Woman Who Appeared with Obama a Convicted Criminal

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 28, 2010 in Government, Business and Law and Justice.

Charlottesville’s Leslie Macko, who stood at President Obama’s side as an example of people who need unemployment benefits, actually lost her job because of after a conviction for prescription drug fraud. Jessica Jaglois at CBS-19 dug up this gem, which certainly has the potential to become national news. Macko said that she’d been laid off from ACAC, and needed unemployment benefits extended since there were no other jobs to be had. In fact, ACAC fired her after she was convicted. Which leaves me wondering how she’s getting unemployment. Don’t you have to be laid off to be eligible?

07/29 Update: ACAC has added an update to the story to clarify something that definitely wasn’t clear the first time around, which is that her firing had nothing to do with her drug conviction. She was convicted of prescription drug fraud (and, in another incident, grand larceny), and she was fired, but that the two aren’t related.

11 Comments

Why the Pushy Beggars Downtown?

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 25, 2010 in General News.

The cover story of the current C-Ville Weekly asks what’s behind the rash of beggars on the Downtown Mall? There’s the obvious point that we’re in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, which would explain the (apparent) increase in numbers, but what’s up with the new faces, displaying signs and soliciting cash? It’s not clear that there are more beggars, but there are some new faces, employing new tactics, eschewing the passivity common among the chronically homeless who beg downtown. As of 2007, the local homeless population was more likely to be local than the population at large, which busted the “Charlottesville is a homeless mecca myth. This January’s survey showed an 18% increase (with 274 homeless Charlottesvillians in total). Now we’ve got The Haven, the day shelter on Market Street, just a block off the Downtown Mall, and it’s certainly possible that facility has something to do with this. The folks who run it argue that they’re in the habit of upbraiding people for panhandling and, more important, helping people get employed (and employable) so that they’re not homeless.

I visited Reno a couple of years ago, and they had a clever solution to the problem of the hordes of pushy panhandlers wandering around downtown. Near the busiest intersections, in front of the garish casinos, large, eye-catching collection boxes were set up, with signs saying that the best way to help the homeless is to donate to the organizations to assist them, not to give money to individuals. That had the effect of pushing panhandlers away from that block. That may be overkill for Charlottesville, but it could help.

26 Comments

Local Man Buys Ice Park, Intact

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 25, 2010 in Business and Sports.

In this week’s Hook, Courteney Stuart explains how 29-year-old businessman Mark Brown came to acquire the Ice Park. He bought it last week for $3M, and intends to keep it closed it for the summer while he has some modifications made to the facility. Brown is taking the financial leap that the prior owners could never justify: installing a removable rink floor, so that it can be closed and rented out each summer as a general-use large venue. (The rink alone is three times larger than The Omni’s ballroom.) It’s slated to re-open on September 15.

6 Comments

“Literally the gayest thing I’ve ever done.”

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 15, 2010 in Meta News.

In Saturday’s Progress, Brandon Shulleeta had a long, detailed article about a ridiculous sounding “gay-to-straight camp” run by a guy in Greene County who says he can change people’s sexuality. He claims a whopping 13% success rate for attendees of his $650 weekends. (For straight folks who can’t understand why this is so dumb, consider whether a weekend-long camp would be sufficient to make you gay. Yeah, you neither, huh?) This isn’t normally the sort of thing I’d write about here, but there were a couple of paragraphs in there that I loved—I’ve revisited them with a chuckle about once a day since—and I’ve just got to share. Shulleeta talked with Ted Cox, a straight guy working on a book about the faux science of gay-to-straight therapy, who attended the camp, posing as a gay guy wanting to go straight:

At one point during a camp weekend, participants were told to perform a hold with each other that’s similar to how a parent would hold a child, Cox said. Another hold involved one man leaning back into another’s chest. The positions were not sexual in nature, Cox said, but he doesn’t see how they could help someone become straight.

“I would think that some of the things we did at the camp would be counter-productive,” said Cox, who called the weekend “literally the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

If you think that’s as funny as I do, you might enjoy an article Cox wrote about the experience.

9 Comments

Bel Rio’s Landlord Says “Knock It Off”

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 15, 2010 in Development, Business and Music.

The saga of Jim Baldi’s noisy Belmont restaurant is ending not with a bang, but a whimper. Bel Rio’s landlord, Jeff Easter, has told them to be quiet, Rachana Dixit writes for the Daily Progress. Easter says that his lease limited them to jazz performances, not traditionally known for being loud, and Baldi’s move to having DJs spinning thumpy music just isn’t permitted. There’s a twist, too—Bel Rio is shut down, a sign on the door saying it’s only temporary, but it’s not clear why or when—or if—it’s reopening. Council is set to consider lowering the noise ordinance further on Monday, just to deal with Bel Rio, but I imagine they’ll put that off for a future meeting, since it’s entirely possible that this is the end of the matter. Until it comes up again in 5-10 years, the next time somebody opens a noisy venue in a residential area.

16 Comments

Danielson Loses $6M Dispute with Minor

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 2, 2010 in Development and Business.

