Former Western Albemarle High School social studies teacher Neal Willetts has been indicted on federal charges of sexually exploiting children, Lisa Ferrari reports for CBS-19. The 26-year-old is accused of engaging in sexual acts with a total of eight students, including two at WAHS and one at Fluvanna. The most recent regional instance of similar charges came in the case of CHS’ Jonathan Spivey. Before that was Fork Union Military Academy’s Gregory Allen Moyer and, also in 2001, CHS teacher Jeffery Hutchinson.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith
Page 206 of 549
The Board of Supervisors’ Rio District representative David Slutzky proposed allowing rural landowners to sell their unused development rights to growth-area landowners back in October, with the caveat that localities aren’t currently permitted to authorize that under state law. That changed with HB2503, introduced by Del. David Toscano. Gov. Tim Kaine just signed that bill into law, Jeremy Borden writes in the Progress, meaning that the path is now clear for transferrable development rights (TDR) in Albemarle and, in fact, throughout the state. It may not matter, though, since the BoS has thus far been entirely uninterested in the proposal.
Three more people have announced they’re running for local offices in the past few days. Democrat Marcia Joseph (pictured at right) held an event at Sutherland yesterday to announce that she’s running against Republican Ken Boyd, who represents the Rivanna district on the Board of Supervisors. She’s the chair of the Planning Commission, and is campaigning on the need to sharply curtail development — she led last week’s unanimous vote against Biscuit Run.
Republican John Dawson is running for Clerk of Court, the Daily Progress reports, the only candidate to announce since Shelby Marshall announced her retirement after holding the seat for 40 years. Dawson, owner of Dive Connections, used to head up the county Republicans, and has advised Ed Robb and Jim Camblos on their past candidacies.
Finally, Democrat Kevin Fletcher is running against Lindsay Dorrier again, writes the Progress, challenging the Democratic incumbent for the nomination. Fletcher, who runs a property maintenance company, ran as a write-in against Dorrier in ’03. He’s interested in increasing the stock of affordable housing and getting the county to work with UVa and Charlottesville on transit issues. Republican Denny King will run against whomever the party nominates.
County police issued a press release this afternoon (below) announcing the arrest of two Henley Middle School students in the bomb threat at Henley on Tuesday. Each has been charged with “constructing and/or placing a hoax explosive device,” and one has been charged with “threats to bomb or damage buildings.” With the press release came a screen capture from video taken of the cylinders that raised concern. The one pictured here was taped to a pole in front of Brownsville Elementary. Two other “round cylinders” (do they make ’em any other way?) were found on the roof of Henley and one on the corner of the building. The identity of the two kids isn’t being released, but it’ll be on MySpace within the hour, no doubt.
Another year, another anniversary for cvillenews.com. Since I celebrated last year by doing absolutely nothing, this year I’m partying like it’s 2005 by making some changes.
Software
The site is still running WordPress, the software that I switched it over to two years ago now, and I couldn’t be happier about it. But now I’m using the K2 modifications to it, along with a series of plugins to provide new functionality.
Features
It’s the major new features that I’m geeked about.
- Sideblog: In the top of the center column there’s no space for really brief blog entries that really don’t merit a full write up. Though I’m mostly interested in using this to regularly link to Charlottesville blog entries that I want to promote, I imagine I’ll end up abusing it for all sorts of things. These entries are carried in the RSS feed, too.
- Elimination of Registration: Originally, anybody could comment. But 75% of people posted as “Anonymous,” and some behaved as if they were anonymous, too, thus demonstrating John Gabriel’s now-classic theory about anonymity. This created a lousy community, and I ended up requiring registration. Now that most folks likely to read cvillenews.com are familiar with blogs, and know not to behave like feces-throwing chimps, I feel pretty good about letting people post a comment as they would to any other blog. If I end up being wrong about this then I guess I’ll just go back to how things were. I anticipate a much higher participation rate with an open commenting system. (Note that this makes the site newly subject to comment spam. If you post a comment and it doesn’t show up immediately, it’s just caught in the spam filter. Don’t worry, I’ll rescue it.)
- Flickr in the Sidebar: I’ve been wanting to make Flickr images of Charlottesville more widely available. It just annoys people when I include them in Charlottesville Blogs, so now they’ll be in the sidebar here. If you want your pictures of Charlottesville to show up in the sidebar of cvillenews.com, just post them to the Charlottesville Flickr group.
K2 provides a series of minor quality-of-life improvements to the site, too — better access to archives, improved searching, and some clever little Ajax-y elements.
Design
Every page on the site is now ridiculously wide. But, honestly, it’s the only way that I could pack everything in. It’s structured so that you can have a narrow browser window and see the basics — the main blog entries, or make it a bit wider and see more, or make it fully 995 pixels wide and see the whole affair. I really love having the canvas at the top for a random photo to appear. At the moment I’ve just selected a dozen or so photos that I’ve taken around town that seem nice. I hope to take a bunch more photos to stick up there, and maybe get some other people to contribute images, too. (If you’re interested, it has to be 995 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall. If you want a credit, put it in tastefully small white Verdana in the lower right-hand corner.) The layout is a bit goofy in some of the sidebars right now, but a few tweaks should settle that.
There’s nothing major here, but I think it’s a good step forward for the site. The more that this site is a community pastiche — such as Flickr photos and local blog entries — the happier I am.
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 #
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