UVa graduate student Elizabeth Hafter has been missing since Friday, and a body fitting her description has turned up at Humpback Rocks. And a 37-year-old Georgia man has been shot dead by Florida police shortly after driving Hafter’s car off the road, concluding a multi-state killing spree as he fled from Georgia to Virginia and then south to Florida. Media General News Service presents the story as it’s known now, though presumably there’s much still to emerge.
Archive for October, 2006
It’s that time of year when thoughts turn to picking apples and buying cider. Though a trip to Carter’s Mountain makes for a fine afternoon, their cider is, sadly, pasteurized. Does anybody know of an area orchard that sells unpasteurized cider?
Board of Supervisors member David Slutzky made an interesting proposal early last week, I’ve just discovered upon returning from a week’s vacation. He’d like to see the county allow transfer of development rights from rural property owners to growth-area property owners, meaning folks who live out in the country can sell their right to build more houses on their land to folks who already own land in growth areas. It’s a free market approach to shaping growth, requiring that nobody lose any property rights. Not everybody’s thrilled with the proposal, but this may well prove to be the most popular short-term solution to our growth problem.
The new Proffit Rd. bridge isn’t strong enough to bear the weight of firetrucks, Jeremy Borden wrote in yesterday’s Progress, and the Stony Point Fire Department isn’t particularly happy about it.
Stony Point’s two trucks weigh 15.5 and 16.5 tons, while the bridge can bear just 12 tons of weight. Stony Point is not the primary responder to that area — Charlottesville and Earlysville can get there as quickly as Stony Point — but a three-alarm fire may well require Stony Point to show up. Thing is, the old bridge was only rated at 15 tons (15 < 15.5), and that was dropped to 12 tons a year and a half ago.
Jeremy Borden was kind enough to provide some more detail via e-mail. It seems that the Stony Point Fire Department, back when it was being run by arsonists, figured that the bridge would hold twice the posted limit, so they just went ahead and drove over it. When the adults took over in 2002 they brought a stop to that and began seeking an official blessing to use the bridge.
So, nothing has changed, but this does seem like a good example of what can happen when development patterns don’t respect the realities of existing infrastructure and resources. The county shouldn’t provide building permits to structures on the west side of that bridge that could have fires so severe that they’d require a prompt response from Stony Point. But that’s just common sense. Isn’t it?
The results of Albemarle County’s latest citizen survey look pretty good, WINA reports. UVa’s Center for Survey Research surveyed hundreds of Albemarle County residents via telephone, as they did in 2002 and 2004, and this year’s results seem to be a lot like prior results. Ninety one percent of people are happy with county services, and 85% believe they’re getting a good value for their tax payments. I think the most interesting numbers are those about growth: 64% believe that the county is growing too fast, and just a teeny tiny minority — 3.4%, or approximately the number of employees at the Chamber of Commerce — support faster growth.
October 13 Update: Lee Catlin provides the summary results and the entire report, which is really, really detailed. Who wants to dig into the internals of this poll?
Do you have old paint, used oil, batteries or other items which aren’t permitted in normal refuse pick-up? Take note that the Ivy Materials Utilization Center will accept these items on Oct 14th from 9am to 2pm free of charge. The county offers details, including directions.
Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross dismissed criminal trespassing charges against Rich Collins, WINA reports, and I couldn’t be more surprised about it.
Collins was arrested while campaigning for House of Delegates in May of last year after he refused to leave Shoppers World. He maintained that it was public property, while the complex’ manager begged to differ. Criminal charges were filed against him, and he filed a civil suit against the shopping center. Collins was convicted a year ago this month, much to his pleasure, since he hoped to appeal the case clear up to the Virginia Supreme Court and get the law changed. (The judge said that he’d have ruled in favor of Collins were he on the state’s highest court, but felt that his hands were tied at the level of his court.) He and his lawyers — from the ACLU and the Rutherford Institute — believe that private property that is provided for substantially public purposes, such as shopping centers, have an obligation to let people express themselves freely, given appropriate time, place, and manner requirements.
I’m certainly no attorney, but I believe that the ruling would need to be appealed by the Commonwealth’s Attorney (Jim Camblos, assuming that Shopper’s World is in the county) in order to proceed up the appeals chain. This, of course, is just the criminal case — I believe that the civil case is ongoing.
10:15pm Update: The Hook has more useful, complete information on their blog.
Cvilleyankee writes:
Daphne Keiser, principal of Burnley-Moran Elementary School, has won the 2006 Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of working with Daphne knows how much she deserves this award. Though how she spends the $25,000 award is unrestricted, she will spend most of it on a broadcast studio and science lab for Burnley Moran.
