Monthly Archive for September, 2011

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Halfaday Saga Keeps Getting Stranger

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 17, 2011 in Politics. 28 Comments

It started with The Hook’s revelation that the recent Democratic candidate doesn’t own the local business that he claimed to own. A regular talking point of his campaign was his ownership of Snap Fitness, a claim that surprised the owners of Snap Fitness. Since Halfaday had reported an ownership interest in his candidacy filing with the State Board of Elections, that got voter registrar Sheri Iachetta’s attention. She turned over the matter to Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman, at the direction of a unanimous electoral board. In the meantime, The Hook’s Lisa Provence did a little more digging and found that Halfaday doesn’t even appear to live in the city, and that at least some of the 21 donors who he listed on campaign finance reports never gave him any money at all.

The piling-up of apparent mistruths make it logical to question just about everything that is known about him, as surely local media outlets are doing now. Like:

In an interview published with a web-only, Florida-based, LGBT publication earlier this month, Halfaday said he’s considering running for council again in two years. Perhaps the silver lining here is that he finished seventh in a seven-way race—perhaps voters’ choices reflected their concerns.

Record Profits at UVA Hospital

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 15, 2011 in Business and UVa. 8 Comments

The University of Virginia Hospital’s profit increased 52% last year over the prior year, Ted Strong reports for the Daily Progress, a record high of $180.4M. They credit the income to shorter per-patient stays (6.19 days reduced to 5.93 days, on average) and more people needing their services.

Blake Caravati Arrested for Domestic Assault

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 12, 2011 in Crime and Politics. 7 Comments

Blake CaravatiFormer Mayor Blake Caravati was arrested last Friday night, charged with assault in a domestic dispute, CBS-19 reports. Police aren’t saying who the victim is; Caravati lives with his wife, Paula. The 60-year-old Democrat was elected to council in 1998, and was mayor from 2000–2002. Neither he nor the police have commented on the matter.

9/13 Update: The Progress has more detail on this story—which was first broken by NBC-29, incidentally—specifying that he’s charged with assaulting his wife, and that she did not need medical attention. Neither Caravati nor his attorney are commenting. There’s an initial court hearing on Friday.

Rick Turner: A Secret Pact Bars Blacks from Downtown

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 11, 2011 in Business. 18 Comments

Remember Rick Turner? The former UVA Dean of African-American Affairs retired in 2006 after lying to federal investigators in a drug case. (The details of that sordid affair never became public.) That humiliation appeared to be the end of his public life, one that had become increasingly noisy in the prior couple of years. In 2005 alone he defended the stunningly incompetent school superintendent Scottie Griffin as a victim of race hatred, declared that teachers and the school bard are racist, that firing Griffin would be a “lynching”, that black people have a “slave-like mentality”, and that UVA students were guilty of “racial terrorism”. Again, that’s just in 2005.

Well, Turner’s emerged in public to again light a fire and throw some gasoline it, this time informing City Council that downtown has way too many white people, Graham Moomaw wrote in the Progress last week, and accusing downtown business owners of having a secret pact to refuse to hire African-Americans. Turner, the head of the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP, provided no evidence to support his claims. Councilors Holly Edwards, David Brown, and Dave Norris thanked Turner for his comments. (Turner once called for then-mayor Brown to resign for meeting with school principals.) His remarks can be watched, starting at the 43:14 mark. Downtown business owners aren’t thrilled with the accusations. Chamber president Tim Hulbert complained that “[i]It’s just not helpful…when anyone calls out a whole group of people and paints them with a brush that’s inaccurate.” Downtown Business Association co-chair Bob Stroh was reduced to stating the obvious, that “the part about the secret code and that kind of stuff is…not true.”

Earthquake Exceeded North Anna’s Designed Tolerances

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 9, 2011 in Business and Weather. 2 Comments

Last month’s earthquake exceeded the design standards of the North Anna nuclear plant, the Associated Press reports. That came out after a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection of the plant, using USGS data. That’s based not on the magnitude of the quake, but based on the peak ground acceleration (PGA)—the measurement of how hard and fast the ground was shaking at the plant. You can see that on the USGS’ “shakemap” of the earthquake. PGA varies enormously, based on distance from the quake, soil makeup, and other factors. It’s measured in G-force, a term that you’ll have heard in the descriptions of the forces on fighter pilots when pulling sharp turns, or on astronauts upon launch. Lake Anna was constructed to withstand 0.12–0.18g, but the 5.8 earthquake caused peak ground movement of 0.26g, substantially more than the designed limits of the reactor.

The plant remains closed, as it has been since the August 23 earthquake. The NRC says that it suffered “minor” damage, but no specifics have been provided.

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