Snowmageddon Photos

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
February 6, 2010 in Transportation and Weather.

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I just had to drive from Stony Point to Airport Road and back again, and my wife took some photos along the way during the two-hour journey. If you’re wondering how things look in 20N, Proffit Road, 29N, or Airport Road, here are some snapshots.

Folks are starting to upload their snow photos to the Charlottesville Flickr group, too, so flip through that for some images from across town. And, if you put photos on Flickr, join the group add your own pictures!

2 Comments

Snowmageddon (aka snOMG) is Upon Us

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
February 4, 2010 in Weather.

The National Weather Service is calling for 20–28″ of snow over the next couple of days, beginning around dawn tomorrow. While this is less than the December Snowpocalypse, after the snow that we got a couple of days ago and the snow that we got a couple of days before that, we’re basically all dreading it at this point. Schools are closed in the city and the county, UVA has (quite unusually) declared that they’re shut down tomorrow to all but essential staff, and VDOT has signs up along 29 declaring that conditions are going to be very dangerous, encouraging people to stay off the roads. Where things will get tricky is tomorrow afternoon and evening, when the heaviest snowfall is slated to coincide with strong winds, which will—in the words of the NWS—”make travel very hazardous or nearly impossible.” If we’re lucky, this will all come down in the form of snow, as is forecast; if some of this turns into ice, we’re headed for a very unpleasant next few days.

If you don’t have a shovel, and if you’re not stocked up on food, well, too late. If you do wind up stranded in your car, or in a house getting dangerously cold without heat, then knock on a stranger’s door and ask for help rather than freeze to death. At home tonight, round up your batteries, flashlights, weather radio, sleeping bags, candles, etc., and prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. If you’re feeling anxious, do some panic-cooking so that you’ll have some vittles while the power’s out. Bring the cat inside. Basically, expect to spend the next 3-4 days huddled around our collective internet-based hearth on your favorite local blogs, Facebook, etc. If we’re lucky, the power will stay on, and that hearth will be purely virtual.

With the last big storm, the best outlets for regular updates about the outside world came from The Daily Progress on Twitter, CBS-19 on Twitter, and The Hook’s blog, so folks hungry for information might check there for the best updates.

49 Comments

USPS to Shutter Processing Facility

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
February 2, 2010 in Business.
USPS Distribution Facility
The USPS Distribution Facility on Airport Rd.

The USPS is shutting down the Charlottesville mail processing facility, NBC 29 reports. They announced in August that they were going to conduct a study of whether they should scale it back, and then, to nobody’s surprise, announced in October that they’d be consolidating some services, but wouldn’t say the extent to which they’d be curtailing local services. (All of this after they’d built a new sorting facility in Sandston, east of Richmond, raising significant doubts as to whether they’d ever intended retain the C’ville location.) It turns out that they’re just going to shut it down entirely. Officially, there will be no layoffs, because the USPS will offer people jobs at this or another location; those who cannot sell their house in this market to move, or who won’t make the eighty-mile each-way commute through Richmond traffic, will be judged to have quit.

45 Comments

City, County Property Assessments Decline

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 30, 2010 in Government and Taxes.

Assessments are in for Charlottesville and for Albemarle, Rachana Dixit and Brandon Shulleeta report for the Daily Progress, and the trend is strongly downward.

For the first time since 1976, there’s been a decline in Charlottesville home values—a 2.19% drop—plus a 0.34% drop in commercial property values. That adds up to a $175k drop in city revenue, assuming a stable tax rate, which isn’t bad. Last year, home values went up 1% in the city, despite the national trend.

Albemarle home values dropped by 4%, while commercial properties dropped by 0.64%—basically the same ratio that the city saw. That’s not as bad as the county planned. With the current property tax rate at 74.2¢ per $100 of assessed value (that is, a 0.742% tax on property value), they’d have to take the rate up to 76.6¢ to keep revenue stable. Given the opposition to a tax increase among the Republican majority on the board—they support keeping the rate at the current rate—that’s going to mean a a 3.2% decrease in spending based on that income.

16 Comments

Gary O’Connell Leaving the City for ACSA

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 28, 2010 in Government.

