2009 April archive at cvillenews.com

Archive for April, 2009

State Releases Local High School Dropout Rates

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April 1, 2009 in Education.

Twice as many students drop out of CHS than county schools, Rachana Dixit and Brandon Shulleeta write in today’s Daily Progress. The state Department of Education has just released the results of a four year longitudinal study, and some of the results are a bit different than conventional wisdom. 13.2% of kids who entered CHS in 2004 have left without a degree, compared to a state average of 8.7%, and a county rate of 6.5%. Turning the statewide standard on its head, females at CHS are slightly more likely to drop out than males (13.3% vs. 13%). In the county, black and white students drop out at the same rate, which is significantly different than the 12% and 6% dropout rates, respectively, statewide. In the city, 15.4% of black students drop out, which is slightly higher than the overall rate.

Spokeswoman Cass Cannon tells the Progress that the city schools are already working on the problem:

We certainly have moved to address our dropout rate and we’ve more than doubled our programs to support high school graduation. We have things in motion to address what we’ve known, but that won’t show up for years to come.

Mayor Dave Norris suggests that the problem may actually be worse than this, telling the paper that he’s heard of kids dropping out after middle school.

This method of tracking is totally new. Dropouts used to be tracked annually, rather than in four-year groupings. So if a kid finished his freshman year, and didn’t come back in his sophomore year, he wasn’t recorded as a dropout. This new methodology is designed to address that problem.

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Students Photograph Calder Sculpture In Protest

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April 2, 2009 in UVa.

Last weekend UVA installed an enormous sculpture by Alexander Calder in front Peabody Hall, across from the West Range. The 12′ black, metal work, entitled “Tripes,” is a long-term loan from the Calder Foundation. In front of the sculpture, the university posted a sign reading, in part: “No photography allowed without written permission from the Calder Foundation.” UVA’s Committee on Public Art insisted that copyright law prohibited any pictures being taken of the sculpture. (As you can guess, no such law exists.)

If there’s one thing that lots of people want to do, it’s what they’ve been told arbitrarily that they must not do. Yesterday dozens of students showed up for a “photo-in” protest, Emily Poe writes for The Cavalier Daily. Organized on Facebook, the goal was to have lots of people simply show up and take verboten photographs at the appointed hour. I counted about fifty people snapping pictures (the sculpture is across the street from my office), and many of their photos have been posted to Facebook. By the end of the day yesterday, UVA announced that they were rescinding the ban, saying that the Calder Foundation had obligated them to make the false statement on the sign, but that they’d received permission to change it to say that only commercial photography is prohibited. While still not quite accurate, it’s not liable to result in a student protest anytime soon.

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Unemployment Doubles

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April 2, 2009 in Business.

The Charlottesville MSA’s unemployment has gone from 2.8% to 5.6% in the span of a year, Brandon Shulleeta reports in the Progress. That rate is a bit rosier than the statewide 7% average, which is better still than the national 8.9% average. As always, the worst unemployment rate is in Martinsville, the city of 15,000 that’s about three hours SSW of C’ville. Charlottesville fares well, as it long has, thanks to the University of Virginia; those of us who work there have pretty secure jobs.

It would be interesting to see the unemployment rate of non-UVA jobs. Presumably that’s closer to the statewide average.

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Balloon-Flying Business Faces $3,200 in Fines

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April 2, 2009 in Government and Business.

A former rug shop owner is facing a $3,200 fine for flying a balloon in front of his 29N business, Lisa Provence writes in The Hook. Mahmood Pasha’s Rug Depot was located across from Wal-Mart—you’ll remember the rugs often hanging out front on a rack—and he promoted his going out of business sale by flying a red, oversized helium balloon in front of his shop, about eighty feet in the air, with the string festooned with small flags.

