It’s official: Sally Thomas isn’t running for reelection to the BoS. She won her seat as a write-in candidate, amazingly, back in 1994. #
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith
Page 223 of 744
Walker Richmond weighs the benefits and drawbacks of chain stores on the Downtown Mall. #
- Image courtesy of the TJ Center.
Charlottesville Thomas Jefferson for the Protection of Free Expression has named the recipients of their annual Muzzle Awards, the dubious distinctions given to those government-related organizations who have done the most to squelch free expression in the prior year. Recipients this year include the DNC, the RNC, two judges, four colleges, two high schools, one school board, and one military base. Camp Lejune, for instance, threatened to fire a civilian employee for the bumper stickers on his personal vehicle, including one reading “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct. 2000,” honoring the employee’s son, who died in the attack. And Yuba College threatened to expel a student for proselytizing outside of the permitted hours of noon to 1 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. No doubt these awards are proving embarrassing to their respective government entities. Wistar Watts Murray provides the full rundown on this year’s awards as the cover story in this week’s C-Ville Weekly.
Disclosure: The Thomas Jefferson Center is one of the groups representing cvillenews.com in Thomas Garrett v. Better Publications. But I write about the Muzzles every year, so there are no shenanigans here.
Last night City Council voted unanimously to upgrade the McIntire wading pool to keep it open, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. The facility requires significant upgrades, and it’s not clear that it can survive in the face of the interchange planned for the McIntire/250 Bypass intersection, but the goal is now to keep it operational.
- A Buckingham Branch engine idles in the downtown yard.
The Board of Supervisors is exploring establishing a Charlottesville/Crozet commuter train, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. There’s already a line running from Charlottesville to Crozet, operated by the Buckingham Branch Railroad. The BoS figures it would only get 100-200 cars off the roads each day at first, and that it would cost about $5M to get the service started. The hard costs come from the train itself, establishing fencing the existing track through town, and building a side track to allow the commuter train to pass by a CSX train or Amtrak’s Cardinal train going the other way. They’ve contacted U.S. Sen. Mark Warner to ask about funding options, and they’re looking at getting a consultant to plan it out. With the federal government looking at spending a great deal of stimulus money on transportation infrastructure, now is probably the time to be looking into this.
At $25,000 per car off the road, the cost doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but given the powerful role that rail can play in establishing human settlement patterns, the service might be a strong incentive for concentrating development in the Crozet area. Two hundred cars now might be five hundred cars in five years. This is something that the university might be interested in helping to make happen, given their commitment to non-automobile transit among their employees.
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