For those who are wondering like I was, yes, it’s that Milken.
Crimes like robbery and even carjackings occur with regularity in the area, but it’s not often that they take place in broad daylight while witnessed by a blogger. WT reports on the attempted carjacking that he witnessed in Court Square this morning. I love seeing citizen journalism like this, though obviously I could do without the carjacking.
10/14 Update: CBS 19 has the story. Check out the picture of the suspect, one Elvis Gene Shifflett. If ever there was a guy who was going to attempt to kill somebody, it’d be him.
It’s official — we’ve got mumps, Aaron Kessler reports in today’s Daily Progress. Or, at least, UVa has mumps. There are now three cases among undergrads, all of which are linked. There are another twelve suspected cases, with just four among non-students. The school has set up a quarantine building, nicknamed Mumps House, where two of the infected students are riding out the illness.
The CDC has a good explanation of Mumps, and the NIH provides extra detail for those who want to know more.
Local writer Jonathan Coleman had an amusing piece in Sunday’s Washington Post that I’d be remiss if I ignored. John Grisham has gotten into a tiff with Gabe Silverman over the attempted towing of Grisham’s car after he parked in a private space while shopping at the Main Street Market. Grisham sent an angry letter to Silverman’s business partner, who took the opportunity to circulate copies of the letter and sent Grisham the 95 bucks for the tow, which was not well received. Neither Grisham nor Silverman have any idea of when to back down from such a confrontation — Grisham forecasts the pissing match will last at least a year.
I see on CBS-19 that I’m not the only one dealing with a swam of Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles. These things look much like lady bugs (though with more color variation), but they are actually a totally different insect. Some jackass at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service thought it would be a good idea to import the critters from Japan in the 1970s, to eat aphids. They thrived, and now annually swarm — in our parts, they do so on the first warm day in mid- to late-October.
Two years ago I was caught unawares and the house was filled with thousands and thousands of them. Throughout the winter and spring they’d fly around the house, climb into the bed, bite us, release their horrible beetle-stink, and ultimate crawl towards the windows to attempt escape. We could vacuum up hundreds each day and never make a dent. Finally they all left in mid-spring. Last year I was prepared, and hatched a recipe to battle them. It was wholly successful and so now I share it with you, o sufferers of lady beetles.
Last year’s invasion began on October 31. They swarm the eastern wall houses, but generally only if they’re sunlit and more or less rock-colored. 
The well-lit, slate-gray eastern wall of my house was quite attractive to them. I had already thoroughly sprayed the entire wall with bifenthrin (Ortho Home Defense Max — I picked it up at Home Depot) a couple of weeks before, but I went over the entire thing again. Then I climbed up on the roof and hung two enormous blue tarps from the roof line, hanging them from nails I drove into the exposed wood. (Feeling quite smug about finally making use of the hammer loop in my jeans.) Finally, I doused the tarps in bifenthrin.
It worked really well. First, the blue of the tarps was far less enticing than the gray of the house, since blue is not a color that tells them “this is a rock outcropping that you can crawl under for the winter.” Second, even a light breeze stirred the tarps, which caused the ladybugs to fly off of them. Third, the tarp acted as a physical barrier to keep them out of the house. Fourth, even if they did get through the tarp to the house, that was sprayed. And finally, I even sprayed the windowsills of the two windows on the east side of the house, so that if they got inside they’d die just the same.
I felt safe declaring victory over the lady beetles come this past March, having spent the winter free of their nasty little bites, the orange fluid that they stain fabric with, and the general horribleness of sharing my house with thousands of insects. I followed the same plan this year, and spent some quality time on the roof yesterday and this morning hanging the tarps. Here’s hoping it does the trick again.
Charlottesville Friends have established a memorial to the 80 Virginians who have died in President Bush’s war in Iraq, Bryan McKenzie wrote in yesterday’s Daily Progress. They’ll display eighty pairs of combat boots to provide a sense of scale of the loss. The family of every soldier was contacted to obtain their blessing. There will be no signs or chanting — just the boots. It will be on display at the County Office Building on Friday, at the First Amendment chalkboard on Saturday and at Brown College on Sunday.
Budding rocket surgeon Elvis Gene Shifflett has been captured by police after a massive manhunt yesterday afternoon. Shifflett, wanted for attempting to kill his ex-girlfriend in Court Square last week, was pulled over by police yesterday for driving with two different license plates on either end of his car. He sped off, ditched his car on route 20 just south of Piedmont Virginia Community College, and took off on foot, prompting the police to order a lock down at nearby PVCC and MHS and shut down 20 and 53. Somebody told police that they’d seen a “muddy man” walking down a creek bed, which set them on his path. Police finally found him on Brookhill Ave at 6pm and shot him repeatedly; he’s now at the UVa hospital.
