Greenbrier residents really love the ArtInPlace sculpture at the corner of Dairy and 250, the 28-foot-wide wooden whale tail, so it’s not surprising that they got pretty upset when its sculptor was entertaining an offer to move to move the work to a Vienna botanical garden. Seth Rosen reports in today’s Progress that the whale tale isn’t going anywhere — the city has bought it. They’ll lease it for $3,000/year for the next five years, so long as the sculpture holds up.
Archive for October, 2007
White supremacist, pedophile, and wife-beater (the trifecta) Kevin Strom has had two charges dropped against him, Rob Seal reports in the Progress. It turns out that it’s totally legal for a grown man to obsess over a ten-year-old girl, send her gifts and love letters, suggest marriage, and cruise by her house. It’s also totally legal for him to beat and threaten his wife after she reports him to the police — that’s not, in fact, intimidating a witness. There do, however, remain the child pornography charges on which he was arrested in January. I’d bet cash that he’ll spend more time in prison for just looking at child porn than somebody who’d actually had sex with a kid. (And probably as much as somebody who sent sexual IMs to a kid.)
But you’ve got to love this part of the story, about Strom’s wife walking in on him:
“She caught him masturbating, but I’m sure that he was not the only one in the county doing that,” [Judge Norman] Moon said in court. “And it’s not a crime, so far.”
I don’t know what’s more awesome — Judge Moon declaring that, or Rob Seal including it in the story.
In the Hook’s profile of commonwealth’s attorney Jim Camblos, he eventually realized he couldn’t defend himself. By the time Lisa Provence asked him why he didn’t bring charges in the death of the Deane family on 29N, he flat out refused to discuss it. Based on last night’s candidate forum, it looks like Camblos has discovered what the rest of us know: his record is indefensible. As Rob Seal writes in today’s Daily Progress, Camblos refused to stand on his record when challenged on it. Democratic challenger Denise Lunsford pledged to restore the good name of the office, citing Camblos’ habitual bungling of serious cases, setting criminals free. Camblos simply wouldn’t respond, providing only the non sequitur that he’d “stay positive,” thus declaring that even he thinks his record is a negative.
Sheriff candidates Chip Harding (the Republican) and Larry Claytor (the Democrat) seem to have had a more informative exchange at the event. Claytor is campaigning on simply doing what the sheriff’s office is tasked to do and doing it well — transporting prisoners, serving people papers and securing the courtroom — while Harding is campaigning on expanding the office’s mission, creating a new system in which deputies would track down online sexual predators. Ironically, this places both of them in the opposite camps that would traditionally be expected for the two parties, with Harding seeking to expand government and Claytor seeking to hold the line. Presumably Harding’s time in the Charlottesville Police and the Claytor’s pedigree as an Albemarle Republican has something to do with that.
Courteney Stuart reports in the current Hook about a pretty stunning arrest that took place on Water Street a few weeks ago. A 27-year-old Iraq/Afghanistan veteran was crossing Water Street with his fiancee when a Charlottesville police vehicle came barreling through the crosswalk. The angry man shouted at the officer to slow down, and the officer promptly got out of the SUV and handcuffed him. His fiancee asked the cop why he was being arrested, and the officer knocked her to the ground in response. A dozen angry onlookers demanded that the officer let the pair go while one called 911 to report an incident of police brutality. Another officer arrived and arrested the female, and the two were taken into custody on charges of public swearing, intoxication and obstruction of justice. The woman went to the emergency room for her injuries. The two went before a judge on the charges back on the 11th. There’s no word on the outcome.
Predictably, the Board of Supervisors failed to pass a trio of rural protection measures along a 3-3 split, Jeremy Borden reported for the Daily Progress on Friday. Kenneth Boyd, Lindsay Dorrier and David Wyant — the three who are up for reelection this year — voted against prohibiting people from building on steep slopes, barring houses from being built within 100 feet of streams, and lengthening the two year prohibition on subdividing land that’s been split up via a family subdivision. Supervisor Sally Thomas, as a last-ditch effort, proposed that rural landowners simply provide a plan to deal with erosion resulting from building a driveway that would result in significant runoff, but that failed along the same lines. Charlottesville Tomorrow provides the audio of the debate.
Whether or not Boyd, Dorrier and Wyant’s positions are what the county wants will be determined in just a few weeks. All have challengers for their seats, with Boyd and Wyant having particularly vigorous opposition.
