids—today’s the Charlottesville election. You’ll be voting for three School Board members and two City Council members. The polls are open until 7pm, so get on it.
The results are in: Republican Rob Schilling has been tossed off City Council, while Democrats Dave Norris and Julian Taliaferro have won election. They won decisively in every precinct in the city. There was no major issue in the race, and it came down to a battle of personalities.
On the School Board, Ned Michie, Leah Puryear and Juandigo Wade won in this first-ever School Board election for the city. The School Board race was an awkward one, with few voters seeming to be familiar with the candidates or issues in the race. It may take a few election cycles for us to work the process out.
9pm Update: I’ve got some graphs of the results up on my blog. Schilling didn’t even come vaguely close to winning any precincts. Perhaps this will put an end to talk of a ward system being the key to Republican victories in Council races. I suggest a less-exciting tactic: running better candidates.
There is, of course, some coverage of last night’s election. In the Progress, John Yellig reviews the results of the Council race, while Bob Gibson looks at the School Board race. Gibson points out that all of the winners — Michie, Puryear, and Wade — are Democrats, making last night a sweep for the city’s majority party. And election official and local Republican Rick Sincere has photos of the day, a list of write-ins (which includes at least four cvillenewsers) , and his analysis of the numbers.
Colin writes: “Telcove (formerly Adelphia Business Solutions) was bought by national telcom company Level 3 on Monday. Telcove has a significant fiber network in Cville, and, at least on the business side, is one of Embarq’s (formerly Sprint) main competitors in town.”
I am incapable of keeping up with these telecom name changes. Less competition is seldom good in telecom, or just about anywhere else. I’ll be curious to see what this does to fiber prices in the area.
A wing of the Church of Christ on Fifth Street was destroyed by fire around midnight last night, and the ATF is now investigating. One of the windows was broken and bloodied, making it appear that somebody broke in (badly) to start the fire, though it’s possible that somebody was simply attempting to escape the fire.
1pm Update: The Hook reports that there’s been an arrest in the case.
With the weekly blog round up gone mobile, Jim Duncan bravely hosts this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival:
Lucretius reflects on the election, as does Rick.
DocMultimedia, the most ornery resident of the “village” reflects on the opening of the Mall while Jeannine wonders whether “pedestrian mall” means something else.
Waldo launched Virginia Political Blogs - an aggregator of perhaps the most active political blogosphere in the nation.
Anoop reveals that the Waffle House takes credit cards. Is the apocalypse really that close?
CvilleTomorrow notes the conflicts in installing a town within a town.
The end of this chapter in the Living Wage campaign. I have a feeling that it will be back.
Sean Tubbs with CPN is podcasting some of Charlottesville - Right Now. If only WINA would stream and podcast the entire shows…
Dave comments on immigration.
Joe continues his finding of some of the best stuff on the web. Bet on the price of gas!
Duane laments the continuing lack of geographic knowledge of America youth.
Next week, Anoop Ranganath takes on the challenge of hosting. If you see (or write) any blog entries this week that you particularly enjoy, tell Anoop.
October 30, 1959 was the night of the grand opening of Barracks Road Shopping Center, as well as a football game at Albemarle High School. It was overcast and chilly. It was also the night that Piedmont Airlines‘ Fairchild F-27 crashed north of Free Union, on Buck’s Elbow. Twenty-two year old WCHV reporter Rey Barry was covering the football game that night, and when he heard about a missing plane, he headed out to cover it. He joined the search for the crash for the next 36 hours and, while scrambling up a hill, he discovered a field of two dozen bodies and the sole survivor, still strapped into his seat.
The story is legendary, but this is the first time I’ve heard that Rey had anything to do with it. On Coy Barefoot’s “Charlottesville Right Now” yesterday, Rey related the story of his experience in a lengthy monologue, and the audio is available from the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. Don’t miss this.
Charlottesville Tomorrow points out that the 250 Interchange Steering Committee has just met for the fourth time as they work on figuring out how the 250 / Meadowcreek Parkway intersection will look. They’ve got thirteen designs to choose from, ranging from a straightforward stoplight-based intersection all the way up to a pair of roundabouts, and there’s even a whole website about the project where you can find out more. Think you know how the interchange should work? Tell them.
I just got back from a four-day vacation, and I just want to say how awesome the discussion about the crash of Flight 349 is. Charlottesville is comprised of a truly fascinating group of people.
Somehow it escaped my notice that oodles of people took part in the national day of demonstration, back on May 1, right here in Charlottesville. On C-Ville Weekly’s throughly-linkable new site, Nell Boeschenstein writes that 350 people stood outside of the Albemarle County Office Building on May 1, almost entirely hispanics, to make known their numbers in the region. Though that’s not much compared to the 300k marching in Los Angeles, it’s a lot more than I would have guessed for C’ville. Fat lot I know.