Section 4.15.7 of the county code prohibits a bunch of types of signs “with characteristics that create a safety hazard or are contrary to the general welfare,” including “a sign that is a moored balloon or other type of tethered floating sign.” (Other prohibited signs include strobe lights, signs that make noise, those on public property, and those that obstruct vision. The logic in balloons is that a large balloon, once it loses a bit of helium or it’s hit by some wind, would bobble right down onto 29N.) The county notified him that he needed to stop, and that he’d be fined $200, but that he could appeal the order. Pasha ignored the notice, and did not appeal. The county checked again on November 21, three weeks later, he still had the balloon up. And again on December 2, January 9, January 21, February 6, and February 17—Pasha kept the balloon up. Now that he’s gone out of business, he’s unhappy about the $3,200 in fines that he’s racked up, and he’s going to court over it.

There’s a history of disagreements between libertarian-minded business owners on 29N, who figure they can put up any sign on their property that they want, and the county, who has some pretty specific restrictions in order to keep Charlottesville from looking like Las Vegas.

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SPCA Requiring a Funding Increase from City, County

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April 4, 2009 in Government.

The Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA wants more funding from Charlottesville and Albemarle and at least the city looks like they’re willing to play ball, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. The city and the county maintain no animal shelter of their own, and instead outsource that to the SPCA. The contract that the group has with the city and the county brings in about $1.60 for the shelter, care, and feeding of every critter taken in by the group. In an open letter on their website (124k PDF) the SPCA says that the industry standard is between $4 and $7 per animal, and that they’ve unsuccessfully tried to get the municipalities to pay more for several years now. It’s time to renew that contract, and the SPCA says that they’re just not going to sign a deal unless it covers more of the real costs that accompany serving as the pound.

Worst case, the city and county have to start their own pound(s). More realistically, they agree to pay more, since that’s bound to be cheaper in the short or long run than operating a municipal pound.

04/06 Update: Councilor David Brown points out that this funding is per capita, not per animal. So it’s actually wrong to say that the SPCA gets $1.60 for each animal, unless the number of animals they process each year is equivalent the population of Charlottesville and Albemarle, which seems pretty unlikely. What that real per animal funding is, I don’t know, but suffice it to say that it remains significantly lower than the standard cited by the SPCA.

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BoS Exploring Crozet/Charlottesville Commuter Train

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April 5, 2009 in Transportation.

: A Buckingham Branch engine idles in the downtown yard.

The Board of Supervisors is exploring establishing a Charlottesville/Crozet commuter train, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. There’s already a line running from Charlottesville to Crozet, operated by the Buckingham Branch Railroad. The BoS figures it would only get 100-200 cars off the roads each day at first, and that it would cost about $5M to get the service started. The hard costs come from the train itself, establishing fencing the existing track through town, and building a side track to allow the commuter train to pass by a CSX train or Amtrak’s Cardinal train going the other way. They’ve contacted U.S. Sen. Mark Warner to ask about funding options, and they’re looking at getting a consultant to plan it out. With the federal government looking at spending a great deal of stimulus money on transportation infrastructure, now is probably the time to be looking into this.

At $25,000 per car off the road, the cost doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but given the powerful role that rail can play in establishing human settlement patterns, the service might be a strong incentive for concentrating development in the Crozet area. Two hundred cars now might be five hundred cars in five years. This is something that the university might be interested in helping to make happen, given their commitment to non-automobile transit among their employees.

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Council Votes to Save McIntire Wading Pool

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April 7, 2009 in Government and Transportation.

Last night City Council voted unanimously to upgrade the McIntire wading pool to keep it open, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. The facility requires significant upgrades, and it’s not clear that it can survive in the face of the interchange planned for the McIntire/250 Bypass intersection, but the goal is now to keep it operational.

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TJ Center Awards Muzzles

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April 7, 2009 in General News.

: Image courtesy of the TJ Center.

Charlottesville Thomas Jefferson for the Protection of Free Expression has named the recipients of their annual Muzzle Awards, the dubious distinctions given to those government-related organizations who have done the most to squelch free expression in the prior year. Recipients this year include the DNC, the RNC, two judges, four colleges, two high schools, one school board, and one military base. Camp Lejune, for instance, threatened to fire a civilian employee for the bumper stickers on his personal vehicle, including one reading “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct. 2000,” honoring the employee’s son, who died in the attack. And Yuba College threatened to expel a student for proselytizing outside of the permitted hours of noon to 1 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. No doubt these awards are proving embarrassing to their respective government entities. Wistar Watts Murray provides the full rundown on this year’s awards as the cover story in this week’s C-Ville Weekly.