With election day fast approaching, I want to link to some audio and video provided by Charlottesville Tomorrow of a couple of candidate forums, for those of you who don’t yet know who you’ll vote for.
There’s audio and video of the David Wyant / Ann Mallek candidate forum held in Earlysville last week. It’s twenty minutes long, and a full transcript is provided.
Then there’s audio of the City Council forum held in Greenbrier last week. That’s an hour and a half long, includes a transcript of highlights, and video will be provided soon.
Y’all in the city are going to have to pick four school board candidates from the seven people running. Barney Breen-Portnoy provides a rundown of the school board candidates in the Progress to get you up to speed.
The latest campaign finance data is available for county races. Republican Ken Boyd is ahead of Democrat Marcia Joseph in Rivanna, $33k to $31k. Lindsay Dorrier is far ahead of his two independent challengers in Scottsville, with $23k to Kevin Fletcher’s $575 and Denny King’s $5k. And in White Hall, Republican David Wyant has $37k to Democrat Ann Mallek’s $27k. As a rule, the guy with the most money wins, so odds certainly favor the incumbents at this point.
Seth Rosen profiles all five City Council candidates in today’s Daily Progress. If you still haven’t picked from the three Democrats, one independent, and one independent Democrat, consider this your candidate guide.
Lynchburg’s Sen. Steve Newman has been happy to indulge his constituents’ fantasy that the only thing standing between them and vast wealth is Charlottesville building a bypass bypass — a bypass around our existing route 29 bypass. To that end, he recently asked Attorney General Bob McDonnell whether the Charlottesville-Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has to reimburse VDOT for the money they’ve put into the bypass if the MPO won’t allow the bypass to be built. McDonnell issued an official opinion saying, yes, we’re on the hook for $45.3M, as Jeremy Borden wrote in the Progress yesterday.
Newman hardly needed to ask. After all, McDonnell’s decision was based on a law passed by Martin in 2004 that states explicitly that the MPO will owe that money if it doesn’t allow the bypass to be built. The $300M road would be six miles long, saving just over a minute in travel time. Studies show it would have virtually no impact on traffic or travel time. VDOT has no money to build the road, and has not scheduled any money through 2013, the farthest out that they forecast.
Because I’m a hell of a guy, I’m going to make an offer to the state. I’m willing to assume that $45M in debt from the state. Every penny. Though I’ll want along with it all of the land that VDOT bought with that money in the early and mid 90s. Since they want their money, they’d take that deal. Right?
The Police concert at the Bell Center, Montreal. By Franz Dejon.
The county sent out an interesting notice today, alerting voters in the University Hall precinct to a scheduling conflict on Election Day. November 6 is the date of the the Police concert at the John Paul Jones Arena. The doors open for the show at 6:30pm, while the polls are open until 7:00. Voters are alerted that they “may experience significant traffic and parking issues” when attempting to vote after work. Seems to me that U-Hall may simply not working as a polling place anymore. After all, UVa can hardly be expected to keep their venue dark on Election Day.
The good news is that tickets to the Police concert apparently aren’t selling. Nosebleed seats are $52, and prices soar up to $227. I’m a lifelong fan of The Police, but ain’t no way I’m paying $200 for a decent pair of seats.
The Albemarle Planning Commission has denied Wendell Wood’s request to add land into the growth area, Jeremy Borden writes in the Daily Progress. Wood sold the land to NGIC for what he says is $9M less than it’s worth, a result of Supervisor Ken Boyd’s claim that he received a phone call from an NGIC employee — he won’t say who it was — saying that they’d pack up and leave town if they couldn’t expand. (Boyd’s campaign now says that this was a fabrication on the part of C-Ville.) Wood says the county owes him for taking a hit, and figures that having 30 acres reclassified from rural to growth area would be fair. NGIC has the land, and they’re expanding, so that’s not a concern anymore. Of course, the BoS is forever overruling the planning commission — they wouldn’t let a little thing like a unanimous vote stand in their way.
Borden also had a pair of articles today about Boyd’s reelection bid — one about Boyd and one about his challenger, Marcia Joseph.
Will Goldsmith has a breakdown of what a victory for each BoS candidate would mean in the current C-Ville. He forecasts that a win on the part of challengers Ann Mallek and Marcia Joseph would mean developers paying their fair share, rural protection ordinances would pass, and property taxes would go up. If incumbents win, presumably things will stay the same. Goldsmith is pretty frank, and it’ll annoy some people, but it makes sense.
