Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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Bronfman Farm Manager Acquitted of Embezzling

Edgar Bronfman Sr‘s former farm manager, Michael Nemeyer, has been acquitted of eleven charges of embezzling from Bronfman, Hawes Spencer writes for The Hook. The 52-year-old had been accused of stealing $115,000 from the noted millionaire over the course of two decades of managing Georgetown Farm, in Free Union, a beef and bison farm which shut down in 2004. The jury found him not guilty on all charges, apparently leaning on the fact that Nemeyer had initially volunteered that he owed the money to Bronfman, describing them as loans. There was a lack of criminal deception and, thus, no embezzlement. One juror even argued that the case never should have made it as far as the criminal justice system.

Disclaimer: I lived next door to Georgetown Farm as a kid, I’ve had connections with members of the Bronfman/Hoffman family for many years, and Mike Nemeyer paid me a few bucks to fix his computer when I was in high school and kindly donated ~$200 to help fund my hike of the Appalachian Trail in 1996.

Boyd Wants to Open Meadowcreek Parkway, Now

Supervisor Ken Boyd thinks it’s time to open the Meadowcreek Parkway to traffic, despite that it’s not finished being built, Aaron Richardson writes in the Daily Progress. The agreement between the city, the county, and the Virginia Department of Transportation stipulates that no portion of the road can open until it’s completed. The county’s portion was open briefly, so that VDOT could direct traffic along it to facilitate construction, but the effect of it was to dump all of the traffic directly in front of Charlottesville High School, which made the school’s administrators fear for their students’ safety. VDOT is yet to sign off on the project as completed. Boyd says that if the road isn’t opened soon, the surface of the road will deteriorate. There was no quoted response from VDOT spokesman Lou Hatter on Boyd’s claim. The Board of Supervisors is slated to vote on Boyd’s proposed resolution on the matter on Wednesday.

Scottsville Candidate Filed for Bankruptcy

Scottsville BoS candidate James Norwood—who bills himself as a fiscal conservative with business experience in the race—declared bankruptcy two years ago.  #

Strange Lineup of Candidates in the 59th

Some very weird information has become public about two of the three candidates in the 59th District House of Delegates race, Ray Reed writes for the News & Advance. (The 59th Distict includes southwest Albemarle, up to the edge of Charlottesville, and runs south from there.) Republican candidate Matt Farriss has been repeatedly convicted of weapons and DUI violations, and was the subject of an emergency protective order after allegedly breaking into a woman’s home. Lynchburg newspaper The News & Advance has tried to get Farriss to explain the many incidents, but he won’t talk to them. Then there’s conservative independent candidate Linda Wall, who admitted in a 2006 deposition that, as a teacher in the 1970s, she’d had a sexual relationship with a (female) student, for which she lost her job. By way of defense, she says that she was smoking a lot of marijuana then. (Five years ago I wrote about her testimony before a state senate committee in opposition to a bill that would prohibit state government from discriminating against people in hiring practices based on their sexual orientation.)

The third candidate in the race is Connie Brennan, Democrat and long-time Nelson County Supervisor. She ran unsuccessfully for the same seat in 2007. Disclaimer: I’ve given money to her campaign, and she is a friend.

Anger Management for Caravati

A judge has ordered former mayor Blake Caravati to therapy and anger management classes.  #