Disclosure: The Thomas Jefferson Center is one of the groups representing cvillenews.com in Thomas Garrett v. Better Publications. But I write about the Muzzles every year, so there are no shenanigans here.

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Gravity Lounge Closed, Temporarily

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April 8, 2009 in Business and Music.

The Gravity Lounge has been shut down by its landlord, Lisa Provence writes for The Hook. Building owner Ludwig Kuttner cites two years of back rent and fire safety citations as the reasons for giving Bill Baldwin the boot. He intends to install a new management team and reopen as soon as possible. Brendan Fitzgerald explained the struggling venue’s situation in C-Ville Weekly in February—it sounds like Kuttner’s current role is less as landlord and more as owner of Gravity Lounge, which makes his actions a little less strange than they might sound at first.

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Beth Duffy’s Travel Agency Ads

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April 8, 2009 in Meta News.

A couple of folks have asked me about a commercial running on CBS-19 that appeared to raise some ethical questions. That advertisement has been described to me as featuring news anchor Beth Duffy promoting a vacation through a travel agency. (I can’t pick up any local channels, so I haven’t seen it.) There’s generally a wall between the advertising and editorial sides of a media outlet, so that’s the sort of crossover that would seem to be frowned upon. The Poynter Institute has an article on this very topic, which doesn’t establish any rules, but rather presents a series of questions for any media outlet looking to commingle editorial and advertising. Curious about what the story might be here, I asked Jim Hanchett, the news director for the station, if he could help me understand what they’re doing. Here is an edited transcript of his e-mailed responses to a few questions:

WJ: Would you describe the content of this commercial for our readers?
JH: Thank you for this opportunity to answer some questions and keep the dialogue going about issues of importance to your readers. As for the commercial, it is a 30 second spot featuring Beth as she describes a trip to Italy and tells viewers how to get more information. We see this as a chance for our viewers to get to know and travel with one of the region’s best known and most respected journalists. It is also an opportunity for us to earn the revenue that allows us to maintain one of the region’s largest news gathering teams with a focus on what matters most to Charlottesville. This is a common practice, done by scores of media outlets. In fact, the highly regarded PBS anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil offered a similar cruise on the “Seven Seas”.

WJ: Does your station have a policy regarding the division between journalists and advertisers? If so, would you be willing to share that policy?
JH: Advertisers, as with anyone in the community, are encouraged to suggest story ideas but news coverage is never promised in return for an ad buy. Members of our news team are not allowed to endorse products or candidates with very rare exceptions and this is one of them.

WJ: Do you broadcast these commercials during the newscast? If so, do you clarify that the commercial isn’t part of the content of the newscast?
JH: These announcements do air during the newscast but they in no way resemble anything we do during the newscast and they’re part of clearly defined commercial blocks so I’d be very surprised if anyone is confused.

WJ: Do you worry about the perception of a conflict of interest among your viewers, or that they’ll be confused about that line between journalism ad?
JH: I can see that potential if the circumstances were different. In this case, Beth is not endorsing a local company or a local product that ever figures into our news coverage. In the very remote chance this trip or the company involved becomes a news-maker, we would absolutely make clear our connection.

I’m grateful to Jim for taking the time to respond to these questions.

Some folks, incidentally, might appreciate the irony of Jim Hanchett working for an area TV outlet. He used to report on a national feed for NBC, providing coverage of big stories to feed into local news broadcasts, providing the illusion that NBC-29 had a man in Washington. So Stacey Horst would introduce a story, Jim Hanchett would report live from wherever, and then the station would cut back to the local broadcast, with Stacey Horst inevitably saying “Thanks, Jim,” despite that Jim didn’t know that NBC-29 existed. As my mother wrote in an essay for cvillenews.com in 2001: “Like Jim Hanchett will be at the WVIR Christmas party. I don’t think so.” He may be invited yet.

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County Cuts Budget by $30M

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April 9, 2009 in Government and Taxes.

