After years of remaining pretty level, Albemarle County school enrollment is forecast to climb by 7.2% in the next five years, The Daily Progress reports. UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service produced the report, as they do annually. Charlottesville should climb by 1%. The only area locality expected to actually lose students is Buckingham.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Monthly Archive for June, 2010
A particularly nasty storm swept through town a couple of hours ago, and based on the reports right now, it sure sounds like a small tornado may be to blame for the corridor of damage that high winds left behind. Accounts by local media outlets and on Twitter report trees down, power out for 41,000 people, and a bunch of reports of property damage. A lot of the damage, at least anecdotally, is in a swath running from Best Buy through Barracks Road over to Ivy Road. While it could be a microburst, those generally last for less time, and are isolated to one location, rather than running along a path.
When we had a tornado in May 2000, it was a few days before the microburst was confirmed to be an F0 tornado, as the path of damage made obvious. On the other hand, our 2002 tornado was never confirmed as such.
At 5:00, I was on 81 in West Virginia, headed home after being out of town for a week, so I missed the whole affair. What was your experience? What do you think–bad thunderstorm, microburst, or tornado? Who’s got pictures?
WTJU’s internal debate over its future has gone public, Dave McNair writes for The Hook. Long-time station manager Chuck Taylor recently retired, and brand-new manager Burr Beard has been told by UVA that he’s got to make WTJU relevant, or it may simply be shut down. (With 7,500 weekly listeners, the station is perhaps better loved than actually listened to.) Long-time DJs—all volunteers—are none too thrilled by Beard’s plans, which are to move to a format closer to commercial radio and to scale back on the eclectica. Though many seem to be OK with change in concept, having this new guy stroll in and immediately start making changes without volunteer buy-in isn’t being received well. One twenty-year veteran has resigned rather than wait to be booted. DJ Tyler Magill has started a blog documenting and objecting to the proposed changes. But if Beard really has the dire mission that’s been described, he may basically have license to do as he likes.
UVA has agreed to postpone any changes until fall, Brian McNeill writes in the Progress, and WTJU is about to launch a blog on their website, in an apparent effort to move the online discussion from Magill’s website to their own.
In the mid-nineties, I had a bi-weekly rock show on WTJU (with an inherited, classically useless WTJU title: “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”), and for some years I co-hosted Rock and Folk Marathon shows dedicated to Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Liz Phair, and others. Fifteen years later, I still have WTJU preset on my car radio, but it’s increasingly a sympathy button. Easily a third of the time that I flip to it, I’m greeted by silence, either because they broadcast at such a low level (sure, yeah, it provides greater fidelity, but it’s too quiet to be heard) or because a long, awkward pause is underway. No more than one time in twenty is anything that I want to listen to being broadcast. The schedule is impossible for any normal person to remember, and even when read, doesn’t seem wholly logical. (Jazz at 9 AM? No thank you.) The show titles are of no help to understanding what you’re going to hear, and the descriptions often don’t help much, either. All of which is to say that WTJU certainly has its problems, which even a long-time fan like me can see, and I can’t see that anybody would argue otherwise. It remains to be seen whether the cure will be worse than the disease.
Since the owners of the Charlottesville Ice Park announced its closure due to a fundamentally flawed business model, it’s seemed inevitable that it would shut down—who wants to buy debt with little prospect of return? Looks like there may be a buyer, Courteney Stuart reports for The Hook. The catch is that the potential buyer is $300k short of the asking price, so this is far from a done deal.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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