Archive for October, 2008

Unemployment Up; Still Relatively Low

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 1, 2008 in Business.

Unemployment in the region is at a six-year high, Brian McNeill writes in the Progress, but it’s still not bad. We’re at 4.1%, compared to 4.6% statewide and 6.1% nationally. That’s a 55% increase over August of last year. (And it was just January of last year that the city had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation.) It’s well worth noting that unemployment numbers are based on the number of people still seeking employment; anybody who gives up to wait for the job market to improve is dropped from the rolls. Broadly speaking, a rate of 5% unemployment is considered normal and healthy, since there is always going to be a certain number of people between jobs.

We had a nasty drop off of employment, both in raw unemployment numbers but also in underemployment, back when Ix, Comdial, and Technicolor folded, laid off their local workforce, and moved operations to Mexico, respectively. That put a lot of career blue collar workers out of work or left them delivering pizza (making them technically employed). That 1998-2002 period was followed by the unsurprising discovery that area income was dropping.

If the global economic woes are a hurricane, and Charlottesville is a beach town, the good news is that we’ve got the coastal wetlands of the university to buffet the waves. (Admit it—that metaphor was awesome.) Though UVa is making it tough to hire new employees now, and a hiring freeze is rumored, there’s just no reason to expect layoffs now, as there virtually never has been there.

2 Comments

Twenty Year Old Murdered on 2nd Street

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 1, 2008 in Crime.

Twenty year old Joshua Lee Gibson was stabbed to death at the entrance to Friendship Court yesterday afternoon, Tasha Kates reports for the Daily Progress. Lamont Jermaine Blakey, aged 26, has confessed to the killing, and is in custody. Gibson was stabbed in the chest with what’s said to have been a foot-long knife. Also injured was 44-year-old James Edward Brown, though he’s in good condition with a knife wound to the thigh. It’s thought that the murder was sparked by an argument over a woman.

This is the second murder in the neighborhood in just over two months—19-year-old Joshua Anthony Magruder was shot to death two blocks away in July.

9 Comments

We’re #1! …For Gas Prices

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 9, 2008 in Business.

WINA notes that we’ve got the most expensive gasoline in the state, with an average of $3.61, compared to a state average of $3.42. The cheapest fuel is in Richmond, at a $3.33 average. Not explained by WINA is why that’s so. I returned from week-long back-to-back trips today, and driving through Curricuck County, NC (just south of the VA border) I paid $2.99/gallon to fill up, which was a common price throughout the area. When I saw the price, I actually did a double-take, followed by a cartoon-style wwaaahhhh?

55 Comments

Half of Albemarle Supports a Road Tax

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 10, 2008 in Transportation and Taxes.

The results from the county’s annual citizen satisfaction survey are in, Brandon Shulleeta wrote in yesterday’s Progress, and the surprising news is that 70% of those surveyed “somewhat” or “strongly” support spending more on roads, with 49% saying they’d pay more taxes to make that possible. In past years, this survey asked people what they’d like to see the county do more of, but didn’t also ask if they were willing to pay for those services, so this new approach marks an improvement. Other notable numbers include that 93% of citizens are satisfied with services and that 58% believe that real estate assessments are done fairly. The complete report won’t come out for another couple of months.

10 Comments

Sky-High Voter Registration Rates

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 14, 2008 in Politics.

City and county registrars have released the final voter registration numbers, John Robinson writes for C-Ville Weekly, and they’re impressive. An admirable 80% of the city’s eligible population is registered, and a really stunning 95% of Albemarle’s eligible population has gotten signed up to vote. That’s an 11% increase for C’ville and a 7% increase for Albemarle in 2008. I know that a lot of people have been working really hard to get more people registered.

2 Comments

Tiger Fuel Offers Gas Price Explanation

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 14, 2008 in Transportation and Business.

Brian McNeill asked around about Charlottesville’s high gas prices for the Daily Progress, and got the following from the president of local fuel distributor Tiger Fuel:

“The prices are changing very quickly. They’re coming down,” said David Sutton, president of Tiger Fuel Co., which operates a dozen local gas stations and provides oil to roughly 100 others. “Right now, Charlottesville’s prices are a little higher than elsewhere, but they’ll come down, certainly by the end of the week.”

High-volume gas stations are generally charging less than some others, Sutton said, because they are resupplying with gas bought at a lower rate. Stations with less volume are charging higher prices, he said, because they have not yet run out of the more expensive fuel.

The Charlottesville region’s market, he said, does not consume gas as rapidly as places like Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and Richmond. Consequently, Charlottesville’s prices sometimes lag behind when it comes to price, he said.

“This is not a high-volume market,” Sutton said. “Our prices don’t change as quickly.”

