Under an act of the General Assembly, smoking in Virginia restaurants is illegal, beginning today. Huzzah! (The exception is restaurants that maintain a closed, separate smoking room with an independent ventilation system.) Many restaurants banned smoking after the bill passed last winter, getting a head start on the law, but some holdouts only went smoke-free at 12:01 AM today. Governor Tim Kaine will be visiting West Main (the restaurant) Hamilton’s at noon today to celebrate the new law, as a part of a tour of restaurants across the state. There are a handful of restaurants that I’m looking forward to being able to go to now, with Riverside on High Street topping the list. Where do you plan to go now that you can return home afterwards without smelling like an ashtray?
Archive for December, 2009
There’s a YouTube trend of filming so-bad-they’re-good self-parodying hip-hop homages to one’s hometown. (See Arlington: The Rap, which I think was the first one, or River City.) They’re all done in the style of Lazy Sunday (Chronicles of Narnia), the crazy-popular SNL short that convinced NBC to put stuff online. With that essential context establish: Emily Bolecek and Arin Noble are tossing Charlottesville into the mix with five minutes of props to the Downtown Mall.
Well, that didn’t take long: UVA named Mike London as the new head coach for the football program today. After just two seasons as University of Richmond’s head coach, the former UVA defense coordinator is back again. The 49-year-old one-time college football player is certainly popular among players who studied under him, who had lots of nice things to say about him. In his remarks, he emphasized the importance of academics, and asked fans to come back into the fold.
Former Glenmore treasurer Michael Comer has been indicted on charges of embezzling from them. You’ll remember that Comer went missing in July, it quickly emerged that he was dodging an audit of the community association’s finances, and a few weeks later he was arrested at Wintergreen, looking like something the cat dragged in. Glenmore wasn’t interested in pressing charges, which would have been a clear instance of the good-ol’-boy network at work, but the FBI and Albemarle Police Department got involved anyhow. Comer was indicted on five charges of embezzlement, and the case will be taken up in the new year.
Shopping centers that don’t allow soliciting aren’t allowing the Salvation Army to solicit, Liz Palka reports for CBS-19, and I get the impression that we’re supposed to be angry about that. The Salvation Army is singling out both CVS and Harris Teeter, neither of which allow solicitation on their property, saying that they’ve raised $22,000 less than last year as a result of having fewer locations to show up at. (Is $22,000 a lot? Palka tells us it’s “staggering,” but without knowing what percentage of the total that comprises, viewers can’t have any idea.) They’ve tried to set up at other places, but those places have also said that they’re not interested in having somebody ring a bell and ask for money next to their front door. Of course, there are lots of charities all over Charlottesville that would like your support, and the Salvation Army is set up in locations throughout town, so the fact this particular charity isn’t in front of these two particular stores shouldn’t be an obstacle to people helping the less fortunate this Christmas season.
Shopping centers are private property, and they don’t allow the sorts of things that are permitted on public property (like the Downtown Mall)—juggling, guitar playing, protesting, soliciting, or even just standing around. These places look public, but it’s a simulation of public property—you have no First Amendment rights there. Whether or not you think that the loss of that makes these places better or worse than real public space is up to you. You’ll recall that House of Delegates candidate Rich Collins was arrested for campaigning in a shopping center back in 2005 in a dispute over the same matter.
Biscuit Run may become a state park, Brian Wheeler writes in the Daily Progress / Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Hunter Craig paid $46M for the 1,200 acre property in 2005, which he intended to develop as “Fox Ridge” (somewhere, I know, there’s a software program that just spits out random names for “upscale” housing developments). He’d planned on somewhere between 900 and 5,000 houses. The Planning Commission unanimously opposed it, but the Board of Supervisors OKd it anyway, allowing 3,100 houses, despite the $222M that you and I will have to pay in tax dollars to subsidize it. The project was put on hold in January, an unsurprising move in the face of a total collapse of the U.S. real estate market.
Presumably seeking the least financially harmful way to dispose of this property (because, really, where is the demand for 3,100 new houses?), Craig is talking with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation about donating the whole affair to the state to join the network of 35 state parks. With the land assessed at $44M, presumably that could afford Craig a unique financial opportunity to write down those losses; a governor eager to increase protected land before his term expires in a month’s time may be able to offer some state tax incentives. Albemarle County isn’t thrilled at the prospect of losing the $325k in annual property taxes that Craig pays on the land now, which would be the effect of moving it into state ownership, but since the project is a significant net financial loss for the county, Biscuit Run as a park would seem to be a good outcome. The only other snag is that chunk of land is in the growth area, which doesn’t make sense as a location for a park. But that’s the land that Craig owns, that’s the only offer on the table, and it’s not clear that Albemarle County has any say in the matter, anyhow.
