David Slutzky says he’s not going to run against Del. Rob Bell. #
Chicken farmer and faux celebrity Tommy Garrett has subpoenaed me for evidence in his lawsuit against The Hook. In the incredibly overbroad subpoena, his attorney asks for full documentation about any time I have ever communicated with anybody, ever, about Garrett or the lawsuit, along with everything I know about everybody who posted a comment to my blog entry about the case: names, e-mail address, IP addresses, etc. The idea that I could have any information relevant to this case is absurd, since I hadn’t written a word about the matter (or even heard of Garrett) until after his lawsuit had been filed.
What Garrett and his attorney may not know is that I’ve got a bit of a history of not taking any guff on the legal front—I was among the plaintiffs who took the youth curfew case up to the Supreme Court in the mid-90s, and I prevailed when Mattel came after me in federal court in 2000. So rest assured that I don’t intend to give up a thing unless compelled to do so by a court. Unfortunately, “hiring a lawyer to quash a subpoena” doesn’t appear in our household budget, so I’m acting as my own attorney here. But, hey, I’ve been exploring getting a law degree, so here’s a chance for a crash course. The requested information appears to be variously irrelevant, unnecessary to the case, confidential, and privileged.
I’d chalked up Garrett as a harmless kook, and pitied the guy enough that I’d resolved to basically ignore this matter save to cover the aspect of a local media outlet being sued. But my perspective is now considerably less charitable.
The YMCA is dramatically shrinking the size of their planned McIntire Park facility, Rachana Dixit reports in the Progress. Recall that the city gave away $2M of public park to the Young Men’s Christian Association after the group agreed to build the facility and allow the Charlottesville High School swim team to have priority to the $1.25M lap pool (which the city paid for). The 75,000 square foot facility has shrunk by a third to 50,000 square feet, which the organization says is a result of a lack of donations because of a tight economy. They need to raise $15M, but they’re stuck at $7.5M. The good news is that the softball fields aren’t going anywhere. The smaller size of the building means that there’s no longer any reason to tear them up.
The developers behind the massive Biscuit Run project say it’s on hold, Tasha Kates writes in today’s Daily Progress, a result of the collapsed housing market. You’ll recall that Biscuit Run was sold to developers by the Breedens for $46M three years ago, and that the county calculated that the development would cost us the taxpayers $222M, but that we’re basically powerless to prevent it, so it was approved a year and a half ago. The planned 3,100 houses are to be located just south of town, but since nobody appears to be able to sell any existing houses right now, building new ones wouldn’t make any sense at all.
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