Monthly Archive for October, 2009

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County Dropout Rates for Black Students Have Tripled

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 21, 2009 in Education. 3 Comments

Black students in Albemarle County high schools are graduating at a lower rate this year than last year, Rachana Dixit and Brandon Shulleeta report in today’s Daily Progress. Of the class that entered ninth grade in 2004, 5.4% of black students dropped out. Of the class that entered in 2005, 15.2% dropped out, nearly triple the rate of the prior year. However, it’s helpful to look at the raw numbers for perspective. Only 138 black students entered the county school system in 2005, so we’re looking at an increase of about fourteen students, or about five students dropping out per high school.

The county school system points out in a press release some of what’s behind those numbers:

Although fewer black students graduated on-time in 2009 than their counterparts in 2008, one-third of those students who did not graduate are still enrolled in school and are on track to graduate within five years. Nationally, about 71 percent of students graduate on time with a regular diploma, but barely half of black and Hispanic students earn diplomas with their peers.

“A number of our black students who did not graduate in 2008 stayed in school another year and graduated in 2009,” said Dr. Matthew Haas, Director of Secondary Education for the school division. “These students had gotten behind early in their high school careers and persisted to finish their work and graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers. As a School Division, we have now put into place more programs to help students who fall behind early in high school get caught up sooner, so that they can not only graduate, but graduate on-time.”

A school system representative tells the Progress that they’ve put retention programs into place in the past couple of years—which they say have been very successful—which are too new to have fully benefitted the most recent class of students.

That may all be true, but the headline here—”Black dropout rate in county triples”—is a bitter pill.

Slonaker Loses County Court Case Over Signage

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 18, 2009 in Business and Government. 26 Comments

General District Judge William G. Barkley has found Forest Lakes Arby’s owner Tom Slonaker in clear violation of the county’s zoning regulations, Tasha Kates wrote in yesterday’s Progress, fining him $1,000 per violation. For years Slonaker has festooned his business with advertisements for Arby’s and another, unlicensed business that exceed county standards that regulate how many square feet of ads that a business can have on their property. When pressed in court as to why he left signs up in violation of a law he was well familiar with, Slonaker claimed temporary blindness.

Back in 2003, Slonaker flew an Arby’s flag on his flagpole, and when the county pointed out that’s an ad too, Slonaker accused the county of opposing the American flag and thus being terrorist-supporters, or some such drummed-up patriotism of financial convenience. (At the time, he told the Progress: “Not only do I intend to continue to fly the Arby’s Flag with pride below our American Flag, but I will also fly the UVa Flag, our state flag and any other flag which shows our pride in America’s freedom’s which you seem so intent to abolish.”) His argument is that it’s his property, and he can do anything that he wants, without restriction, and there’s nothing that the county or anybody else should have to say about it.

One point that Slonaker has made repeatedly that have some merit is that other businesses display advertisements that would appear to exceed reasonable standards for the allowable square footage. I recently drove down 29 and took pictures of a couple of the more prominent examples. Better Living Furniture, near Rio Hill, appears to have a trailer parked permanently next to their store, covered with a large ad for one of the product lines that they carry. (Google Maps captured this, too, so constant is its presence.)

Better Living Furniture Trucks

And Ntelos’ store up towards Hollymead has an armored truck permanently parked out front that serves as a billboard for the business, something that Slonaker used to do with a sign-bearing van out front of his fast food restaurant.

Ntelos' Store on 29N

Signs are covered under section 4.15 of the zoning regulations (505k PDF), which certainly appears to prohibit both the Ntelos and Better Living signs. §4.15.7c2 prohibits

Advertising vehicles, where (i) the vehicle is parked so as to be visible from a public right-of-way in a parking space or parking area not authorized by section 4.15.6(21); (ii) the vehicle is inoperable; or (iii) the vehicle is incapable of moving on its own or is not self-propelled.

The exception specified in 4.15.6(21) is for vehicles that are “used as transportation for the business” and are parked properly. Given that neither of these things seem to move (and Ntelos has no use for an armored truck—it’s unlikely that they often deal in cash), I can’t see how they qualify.

It looks like Slonaker is right that the regulations are enforced unevenly, and he’s right to complain about it. But he’s dead wrong in believing that means that the law doesn’t apply to him.

Planning Commission Opposing Rezoning Due to Road Capacity

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 16, 2009 in Development, Government and Transportation. 18 Comments

The Albemarle Planning Commission is set to oppose rezonings in the vicinity of Glenmore, Connie Chang writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow, because there’s simply not the road capacity to handle the traffic between there and Charlottesville. That’s good news for supporters of common sense. Traditionally, developers get to build whatever they want just about wherever they want, and we get stuck footing the bill for the sewer line capacity, road expansions, etc. to accommodate the development. It’s a net financial loser for the county. The area around Glenmore is designated as a growth area, to the perpetual horror of Glenmore, but a two-lane 250W runs between there and Pantops, and it’s already getting more traffic than it can handle. Adding the 1,000+ residential units that could hypothetically be added would require $16M in road upgrades. As the state’s transportation system hurtles towards bankruptcy, there’s almost zero chance of such upgrades happening. Wisely, the planning commission isn’t interested in approving development that our infrastructure can’t handle. It’s a practical approach that hasn’t often been taken in the county, but one that’s necessary in the face of a slow-motion economic transportation crisis that isn’t likely to be solved in the next decade.

Slutzky Suggest Land Use Tax Reform

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 13, 2009 in Development, Politics and Taxes. 59 Comments

Albemarle BoS chair David Slutzky is toying with a significant overhaul to county taxation policy, Brandon Shulleeta writes in today’s Daily Progress, although he says it’s nothing more than idea, one that he’s not even sure that he’d vote for. The county provides a significant real estate tax cut to landowners in rural areas who agree to keep their land rural. The majority of the county’s land is enrolled in the program, $18M worth of tax breaks in all. A lot of folks are using the program as it’s designed. But some folks aren’t. Land speculators that aren’t planning on developing their land just yet can enroll their land, get tax breaks for as long as they want, and when they decide to develop it, they just pay the last few years of rollback taxes. Slutzky proposes requiring that, in order to get the tax break, rural landowners commit to permanently keeping their land rural by placing it in a conservation easement, so that neither they nor any future owners would be permitted to develop it. He figures it could bring in an extra $10M-$20M year in real estate taxes, revenue that would come in handy right about now.

Rodney Thomas, the Republican opposing Democrat Slutzky in this year’s election, doesn’t support Slutzky’s idea, and told the Progress:

I think it’s just taking the rights away from the individuals that own the land. I don’t think they [should] have to put their land into conservation easement just to prove that they aren’t going to develop some property. It’s their property. It belongs to them.

Slutzky doesn’t intend to do anything with this idea before the election, but says that he wants to learn more about it to see if it’s worth pursuing.

A New Dam Cheaper than Fixing the Old One?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 8, 2009 in Government. 32 Comments

It may be cheaper to build a new dam than repair the existing one, Rachana Dixit wrote in yesterday’s Progress. The Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority‘s executive director says that the engineers studying what to do with the dam figure that the cost of repairs would exceed the cost of tearing it down and starting again, though that’s just a preliminary conclusion. That’s the opposite of what the prior consultants said…though they were fired. In the case of such wildly varying information, it’s tough to know what to believe.

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