Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Books Behind Bars Nixed by State Prison System

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 9, 2009 in Law and Justice. 18 Comments

The state prison system has shut down the locally-based Books Behind Bars program, Maria Glod writes in tomorrow’s Washington Post, because they’ve deemed it a security threat. As first reported by Bryan McKenzie in Monday’s Daily Progress, the twenty-year-old program has been banned by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Operated out of and funded by the Quest Bookshop on West Main, the program functions without taxpayer dollars, for the purpose of allowing prisoners to better themselves through literacy and education. They’ve provided an estimated one million books to prisoners over the years, according to the Post. Prisoners make requests for books—the dictionary and the Bible are especially popular—which Quest fulfills by mailing books directly to the prisoners, free of charge. The books are treated like anything materials mailed to prisoners, inspected by officials for contraband before being given to prisoners. After prison officials found a CD left in one book and a paperclip in another, they deemed the program both a security threat and a waste of prison employees’ time, and informed Books Behind Bars that they could not send books to prisoners.

Note that prisoners can purchase both books and CDs from approved vendors, and they are permitted to keep up to thirteen books in their cell. So they can receive books, and they can keep books, but they just can’t receive books from Books Behind Bars.

The program’s founder—Quest owner Kay Allison—has asked the Department of Corrections to reconsider their decision, but lacking some sort of pressure other than that of a 78-year-old woman asking nicely, there’s no good reason to think that they’ll change their mind.

State Cuts UVA Funding by 8%

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 9, 2009 in Government and UVa. 21 Comments

More budget cuts are hitting UVA, Bryan McKenzie writes in the Progress, with the state cutting its funding by 8% and requiring university employees to take a day of unpaid leave next spring. Only something like 6% of UVA’s funding now comes from the state—awfully low for an ostensible state college—with this cut coming to about $7.7M. Gov. Tim Kaine’s budget reduction plan (2MB PDF) makes cuts across state government, including layoffs of nearly 600 employees, though none at the university. This is just the latest in a series of such cuts in the past year and a half. Though there have been no layoffs at UVA yet, there’s speculation among many employees that they’re coming.

Disclosure: I’m a UVA employee though, oddly, not a state employee.

Man Killed by Train

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 8, 2009 in General News. 3 Comments

An unidentified man was hit and killed by a train on Shamrock Road, Stephanie Satchell reports for CBS-19. It’s not clear how long ago he died, or even known who the man is. Police do believe that he was killed after being struck by the train, rather than beforehand, but that seems to about all that they know right now. 09/09 Update: He committed suicide, police say.

Wendell Wood Wants a Walmart

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 8, 2009 in Business, Development and Transportation. 28 Comments

Developer Wendell Wood is upset. He bought a big chunk of rural land—meaning that he can’t develop it, which he’s known since before he bought it—but he had Walmart sign a contract to build a new store there. And then the county wouldn’t let him because, again, it’s zoned rural. He claims Walmart offered a “minimum of $8 million to $9 million…to do what’s called ‘at-site work,'” which Wood implies would have gone entirely to help cover the $25M bridge and road that would be necessary to even get to his parcel. Where is this land? Why, it’s right next to Walmart—on the other side of Sam’s Club, just across the river. Why build another Walmart by the old one? Because they want to replace the old one with a bigger one, leaving the old shell behind. Wood says he’d take over the current location, but one look at Albemarle Square will tell you there’s not a lot of demand for existing big-box stores. So why would anybody support this? Because the Places29 plan calls for building roads parallel to 29, including extending Berkmar, the road in question, and if Walmart could actually toss in $8M-9M towards the cost of road construction, that would be good to get. Brandon Shulleeta dug up all of this for the Daily Progress, and I think it’s got the potential to prove to be a big story. He tried to get Walmart’s side of this, but they’re not talking, so this information is all coming from Wood.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, Wood pulled something very similar a few years ago on the NGIC land, just a bit farther up 29, and successfully got the BoS to agree to convert 30 acres of rural land into develop-able land—which, to date, they have not acted upon—which would turn nearly valueless woodland into a multi-mullion-dollar parcel with a prime location, backed up by phone call to Ken Boyd (who won’t say who he talked to) saying that NGIC would pack up and leave town if the county didn’t go through with the deal. Much like Walmart, NGIC wasn’t willing to talk to the press about those claims, either.

You’d think that this would be the end of it, but BoS member David Slutzky is apparently on Wood’s side, Shulleeta writes, working to designate Wood’s land as developable. (Want to build a new house for your grandkid on your rural land? You’re out of luck. Wendell Wood wants to put in a Walmart? Come on down!) Given the lack of funding for new transportation infrastructure, it looks like all of this is academic anyhow. Whether $25M or $250M, there’s just no money to build roads or bridges.

USA Today Profiles UVA ER

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 8, 2009 in UVa. 3 Comments

USA Today has a feature entitled “24 hours in the ER” that happens to be set at the UVA Medical Center. It’s meant to be a slice-of-life piece, showing what happens during a random day in a single hospital, as a way of showing what’s going on with our nation’s healthcare system.

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