A UVA project has virtually recreated Vinegar Hill in its heyday, the university writes in a press release. (If you’re not from here: Vinegar Hill was a large, mostly black neighborhood around the McIntire/Main intersection that was demolished by the city for “urban renewal.” The city relocated people from their own homes into public housing.) Undergraduates researched archival records to look at who owned property, when and how it changed hands, what it was appraised for, where people went after they lost their homes, and lots of similar information, combining it all into a series of visualizations fronted by a website called The Vinegar Hill Project. I’ve spent a while exploring this website, and it’s just a treasure trove of data, veritable infoporn for local history buffs. Set aside an hour to pore over this site.
It’s a shame that the historical society is too stuffy to do this kind of thing. They prohibited their last executive director from blogging.
The Rutherford Institute thinks that Rep. Tom Perriello should move his office to a more protestable location, Brian McNeill writes in today’s Progress.. As Lisa Provence explains in The Hook’s cover story this week, angry protesters are intimidating patrons of neighboring businesses, insisting that they have every right to protest on private property, and complaining that the sidewalk next to the building isn’t close enough for their liking. (Let’s all pause to consider the irony of property rights advocate insisting that they have a right to protest on private property.) Rutherford president John Whitehead says that when the congressman’s lease expires on the space in a year, he should move to a location that is friendlier to protestors. Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression president Bob O’Neil thinks that it’s possible that it would be a good thing for Perriello to do that, but has to wonder what location this could possibly be.
So, let’s figure this out. Who can think of a privately-owned building that leases a space appropriate for a congressman’s regional district office, that’s surrounded by public land, located in a more popular and well-trafficked part of the city than this one (two blocks off the Downtown Mall), but has no neighboring offices, businesses, or residences, and has rent that’s low enough that anti-government protestors won’t complain about it? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?
The Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review says that the demolished Victory Shoes façade has to be restored, Liz Palka reports for CBS-19. It was illegally demolished last month, with property manager Bill Rice and building owner Joe H. Gieck claiming (implausibly) that they had no idea that a permit was required to demolish the façade of a historic structure. The BAR is pissed off, and has ordered them to set it back the way it was. In what sounds like a lucky stroke for the duo, somebody called the BAR to say that they’d removed the curved glass portion of the storefront, rather than allow it to be destroyed, and they’re willing to give it back. Gieck is going back before the BAR next month with a proposed storefront, one that’s premised on the restoration of the old one.
We’re in the midst of getting a metric pantload of snow. There are 17″ of the powdery stuff on the ground here in the northeast corner of Albemarle right now, which seems to be the average in the area. This is the biggest December snowfall here in recorded history. The National Guard has been called out in response to the states of emergency declared by the state and the county, with dozens of them currently searching for stranded motorists along 29S and 20S. Twitter is full of people reporting that they’re trapped in their cars, most of whom have been stuck since last night. Hundreds of cars have been abandoned on the major roads alone. Rescue crews are trying to get to these people; many are being sheltered at the Monticello and North Garden fire stations, and a new shelter is being set up at AFC. Dominion’s map shows hundreds of homes without power (a number that might start to look pretty good). The city, putting Twitter to great work in the past 24 hours, has called for volunteers with 4WD vehicles (who know how to use them—your Subaru Outback doesn’t count).
If you’re looking to go anywhere, don’t. If you haven’t bought all the stuff you need to for Christmas, don’t—you don’t need it that much, and everybody else is in the same boat. Everything is closed, anyway.
Lots of great photographs of the weekend’s snowstorm are circulating online, which are great for those of us still snowbound (which is to say, most of us) who want to know what the outside world looks like. Here’s a slideshow of some of them:
You can add your own Flickr photos to this slideshow by tagging them with “charlottesville” and “snowpocalypse.”
Brandon Shulleeta had a story in the Daily Progress a week ago that went largely unnoticed in the snowstorm, but that warrants attention. Del. Rob Bell is introducing legislation to take $3M in school funding from Charlottesville and give it to Albemarle County. The state’s school funding formula gives differing amounts of funding to different localities, depending on how wealthy they are—the more money that they have to fund schools, the less that they need from the state. The formula doesn’t take into account the revenue sharing agreement between the city and the county, by which Charlottesville agreed to stop annexing chunks of the county to expand the city tax base if Albemarle would agree to give them a chunk of their tax income. Bell wants the state to consider that money when handing out education funds, which would hack millions out of the city’s education budget. In doing so, Bell has tossed a can of kerosene onto the small fire that is city/county revenue sharing, which began to heat up again in March of 2008 when Supervisor Ken Boyd threatened to simply stop making payments to the city.
