Monticello High School’s athletic director has pleaded guilty to rigging the bidding process for buying athletic apparel, CBS-19 reports, and did so in collaboration with Downtown Athletic. Fitzgerald Barnes—also a member of the Louisa Board of Supervisors conspired with a vice president of Team Distributors and the vice president of Downtown Athletic to create fake bids, ensuring that they’d get the required three bids, and that Downtown Athletic would be the lower bidder. That was a federal crime, but the punishment is just relatively small fines ($350–1,500). Downtown Athletic claims that they didn’t make any extra money off of this (something that cannot be known, since there were no competing bids), and the county school system says that Barnes did not personally gain from this. The school system has placed Barnes on administrative leave, and they’re considering whether he should keep his job.
Monthly Archive for August, 2014
Charlottesville city police are investigating a report of city funds being used to pay for a cell phone used by former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander more than three years after she left office, K. Burnell Evans reports in The Daily Progress.
The Electoral Board is a three member board that is charged with conducting elections in Charlottesville and certifying the results. Members are appointed by Charlottesville Circuit Court Judges based on nominations from the two political parties that received the most votes in the most recent gubernatorial election. The current Governor’s party has two representatives on the Board and the party receiving the next highest number of votes has one representative. Current members are Chairwoman Joan Schatzman and Vice Chair James Nix, both representing the Democratic Party, and Republican Rick Sincere.
Members are optionally given city-issued cell phones, and three years after she left the Board, Democrat Stephanie Commander was still using hers at a cost to the city of over $2500 since leaving office.
City Registrar staff brought this issue to the attention of City Manager Maurice Jones last March. On Friday, Board Chairwoman Joan Schatzman turned phone records over to city prosecutors. In addition to Ms. Commander, for the past five years the city has also paid for a cell phone for Pat Owen, the husband of City Registrar Sherri Iachetta. Ms. Iachetta reports that she has reimbursed the city for her husband’s phone every month since it was first issued to him.
Board members Nix and Sincere do not have city-issued phones.
John Dewberry, the developer who bought the half-finished Landmark Hotel in 2012, has a history of not completing projects in other towns, NBC-29 reports. Hotel Dewberry in Charleston, SC, was supposed to open in 2013 but remains unfinished. Similarly, Dewberry-owned projects in Atlanta and Richmond have not come to fruition.
The Landmark Hotel was originally projected to be a $30M, nine-story luxury hotel on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. At the 2008 groundbreaking, the boutique location was scheduled to be open in the summer of 2009. However, local developer Halsey Minor ran into a series of financial and legal troubles, and the eyesore of a building has remaining unfinished since January of 2009. The building changed hands several times, but construction never resumed. In early 2014, the City Council deferred a vote to declare the site blighted and forced Dewberry to secure the building with higher fences and to perform a structural analysis of the skeletal structure.
It was a busy day on the UVA Corner yesterday. Even as police were investigating a stabbing, yet another truck ran into the 14th St. bridge and tied up traffic.
Robert Sherwood Shrieves is in custody while his still-unnamed victim remains in the UVA Hospital.
Claire Ogilvie, who last February attacked Nancy Tramontin in her home, has been indicted by a grand jury on felony charges of breaking and entering while armed, abduction, and malicious wounding.
Ms. Tramontin and her husband, House Minority Leader David Toscano, befriended the defendant in 2010 when they all participated in the UVA Semester at Sea program and Ms. Ogilvie tutored their son. The friendship continued when Ms. Ogilvie later moved to Charlottesville. But by 2012, according to Ms. Tramontin, Ms. Ogilvie had developed an “unsettling” interest in the family and so they ended their friendship.
In February of 2014, Ms. Ogilvie entered the Toscano home and Ms. Tramontin “was struck by her female assailant in the head several times but never lost consciousness,” according to contemporary reports.
Ms. Ogilvie has remained in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail without bond since her arrest hours after the attack. Her next court date is set for September 17 in Charlottesville Circuit Court.
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 #
-
Archive for Sideblog »
Recent Comments