Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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$6.5M Transit Center Now $11M

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 22, 2006 in General News. 12 Comments

When the transit center was approved, it required $6.5M in federal transportation funds. Last June the price went up to $10.5M, and last night Council voted to obtain another $400,000 in state and federal funding for the project, John Yellig reports in today’s Daily Progress. The price increase comes from a combination of design changes, weak soil, and the discovery of abandoned fuel storage tanks and old storm sewers on the site. Councilor Rob Schilling voted against requesting the funding, with Councilor Kendra Hamilton saying that doing so would prevent the building from being finished, which isn’t an option.

Walking by there yesterday, it looked like the digging is done and the bulk of the cement for the foundation and the walls had been poured. It looks a lot smaller than I thought it would — I don’t think it’ll be as out of scale for the area as I thought it might be, though the amphitheater and the huge new building on Fifth and Water have set an entirely new scale for the area in the past year.

High Files Complaint with SBE

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 22, 2006 in Politics. 9 Comments

Charlottesville School Board candidate Vance High has filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections over comments made about his candidacy by Charlottesville Electoral Board member Joan Schatzman in a recent Daily Progress article, John Yellig writes in today’s Progress. From the article in question, which covered Saturday’s school board candidate forum:

Some audience members, who had not known much about the board members previously, left with strong impressions.

“I came here to be informed, to educate myself,” said Joan Schatzman, a Charlottesville resident. “I’m drawn toward Leah,” she said, “but I’m repelled by Vance.”

Electoral Board members are appointed based on their partisan affiliation, and there is no speech restriction that accompanies the appointment to the board. The SBE intends to take no action, as there is nothing for them to do. High says that he’s “not trying to void anybody’s First Amendment rights,” but that he thinks it’s unethical for a board member to talk about candidates.

I’m reminded of a candidate for local office several years ago who I blogged about after she was quoted by the Progress making a shockingly uninformed remark at a candidate forum. A year or so ago she discovered the blog entry, and she proceeded to send me vaguely threatening e-mail, demanding that I remove the offending Progress quote. Because I’m not a member of the media, she explained, I have no right to say anything about her or any other candidate for office. I refused, of course, and added her to my bozo filter in my e-mail client; she could be e-mailing me still, for all I know. (She’s taken to calling radio stations on which I’ve been a guest to complain about me being unethical, as evidenced by my heinous offense.)

It sucks being a candidate, because it means that total strangers may, for the duration of your candidacy, say horrible and critical things about you. It’s not much fun, but it comes with the territory, with everybody from Joe Blogger to Electoral Board members weighing in. C’est la vie.

Book Fest Begins Tomorrow

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 21, 2006 in Entertainment. Closed

Consider this your reminder that the Virginia Festival of the Book runs from Wednesday through Sunday. Dozens of events are scheduled in that period, most of which are readings or presentations by a panel of authors. Notable participants include David Baldacci, Joan Biskupic, Amy Goodman, Hendrik Hertzberg, Elizabeth Kolbert, Warren St. John, Lawrence Weschler, Jeffery Deaver and Art Spiegelman. Local notables participating include Barbara Ehrenreich, Rita Dove, John Casey, Terri Allard, John McCutcheon, Gregory Orr and George Garrett. (Nearly) all events are free and open to the public. For the schedule, author bios, etc., see the Book Fest website.

Our Blogging Mayor

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 20, 2006 in Blogs and Politics. 1 Comment

Mayor David Brown has launched a blog. He writes that being mayor “gives me a chance to see and learn about Charlottesville in ways that I would like to share…I thought a blog might be a good way to communicate,” and also announces his goal of walking or bicycling on every street in C’ville while he’s on City Council. (That was totally going to be my goal if I were ever on Council, not that there’s any danger of that. Damn his creativity.) Charlottesville now joins Washington D.C., St. Louis and…uh…Reading on the list of cities with blogging mayors.

Incident Reports for Buford, CHS

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 20, 2006 in Crime and Education. 7 Comments

Increased safety concerns at Buford Middle School, from students behaving violently, and the school board beginning to address the matter led a reader to send me some data about crime rates there. Police incident reports for 2005 for both Buford and CHS (544k PDF), which are public data, indicate visits to CHS every couple of weeks, with incidents ranging from runaways to bomb threats, “suspicious circumstances” to traffic accidents. Buford received less frequent visits, but offenses include assaults, drug possession, robbery and “fires not arson.” I count twelve assaults (simple and intimidation) for the year at Buford but, having nothing to compare that to, I don’t know how that compares to the average for Buford or for comparable schools.

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