In a comment on the Progress’ site, reader JB makes a good point about this logic:

If C’ville gas prices are slow to decline because of the area being “low-volume”, then the same logic should apply when prices are on the rise. I don’t recall the C’ville area lagging behind when the price was going up. Greedy gas weasels!

The good news is that price are dropping. The bad news is that it’s because the economy is in a nosedive.

47 Comments

City Kills Rescue Squad Plans

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 17, 2008 in Government and Taxes.

The city is abandoning their plan to establish a rescue squad, Henry Graff reports for NBC 29:

Now, very quietly, we’re told the city is scrapping the plans for its own squads. One source says city ambulances aren’t really needed; another says they cannot be afforded.

Either way, they’re not going to happen, and the money set aside for them will help balance the city’s bottom line.

Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner says CARS is meeting the city’s response time expectations, and a new ambulance at the Monticello Fire Station gives the city adequate coverage. But Mayor Dave Norris says it all comes down to balancing the budget.

By my math, CARS has always been meeting the city’s response time expectations, and given that CARS is already performing this service at zero cost to the city, I can’t see how it ever made sense for Charlottesville to do this. When Council approved this they set aside $750k for it, so that should help with what’s sure to be a tough budget year.

37 Comments

McDonough: “Green Guru Gone Wrong”

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 20, 2008 in Business.

In the cover story of November’s Fast Company, author Danielle Sacks argues that Bill McDonough is the biggest obstacle to his own success, and he’s pulling the sustainability movement down with him. The Charlottesville architect is the world’s most celebrated eco-architect, and many people (including me) regard him as a visionary. His trouble is that he’s been repeatedly presented with the choice between making a difference and making money, gone for the latter, and wound up with neither. Most recently he’s butted heads with Charlottesville non-profit industrial eco-designers GreenBlue, an organization that he founded, but now he wants them to license the use of the term “cradle to cradle,” though he didn’t even coin the phrase. As Sacks presents it, McDonough is great at the vision thing, but not so great at the doing stuff thing.

6 Comments

Plane Missing South of Town

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 24, 2008 in General News.

An airplane is missing, with a last known position just south of Charlottesville, CBS-19 reports. After a trio of mayday calls, the plane disappeared from radar around 7:15pm, near Walton Middle School, about five miles south of Charlottesville. Pegasus is searching for wreckage, and Red Hill Road is closed to traffic. The airplane had departed from Lynchburg, thought to be destined for CHO.

We’ve had a few plane crashes in the area in recent years, with mixed outcomes. A 2001 crash at Wintergreen left a plane and a house’s deck destroyed, but the husband and wife in the airplane alive. One month later a Cessna collided with Humpback, killing the lone pilot and sparking a week-long, ten-acre forest fire. Then there was the Bundoran Farm crash in 2006, killing everybody onboard the small craft. Also in 2006 was the Rivanna Farm crash, with the plane’s pilot—the sole person in the plane—dying on impact. Finally, and most notably, was the 1959 crash of Flight 349 on Bucks Elbow, killing 26 people, but miraculously leaving a single survivor.

12:05am Update: WINA reports that the wreckage of the plane was found a couple of hours ago, and reports tentatively that one person is dead. No word on how many people were on board. Folks in the area tell WINA that they heard the crash.

10/25 12:20pm Update: The AP reports that a woman also died in the crash. There’s no word of survivors. Federal investigators are due on the scene today.

10/26 Update: The victims have been identified as Thomas Mahoney and Elizabeth Paris, of Orange. They were flying from Asheville (not Lynchburg).

3 Comments

Meadowcreek Parkway Lawsuits Planned

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 28, 2008 in Transportation and Law and Justice.

Two separate groups are exploring lawsuits to stop the Meadowcreek Parkway, Will Goldsmith writes in the latest C-Ville Weekly. The Sierra Club figures that federal laws protecting parkland and historic sites are enough to mount a challenge, while a group of independent critics accuse the city and the county of circumventing proper environmental review by claiming that the completed project consists of a road that stops in the middle of the park. Nobody’s filed anything yet, but the president of the local chapter of the Sierra Club says that they “plan to use these laws to protect McIntire Park,” which sounds like a clear statement of intent. Lawsuits are about all that could halt the road at this point; it may well be the only road planned in Virginia for which funding exists.

23 Comments

Darden Towe Softball Lights Scrapped

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 28, 2008 in Taxes and Sports.

Charlottesville has joined Albemarle in abandoning plans to light the softball fields at Darden Towe Park, Stephanie Garcia reports for The Hook. Given the impending budget crunch, the political will just doesn’t exist to spend $500-$700k on floodlights for a sports field right now. The plan to eliminate the McIntire fields is going full steam ahead, leaving softball players in the lurch, at least after dusk.

12 Comments

Vinegar Hill Theater Sold

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 29, 2008 in Business and Entertainment.

