Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Page 276 of 549

WINA’s New Website

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 8, 2006 in Meta News. 6 Comments

WINA has a new website but, sadly, it represents a big step back for a station that was once a local on-line pioneer. The only obvious improvements are that it’s a little prettier and there’s a hint at future podcasting (though the restoration of streaming, which they once offered, would be good).

There are three big problems. First, all old links to their news are broken, rendering every link on the web to every WINA story useless, leading to an ugly 404. Second, there is no way to link to any story on the website now — there’s not a unique page for every story any more, not even an anchor. Third, not only have the old archives disappeared, but there is no archive of the news being added on the new site. The result is that their stories can’t be linked to, and they’ve essentially excused themselves from participating in the web. I guess I’ll have to wait for other media outlets to carry stories and write ’em up then, since I can’t link to WINA’s site.

Amazingly, there’s still no RSS feed, something that I can’t really fathom. Any news outlet without a subscription mechanism (RSS, RDF, Atom, whatever) is stuck in the mid-90s. I don’t know why they’d put a penny into altering their website without starting with a feed. So I’ve modified my screen-scraped RSS feed to work with their new code base.

Maybe they’ll go back to their old site. This one sucks. If you agree, you should vote in the poll on their sidebar and tell ’em it’s no good.

(Via Jim Duncan)

03/09 Update: WINA tells me that the site’s not done — it’s a work in progress. Keep your fingers crossed that all of these things will be fixed.

2007 Budget Proposed

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 8, 2006 in Politics and Taxes. Closed

City Manager Gary O’Connell has presented the 2007 budget for Charlottesville, which proposes $121M in spending, an 8.45% increase over the current year, John Yellig wrote in yesterday’s Daily Progress. Partially offsetting the 14% increase in real estate assessments, the budget cuts real estate taxes by two cents — a thirteen cent cut would be necessary to maintain the current taxation level.

Six Candidates for School Board

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 8, 2006 in Education and Politics. 6 Comments

The filing deadline having come and gone, we’ve got six candidates running for three school board seats in this, our first school board election. The Hook rounds ’em up:

Sue Lewis, a retired financial advisor, who has been applying for a seat on the board for the last 20 years; Newcomer Charlie Kollmansperger, an ex-teacher, entrepreneur, and strong critic of ex-supe Scottie Griffin. (who famously told the board, “I resent being labeled a racist because me and my colleagues oppose cuts to P.E. and guidance.”); current board member, Ned Michie; former teacher, Vance High; director of UVA’s Upward Bound Program, Leah Puryear; and Albemarle transportation planner, and student tutor, (and former jury foreman in the Alston murder trial) Juandiego Wade.

Any endorsements or predictions of victory?

Region Ten Exec. Dir.’s Background Exposed

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 6, 2006 in Law and Justice. 7 Comments

Some Region Ten employees are unhappy with the organization’s executive director, Philip Campbell. They are consequently circulating a heretofore unknown document, a 124-page report issued by the Massachusetts government in 1997 that comes to rather damning conclusions about the state’s Department of Mental Retardation, which was led by Campbell at the time. Two retarded men were tortured, one was accidentally drowned, one retarded woman was abused, and one man choked to death on his own diaper. In John Yellig’s story in today’s Progress, Campbell agrees that he’s ultimately responsible, but that the abuses were committed by low-level employees.

Region Ten employees spoke to Yellig anonymously, making clear that they really don’t like Campbell’s management style. Campbell admits that he failed to tell the Region Ten board about the report prior to his hiring, and that he likewise failed to inform them of a judge’s ruling that he’d abused his authority in trying to force a private treatment business to close, costing the state $1.5M in damages and leading to his resignation. The Region Ten board chair defends Campbell, describing him as just what the organization needs.

Does anybody have an electronic copy of this report? People ought to be able to read this for themselves.

Edward Coles Biography

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 6, 2006 in General News. 3 Comments

I’ve been enjoying reading a web-based biography, “The Man Who Freed His Slaves: A Narrative of the Life of Edward Coles,” by Nicholas Gordon. The portions about about the Coles and Carter families, once powerful names in the Charlottesville areas (and no slouches now), and Enniscorthy and its subsidiary estates will be particularly interesting to any local history buff. Chapter 2 and chapter 6 are particularly interesting in that context, providing some valuable insight on how Charlottesville and Albemarle were shaped in the 1700 and 1800s.

Sideblog