Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Page 239 of 549

200 Yard Firearm Ban Proposed

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 7, 2006 in Law and Justice and Politics. 18 Comments

Jack writes:

According to Channel 29, Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Camblos is pushing the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors for a ban on the discharge of firearms within 200 yards of any house in Albemarle. Including rurally-zoned property.

Camblos reportedly told the Board that he was shocked that no such law is currently in place, which appears to conflict with the fact that Albemarle County already bans the discharge of firearms within 50 feet of a house or road. The discharge of a firearm is already illegal in residentially-zoned subdivisions. The measure would prevent most rural residents of Albemarle County from either engaging in target practice or hunting on their own land.

Board member Denis Rooker spoke favorably towards the proposal and indicated a willingness to vote for it. The measure was proposed as a response to the ‘Bentivar cat-killer’ case, despite the fact that shooting your neighbor’s cat is already illegal and the culprit was convicted and given a prison sentence.

An errant bullet from a .22 will travel up to 2 miles unless it hits a target or a safe backstop first. Thus it is unclear how regulations banning the discharge of a firearm within 200 yards of a house would be any safer than either the current 50 foot rule or even a 1 mile rule.

Lethal Wrecker = After Five Towing

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 31, 2006 in Business. 9 Comments

Consider this a public service announcement: Lethal Wrecker is changing their name to After Five Towing. They’ve gotten such a terrible reputation that apparently they figure a name change will allow them to leave it behind. (From the Whisper Ridge School of Business?) The company is also planning to file for bankruptcy, not because they’re going under, but to avoid having to pay up after being caught overcharging their victims, as well as to avoid paying up in the $20M suit recently filed by a man left crippled after his car was crushed by a Lethal tow truck.

I think I may have to run PSAs on the site periodically to remind people that After Five Towing is one and the same as Lethal Wrecker. I’d hate for anybody to forget.

Whisper Ridge Employees Indicted

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 31, 2006 in Business and Law and Justice. 3 Comments

The train wreck that is the Whisper Ridge Behavioral Health System (née The Brown Schools, née The Millmont Center — they change their name regularly in hopes that their misdeeds won’t be associated with them) has just come off the tracks — five recently-sacked employees have been indicted for the sexual abuse of the children in their care there, Rob Seal reports in the Progress. These aren’t just any employees — the two who have been named are Director of Operations Bianca Nicole Johnson and Mental Health Specialist Bryan Antwann Vaughan. Johnson is charged with taking indecent liberties with a child, while Vaughan is charged with forcible sodomy and taking indecent liberties with a child two counts of sexually abusing a child while in a custodial or supervisory role. The unnamed accused, two women and one man, face similar charges.

Police have had an investigator working on this case full-time for six months now. In the meantime the number of residents there has dropped from sixty to just six. I’ve got to wonder what the parents of those six are thinking.

2:36pm update: Turns out the charges against Vaughan reported by the Progress were wrong, though the penalties for the real charges are identical.

Drought Concerns Loom

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 28, 2006 in Weather. 21 Comments

My stream disappeared a couple of weeks ago. I’ve lived here for a couple of years now, and this is the first time that the little brook has simply disappeared. For the second summer running my wife and I have a good-sized little garden, and this year I’ve had to water it every day — very rarely does enough fall out the sky to do the trick.

Josh Barney wrote in the Daily Progress a couple of days ago that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is starting to get worried — water usage is way up, and the rain’s just not coming. The reservoirs were hit for a record 14.3 million gallons on Friday, while they’re down to storing 82% of capacity. Neither is any reason to panic, assuming that we get a nice rainy fall.

I’ve been keeping an eye on stream flow levels, using the USGS’ National Water Information System, and they just keep dropping. The Rivanna is down to 1.13 ft/sec discharge, compared to the 12-year mean for this date of 293 ft/sec. The last time that it was this low was 2002, when we were in the throes of drought. The Moormans is even worse: 0.363 ft/sec, the lowest it’s been this time of year in the eighteen years it’s been monitored. Normally it’d be 143 ft/sec this time of year. Ground water levels keep dropping — it was at 29.75 feet a month ago, and now it’s at 31.25 feet. It’s once it starts dropping below people’s wells that there’s trouble.

The good news is that there’s a hurricane on the way. If we’re lucky, Hurricane Ernesto will weaken over land and dump a few inches of rain on us, which will help to recharge the reservoir. It’ll take a lot more than that over a much longer period to recharge our ground water, but it’d be a start.

08/30 Update: 6″-12″ of rain is forecast to fall on Friday, the remnants of Hurricane Ernesto. I believe I’ll be taking credit for this reversal for fortune.

Page/Venable Fence to Come Down

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 28, 2006 in General News. 15 Comments

There’s a six foot tall chain link fence that separates 10th and Page from Venable. Its function — and surely its original purpose — is to separate the poorer people in the former from the wealthier people in the latter. The Hope Community Center is going to ceremonially cut the thing open at a ceremony this afternoon, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. The fence is more of a symptom than a problem, but the symbolism is terrible — it sends entirely the wrong message to people in both neighborhoods. Opening it up is a great idea.

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