Halsey Minor is the victor in his dispute with Lee Danielson over the Landmark Hotel, Rachana Dixit writes in the Progress. The former business partners took their dispute to arbitration, with Minor wanting $12M from Danielson, and Danielson wanting $6M from Minor. The arbitrator found that Danielson was guilty of “deliberative and reckless conduct” and “gross negligence,” and has ordered him to pay $6.4M to Minor. (A stunning $2.2M of that is in attorneys’ fees.) This tells us nothing about the future of the hotel. There’s still the matter of Minor’s lawsuit against Silverton Bank—and vice versa—the outcome of which may help figure out what’s going to happen to the big, empty tower.

By way of reminder, this whole thing started with Lee Danielson back in 2003, when he bought the Boxer Learning/Central Fidelity building for $3.3M. Three years later he hadn’t done a thing with it, and Oliver Kuttner bought it from him for $3.7M. Though he’d said he was thinking about turning it into affordable housing, he ultimately returned to Danielson’s plan to build a hotel, and sold the whole thing back to Danielson and Minor. Within months, Danielson and Minor couldn’t even agree as to whether they were still building a hotel, started squabbling publicly, and early last year the lawsuits started.

How many times do people have to learn not to do business with Lee Danielson?

8 Comments

Suspect in Harrington Case

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
July 1, 2010 in Crime.

Wanted PosterThere’s a suspect in the Morgan Harrington murder case, the Daily Progress reported this afternoon. Apparently, DNA from the suspect was found, because a cold hit matched to a 2005 abduction and sexual assault case in Fairfax. A 26-year-old woman was walking through a residential neighborhood at 10 PM on a Saturday night when a ~30-year-old black male seized her from behind, carried her into a park, and assaulted her. (See the wanted poster for details on the suspect.)

The description of a suspect is a huge break in the case, which—at least publicly—has had nothing but dead ends so far. Witnesses may not remember seeing Harrington that night, but having a description of a suspect would seem to double the odds of somebody having seen something.

7 Comments

Albemarle School Enrollment to Climb

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
June 29, 2010 in Government, Taxes and Education.

After years of remaining pretty level, Albemarle County school enrollment is forecast to climb by 7.2% in the next five years, The Daily Progress reports. UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service produced the report, as they do annually. Charlottesville should climb by 1%. The only area locality expected to actually lose students is Buckingham.

1 Comment

Tornado at Barracks Road?

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
June 24, 2010 in Weather.

A particularly nasty storm swept through town a couple of hours ago, and based on the reports right now, it sure sounds like a small tornado may be to blame for the corridor of damage that high winds left behind. Accounts by local media outlets and on Twitter report trees down, power out for 41,000 people, and a bunch of reports of property damage. A lot of the damage, at least anecdotally, is in a swath running from Best Buy through Barracks Road over to Ivy Road. While it could be a microburst, those generally last for less time, and are isolated to one location, rather than running along a path.

When we had a tornado in May 2000, it was a few days before the microburst was confirmed to be an F0 tornado, as the path of damage made obvious. On the other hand, our 2002 tornado was never confirmed as such.

At 5:00, I was on 81 in West Virginia, headed home after being out of town for a week, so I missed the whole affair. What was your experience? What do you think–bad thunderstorm, microburst, or tornado? Who’s got pictures?

33 Comments

WTJU Format Debate Spills into Public View

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
June 23, 2010 in UVa and Music.

WTJU’s internal debate over its future has gone public, Dave McNair writes for The Hook. Long-time station manager Chuck Taylor recently retired, and brand-new manager Burr Beard has been told by UVA that he’s got to make WTJU relevant, or it may simply be shut down. (With 7,500 weekly listeners, the station is perhaps better loved than actually listened to.) Long-time DJs—all volunteers—are none too thrilled by Beard’s plans, which are to move to a format closer to commercial radio and to scale back on the eclectica. Though many seem to be OK with change in concept, having this new guy stroll in and immediately start making changes without volunteer buy-in isn’t being received well. One twenty-year veteran has resigned rather than wait to be booted. DJ Tyler Magill has started a blog documenting and objecting to the proposed changes. But if Beard really has the dire mission that’s been described, he may basically have license to do as he likes.

UVA has agreed to postpone any changes until fall, Brian McNeill writes in the Progress, and WTJU is about to launch a blog on their website, in an apparent effort to move the online discussion from Magill’s website to their own.

In the mid-nineties, I had a bi-weekly rock show on WTJU (with an inherited, classically useless WTJU title: “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”), and for some years I co-hosted Rock and Folk Marathon shows dedicated to Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Liz Phair, and others. Fifteen years later, I still have WTJU preset on my car radio, but it’s increasingly a sympathy button. Easily a third of the time that I flip to it, I’m greeted by silence, either because they broadcast at such a low level (sure, yeah, it provides greater fidelity, but it’s too quiet to be heard) or because a long, awkward pause is underway. No more than one time in twenty is anything that I want to listen to being broadcast. The schedule is impossible for any normal person to remember, and even when read, doesn’t seem wholly logical. (Jazz at 9 AM? No thank you.) The show titles are of no help to understanding what you’re going to hear, and the descriptions often don’t help much, either. All of which is to say that WTJU certainly has its problems, which even a long-time fan like me can see, and I can’t see that anybody would argue otherwise. It remains to be seen whether the cure will be worse than the disease.

14 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.