Scottsville Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier has announced that he will not be seeking a sixth term on the Board of Supervisors, Brandon Shulleeta reports for the Progress. The conservative Democrat has served since 1999 and, before that, was elected in 1975 and again in 1979. His initial time on the board ended when he was elected Commonwealth’s Attorney, a position that he held from 1981–1990. (See Cvillepedia for details on Dorrier.) The 68-year-old says he just wants to do something different. There’s no word on who we can expect to see running for his seat, but I think it’s reasonable to expect some robust competition.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
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Ralph Leon Jackson has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Timothy Davis and attempted murder of Christina Floyd on the Blue Ridge Parkway one year ago, Chase Purdy reports for the Waynesboro News Virginian.
The 57-year-old mechanic drove up to an overlook on the parkway, where he sat for fifteen minutes before firing at the two out of his window with a 20-gauge shotgun. He fired again and threw the 19-year-old Floyd over the cliff. A massive manhunt led to Jackson’s arrest the next day. Jackson briefly attempted a Twinkie defense, claiming that he’d taken penis-enlargement drugs, and they made him do it, but that didn’t last long.
In the end, nobody has the faintest idea of why Jackson did it. He wasn’t found to be mentally ill, was apparently unable to explain his motivation, and apparently couldn’t mount any sort of a defense. The formal sentencing will be held in June.
Former teacher Ned Gallaway is running for the at-large seat on the Albemarle County School Board, NBC-29 reports. The seat is currently held by Harley Miles, who was appointed to the seat in September after Brian Wheeler resigned. Gallaway, a Democrat, has children in the school system, and is on the parent council.
As I recall, Miles said that he would not seek election to the seat—just serve out the rest of Wheeler’s term. That makes Gallaway the only candidate for this seat. The election will be held in November.
There were a pair of stories from Bryan McKenzie in the Daily Progress last week that, hopefully, add up to a larger economic narrative. The area lost a lot of its admittedly small manufacturing base a decade ago, a result of NAFTA and manufacturing’s move to China. (Ix, Comdial, Technicolor, and Nimbus all come to mind readily.) Many hundreds of people were left unemployed, often with very specific sets of skills for which there were no reasonable replacements—a lot of these folks wound up, at best, underemployed. One of those was Comdial, which laid off its final 200 people in 2001. The company that bought the building wanted to turn it into a shopping mall, but that obviously never went anywhere.
Now comes the news that screen printer CustomInk.com is moving into the Comdial building, having been looking around for a facility to expand into. CustomInk.com is a custom, small-batch screen printer—you can submit a design online, and they’ll print and ship the shirts. They already have 32 employees in Albemarle, and intend to hire enough to get them up to about 100.
The other bit of good news is that the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Preston has a tenant: Indoor Biotechnologies, a local biotech company that specializes in allergens. They’re located on Harris Street now, so it’s a short move to their newly purchased building. Unlike the Comdial building, which sat idle for a decade, the Coke plant has only been out of commission since last year. Folks who have been in the building recently tell me that it’s an unusual building, since it was constructed explicitly for the purpose of bottling soda, receiving shipments of syrup, and sending out shipments of the finished product, meaning that it’s a bit too oddly laid out for most potential tenants. Apparently it’s right for Indoor Biotechnologies.
03/22 Update: The Comdial building is not entirely empty, it turns out—it was divided up. Googling for its address reveals a bunch of tenants: VAMAC, MSV, Roberts Home Medical, TransDigital, and Worrell Water Technologies all show up there. Although I imagine that CustomInk.com will be the largest single employer there, they’ll hardly be alone.
It’s Sunshine Week, that time each year when media outlets through the country remind their audiences of the importance of open government. (The Daily Progress editorialized on the topic on Tuesday.) I’d like to take this opportunity to get one simple message across about open government, and that’s this: All you have to do to find out something about government is ask.
Although it is a convenient shorthand phrase, there really is no such thing as “making a FOIA request.” Sure, Virginia has a Freedom of Information Act (here’s a detailed explanation of how it works), but it’s so simple that you don’t really need to know much about it. It says, simply, that when you ask a local or state unit of government for information, they’re obliged to provide it to you promptly. You don’t have to say “I’m filing a request under FOIA.” You don’t have to explain why you want it. You just have to ask. If you want the minutes from a committee meeting, if you want to know how much money was spent on a traffic improvement, if you want to know who got the contract to install new computers, you just have to ask. They have the right to tell you that your request is going to cost money—they can charge the actual cost associated with them providing that information. It’s best to submit requests in writing (e-mail is fine), so that you have a written record of the request. There are a whole mess of exemptions to FOIA: personnel records, administrative investigations, and security records, among others, but the government will be happy to inform you if your question can’t be answered.
I’ve submitted many requests to the city and the county over the past decade, and they’ve always been answered completely and promptly. The few that I’ve submitted to the state have likewise worked out just fine.
Still feeling nervous at the prospect of making a FOIA request? Check out these simple how-to videos about making a FOIA request in Virginia.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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