Monthly Archive for December, 2006

Page 4 of 7

Even UVa Doesn’t Like the Purchasing System

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 11, 2006 in UVa. 5 Comments

We know that UVa employees hate their new electronic procurement system, but it turns out that UVa is no more fond of it, Aaron Kessler reports in today’s Daily Progress. The state is charging “user fees,” meaning that universities across the state — including UVa — have to pay a 1%-2% fee on top of all of their purchases. This comes as news to UVa. That’ll run them $2.5M, and now they have to figure out how to distribute that money among their departments and rejigger their budgets, retroactive to July 1, to pay for it. UVa has asked the state for $400k in funding to help cover the unexpected costs, meaning that the state would be paying UVa so that UVa could pay them.

So why the enormous fees? Turns out the entire system was contracted out to CGI-AMS, with CGI agreeing that they’d fund it solely through user fees. But then CGI said that user fees weren’t enough to run the system, and that they were losing money on it. (How much money they lost is secret, claimed by the company to be proprietary.) So the state decided to start charging these new fees and paying $3M/year from its own pocket, and now CGI will make $12M/year on this, or twice as much. The company is now paid a flat fee, and the user fees thing has gone out the window. Along the way the state is doing many of the things that CGI was doing, including running the customer service center and handling billing and collection.

So we’re paying CGI twice as much to do significantly less work because they’re not making enough money…but they won’t say how much.

Plane Crash on Proffit Rd.

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 10, 2006 in General News. 4 Comments

An airplane has crashed on Rivanna Farm at Riverview Farm, just off of Proffit Road, CBS 19 reports. It’s said to have had four passengers on it from Chesterfield County. At least one passenger is known to be dead. My wife saw a small airplane flying far too low while driving on Stony Point Road some time around 1:30pm today — it was odd enough to concern her, but she thought it must just be sightseers. Presumably more information will be coming in soon.

10:30pm Update: John Yellig provides details for the Daily Progress. It was a Piper Lance that was cleared to land at CHO, but the pilot reported that he was having engine trouble and, in fact, the engine was turned off. He tried to land in a field at the farm but crashed into the woods. The pilot was killed on impact and the plane caught fire. Amazingly, Pegasus was in the air at the time and witnessed the crash, so they were on the scene immediately. It took half an hour for fire crews to figure out how to get to the crash site. The condition of the three passengers hasn’t been reported.

12/11 Update: The deceased is Richmond oncologist Christopher Desch, the RT-D reports. He was 51 year old, and leaves a wife and son in Henrico. It also seems that the early word of there being three passengers was wrong — Desch was the only occupant. Finally, Autria Godfrey at CBS 19 provides a Pegasus flight nurse’s account of the crash from their perspective.

VDOT Fudged Response Time Figures

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 9, 2006 in Politics and Transportation. 8 Comments

Jeremy Borden has a lengthy article about the proposed closure of the western Albemarle VDOT maintenance facility in today’s Progress with several interesting new bits of information. There are 91 such closures proposed around the state.

At last week’s community meeting in Free Union, VDOT insisted that western Albemarle County’s would continue to be maintained at VDOT’s minimum level of service. They left out an important detail that an audience member had to point out — that VDOT’s minimum level of service is considerably lower than the current level of service. But the Progress has pointed out that the story is worse still. VDOT’s been reporting in their presentations that their maintenance standard is that any given portion of road should be within a 45-minute drive from a maintenance facility. Turns out they just came up with that — the standard was long 30 minutes, but they raised it in order to reduce the quality of service without having to admit that they were reducing the quality of service. Naturally, they’ve chosen not to point this out in their presentations. Of course, they’ve provided virtually no data to the public, so this isn’t unusual.

The Progress also points out that this money-saving plan doesn’t seem to be a money saving plan at all. They’ve thrown around large figures to demonstrate the cost savings, but don’t trumpet the point that that money will then have to go to pay private contractors to do the same work.

A final point in the article that left me a bit tweaked is Del. Rob Bell’s plan to hold a conference call between concerned residents and Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer. This whole VDOT outsourcing / shutdown plan has come about because many members of the General Assembly refuse to fund transportation at a level that will allow basic service to continue, even though a special session to accomplish just that was held this fall. Del. Rob Bell was one of the representatives who voted against the funding increases and for this outsourcing plan. Though it’s nice that he’s holding a conference call, the problem that so concerns him is of his own making. He could introduce a bill tomorrow that would fix this if he were genuinely sympathetic to his constituents’ concerns.

9pm Update: On a related note, Bob Gibson writes that Republicans are going to lose more seats if they don’t do something about transportation.

Harry F. Byrd came to power in the 1920s by championing fiscal commonsense in road funding, establishing the organization that became VDOT with The Byrd Road Law of 1932. It took more than sixty years for Republicans to regain the majority after that. How long will they be in the wilderness after they’re done screwing it up this time around?

BoS Ignores Slutzky Growth Plan

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 7, 2006 in Development and Politics. 25 Comments

Albemarle Supervisor David Slutzky (Rio) has spent months developing a detailed and intricate plan to create a market-based solution for keeping rural areas rural and encouraging dense development within the urban ring. The idea is that those of us who live in the rural areas can sell our rights to build more houses on our land to people in the urban ring, who can then develop more densely.

Last night he formally proposed it to his fellow Board of Supervisors members. As Jeremy Borden explains in today’s Daily Progress, the BoS really wasn’t interested. They weren’t so much opposed as they just didn’t care. Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier (Scottsville) just thought it was too darned complicated. (If this is too complicated for him, it might be time he left office. This is pretty basic stuff.) So there was no vote, no counterproposals, no plan to move forward. Just nothing.

Here’s the podcast of the discussion.

The phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” comes to mind.

Louisa Also Gets No VDOT Answers

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 7, 2006 in Politics and Transportation. Closed

Louisa County officials are getting annoyed with VDOT, Leyla Santiago reports for NBC 29 — VDOT has proposed closing the Louisa maintenance facility, but won’t provide any details as to why. The county sent a letter to VDOT in late November with a series of concerns that they’d like addressed before the agency’s self-imposed December 15th decision deadline, and they haven’t heard a peep from VDOT. As with Albemarle, VDOT hasn’t given Louisa any data about why the facility is being closed or how the roads will be maintained at an acceptable level without it.

Jeremy Borden reported for the Daily Progress today that the Albemarle BOS voted unanimously against closing the Albemarle facility in Free Union, specifically citing the lack of coherent data from VDOT.

This is going on in just about every county in the state. I’d provide a link to more information about this on VDOT’s website, but if they have any information available, I certainly can’t find it.

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