Monthly Archive for October, 2009

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The Hook Looks Back at the Piedmont Airlines Crash

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 8, 2009 in General News. 5 Comments

This month is the fiftieth anniversary of the crash of Piedmont Airlines Flight 349, which went down on Bucks Elbow, near Sealeville north of Crozet, on October 30 1959. The Buckeye Pacemaker, a DC-3, travelled low over AHS, where fans at the football game that evening heard it buzz by, hidden in the cloud cover. Minutes later the plane, with 27 on board, crashed into the side of Bucks Elbow. Remarkably, one man survived, tossed from the plane, still strapped into his seat, where he was found a day and a half later. (Listen to Rey Barry’s remarkable story of how he found the man, from Coy Barefoot’s show in 2006.) The crash, and the survivor’s ordeal, were national news. It’s remained a mystery why and how the pilot made the series of errors necessary to fly directly into the side of the mountain.

In this week’s Hook, editor Hawes Spencer tells the story of what happened in those couple of days, in far greater detail that I’ve ever seen it. It turns out that the government crash report doesn’t make a lot of sense, and what might be the real explanation of what happened that night is a whole lot more interesting, and makes a great deal more sense. Don’t miss the comments, where family of the deceased are telling their own stories.

Annual Raises for County Teachers Unlikely

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 8, 2009 in Education, Government and Taxes. 2 Comments

County teachers aren’t likely to get their annual pay raise next year, Brandon Shulleeta reports in the Progress today. That’s already the case for state employees, who aren’t getting any raises for performance or cost of living increases, and with Albemarle facing the same economic conditions, it looks like there’s no way around limiting teacher pay likewise. No official decision has been made, but with a $4.7M shortfall in the county budget, it may as well have been.

Council Apologizes for Closing Schools in 1959

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 6, 2009 in Government, History and Politics. 19 Comments

City Council has passed a resolution apologizing for its role in Massive Resistance, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Progress. The vote was unanimous. Copies of the resolution will be sent to the dozen men and women who were the first students to cross the color barrier fifty years ago.

Cummings, Lowry and Snow Debate

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 3, 2009 in Politics. 2 Comments

The three candidates vying for the Samuel Miller BoS seat held a debate last night, Brandon Shulleeta writes in today’s Progress. (Or, at least, I assume that it was a debate and it was last night. Due to what I assume is some unfortunate editing, the articles makes no mention of how these three candidates came to be interacting or when they did so. So I’m going with a debate, last night.) Republican Duane Snow, Democrat Madison Cummings, and independent John Lowry are all looking to replace Democrat Sally Thomas, who is retiring. Lowry argued that millions of dollars could be added to county coffers not by raising taxes, but by encouraging new businesses to start in the area. Boldly defeating a strawman, Lowry disagreed with “the no-growth people don’t want to have business in the growth area.” (Who are these people? I want names.) He also criticized Snow for supporting keeping open the three elementary schools in the county facing consolidation, saying it was “entirely inappropriate” for Snow to state his opinion prior to the superintendent’s recommendation that they be kept open. Snow advocated zero-based budgeting—a popular proposal among state and local candidates of all political stripes—and said that education is his highest priority. Cummings, a two-term school board veteran, wants to increase school funding, wants to reemphasize physical fitness in the schools, and thinks the county needs a rainy day fund.

This race has been incredibly scattered, and it’s tough to know how it’ll turn out. Lowry has proved to be far and away the best fundraiser, taking in $14.5k without benefit of a party to back him. Cummings has the second-largest total, $10k, but that includes the $5k that he’s donated to himself. Snow has taken in $8k, including $2,500 from the Virginia Association of Realtors. Cummings has $7.5k cash on hand, or about half again as much as his opponents. No issue has come to the fore as one that will dominate the race, and Lowry is running a strong enough race that one can’t simply assume that Cummings will win by virtue of being a Democrat.

Slutzsky and Thomas’ Comparative Views on Leadership

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 2, 2009 in Politics. 16 Comments

The candidates for the Rio BoS seat held a debate last night, Bryan McKenzie writes in today’s Progress, with the two candidates highlighting a sharp difference in their philosophies of leadership. On the question of how a supervisor should figure out what side to support in dealing with hot-button issues, incumbent Democrat David Slutzky says that public wishes should be considered along with the supervisor’s own knowledge of the facts, recommendations of staff, and the results of research. The challenger, Republican Rodney Thomas, says that the best decision for the people is the one that most people want—majority rules—and he views it as his job to vote based on their wishes. The two also discussed additional taxes, what to do abut the reservoirs, Places29, and land use planning.

For my money, this is the most interesting local race this year, with two sharply contrasting candidates campaigning on opposites sides of some of the most important and interesting topics facing the county today. The outcome of this race will be fodder for weeks of analysis in an effort to divine the wishes of county residents on the topics of growth, planning, water supply, and transportation.

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