City Manager Gary O’Connell is leaving to run the Albemarle County Service Authority, Hawes Spencer writes for The Hook. The most powerful man in city government, O’Connell will remain in his position through April before leaving, after nearly fifteen years on the job (and fourteen before that as assistant city manager). As Spencer explains, his new position will strike some as ironic, given that his work on the water supply plan as city manager has not been universally lauded, to put it gently. Because Charlottesville has a “strong city manager” form of government—which is to say that the city is run by a professional, rather than an elected mayor—the process by which the new city manager is hired is going to be an important one, the effects of which will be much more important than who the mayor is.

17 Comments

The DIA Boondoggle

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 27, 2010 in Government, Development, Business and Politics.

In the latest C-Ville Weekly, Will Goldsmith has a brilliant fisking of the whole Defense Intelligence Agency debacle that I just can’t recommend highly enough. It’s only January, and I’m pretty sure this is going to be the best piece of local investigative journalism in 2010. Business leaders (Leonard Sandridge, The Daily Progress editorial board, and the Chamber of Commerce chief among them) have been crowing about how the 828 employees that DIA will bring here will mean bajillions of homes sold, new jobs galore, flush county coffers, and a puppy for each and every one of us. It’ll be The Biggest Thing Ever™ for Charlottesville!

Except not. The jobs that they’re advertising for are so crazily specialized—and require a top-secret clearance—that neither you nor me or anybody we know are qualified for them. And the real estate benefits are nothing to write home about—new homes aren’t being built for these folks, since the market already has a glut of existing homes waiting to be sold, so there’s not likely to be any increase in property tax revenue. But even if there was, what of it? As Dennis Rooker explains in the article, a $300k house brings in $2.2k in property taxes. Educating just one kid from that house will run the county $8k. Don’t worry, though, that household can make it up in sales taxes. As long as they spend $580k/year in Albemarle stores. (Here’s hoping they don’t have two kids. Or use the roads, parks, police, fire, or rescue services.)

So who is this good for? Why are we doing this? Well, one names comes up over and over again: Wendell Wood. You’ll recall that this whole deal only went forward because Wendell Wood said that it simply had to happen, for super-secret national security reasons that he couldn’t divulge but, trust him, if Albemarle didn’t give him a rezoning of the land around the parcel he was going to sell to DIA, then DIA was totally going to take their ball and go home. So they turned his worthless land into a goldmine, by taking his rural land adjacent to the property and making it a part of the growth area. When those 828 employees want to buy some lunch, get some groceries, or perhaps rent an apartment real nearby, where are they gonna go? Why, to the buildings that Wood will construct next door on his newly-buildable land. And, lucky thing for Wood, he also owns another 958 acres adjacent to those two parcels, also zoned rural. And, luckier still, the new Board of Supervisors is just raring to expand the growth area and, damnedest thing, they want to do it by declaring Wood’s rural land to be part of the growth area, and with the wave of their magic wand, turn his near-worthless land into a small fortune. Not your land. Not my land. Wendell Wood’s land.

The word for this is “boondoggle.” That’s what we’re in the midst of here, watching unfold in slow motion. What I’ve written here is a slapdash summation of Goldsmith’s article. Really, just go read it.

40 Comments

Body “Likely” Morgan Harrington

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 26, 2010 in Crime.

In a press conference this evening, Virginia State Police announced the discovery of remains presumed to be those of Morgan Harrington, missing since October. A farmer out inspecting his fences near Red Hill (just off 29S) discovered her remains this morning, which were identified by clothing and hair. An autopsy is necessary to authenticate the identity and to determine the cause of death. Because of the circumstances of her disappearance and the odd location where her remains were found, police are treating this as a likely homicide.

This will inevitably draw comparisons to the 1996 murder of Alicia Showalter Reynolds, the 25-year-old who disappeared while driving to Charlottesville from Culpeper on 29. Her body was found in a field in Culpeper County nine weeks later; the elapsed time and the heavy rain had rendered the crime scene devoid of clues, perhaps as in the current case. Nobody was ever convicted of Reynolds’ murder, although a 2007 investigation by the Frederickburg Free Lance-Star makes a compelling case that the now-deceased Richard Evonitz did it; he’s also believed to have killed Sofia Silva and the Lisk sisters.