The Albemarle County BoS set a real estate tax rate of 74.2¢ last night, Brandon Shulleeta writes in the Progress today, establishing a budget that’s $30M lower than the current fiscal year’s. The idea was to maintain current dollar tax payment levels for property owners. The result is significant service cuts—our library system will continue to be neglected, government operations are short-staffed, and employees are having their salaries frozen.

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Second Body Found in Louisa Woman’s Yard

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April 11, 2009 in Crime.

Remember the Louisa woman whose dead boyfriend was found stuffed in her well last month? Well, her second husband was just found in her backyard, too, the Progress reports. Ulisa Chavers has confessed to burying her 68-year-old husband in her backyard in 1994. As with her deceased boyfriend, Chavers provided different stories to different people about what had become of her husband. At this point there doesn’t seem to be any cause to suspect her of murder—it just looks like Social Security fraud, with Chavers continuing to collect checks from a federal agency that had no reason to believe that the men were dead.

There’s no word on what became of her first husband. Maybe somebody should check the front yard. 04/12 Update: Her first husband is (ostensibly) still alive. Given this woman’s history, somebody ought to check up on him, just in case.

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Lucia Phinney Running for BoS

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April 13, 2009 in Politics.

Batesville Democrat Lucia Phinney is running for the Democratic nomination for the Samuel Miller District seat on the Board of Supervisors, Fania Gordon writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow. The architecture school lecturer and Batesville resident is running for Sally Thomas’ old seat “because she has a strong background in the issues facing the County.” Phinney will face off against Madison Cummings, the other Democrat in the race, for the nomination for their party. The winner of that will go on to run against Republican(-ish) John Lowry in the general election.

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Sizable Illegal Dump Found in Batesville

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April 21, 2009 in General News.

A 3/4 acre illegal dump has been found on Henry Chiles’ land in Batesville, Brandon Shulleeta reports in today’s Daily Progress. The pile—eight feet tall in places—contains thousands of bags of trash, large appliances, batteries, and tires. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is investigating, and they suspect that there’s a severe amount of resulting pollution of the soil and water. Mr. Chiles—the owner of Crown Orchard, best known for its peaches—says that he doesn’t know anything about a dump. It’s not unusual for conveniently-located vacant land to end up as an illegal dump for third parties, though something of this scale would have to be unusual.

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Progress Alumna Wins a Pulitzer Prize

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April 21, 2009 in Meta News.

The St. Petersburg Times’ Lane DeGregory, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing yesterday, is an alumna of the Daily Progress, Bob Gibson writes on Facebook. DeGregory won for “The Girl in the Window,” which the judges describe as a “moving, richly detailed story of a neglected little girl, found in a roach-infested room, unable to talk or feed herself, who was adopted by a new family committed to her nurturing.”

The paper won a second Pulitzer yesterday, for their popular Truth-O-Meter website, which evaluates the accuracy of claims made by political leaders. The nationally-respected paper has racked up eight Pulitzers since 1964, surely in part because they are owned and operated by a non-profit journalism school, The Poynter Institute. And though there’s no Pulitzer in it, I highly recommend wasting some time on their their Tampa Bay Mug Shots website. I like to use it to play a game I call “Guess the Crime,” based on the photos.

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Foxfield and Dogwood Parade Tomorrow

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April 24, 2009 in Transportation and General News.

Foxfield and the Dogwood Parade are tomorrow. So don’t drive, y’know, anywhere. Alternately, head to town around 9:00 AM, find a spot downtown, and watch the parade. The weather should be perfect. But don’t go to Foxfield—spring is when we cede it to the students. Wait for the fall running.

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Dogwood Carnival Victim of McIntire Plans

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April 25, 2009 in General News.

The Dogwood Festival will need a new home, Christina Mora reports for NBC-29, since McIntire Park is being converted into something considerably less park-like. The event has been held in McIntire Park for sixty years (before that it was the Apple Harvest Festival, held in the fall beginning in 1950). The organizers are looking for a new home for their rides and fireworks, somewhere in Charlottesville or Albemarle.

I wonder if this means that our annual Fourth of July celebration can’t continue to be held in McIntire? If that’s the case, City Council may find itself with a full-blown rebellion on hand. It’s one thing to eliminate softball fields. It’s another to eliminate the only viable location in the city to celebrate the founding of our nation.

