Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Page 178 of 549

Whom Do You Endorse?

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 1, 2007 in Politics. 86 Comments

I want to open up the floor to endorsements for Tuesday’s election. Tell us who you support, who you oppose, and — this is the important bit — why. Persuade us to vote for your guy. Bonus points will be awarded for those who can stick to the positive attributes of their candidate of choice, rather than the downsides of the opposition (admittedly not always a strong suit for me). If you’re involved with any of the candidates’ campaigns, say so, and tell us what moved you to work for that candidate.

Unsurprisingly, I’ll be voting for Democrats here in Albemarle. I liked Larry Claytor when he was a Republican running for sheriff, and I like him just as much now that he’s switched teams. He’s like Andy Griffith — a hard-working boy scout — and a perfect match for the Albemarle sheriff’s office. Honestly, I don’t know the first thing about clerk of court, so I’m likely to just vote for Debbie Shipp because she’s got a “D” next to her name. And commonwealth’s attorney…don’t get me started. I’ll have a special day-before blog entry to remind everybody that, every time they cast a vote for Jim Camblos, God kills a kitten. I’m in Rivanna and represented by Republican first-term incumbent Ken Boyd. He and I disagree utterly on all matters of land use and development, which I see as the most important issue for the BoS these days, while Democratic challenger Marcia Joseph‘s positions make far more sense to me. (Disclosure: I’ve contributed to the campaigns of Claytor, Joseph, and Lunsford and provided some advice to Claytor and Joseph’s campaigns. The latter may or may not actually qualify as helpful.)

I can’t vote in the city, and I’m glad, because I’d hate to have to pick. Peter Kleeman is an old, dear friend, and he’s precisely the sort of guy who we need on council: honest, inquisitive, awfully nice, and an absolute genius. He’s not running as a Democrat, but I don’t care. Holly Edwards, too, is just a wonderful human being who I’d have to vote for. The toss-up would be between David Brown and Satyendra Huja.

Sadly, I’m not in the 59th house district (Albemarle south of the city) because, if I was, I could vote for Connie Brennan. Connie’s another old, dear friend, and she’s challenging 21-year incumbent Watkins Abbitt, who has no record to speak of. (Disclosure: I’ve contributed to Connie’s campaign.)

Your turn: who do you support and why?

Council, School Board Criticized for Tuscan Junket

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 1, 2007 in Education, Politics and Taxes. 87 Comments

Further to recent discussion on the topic here, Barney Breen-Portnoy writes in the Daily Progress about five city officials’ planned six-day trip to Tuscany at taxpayer expense. School superintendent Rosa Atkins, associate superintendent Gertrude Ivory, school board chairman Alvin Edwards, mayor David Brown and councilor Kendra Hamilton will all be visiting sister city Poggio a Caiano beginning next Wednesday, ostensibly “to explore the possibility of reestablishing a student exchange program.” The three school officials’ costs will be covered by the school system, and the two councilors’ costs will be covered by the city.

School board member Charlie Kollmansperger was the first school board member to criticize this use of public funds: “This is ridiculous. If I were a teacher, I would say, ‘Are you kidding me?'” This is probably going to be a common sentiment.

Brown and Edwards are both up for reelection on Tuesday — the day before the trip — and next month will be Hamilton’s last in office. Edwards has come under fire for his strong defense of a CHS teacher turned convicted pedophile, a pretty sketchy role for the school board chair, but his strong support among black voters makes it unlikely that the Democrat has anything to worry about next week. Brown was the lowest vote-getter at the Democratic convention in June, which is certainly unusual for an incumbent (and mayor, at that), so he may well have cause to move into damage control mode, given the two independent candidates in the council race. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a last-minute issue in either the school board or council races.

10:05pm Update: WINA reports on their utterly unlinkable website that Edwards has caved and agreed to pay his own way.

C-Ville on Sign Spam

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 30, 2007 in General News. 15 Comments

Yay for C-Ville Weekly for calling out 1-800-GOT-JUNK for illegally strewing their own junk all over town. Companies are sticking up their damned signs along every road in town. At the moment it’s a plague of mortgage brokers’ signs, which was preceded by signs pitching a dating service, which was preceded by Mountain Kim Martial Arts (who presumably had to learn self defense in the first place to deal with people pissed off to find their yard cluttered with signs.)

Fun fact: it’s illegal for you to take them down, so the city/county has to use its own resources (read as “tax dollars”) to pick them up, since it’s not like the spammers are ever going to come along and clean up. I want to know which candidate for commonwealth’s attorneys will prosecute these yahoos. I suppose we can rule out Jim Camblos, since he’s not doing anything about them now, but maybe, like “fighting underage drinking and smoking,” this could be his new cause.

In case you haven’t noticed, I really, really loathe these things.

New Political Tactic: Deny Growth

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 29, 2007 in Development and Politics. 80 Comments

Jeremy Borden notes a curious new political tactic among some Albemarle sprawl supporters: deny that growth is taking place in Albemarle. Rivanna Supervisor Ken Boyd says that the annual addition of ~1,000 new residents is so little as to be irrelevant, while Albemarle Republican Party vice chair Christian Schoenewald (you remember him for his proposal to remove all growth restrictions in order to preserve the rural character of Albemarle) echoes the sentiments, saying that our growth simply isn’t preventing a problem. CAAR CEO David Phillips picked up on this same theme a few days ago, fretting that we’re not growing fast enough. Did a memo go out?

For several years now there’s been an honest discussion taking place: growth opponents argue that quality of life and infrastructure problems trump some private property rights, while growth supporters argue the opposite. This new message from these candidates is, apparently, that we’re all just hallucinating. Remember when we ran out of water in 2002? Didn’t happen. You know how rough it is to drive up Emmett between 5pm-6pm? It’s not. Did you think that our rescue squad is the busiest in the nation? Myth. Though we needed $19M to expand the sewer capacity along 29? Think again.

We’ve had some really productive, informative discussions about growth here on cvillenews.com in the past few years. We’ve even had one today. I’m glad we can stick to an honest dialog, even if our candidates can’t.

Committee Recommends Taxpayer-Funded Rescue Squad

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 27, 2007 in Politics and Taxes. 38 Comments

A city committee has recommended the creation of a publicly-funded rescue squad, Henry Graff reports for NBC-29. The topic has become a bit of a political football since city leaders indicated their support for creating the new department back in April by way of a $1M budget addition. The city feels that the response times by Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad (CARS), the busiest rescue squad in the nation, are “unacceptable.” Committee chair Del. David Toscano cited response times to southwest C’ville as being most in need of improvement, and by “improvement” he means “replacement.”

CARS is a volunteer, non-profit community organization whose supporters aren’t happy to city criticized by the city, who doesn’t contribute financially to it but benefits enormously from it. My analysis of response times shows that things look pretty good. CARS publishes all of their response data to the web in real-time, making it possible for anybody to analyze their response times. The city’s own fire department — which would house the new city rescue squad — does not do so.

The new service, if approved by Council, would start up in just two months.

10/29 Update: A source at City Hall tells me that there were three primary partners on this task force — CARS, the city FD and the county FD — and both CARS and county FD voted against the final recommendation. This seems like a bad sign.

Sideblog