Developer Lee Danielson announced in 2003 he’d be building a nine-story hotel downtown, on the site of the old Central Fidelity building (and briefly Boxer Learning’s headquarters) at the corner of 2nd and East Main. It was his only remaining entanglements in Charlottesville after he was all but ridden out of town on a rail. By all accounts he never actually did anything to make the hotel happen, and now area developer Oliver Kuttner is buying the 22,000 square foot building for $3.7M, Courteney Stuart reports in this week’s Hook. Kuttner had sworn off any more developments in Charlottesville, having bought up a good chunk of downtown Lynchburg (an area poised for a real renaissance) in the past few years, but he’s apparently changed his mind. He intends to keep the exterior intact, while gutting the interior for restaurant and retail space.
Gangland: not actually an amusement park. (I’m not making that mistake again; sorry, kids.) Also not a word used in Charlottesville newspapers until a few weeks ago, when there was a “gangland-style beating of two teenage boys,” to quote from the Daily Progress. Now the police’s Capt. Chip Harding says that two of the six kids arrested in the attack were not just wannabes, but actual members of the Bloods, John Yellig and Bryan McKenzie write in today’s Progress. As gang activity has spread south from D.C., police around the state have become increasingly vigilant about violent groups like the Crips, the Latin Kings, Mara Salvatrucha. Gangs are nothing new to Charlottesville, but particularly violent gangs or gangs with ties outside of town certainly are.
Anoop Ranganath hosts this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival. (Or, rather, last week’s. Time flies.)
Friday, I’m hosting on my blog, which should expose C’ville blogs to a whole different audience.
The authority that oversees the local jail is considering charging inmates for their stay, Liesel Nowak reports in today’s Daily Progress. There are enough Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail board members that are concerned about the proposed $1/day fee that the proposal has been tabled, though it may still happen. Board member and Charlottesville Sheriff Cornelia Johnson counts herself as an opponent, pointing out that it’s not the inmates that end up paying, but their families, which is particularly harsh if the inmate is the primary breadwinner. Note, too, that this is a jail, not a prison — many inmates haven’t been convicted of any crime.
Noted anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan spoke to a large audience at last night the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center as a part of a ninety minute program. The event, organized by Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, was recorded and is is available online courtesy of the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.
The City Council-appointed School Board Elections Study Task Force has presented six options for how future School Board elections could work, John Yellig reports in today’s Daily Progress. The first option is to do it the way that we just did — non-ward, at-large; a series of ward systems with anywhere from three to one members from each ward and anywhere from one to three at large; or a seven-ward system with no at-large members. Newly-elected School Board member Leah Puryear thinks that the current system works pretty well, but there’s a not-insignificant number of people who believe that a ward system would be best.
The seventeen UVa students who recently staged a sit-in outside President John Casteen’s office have been acquitted, The Hook reports. Though the rationale for the ruling isn’t particularly explained, part of the problem seems to be that the students weren’t given ample opportunity to clear out after being ordered to leave. Professor Wende Marshall’s trespassing charge stuck, though.
As promoted on their website for months, Charlottesville launched a new website yesterday. The content appears to be basically the same as was up before — what’s changed is the design (it’s distinctly less hideous) and the content management system (out of the fire and into the frying pan). This replaced the site they launched in 2001 and will hopefully make it possible to link to pages on the site again.
Unfortunately, they’ve moved from URLs of Death (http://www.charlottesville.org/default.asp?pageid=69BA9DD5-8CF7-4591-90EC-919ACDA784D1) to merely meaningless URLs (http://www.charlottesville.org/Index.aspx?page=161); there’s no RSS feed to keep up with city news; the code isn’t even close to valid; and no apparent effort has been made to make the site compliant with Section 508 (ADA) standards, despite the accessibility statement to the contrary.
That said, I can only assume that this CMS is better than their old one, so this hopefully puts them on a path that will make it easier to correct these problems. The important thing is that the new site integrates with CityLink, their new city-management software, which opens the door to things like paying taxes and making service requests on-line. The site was developed by a California-based firm, and runs on their proprietary CMS.
Courteney Stuart has a fairly horrifying article in the current Hook about the shooting death of a cat in a suburban neighborhood north of town. I read the first half of the article when the issue came out last week and figured hey, bummer, some mystery person killed their cat. But then I finished the article tonight, horrified to discover that it’s known who the shooter is: Charlottesville businessman George Seymour, owner of The Import Car Store, on the corner of Hydraulic and 29. He confessed to murdering the cat “because he’d once seen her on his car.”