Vinegar Hill Theatre has been sold to a Staunton business, and will remain in operation much as it is now, Liz Nagy reports for NBC-29. They’re shutting down for two weeks, beginning November 3rd, to replace the pair of Century 35mm projectors with a platter system. The Market Street single-screen theater, known for showing art films, was opened in a former auto showroom by Ann Porotti and Chief Gordon in 1976.

2 Comments

UVa Football Player Arrested for B&E, Theft

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 29, 2008 in Crime, UVa and Sports.

The Cavaliers’ fullback RaShawn Jackson has been arrested and charged with B&E and theft, NBC 29 reports. Police say he broke into a dorm room last year and stole a game console. (Inquiring minds want to know: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii?) If this sounds familiar, you might be thinking of fellow Cavalier Mike Brown, arrested earlier this year for B&E, theft, and selling stolen goods. Or you might be thinking of one of the other three members of the football team who were also arrested this year. It’s getting tough to keep up.

2 Comments

No Campaign T-Shirts or Buttons at Polling Places

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 29, 2008 in Crime and Politics.

In a clear case of unbelievable bullshit (that’s a legal term), state law turns out to prohibit any voter from displaying support for any candidate when voting, and that law will be enforced in the area on Tuesday. If you show up to vote with a John McCain button or a Barack Obama t-shirt, you’ll be told that you must go into the booth topless. If you refuse, you can still vote, but you will be charged with a crime and face a year in prison. Charlottesville and Albemarle will both be enforcing this state law, and while they are basically obliged to do just that, Virginia Beach’s registrar has instructed poll workers to simply ignore the law.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, the Rutherford Institute, and the ACLU of Virginia are teaming up to file a lawsuit against the state to overturn the policy, arguing that state law simply prohibits “exhibit[ing]…campaign materials to another person” in or near a polling place, but that law was never intended to affect buttons or clothing worn by voters. That suit won’t even be filed until after Tuesday, so it will have no effect come Tuesday, but the hope is have the policy eliminated. The organizations ask that anybody who is asked to remove political garb contact them and report the incident.

I remember the woman voting in Charlottesville’s Recreation precinct in 2004 who walked into the booth wearing just her bra up top, after she was told she’d have to remove her campaign t-shirt. I work the polls at the Stony Point precinct every year, in Albemarle, and this year my wife and I will be bringing some spare work shirts and jackets, so people can cover up.

Now I’m facing the conundrum of what to do. Do I refuse to take off my Obama pin, and let the chips falls where they may? Or do I follow a law that I know to be capricious and unconstitutional? (As I’ve mentioned, I may have helped get Denise Lunsford elected, but I don’t doubt she’d charge me with a crime if I had it coming to me. Awk-ward.)

Maybe if hundreds of us refuse to take off our pins and shirts, if we all break the law, then it simply won’t be possible to prosecute all of us, and we might just help to get this overturned. How about it?

46 Comments

Whom Do You Endorse?

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
October 31, 2008 in Politics.

I guess I gave the Daily Progress too much credit when I speculated that they’d endorse former governor Mark Warner for Senate—today they endorsed Jim Gilmore. Warner has become the darling of Virginia Republicans, largely because of his solid business credentials, his centrism, and the work he did to balance the state budget. The former Republican governor, on the other hand, is on track to earn perhaps 20% of the vote in Charlottesville, maybe upwards of 30% of the vote in Albemarle, and he might top 35% statewide.

The Daily Progress has a rich history of chuckle-worthy endorsements, occasionally having to bend over backwards to endorse Republicans who are totally ill-suited for the job. When Kenneth Jackson—a Republican with no political experience or even really work history—was running for City Council, the Progress endorsed him, despite that he’d been convicted of attacking people with knives on three separate occasions over the course of a decade. They asked: “What other candidate has seen the law enforcement system, the court system, the social services system from the perspective of somebody in trouble?” The paper endorsed Bush in 2000, reasonably enough, citing seven reasons why they supported him—he would unite the Republican and Democratic parties, he’d hold his staff to the highest of standards, he’d create jobs, etc. But even though President Bush failed to accomplish a single of those things, they they endorsed him again in 2004.

So, whom do you endorse for House (Republican Virgil Goode vs. Democrat Tom Perriello), Senate (Republican Jim Gilmore vs. Democrat Mark Warner vs. Libertarian Bill Redpath), or the presidency (Libertarian Bob Barr vs. Republican John McCain vs. Independent Ralph Nader vs. Democrat Barack Obama) and, more important, why?

44 Comments

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This is a community news blog about Charlottesville, VA, USA, started in March of 2001. It's run by Waldo Jaquith. It has nothing to do with C-Ville Weekly, the newspaper. Feel free to submit a story.