Last night, city Democrats nominated Dave Chapman and Todd Divers for commonwealth’s attorney and commissioner of the revenue, and Kristin Szakos received one of the two nominations for City Council…but the second council nominee still isn’t known, the Progress reports. Bob Fenwick and Wes Bellamy tied, each getting 1,088 votes in the low-attendance primary, although the election board’s count this morning gave Fenwick another three votes. Now the provisional ballots will be counted—four in all—to select a winner…unless that’s a tie, too. The winner will join Szakos in running against Republicans Michael Farruggio and Buddy Weber in November’s general election.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith
Page 11 of 549
Petie Craddock was appointed to the Board of Supervisors last night, J. Reynolds Hutchins writes for the Progress. The local man was the unanimous choice of the BOS, who appointed him to the Scottsville district to complete the term of Chris Dumler, who resigned last month. Craddock says that he will not stand for election in November. He’s a former member of the planning commission, as well as the board of a few other organizations, and calls himself a non-partisan moderate.
The Albemarle School Board is going to add a rotating non-student representative, Tim Shea reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. Members of the County Student Advisory Council, a student-run group representing the county’s three high schools, will take turns participating in school board meetings, while board members will start attending the student group. The specifics of the relationship are still being worked out, but there seems to be consensus about the broad outlines.
Albemarle Supervisor Chris Dumler has finally resigned from his seat, Lisa Provence writes in The Hook. Over seven months after he was arrested on charges of forcible sodomy, and four months after another accuser came forward and he pleaded guilty to sexual battery, he stepped down. In the interim, just about every elected official and party leader called for him to resign, protesters became fixtures at Board of Supervisors meetings, and Dumler grimly continued to declare that he’d serve out his term. (There was an effort to have a court force him out of office, but it failed, because his crime doesn’t qualify as an impeachable offense.)
Somebody will soon be appointed to fill the seat until November, when the people of the Scottsville district can select a new representative in a special election. Dumler’s resignation leaves Republicans with a majority on the board, making it likely that a conservative will be appointed.
There was a public review of the options for the southern terminus of the bypass bypass on Thursday, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow, as VDOT tries to deal with the shortcomings of the winning bid. Skanska/Branch Highways got the contract with an amazingly low $135M design/build proposal (all of the other bids were higher), but VDOT found that the use of traffic lights on the termini would add nearly two minutes to the average trip. (That was just one corner that was cut by Skanska/Branch to low-ball their bid.) Now there are two new options, a loop ramp (7 MB PDF) and a fly-over ramp (7 MB PDF), to address that shortcoming. Nobody’s saying how much these proposals will add to Skanska’s billing, but it’s surely in the tens of millions.
This whole process is likely to be repeated with the northern terminus, too, as it suffers from the same design deficiency. As Jim Bacon writes on his blog, an internal VDOT technical memo shows that they’re concerned about traffic patterns at the northern end, finding that people will have to weave across many lanes of traffic in order to go either north or south when exiting the bypass. The memo concludes “that the entire intersection would have to be reconfigured in some fashion for this weave to be successful, possibly including an elevated section through the intersection.”
This $135M project is liable to balloon to $200–250M before this road is completed. Given that VDOT only has a $139M budget for the entire project, I have to wonder what the threshold is for the Commonwealth Transportation Board to pull the plug on this. After the lone opponent of the Western Bypass was kicked off the CTB in January, it may be a while until any other board members are willing to speak up.
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