The Progress has a multimedia presentation that combines Matthew Rosenberg’s photos with narration by Lt. John Teixeira.
The Albemarle School Board is shocked — shocked — to find that Crozet Elementary has become overcrowded in just the past few years, Matt Deegan reports in today’s Progress. They’re at 125% of what the school can fit (428 kids in all), a result of the rapid growth in Crozet since the designated growth area started getting built up at a remarkable clip in the past decade. The bus rides are longer than ever, the roads are overcrowded, and the kids are learning in trailers. The solution? Building a new school in…2017. The band-aid is to expand the school’s capacity to 513 kids, at a cost of $5.3M, which should be ready in…2013. Raise your hand if you think that the whole of Crozet won’t have another 85 kids in seven years. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
This is why our current approaching to dealing with growth is stupid. We let the market dictate how fast and how much we’re going to grow, ignoring that it takes years for our infrastructure to catch up. So by the time we expand the schools (or roads, or water supply, or whatever), we’re right back where we were, treading water.
Mayor David Brown made official our sister-city relationship with Besançon, France on Friday, leading the French mayor to comment: “It is, for me, a very big moment of happiness today. Today is wedding night for our towns.” Besançon’s lacy undergarments apparently enticed us, its lesbian sister-bride, since an inbred half-French child-city is expected in nine months.
With the advent of traffic in Charlottesville has come demand for public transit, and that means lots of people are using the Charlottesville Transit Service, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. Though the population of the region has increased 20% in the past eighteen years, use of CTS is up 90% in the same period. The use of JAUNT is up 70%. There’s a tipping point of congestion that’s required for people to bother taking public transit — perhaps we’ve finally hit it.
Family members of Elvis Gene Shifflett were permitted to visit him in the hospital yesterday, CBS-19 reports, three days after Shifflett was captured in a massive manhunt resulting from his attempt to kill his ex-girlfriend two weeks ago. Shifflett is in serious condition, but is expected to survive, after being shot repeatedly by a pair of police officers.
New details are now coming out about the events of Friday afternoon. Police found a loaded semiautomatic SKS and forty rounds in ammunition in his vehicle shortly after he abandoned the car while fleeing police. Crystal Morris, who was in the car with him at the time of the chase, says that Shifflett claimed that he hadn’t turned himself in because he believed they would kill him. She told police that Shifflett was unarmed. Shifflett was spotted by police while he was attempting to steal a flatbed truck on Brookhill. Chief Tim Longo says that he was repeatedly ordered to show his hands and, when he didn’t comply, officers opened fire, hitting him in the neck, back, chest, and arm. The Hook broke the news yesterday that Shifflett was shot in the face and at least one injury was inflicted by an M16.
The state police are investigating the shooting now, as is required, leaving Charlottesville police unable to say much about the matter.
In the Progress, Rob Seal reports that Shifflett has a heck of a rap sheet, going back two decades, including felony convictions. And the Hook reports that it runs in the family: Shifflett’s brother, Jeffrey Wayne Shifflett, is wanted by police for a string of burglaries and for threatening the lives of police officers in his brother’s case. Police are sufficiently concerned about the threat that they’re not releasing the names of the officers involved in the shooting. He is considered armed and dangerous.
Charlottesville finds itself in the national spotlight, embarrassingly, after the Washington Post today reported that Jim Webb’s name is too long to appear on our electronic voting equipment. Charlottesville voters will choose between voting for “George Allen” or “James H. ‘Jim’,” something that may leave voters scratching their heads. That’s because the screen on the Hart InterCivic eSlate can’t fit all of the text in Webb’s name. The problem isn’t new — it’s been ongoing since the city first bought the equipment four years ago.
I’ve never been a fan of the eSlates (the scrollwheel interface is clever on an iPod, but ridiculously laborious for the purpose of writing out text, such as write-in vote), or really electronic voting at all, but this seems particularly egregious. It would seem to me that the appropriate measure would be for the State Board of Elections to grant an exception to Charlottesville, with the permission of Jim Webb, to list him simply as “Jim Webb,” but apparently the plan is to leave things as they are and to post signs describing the problem.
Electoral Board member Rick Sincere has weighed in on this, explaining how the problem came to be and what’s being done about it. Look for more on this from Bob Gibson in Wednesday’s Daily Progress.
10/25 Update: “Phred” points out that the problem is on the summary page shown before casting the ballot, not when voters are selecting a candidate, meaning that the problem is inconsistent. I don’t know if that’s better or worse.
Writes Sean:
See the press release. Appropriately, I found out about this because I signed up for City-related press releases after visiting the new and improved website shortly after it launched.