What a horrible human being. I’d love to see people stop buying cars from him after this. Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos has, mysteriously, only charged the guy with a misdemeanor, rather than a felony; he won’t explain why. Chalk this one up as another gaffe by Camblos? The case goes to trial on June 20.
NPR parked their Storycorps RV on the west end of the Downtown Mall for a few weeks last summer, allowing many people to record an interview with a close friend or family member. One of those interviews was Bob Harllee talking with his daughter, Carol, about his time in Vietnam as chaplain for the 101st Airborne (MP3). That interview was broadcast on Morning Edition today. Bob Harllee died in January at the age of 73.
I’m hosting this week’s Charlottesville Blog Carnival. Eighteen blog entries are included; it’s a big’un. Most of the audience for my personal site doesn’t read cvillenews.com, so I figure it’s a whole new group of people to be exposed to area blogs.
I heard the news this weekend that two members of a CBS crew were killed in an IED attack in Iraq and that a reporter had been seriously injured. I was alarmed to read on Jennifer’s blog that the reporter, Kimberly Dozier, lived in Charlottesville for a time, attending UVa and working at St. Maartens. The Hook provides more detail.
The latest news is that she’s at a military hospital in Germany, having had shrapnel removed from her head. Though she has serious injuries to her lower body, doctors have dared utter the phrase “cautiously optimistic.”
I’m often surprised at the sort of topics that get conversation going here. Every so often something off-the-wall does it, particular K-12 topics. So–what the heck?–here’s a letter I received from a parent who is concerned about Walker eliminating their aquatics program.
Hello! My name is Melissa Bibb-Harris. I am a C-ville local born and raised. I have two children who attend C-ville schools, Greenbrier and Buford. I just heard that the aquatics department at Walker School has been dropped. I spoke with Mr. Bill Byers the head of that department who has confirmed he has opted for retirement since his aquatics program has been dropped.
I would like to know why the City School system has dropped the aquatics division from the P.E. program at Walker school? Was there a poll for parents? How do the school board and new Superintendent, Rosa Adkins, explain this decision? Do the American Red Cross water safety standard not fit into the SOL’s? With such a concern on childhood obesity in America how does swimming not benefit the students. What happens now? Do the P.E. classes double or triple in size since a third no longer rotate out for the swimming classes? How can we, a school system, afford to dismiss the advantages of an aquatics program when other school localities such as Fluvanna, Greene and Albemarle would KILL to have an aquatics division as part of their P.E. program?
The amazing thing is that they ever had an aquatics program in the first place. I had no idea.
The central branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library has, in collaboration with the City of Charlottesville, expanded their wireless internet access presence beyond the walls of the library. Thanks to a new antenna pointing north, free WiFi is now available in Lee Park, Christina Tkacik reports in today’s Progress. Many laptops will be able to use the node for access as far away as Central Place and McGuffey. City Councilor Kevin Lynch worked with a friend and former co-worker who is in the WiFi hotspot business to obtain an access point at a significant discount.
Kevin — who gives props to the library for making this possible — asks where y’all would like to see this service expanded. Would a city-wide WiFi network be something that would interest you? If just some portions of the city, where?
And cvillenews.com user fdr, not having had great luck with the signal this morning, asks if people can report on the speed and signal strength that they’ve received in the area of the library.
Cecil writes: “According to today’s DP, cops broke up a party of underage drinkers early Sunday a.m. (probably a post-WAHS prom party). Teixeira said the parents were ‘on location’ (and I don’t think that means they were filming a movie). Sixteen teenagers were ticketed for underage possession of alcohol. As we all (probably) know, a local teen died about a week ago in an alcohol-related accident (Nolan Jenkins, AHS). And these circumstances sound remarkably similar to the circumstances several years ago when the cops broke up a party in Earlysville, at the home of Lisa Robinson, where underage kids were drinking–that party also took place within weeks of the deaths of two (?) girls in an alcohol-related accident. And we all recall the 8-year sentence that the Robinsons received (see the Hook story.)
Deja vu?”
I’ve just realized that I completely forgot to write about the Progress‘ article about a local blog a couple of days ago. John Yellig had a nice piece about ScamperDude, John Dove’s cat-fostering blog. The blog regularly features ridiculously cute pictures of tiny kittens and exhortations to foster one of the little guys until they can find a home. It’s a great idea for a blog — generally awareness-raising blogs aren’t read by the very people among whom they’re trying to raise awareness, but who can pass up daily pictures of those little fuzzballs?
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