5 Comments

Wendell Woods’ 15k Ft. Mansion on Carter’s Mountain

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 25, 2010 in Development.

Because not enough people are wishing ill upon him, developer Wendell Wood has clear cut a big chunk of Carter’s Mountain, where he’s building a 15,554 square foot mansion, Dave McNair writes for The Hook. Including unfinished space and outdoor living space, the whole thing comes to 30,000 feet—and the huge swath of trees that he’s taken out for 360° views means that the enormous structure is visible from all around. You can’t miss it while driving down 29 South, where it sits atop the mountain, interrupting the ridge line. (See The Hook’s photos.) Despite repeated efforts to get the Board of Supervisors to prohibit mountaintop construction—largely at the behest of wealthy local conservative Fred Scott (as in Stadium)—the ordinance has never passed, so such construction is entirely legal, if reprehensible.

I am halfway through the process of building my own house perched on a mountain—although it’s less than 5% of the size of Woods, and kept off of the main ridge—and I’ve become very familiar with the steps that are necessary to keep a mountainside house from becoming an eyesore. Woods isn’t just not taking those steps, but he appears to be actively doing anything that he can to make his site visible far and wide. If that’s the case, all he’s got to do is paint it a garish color, which no doubt is forthcoming. Building a house in this manner is a bit like renting a billboard to suggest to children that they try heroin—while perfectly legal, anybody who would do such a thing is a jackass.

67 Comments

Library Considering Closing Crozet, Scottsville Branches

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 19, 2010 in Government, Taxes, Education and Politics.

The Jefferson Madison Regional Library is looking at closing their Scottsville and Crozet locations, Hawes Spencer writes for The Hook. In a press conference yesterday, the chair of the Library Board of Trustees said that if Albemarle County cuts their budget by just 5%, the Scottsville library will get the axe; with a 10% cut, Crozet will fall, too. County staff has recommended that the library simply cut their hours to 40 per week (less than six hours per day), but board chair Tony Townsend objected, writing in a press release that “forty hours per week of library service is less than that supported in Virginia’s poorest counties.” Library director John Halliday says that it’s just not practical to cut hours more—the savings there comes from cutting salaries, and they can’t recruit competent staff on such limited pay and hours. The Crozet and Scottsville branches are only open eight hours a day, six days a week as it is. The library system has long needed to expand the tiny Crozet branch, the fourth-busiest branch in the whole JMRL system; instead, they may be closing it. Note that Albemarle is the only municipality in the five served by JMRL that’s planning on cutting library funding.

JMRL has been pretty patient in the decade that I’ve been watching them, quietly watching as their physical infrastructure crumbles, simply appreciating the funding that they do get. It looks to me like they just aren’t willing to take it anymore. The timing is tough for the two newest members of the Board of Supervisors, Duane Snow and Rodney Thomas, both of whom ran on cutting spending and taxes—given that the library already has pretty limited hours, relies strongly on volunteers, and has foregone essential maintenance for years now, mantras like “zero-based budgeting” have little to offer what is fundamentally a political problem. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle this, their first government spending test.

22 Comments

Local Media Forum Successful, May Be Repeated

Published by
Waldo Jaquith
January 14, 2010 in Meta News, Site News and Business.
Local Media Forum

Tuesday night’s forum on the future of local print media went really very well. There were something like 85 people there, but it was tough to get a count, because the space was so overfilled. Dozens of people stood for an hour and a half and didn’t complain once, which was very generous. Our speakers were engaging and interesting, the audience had great questions, and I think everybody had a good time. (The Daily Progress’ Josh Barney was a clear crowd favorite. That guy should go on the lecture circuit.) But the whole affair left most people wanting more—a display of hands at the end showed that about 80% of the audience wanted to do this again soon, which surprised the heck out of me. I’d love to hear from folks about what they’d like a follow-up event to focus on, what should be done differently, what should be done the same, and who they’d like to hear speak. I’m grateful to everybody for coming out, to Left of Center for co-hosting this with cvillenews.com, and to all four of our speakers for their willingness to participate.

Sean Tubbs recorded the event for posterity, and you can listen on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network website.

7 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.