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.
Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith
State police are investigating the Albemarle County Circuit Court’s office, Graelyn Brashear reports. Nobody’s saying what it’s all about, other than that it involves an employee of the office, but since the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts is involved, it’s pretty likely that this is about ongoing financial irregularities in the office’s bookkeeping.
The Clerk of Court is Debbie Shipp, a 30-year veteran of the office who was elected as clerk in 2007 after eight-term incumbent Shelby Marshall stepped down. Annual audits by the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts started looking grim in 2011, and did not improve any in 2012 or in 2013. Shipp was given the benefit of the doubt by many because of the serial deaths of her son and sister (an employee of her office), but the auditor’s report made clear that her office’s financial practices are chronically irregular, with no plan to improve them, and lack many of the basic practices employed by most people in their personal finances. The Democrat is serving an eight-year term, so she’s not up for reelection until November of next year.
Of course, it’s possible that this investigation is unrelated, but given the involvement of the state auditor, it seems likely that there is suspicion that this is not about incompetence, but fraud. Nobody’s been arrested, nobody’s been charged, and perhaps nobody will be. No word on what the next step is, but apparently the investigation is ongoing.
The Albemarle County School Board is looking at restricting school buses to major roads on snowy days, Tim Shea reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. County schools have closed for snow on 11 days this winter (prior to Monday’s snow), and the school transportation director figures that would have been closer to 7 days if they weren’t picking up kids on rural routes. This discussion is prompted by complaints of parents who live in developed areas of the county, whose subdivisions are plowed promptly, and are mystified by school closings. (Of course, there are huge swaths of the county where it can take a day or two for a plow to come through.) Those folks don’t know why school has to be cancelled for all kids just because a minority of kids can’t make it. So the proposal being considered is to establish “plan B routes,” basically driving school buses only on major roads, and putting the onus on parents (and kids) to get themselves to bus stops along those roads. The routes they’re looking at now would leave out 1,600 kids, or about 12% of students.
It turns out, interestingly, that Albemarle has already tried this, in the late 1990s. It didn’t work. There was no place for parents to park, due to snow berms along the side of the road, and of course there were safety issues associated with getting kids to those bus stops. (If it’s not safe for a school bus to drive on unplowed roads, then it’s probably not safe for parents transporting kids, or kids driving themselves to school.)
There’s an added twist. Albemarle is required by law, to provide door-to-door transportation for about 120 disabled students. Period. Some of those students live on roads that are not plowed promptly, which seems like a pretty serious obstacle to implementing this plan.
The board hasn’t taken any action, and isn’t planning to. They’re still looking to find out more about what’s to be done, if anything, about snow days resulting from rural road conditions.
Charlottesville member of the House of Delegates David Toscano says—and police confirm—that somebody broke into their home and assaulted his wife, Nancy Tramontin. NBC 29, C-Ville Weekly, and the Daily Progress all offer detailed coverage of yesterday’s attack. 35-year-old Claire L.K. Kennedy Ogilvie has been arrested and charged with malicious wounding, abduction, and what’s variously been described as “burglary” and “entering a house armed.” In a statement, Toscano says that “she was struck by her female assailant in the head several times but never lost consciousness,” and was treated at the hospital and released. The suspect is known to the victim, presumably in part because they both participated in Semester at Sea in the fall 2010 semester. Toscano describes Ogilvie as “a person who we knew but had not seen for over a year.”
Ogilvie is a chemistry teacher at William Monroe High School (in Greene County), and apparently holds degrees from Yale, UVA, and the George Washington School of Law. On her bio on WMHS’s website, she says that she used to be a patent attorney, and that she’s been a contestant on “Jeopardy” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
The suspect is being held without bond in the jail. No motive is known for the attack.
In a stunning development, the Federal Highway Administration is requiring VDOT to prove that the Western Bypass will serve any real purpose and is better than alternatives, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. The FHA points to the growth of the region and questions whether the two-decade-old plan to build a bypass around our bypass makes sense anymore. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.) They’ve told VDOT to consider alternatives, which is almost certainly a euphemism for grade-separated interchanges along 29. In perhaps the most gutting line in the letter, they encourage VDOT to “work closely with local representatives to gain their support of the transportation improvement moving forward,” an acknowledgement that only a single member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors supports the proposed Western Bypass.
As Sean Tubbs writes in the article, “in combination with expected action by the Albemarle Board of Supervisors to withdraw its support, construction of the Western Bypass in the near future now appears very unlikely.”
02/20 Update: Rubbing a little salt in the wound, BOS Democrats passed a surprise resolution against the Western Bypass at last night’s meeting. Ken Boyd, the lone Republican, objected to the unexpected appearance of the resolution, which was met with laughter from the audience and some members of the board. Boyd famously engineered the same thing in 2011, in that case causing the long-dead bypass to rise up again. The whole scene last night amounted to something like revenge fantasy pornography for bypass opponents, who now hold the high ground on nearly every front, an utter reversal from the position of defeat that they occupied three years ago.
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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