It looks like a grocery store is coming downtown, Seth Rosen writes in the Daily Progress. Developer Gabe Silverman has long wanted to bring a grocery store downtown, and now the BAR has approved some changes to his 2,400 sq. ft. space on the corner of 5th and Main that would allow him to do just that. There’s no word as to what chain, if any, would be setting up shop there.
The A&N at that location closed in January of last year, despite Silverman’s best efforts to retain them. A&N is, interestingly, a Virginia business, founded in Richmond right after the Civil War.
Jim Duncan noted the other day that Albemarle Place’s website is gone. And a commenter on his site noted that the development’s signs have disappeared. Tasha Kates looked into this for the Progress today, and found Albemarle Place’s developers won’t comment and Whole Foods says they’ve bailed on the thing and are building their own place on the site of the Terrace Triple. Whole Foods first announced the move two years ago.
Rumors of trouble at Albemarle Place began back in April, when a commenter said she’d heard that funding had fallen through. That was about when its developers had finally got around to noticing that the sewage system couldn’t handle the ginormous new development, which presented a significant problem to them. (Or, more accurately, to the rest of us, since the $19M upgrade would come out of our pockets, not theirs.)
It remains to be seen whether Albemarle Place has actually been reduced to a shriveled pair of striped stockings under Dorothy’s house. But I’ll bet that we can sing soon enough.
A city committee has recommended the creation of a publicly-funded rescue squad, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. The topic has become a bit of a political football since city leaders indicated their support for creating the new department back in April by way of a $1M budget addition. The city feels that the response times by Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad (CARS), the busiest rescue squad in the nation, are “unacceptable.” Committee chair Del. David Toscano cited response times to southwest C’ville as being most in need of improvement, and by “improvement” he means “replacement.”
CARS is a volunteer, non-profit community organization whose supporters aren’t happy to city criticized by the city, who doesn’t contribute financially to it but benefits enormously from it. My analysis of response times shows that things look pretty good. CARS publishes all of their response data to the web in real-time, making it possible for anybody to analyze their response times. The city’s own fire department — which would house the new city rescue squad — does not do so.
The new service, if approved by Council, would start up in just two months.
10/29 Update: A source at City Hall tells me that there were three primary partners on this task force — CARS, the city FD and the county FD — and both CARS and county FD voted against the final recommendation. This seems like a bad sign.
Jeremy Borden notes a curious new political tactic among some Albemarle sprawl supporters: deny that growth is taking place in Albemarle. Rivanna Supervisor Ken Boyd says that the annual addition of ~1,000 new residents is so little as to be irrelevant, while Albemarle Republican Party vice chair Christian Schoenewald (you remember him for his proposal to remove all growth restrictions in order to preserve the rural character of Albemarle) echoes the sentiments, saying that our growth simply isn’t preventing a problem. CAAR CEO David Phillips picked up on this same theme a few days ago, fretting that we’re not growing fast enough. Did a memo go out?
For several years now there’s been an honest discussion taking place: growth opponents argue that quality of life and infrastructure problems trump some private property rights, while growth supporters argue the opposite. This new message from these candidates is, apparently, that we’re all just hallucinating. Remember when we ran out of water in 2002? Didn’t happen. You know how rough it is to drive up Emmett between 5pm-6pm? It’s not. Did you think that our rescue squad is the busiest in the nation? Myth. Though we needed $19M to expand the sewer capacity along 29? Think again.
We’ve had some really productive, informative discussions about growth here on cvillenews.com in the past few years. We’ve even had one today. I’m glad we can stick to an honest dialog, even if our candidates can’t.
Yay for C-Ville Weekly for calling out 1-800-GOT-JUNK for illegally strewing their own junk all over town. Companies are sticking up their damned signs along every road in town. At the moment it’s a plague of mortgage brokers’ signs, which was preceded by signs pitching a dating service, which was preceded by Mountain Kim Martial Arts (who presumably had to learn self defense in the first place to deal with people pissed off to find their yard cluttered with signs.)
Fun fact: it’s illegal for you to take them down, so the city/county has to use its own resources (read as “tax dollars”) to pick them up, since it’s not like the spammers are ever going to come along and clean up. I want to know which candidate for commonwealth’s attorneys will prosecute these yahoos. I suppose we can rule out Jim Camblos, since he’s not doing anything about them now, but maybe, like “fighting underage drinking and smoking,” this could be his new cause.
In case you haven’t noticed, I really, really loathe these things.
Recent Comments