Everybody that you’d expect to be upset is upset, along the lines that you’d anticipate. The city says that the effect would be laying off forty teachers, with Mayor Dave Norris saying that “needs of our city school children will not be held hostage to these kind of desperate measures by Albemarle County.” Members of the county school board voted 4-3 in support of Bell’s legislation, with one member saying of Charlottesville: “They have our money. We need money.” Norris argues that revenue sharing went into place years after the school funding formula was agreed on, so this funding process was a part of the implicit agreement at the time of the initial revenue sharing agreement. Albemarle School Board Chairman Brian Wheeler opposes Bell’s bill, telling the Progress that he just doesn’t think that the legislature is going to pass the bill, anyhow, meaning that the county may badly damage its relationship with the city, but to no effect.
There’s also a political aspect to this. Del. Bell, a conservative Republican, stands to lose little from filing this bill. His district, the 58th, doesn’t include any of the city. Charlottesville is reliably the second-most-liberal locality in the state (only Petersburg provides a higher percentage of vote for Democrats), so it’s not like he has to worry about many Republicans in the city turning against him, ceasing to volunteer for his campaign or contribute money. When it comes time for reelection, Bell gets to say that he brought in $3M to Albemarle schools; better still, he took it from the city, since some county residents are angry that a chunk of their taxes goes to fund the city. Even if the bill fails, he still “fought for Albemarle schools” (as the postcards will say), and he’ll earn some political capital.
Republican Ken Boyd may be the new chair of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, Brandon Shulleeta wrote in the Progress on Saturday, in a rather unusual move. By tradition, members of the BoS take turns being chair, with a process of succession—the vice chair becomes the chair after the chair finishes his turn. The current vice chair is Democrat Ann Mallek, who represents White Hall. The prior chair was Democrat David Slutzky, who just lost reelection. That would normally leave Mallek as chair. That is how the BoS has operated for many decades. But Ken Boyd, who already took his two year turn as chair, wants the position back. (Boyd is running for the Republican nomination to run against Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello, and presumably knows that it looks better to be chair of the BoS than a mere member; Boyd argues it’s a handicap, because being chair would take time away from his campaign.) Boyd argues that Mallek is only halfway through her two-year term as vice chair, and that a year from now, he’ll be happy to let her be chair, although that does nothing to explain why he ought to be the chair right now.
Republican Rodney Thomas, who unseated Slutzky, supports Boyd’s bid; the board’s third Republican, Duane Snow, isn’t saying how he’ll vote. Ostensible Democrat Lindsay Dorrier, a reliable Republican vote, says he hasn’t made up his mind. The remaining member of the board, independent Dennis Rooker, strongly supports Mallek, arguing that if he’d known that it was going to be a partisan matter, Boyd wouldn’t have been allowed to be chair four years ago. The BoS will go into a closed session on January 6 to figure it out amongst themselves.
Bryan McKenzie and Brandon Shulleeta explained the mechanism behind the likely tax benefits of turning Biscuit Run into a state park in yesterday’s Daily Progress. After paying $46M for the 1,200 acre parcel four years ago, owner Hunter Craig is looking to minimize his losses in this wretched housing market (though I have my doubts that it was ever viable to sell 3,100 houses here in that manner), and would surely be looking for a financial benefit in giving it to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. McKenzie and Shulleeta explain that the idea is to receive tax credits, which can be resold. So if Craig got (say) $46M in tax credits, he could resell those, probably for about eighty cents on the dollar. If I wanted to save $1,000 on my state taxes, I could pay Craig $800 for that $1k tax credit, netting myself $200 in savings. Tax credit transactions are not a matter of public record, so unless Craig chooses to disclose those numbers, we’ll never know precisely what the arrangement is. (Which isn’t to say that we ought to know.) Virginia is moving quickly to close on this deal, and the transaction may happen in the next day or two.
There’s one heartening note in the story. So far we’ve seen county officials lamenting the loss of the $325k in annual property tax revenue from the land, ignoring the $222M price to taxpayers, $134M out of county coffers. (For perspective, the county’s entire annual budget is just over $300M.) Turning Biscuit Run into a park would be great economic news for the county. The first acknowledgement of that fact comes from the county comes in this article:
However, Albemarle Supervisor Kenneth C. Boyd said no longer receiving the $38 million worth of proffers might not be as bad as its sounds, considering that much of what was proffered “offset the expense of the development there.”
