Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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“Save McIntire” Group Running Misleading Radio Ads

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 22, 2009 in Government and Transportation. 22 Comments

The McIntire Park Preservation Committee is running ads that contain inaccurate claims, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. (Here’s a transcript of the ad.)

The narrator claims that “McIntire Park is about to be destroyed,” and that there will be “no more Dogwood Festival or Fourth of July fireworks.” Though it’s true that McIntire Park will be significantly reduced in area—and carved up—by the Meadowcreek Parkway, “destroyed” means that it will cease to exist, which is not true. There were erroneous reports that the Dogwood Festival would need to find a new home, which were immediately corrected by Mayor Dave Norris, who explained that the only problem was what to do with the festival for a single year, during construction. If the changes planned for McIntire would affect the Independence Day fireworks, that’s news to me, but if they can happen for the Dogwood Festival, presumably they can still happen on July 4th.

It seems to me that the reality of what’s slated for McIntire Park is bad enough that there’s no need to go making stuff up.

Comer Won’t Be Charged for Embezzlement?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 21, 2009 in Business and Crime. 37 Comments

This Glenmore embezzling story has taken an interesting twist: Glenmore isn’t interested in pressing charges against Michael Comer, Brian McNeill writes for the Daily Progress.

The Glenmore Community Association (GCA)—of which Comer was treasurer—is the one that’s short $666k. Comer was writing checks to Glenmore Associates (which owns Glenmore, but is separate from the GCA, which is the homeowners’ association), for which he also worked, and then recording those checks as income to Glenmore Associates. But he never deposited those Glenmore Associates checks, but instead has been pocketing the money for the past four years. The GCA describes those checks as “unauthorized,” saying that Comer kept any mention of these checks off of the books. Also, payments that were supposed to be coming into GCA from Glenmore Associates were being pocketed by Comer, so he was getting the money coming and going.

Here’s where things get weird. Glenmore Associates’ Jeff Gaffney—who is also Comer’s brother-in-law and the CEO of Real Estate III—said that “the company would pay full restitution to the Glenmore Community Association,” and that they’re “committed to making [GCA] whole.” Which doesn’t make much sense, because “making them whole” would mean compensating both for money that Comer pocketed on its way to GCA from Glenmore Associates—which is sensible, since there’s an argument to be made that Comer failed to make those payments as an agent of Glenmore Associates—and for money that Comer stole by writing checks to Glenmore Associates. The fact that Comer happened to make those checks out to Glenmore Associates really has nothing to do with Glenmore Associates. They’ve got no obligation to make GCA whole. If I were a stockholder of Glenmore Associates, I’d be pretty upset about that.

McNeill writes that the GCA “is not pushing for a criminal investigation,” but that they “simply want their money back.” If Glenmore Associates is pressing charges for the money Comer has stolen from them, McNeill doesn’t mention it. Maybe Glenmore Associates wants this all to go away, and the easiest way to do it is to pay off GCA—which presumably has hundreds of members—and eat the difference. But that leaves a criminal—one who has abused the trust of his friends, neighbors, and coworkers to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars—walking away scot-free, not even a wanted man, having learned that crime pays. If that’s the outcome here, then Glenmore should be ashamed for failing utterly in their duty to society.

07/22 Update: Pressing charges or no, Tasha Kates writes in the Progress that the Albemarle PD and the FBI are jointly investigating the case. Kates also reports that Comer doesn’t actually live in Glenmore, that Glenmore Associates is justifying their payment to GCA as avoiding “a devaluation of Glenmore property values,” and that Comer has been GCA’s treasurer for 15 years. I wonder to what extent Glenmore is cooperating with the investigation, given their stated opposition to bringing Comer to justice. There are lots of other interesting bits, so give this a read.

Market Street Grocery Opening in September

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 17, 2009 in Business. 16 Comments

A small grocery store is coming to downtown, Tracy Clemons reports for NBC-29, the unfortunately-named Market Street Market. In the old Unlimited Vitality space (“more cheese for your money” / “if you love me, don’t feed me junk food”), it’s being started by a father-and-son pair who are shooting to open their doors in early September. They name local meat and produce as two of the types of food they’ll be stocking. It’s not a particularly large space, but Unlimited Vitality always managed to stuff a lot in there, so presumably these folks can do likewise.

Army Corps of Engineers Brings Meadowcreek Parkway to a Halt

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 17, 2009 in Government and Transportation. 73 Comments

The Army Corps of Engineers has refused to issue a permit for one of the segments of the Meadowcreek Parkway, NBC-29 reports, saying that they’re not about to allow the construction of a road to nowhere. Officially, the Meadowcreek Parkway is three projects—a road in Albemarle, a road in Charlottesville, and an interchange at 250. Critics charge that local officials are only taking that approach to skirt state and federal rules, and there is good reason to think that the road would be infeasible to construct if treated as a single entity. The Army Corps of Engineers is looking at the proposal for the Charlottesville portion of the road and balking at a road that simply stops in the middle of a park. This leaves the city and the county between a rock and hard place—they can’t build it as one road, and they also can’t build it in segments. Albemarle County is probably feeling pretty dumb right now—they’re 12% finished with building their segment, having deliberately jumped the gun in anticipating that no obstacles would arise. If this latest obstacle proves insurmountable, the county will prove to have wasted an enormous sum of money.

Where things go from here is anybody’s guess.

On (Not) Redefining “Shop Local”

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 16, 2009 in Business. 13 Comments

C-Ville Weekly‘s cover story this week (an AAN wire story, incidentally) is about big business’ efforts to co-opt the term “local,” like they did “organic.” The definition that they’re going for is that any business that has a location in the vicinity is “local”—Wal-Mart is local to Charlottesville, in that they have a location here, while walmart.com is not. Never mind that Wal-Mart contributes basically nothing to the local economy, other than lousy wages, while a local business would likely hire a local attorney, accountant, cleaning service, etc., and its profits would go to the owner, who would presumably spend much of that money here, too. Economics consultant Civil Economics has found that of $100 spent at a chain, $13 will stay in the area, while $100 spent at a local store will leave $45 circulating in the local economy. (See their recent “Local Works!” study for more on this contrast.) The suggestion incorporated by the author—a proponent of supporting local businesses—is to describe them as “independent local businesses,” though presumably a business willing to bend the definition of “local” is also willing to do the same for “independent.”

When folks started pushing the idea of shopping local a decade ago, it was a tough sell. These days, with a rough economy, people get it. Maybe a better line is “buy stuff from people you know.” Maybe you’re getting a home built by your carpenter friend, or maybe you’re just buying a dozen eggs from your neighbor, but unless you’re friends with the Waltons, that should be a pretty good guide.

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