Monthly Archive for April, 2008

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Turning Morven Into a Working Farm?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2008 in Agriculture and UVa. 5 Comments

In the current (soon-to-be prior) issue of C-Ville Weekly, Jayson Whitehead writes about a pretty cool idea: turning Morven into a farm to grow food for UVa. John Kluge donated the 7,400 acres to UVa in 2001, and the university has been trying to figure out what to do with the land that they haven’t sold off. Urban & Environmental Planning graduate student Anne Bedarf has pitched her idea to the UVA Foundation (which owns all of UVa’s land), and they’ve been receptive.

I considered attending Asheville college Warren Wilson after high school and was pleased to find, when I visited, that they had their own farm for just this purpose. Yale does the same thing.

Plan 9, Satellite Ballroom Closing Next Month

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 21, 2008 in Business. Closed

Plan 9 and the Satellite Ballroom will close at the end of May, David Moltz writes in today’s Cavalier Daily. Plan 9 is going to allow their lease to expire, seeing their possible forced closing as a sign that perhaps it’s best that they consolidate their two C’ville locations. Their subtenants — Higher Grounds, Just Curry, and Satellite Ballroom — will likewise be out come midnight, May 31. Plan 9 owner Jim Bland intends to make a formal announcement today.

1:20pm Update: C-Ville Weekly provides more details. CVS sounds like all but a sure thing, and Satellite Ballroom is looking hard for a new location, rather than simply giving up.

It’s Spring

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 17, 2008 in Weather. 5 Comments
barnscape

©2008 Bill Detmer. All rights reserved.

OK, I’m calling it — winter is over, spring is here. Monday’s threat of sleet was winter’s last gasp. I was convinced of that when I saw this photo by Bill Detmer appear in the Charlottesville Flickr group this morning. The daffodils have come and gone, the flowering trees behind my office have lost their flowers, and The Dogwood Festival is underway.

A barely related memory. A decade ago, when Robert Van Winkle was still at NBC 29. It’s early December. The weather has turned cold because, hey, winter’s coming. Robert has just finished providing the forecast. A bubbly anchor without a brain in her head turns to him and asks earnestly: “oh, Robert, when will this cold snap end?”

City Adopts Budget with a Flat Tax Rate

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2008 in Government and Taxes. 16 Comments

Charlottesville has adopted a $140M budget, Sean Tubbs writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow, keeping the real estate property tax at $0.95, as it was last year. The budget (99k PDF) includes some last-minute additions of funding for things like JABA, Streamwatch, and Children, Youth & Family Services.

For a sense of perspective, note that we had a $100M budget in 2005, a $94M budget in 2004, and a ~$80M budget in 2003.

UVa Laptop Goes Missing with SSNs

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2008 in Crime and UVa. 12 Comments

Bad news for my fellow UVa employees: an employee’s laptop was stolen, and it contained names and Social Security numbers for 7,000 students and staff. Brian McNeill explains in the Progress that the university has contacted everybody whose data has gone missing, saying that they suspect the intended theft was of of the computer, not its data. The university uses SSNs as a primary identification number for many UVa employees, so it’s used whenever there’s cause to provide a unique identifier for a given employee, but they’re thankfully phasing that out.

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