4:02 PM Update: Mayor Dave Norris says it ain’t so:

The media accounts on 29 and in the Hook are incorrect. The City is NOT planning to evict the Dogwood Carnival from McIntire Park. If anything, the changes afoot for the western side of the park will make McIntire an even better home for the Dogwood Festival. The only issue is what to do with the Festival NEXT YEAR if there is a major construction project going on in the park at that time.

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DP Website Gets an Advertising Upgrade

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April 25, 2009 in Meta News and Business.

In a press release, Media General mentions that they’re testing out a new online advertising model on the Daily Progress website:

A transforming development occurring in the world of online advertising right now is the deployment of Yahoo!’s targeted advertising technology on our Web sites. This capability opens significant opportunity for our markets and advertisers. Essentially, the Yahoo! technology delivers smart ads to users based on their online behavior. Our pilot site launched in Charlottesville in March. We’ve signed new business in the auto, retail, service and real estate categories as a result. Advertisers are keenly interested in being able to target their message so precisely to consumers who are most likely to buy their product or service. All of our sites will be using this leading-edge technology by the end of the third quarter.

Yahoo only started customizing ads for viewers of their ad network sites in February, the culmination of a disastrous years-long process to duplicate Google’s success in the same market. The move means that while the Progress was once limited to displaying the same advertisements on their entire website, no matter the visitor, now somebody who has read an article about the Dogwood Festival is more likely to see an ad for the event. If this sounds obvious, you’re right—Google and DoubleClick have been providing these sorts of ads for over half a decade. This is good news for the Progress, though, because it increases the value of their online advertising at a time when they very much need to show Media General that they’re a newspaper worth keeping as a going interest.

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First Democratic City Council Forum Held

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April 25, 2009 in Politics.

The first public forum for the three Democratic City Council candidates was held a few days ago, Sean Tubbs and Brian Wheeler write for Charlottesville Tomorrow, with Dave Norris, Kristin Szakos, and Julian Taliaferro answering a total of seventeen questions on the water supply, infrastructure plans, the McIntire Parkway, relations with the county, noise pollution from the amphitheater, the YMCA, and more. Charlottesville Tomorrow provides the audio of the forum, with video and a transcript to come.

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News Virginian Rethinks Internet Strategy

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April 27, 2009 in Meta News and Business.

The Waynesboro News Virginian has started doing something clever, Lindsay Barnes writes for The Hook—they’re saving their best stories for their print publication. Though a few years ago it made sense for a publication to drive traffic to its website, plummeting online advertising revenues, along with circulation rates for print publications, have made it a better idea for a publication to use its website to promote its print publication. In today’s paper, they promote a story about “sexually explicit lyrics” contained within a song played at a middle school dance, cutting off the story after the fourth paragraph and encouraging readers to “pick up The News Virginian today at an area newsstand to get the full story.” The story is a print-only exclusive, until tomorrow, when the full story goes up online. If it goes well for them, Progress managing editor McGregor McCance says they might try it, too.

Media General has their publications do a lot of dumb things, but this isn’t one of them. It’s actually a sensible strategy, because it drives readers to where the advertising (and copy-sales) dollars are. This might have been a foolish move a few years ago, but now newspapers are in such dire financial straits that it seems well worth a try. We do this at VQR, putting about half of the contents of each issue online and accessible to the non-subscribing public, and putting only the beginnings of the rest of the stories online, with promotions to read the rest by picking up a copy. The more time passes, the more of each issue is available online. After five years we open up everything to the public. Here’s hoping it works out for the News Virginian.

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More Dumps Found on Batesville Property

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April 29, 2009 in General News.

Albemarle is investigating two more dumps on the Chiles family property in Batesville, Brandon Shulleeta reports in today’s Daily Progress. Henry Chiles has already been cited for a large illegal dump on his property, but eagle-eyed cvillenews.com readers noted that it wasn’t the only dump visible on Google Maps, where one more presumed dump can be spotted. The DEQ says that this dump is the worst in the area in recent history. Mr. Chiles says that he’ll clean it up, and maintains that he didn’t know anything about the waste until the county informed him.

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