The award is the City-County Communications and Marketing Association’s Savvy Awards in the website subcategory of the communications technology category, for cities of our size. The website for the award is, ironically enough, horrible. Given that the new Charlottesville website launched after the deadline for submissions, I assume that the old Charlottesville website won. Nevermind — the press release specifically says it’s for the new website.
Remember, kids: four days of movies and related events kick off today for the 19th annual Virginia Film Festival. You can still pick up tickets at the downtown Regal between the hours of 11am and 4pm; good luck getting any if you’re gainfully employed. Check out the schedule to pick a few out.
At Mayor Brown’s suggestion I got tickets to “A Flock of Dodos”, and I’m also going to “Tenacious D,” “Life of Brian,” “The Dark Crystal,” and Jeff Wadlow’s Adrenaline Film Project. Are you hitting up anything good?
In this week’s C-Ville, Spencer Lathrop writes that every local musician’s favorite venue, The Gravity Lounge, is going out of business:
While rumors have long swirled about Gravity Lounge’s demise, people close to the source tell me that December really will be it for the club. Here’s hoping that’s not true—but in the meantime, you should show your support by checking out The Roches this week, and the unbelievably talented and funny Asylum Street Spankers next month.
It may well be that it’s just not profitable to run a venue so nice and so artist-friendly while keeping the prices so reasonable.
(Via Nailgun)
Police took Jeffery Wayne Shifflett into custody after a high-speed chase down Rt. 20 South yesterday afternoon, the Daily Progress reports. Albemarle police spotted him on Monticello Road and radioed ahead to Charlottesville police to coordinate the chase. Shifflett refused to pull over, and fled south on 20. He called 911 to report that he would drive to his sister’s house and surrender there. Twenty minutes after the chase began he was arrested on President’s Road, presumably his sister’s house.
Jeffery Shifflett is the older brother of Elvis Shifflett, who was recently arrested after a chase that also ended on 20 South. Shifflett the younger is now in the hospital after being shot repeatedly by police after he refused to surrender, a mistake that his brother did not repeat, or at least stopped repeating after twenty minutes of doing so. Shifflett was wanted in Albemarle, Charlottesville, Madison and Greene for theft, burglary, and probation violation, but it was his alleged threat against police after the shooting of his brother that made him particularly popular with area police in the past week. NBC 29’s Paul Merrill has an interview with one family allegedly a victim of Shifflett’s crimes, who say that they feel the world is a safer place today, but they’re still thinking of moving to a new house just to leave behind the memories of the burglary and ransacking of their home.
Further to the city transit discussion, The Cavalier Daily’s Daniel Reinish took a spin on CTS to see how good it is. He caught a bus from grounds to Barracks Road, another one to Wal-Mart, and then one back to grounds. The first bus (which came on time) failed to stop for him, so he took a UTS bus to Barracks Road. The bus to Wal-Mart was on time departing and arriving. But it was the last bus there for the day (which he knew in advance), necessitating a $14 cab back to grounds. Reinish concludes that CTS is well worth it, though a little research first is necessary, and recommends improving signage and having buses actually stop at bus stops when people are waiting.
It was when parts started falling off of the Belmont bridge that it became clear that it needed to be replaced. NBC 29 reports that the fifty-year-old structure is collapsing, and the city will need to spend $9M to replace the structure. It’s going to be a headache to do, since it’ll be seriously disruptive to the flow of downtown traffic to close either the bridge or Water Street underneath it. It’ll be in next year’s budget, and the process may take a few years.
I’ve never been a fan of the thing in the first place — it divides Belmont from downtown in a way that never should have been done in the first place. Too late now.
An incident at The Omni this morning has put Charlottesville in the national media spotlight, though hardly for the best of reasons. At an event for Sen. George Allen starring Sen. Elizabeth Dole Democratic activist, Marine veteran and UVa law student Mike Stark had some questions for Allen during the media Q&A portion of the event. He asked Sen. Allen whether it was true that he’d spat on his ex-wife, a rumor that has been making the rounds among Democrats. In response, an Allen campaign employee grabbed Stark in a headlock and threw him to the ground. Another employee escorted him out of the building, despite Stark’s protests.
What makes all of this news is that NBC 29 got the whole thing on tape. They ran it for their 12pm broadcast, and the video was in rotation on CNN by mid-afternoon. The wires picked up the story, every major political blog is talking about it, and most major papers have stories or are working on them for tomorrow’s issue.
Stark writes that he intends to press charges against his attackers. The Allen campaign has issued a press release in which they accuse Stark of “verbally attack[ing]” Allen and say that they simply “restrained him” and “asked” him to leave the building.
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