“If you don’t have the development, you don’t have the expense,” Boyd said, adding that any future developments that might be done in place of Biscuit Run would likely require proffers as well.
Good for Ken Boyd.
Brian McNeill had an interesting article in the Progress on Friday that I don’t want to miss: Monticello is going to start renting out their grounds for private events. They’re not (yet) allowing the home itself to be rented out, but much of the property is fair game, and for the right price, you can buy a private tour of the house. They’re even looking at renting the grounds out for weddings. This is a significant change from how Monticello was run under the twenty year tenure of recently-retired Daniel Jordan, the prior executive director of the private organization that owns and operates Thomas Jefferson’s home. (Jordan had no comment for McNeill, which I think can be read as a rebuke of the new practice.)
It’s not clear to me whether this new practice is innovative or reprehensible, but the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s claim that this is “kind of in the Jeffersonian tradition” strikes me as ridiculous. It’s true that Jefferson was known for his hospitality, which is rather a different thing than renting out his front lawn for bar mitzvahs.
Ken Boyd has decided he’s no longer interested in being chairman of the Board of Supervisors, NBC-29 reports. Boyd wanted to become chair (again), despite that Democrat Ann Mallek was due to be the next chair. Boyd announced this in this press release today, which I reproduce in its entirety because I suspect it’ll be of interest to folks:
Since the November election, when it became clear that David Slutsky was not going to fill out his 2nd one year term as chairman, many Albemarle citizens have ask me to consider filling out the remainder of his traditional term. This would also allow the Vice Chair to fulfill the customary two year term in that position, as all previous Vice Chairs have done in recent times. They were eager for change in the way County government will be run and wanted someone who would champion their concerns. I still remain committed to a new agenda of fiscal conservatism; tax relief for our residents; economic vitality; replacing jobs that have been lost and encouraging businesses in Albemarle to create new ones; and smaller government. I will work tirelessly to accomplish these goals and being chairman does not enhance or detract from these initiatives. I am also honored by the outpouring of confidence and support from constituents and fellow board members.
A few months ago I announced that I was running for the Republican nomination to become the next Congressman from the 5th district. I take this commitment very seriously and have already spent much time and effort furthering that goal. Recently the Republican Party decided to nominate their candidate in a primary rather than a convention. This will involve significantly more time on the road meeting the people of the 5th district. While I look forward to meeting old friends and making new ones, the primary will reduce the time I would have to be Albemarle’s Chairman of the Board of Supervisors.
It is unfortunate that this entire process has played out in the press and that some have tried to politicize the process. I would have preferred this to have been settled the way it has always been done- in consultation with the other supervisors. However, this has become an unnecessary distraction that is not in the best interest for County government and delays the hard work of getting Albemarle County open for business. It is for this and other reasons I have already mentioned that I am withdrawing my name for consideration for the job of chairman.
It’s tough to square a couple of parts of this press release. On the one hand, Boyd writes that he wanted to be chair because voters told him that “[t]hey were eager for change in the way County government will be run and wanted someone who would champion their concerns,” which is to say that Republicans won the races, ergo a Republican should be in charge. On the other hand, he laments “that some have tried to politicize the process.” But, as he admits, that’s precisely what he did. If politicizing the process is wrong, then he shouldn’t have done it. If politicizing the process is what he believes he had the political capital to do after the election, then he shouldn’t accuse others of politicizing it.
It’s official: Biscuit Run is now a state park. That’s 1,200 acres, just south of Charlottesville, to be preserved as a state park indefinitely. If I had a bottle of champagne, I’d pop the cork right now. The paperwork has been filed, the deed has been filed at the courthouse, and Governor Tim Kaine will be here to make the official announcement in a couple of weeks, during the last days of his administration. The conversion to parkland will save county and state government $222M, making this a sort of a financial windfall, insofar as it prevents us from spending a whole lot of money that we would have needed to spend had the planned housing development gone in.
But don’t start tramping around in the woods just yet. The state still needs to figure out what to do with it, build out whatever facilities need to be created, get it staffed, etc. There’s no word on how long that will take, but presumably Governor Kaine will address that in his remarks here on January 8.
12:50 AM Update: Brian Wheeler provides lots of great details over at Charlottesville Tomorrow. The important bit is that the state is paying $9.8M for this land, using money from a 2002 voter-approved bond to buy more park land and from federal funding for land acquisition, and (former) owner Hunter Craig will work out tax credits with the Virginia Department of Taxation.
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