Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Boyd Wants to Open Meadowcreek Parkway, Now

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 31, 2011 in Politics and Transportation. 23 Comments Tags: .

Supervisor Ken Boyd thinks it’s time to open the Meadowcreek Parkway to traffic, despite that it’s not finished being built, Aaron Richardson writes in the Daily Progress. The agreement between the city, the county, and the Virginia Department of Transportation stipulates that no portion of the road can open until it’s completed. The county’s portion was open briefly, so that VDOT could direct traffic along it to facilitate construction, but the effect of it was to dump all of the traffic directly in front of Charlottesville High School, which made the school’s administrators fear for their students’ safety. VDOT is yet to sign off on the project as completed. Boyd says that if the road isn’t opened soon, the surface of the road will deteriorate. There was no quoted response from VDOT spokesman Lou Hatter on Boyd’s claim. The Board of Supervisors is slated to vote on Boyd’s proposed resolution on the matter on Wednesday.

Scottsville Candidate Filed for Bankruptcy

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 31, 2011 in In Brief. 3 Comments Tags: , .

Scottsville BoS candidate James Norwood—who bills himself as a fiscal conservative with business experience in the race—declared bankruptcy two years ago.  #

Strange Lineup of Candidates in the 59th

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 27, 2011 in Politics. 2 Comments

Some very weird information has become public about two of the three candidates in the 59th District House of Delegates race, Ray Reed writes for the News & Advance. (The 59th Distict includes southwest Albemarle, up to the edge of Charlottesville, and runs south from there.) Republican candidate Matt Farriss has been repeatedly convicted of weapons and DUI violations, and was the subject of an emergency protective order after allegedly breaking into a woman’s home. Lynchburg newspaper The News & Advance has tried to get Farriss to explain the many incidents, but he won’t talk to them. Then there’s conservative independent candidate Linda Wall, who admitted in a 2006 deposition that, as a teacher in the 1970s, she’d had a sexual relationship with a (female) student, for which she lost her job. By way of defense, she says that she was smoking a lot of marijuana then. (Five years ago I wrote about her testimony before a state senate committee in opposition to a bill that would prohibit state government from discriminating against people in hiring practices based on their sexual orientation.)

The third candidate in the race is Connie Brennan, Democrat and long-time Nelson County Supervisor. She ran unsuccessfully for the same seat in 2007. Disclaimer: I’ve given money to her campaign, and she is a friend.

Anger Management for Caravati

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 24, 2011 in In Brief. Closed

A judge has ordered former mayor Blake Caravati to therapy and anger management classes.  #

County Police Settle with Gerry Mitchell

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 20, 2011 in Law and Justice. 7 Comments

Albemarle County has settled Gerry Mitchell’s lawsuit against them, the Progress reports. He filed suit two years ago after a 2007 incident in which he was struck by a county police officer’s patrol vehicle while crossing the street in his wheelchair, leaving him hospitalized and with permanent injuries. The value of the settlement is not public. Officer Gregory Davis, who was driving the cruiser, remains on the police force.