Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Dam Prices Doubles

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 23, 2008 in Development, Government and Taxes. 47 Comments

Well, this seems bad:

An engineering firm has nearly doubled the estimated cost of a dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, prompting officials to halt design work on a project intended to supply drinking water to the region for the next 50 years.

Gannett Fleming — the firm tasked with the project’s design, engineering and construction — hiked the original $37 million cost estimate to $70 million largely because of fractured and weathered rock at the site of the future dam. Local officials then sought a second study from Schnabel Engineering, which concluded that the project could be done for $56.5 million or less.

Brandon Shulleeta explains in the Progress that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is putting together a panel to review the two studies and figure out what to do. Citizens for a Sustainable Water Supply Plan are thrilled, saying that this is makes clearer than ever that it would be cheaper to just dredge the South Fork. The trick is that we’re not trying to provide water for everybody who lives here, but also everybody who might move here between now and 2058. Growth is expensive, and it’s the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.

Contribute to Wikipedia

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 21, 2008 in General News. 6 Comments

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia has become the central repository for human knowledge, but Charlottesville isn’t very well represented. Many of the basic historical figures and central geographic locations of our area are only given a cursory description, if they’re listed at all. There are predictably informative and lengthy entries for Thomas Jefferson, UVa, DMB, etc. But there’s nothing at all about the Jefferson School, the Charlottesville Pavilion, Barracks Road, or our own mayor (for instance). And the entries for the Downtown Mall, WINA, the Daily Progress, CHO, Lane High School, The Corner, and the Southwest Mountains are pretty anemic. And given their profile, Ash Lawn-Highland and Montpelier should have way better entries.

I’ve made a list of a bunch of entries that I’d like to create or improve, though no doubt folks can think of plenty more. It took two of us just a couple of days to create a decent entry for Paul Goodloe McIntire. I hope that y’all in the habit of contributing to Wikipedia will take a few minutes to add some information to local entries. And those of you who are new at this, I encourage you to give it a try: just click on the “edit this page” link at the top of any one of those entries, add any information that you think should be there, and save your changes. (See Wikipedia’s guide to editing a page.) Collectively, I’m sure that we all know enough about the area’s history to make a considerable contribution to its chronicling.

Our Latino Population

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 18, 2008 in General News. 18 Comments

The feature story in the current C-Ville is Jayson Whitehead on the largely invisible latino minority in Charlottesville, a group that I’m happy to see written about. Whitehead focuses on the legal and social hardship aspects of immigration—legal and illegal—and writes quite a bit about the far-right Albemarle County Republican Party and their position on immigration. (The party chair says he totally agrees with Rep. Virgil Goode about everything; Goode got all upset about Mexican restaurants displaying the Mexican flag just last year, and that’s the least of his opposition to immigration, legal and otherwise.) The latino population remains relatively small, but as it grows, so too will immigration as an issue in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

C’ville Yanks Sudan-Related Investments

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 16, 2008 in Business, Government and Politics. 8 Comments

City Council has agreed to divest its holdings in any companies that do business with Sudan’s government, Rachana Dixit writes in the Progress. The city doesn’t think that any of its $87M in investments are going to be affected, but it does set a policy for staff going forward. Sudan is a seriously bad situation, with the government having killed hundreds of thousands of their own citizens in the past few years. Most states in the nation now have policies similar to Charlottesville’s, as do nineteen other cities.

Debate Over Lighting Darden Towe Field

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 12, 2008 in Sports and Taxes. 48 Comments

There’s a dispute over whether to light up the softball fields at Darden Towe Park, Rachana Dixit writes in the Progress. The YMCA going in at McIntire means the end of their (lit) softball fields, so there’s a lot of interest in spending $500-$700k to add lighting to the three fields at Darden Towe. Supporters include softball players, while opponents include folks who live around the park and those who aren’t thrilled with spending over a half million dollars on this when we’re facing a budget shortfall. Both the city and the county will hold hearings on the jointly-operated park in October.

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