Mike Baird has announced his candidacy for Charlottesville Sheriff. He’s currently a captain under Sheriff Cornelia Johnson. #
Mike Baird has announced his candidacy for Charlottesville Sheriff. He’s currently a captain under Sheriff Cornelia Johnson. #
The Albemarle Planning Commission gave the thumbs-up to windmills, Fania Gordon reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. In a unanimous vote, they directed staff to come up with an ordinance to let people put up small-scale windmills to generate power. County engineer Mark Graham explained that the conflict will come from wanting to preserve viewsheds and trees, but also wanting to generate sustainable energy. (For a windmill to be useful, it’s got to be above the treetops, whether by making it tall or chopping down some trees.) And four members of the public attended, all speaking out in favor of allowing wind energy in Albemarle. There’s no law in place yet, but there’s a consensus that they need to move towards allowing windmills. The next step is to massage a proposal from county staff into something that’s politically tenable, which will likely come in the next few months.
Should city and county schools consolidate into a single school system? That question gets raised periodically, and Will Goldsmith is chewing it over in the latest C-Ville Weekly. The city’s recent school efficiency study didn’t address the topic, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering. City school board member Llezelle Dugger tells the paper that it’s just not viable, but Albemarle school board member Brian Wheeler thinks it’s well worth spending some time looking at it.
The notion of combining services has been around for a long time, as has the idea that we should just combine the two entities entirely. The word “reversion” still prompts shudders in the veterans of the mid-90s township wars, when some folks were pushing to have the city demoted to a town in order to force cooperation between the entities. Some sort of large-scale collaboration may allow the revenue sharing agreement to be set aside, or at least absorbed into the largest costs of running joint services, and that might be good for everybody.
Monticello is trying to apply Jefferson to everyday life, in the form of a new website. #
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