Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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It’s Spring

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 17, 2008 in Weather. 5 Comments

OK, I’m calling it — winter is over, spring is here. Monday’s threat of sleet was winter’s last gasp. I was convinced of that when I saw this photo by Bill Detmer appear in the Charlottesville Flickr group this morning. The daffodils have come and gone, the flowering trees behind my office have lost their flowers, and The Dogwood Festival is underway.

A barely related memory. A decade ago, when Robert Van Winkle was still at NBC 29. It’s early December. The weather has turned cold because, hey, winter’s coming. Robert has just finished providing the forecast. A bubbly anchor without a brain in her head turns to him and asks earnestly: “oh, Robert, when will this cold snap end?”

City Adopts Budget with a Flat Tax Rate

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2008 in Government and Taxes. 16 Comments

Charlottesville has adopted a $140M budget, Sean Tubbs writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow, keeping the real estate property tax at $0.95, as it was last year. The budget (99k PDF) includes some last-minute additions of funding for things like JABA, Streamwatch, and Children, Youth & Family Services.

For a sense of perspective, note that we had a $100M budget in 2005, a $94M budget in 2004, and a ~$80M budget in 2003.

UVa Laptop Goes Missing with SSNs

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2008 in Crime and UVa. 12 Comments

Bad news for my fellow UVa employees: an employee’s laptop was stolen, and it contained names and Social Security numbers for 7,000 students and staff. Brian McNeill explains in the Progress that the university has contacted everybody whose data has gone missing, saying that they suspect the intended theft was of of the computer, not its data. The university uses SSNs as a primary identification number for many UVa employees, so it’s used whenever there’s cause to provide a unique identifier for a given employee, but they’re thankfully phasing that out.

The Downtown Kiosk is Gone

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 16, 2008 in Business and In Brief. 2 Comments

The downtown kiosk is finally gone, available to the highest bidder. It started its life as a Nagle/Danielson newsstand, and never really found a viable use. #

Remember, It’s Seasonal

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 15, 2008 in In Brief. 3 Comments

If you think the recent cold weather is odd, remember that it snowed this time last year. #