Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

Page 96 of 549

Bad News Comes in Threes

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 24, 2009 in General News. 9 Comments

It’s been a bad last few days here in Charlottesville.

Mother, North Garden farmer, raw milk advocate and local food activist Kathryn Russell died in a car accident on 29S on Thursday night. The owner of Majesty Farm and VICFA board member was crossing 29 on Plank Road when her truck was hit by a van. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and died at the scene. To learn more about Kathryn, see Meg McEvoy’s 2007 C-Ville Weekly article about local food.

Local musician and regional drumming legend Johnny Gilmore died in a house fire, also on Thursday night. He performed with just about every musician in town at one time or another—his eponymous trio, Cory Harris, Soko, Tim Reynolds, Jamal Milner, the C’ville All-Stars, and untold dozens more. It’s not yet known how the fire started, but it appears to have started at the foot of the bed in which he was sleeping, perhaps by an unattended cigarette. His 73-year-old father escaped, but is now left homeless, without the money to pay for his son’s burial. a fundraising/memorial concert is being held Sunday night at Fry’s Spring Beach Club.

Farmer and farmers market founder Jack Cason is hospitalized after a car accident a week ago, and he’s in bad shape. He drove to town while feeling dizzy, crashed, and the truck caught on fire. The eighty-year-old is at the UVA Medical Center in a medically-induced coma with severe burns, awaiting skin grafts. Many vendors at the market are donating 25% of their sales over the next month to a fund to help with his considerable medical expenses.

Bell Challenger Compares Him to a Cheating Husband

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 22, 2009 in Politics. 22 Comments

The Democratic challenger to Delegate Rob Bell sent out a mailing earlier this week comparing him to a cheating husband, Brian McNeill writes in the Progress. Cynthia Neff‘s glossy, 8.5″x11″ one-page mailer shows a bouquet of roses on one side, with large text reading: “It’s like a cheating husband who sends flowers to cover up what he’s done.” (Image here.) The back side says that “Rob Bell is just like a cheating husband who gets away with it,” saying that he sends a lot of friendly letters to constituents, but—Neff argues—he does it to cover up that he’s voting against the interests of the citizens of the 58th District. (Image here.) Bell immediately incorporated the front of the image into a fundraising e-mail, which he sent out on Monday, calling it a “doozy” of an attack ad. He calls the attack a sign that Neff’s campaign is desperate. In the Progress, Neff’s campaign spokesman didn’t address the implication that Bell had been unfaithful to his wife, but instead repeated some of the criticisms already present in the mailer, such as that Bell has voted against increasing teacher pay and voted to prevent rape victims from receiving emergency contraception in emergency rooms to prevent pregnancy.

County Dropout Rates for Black Students Have Tripled

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 21, 2009 in Education. 3 Comments

Black students in Albemarle County high schools are graduating at a lower rate this year than last year, Rachana Dixit and Brandon Shulleeta report in today’s Daily Progress. Of the class that entered ninth grade in 2004, 5.4% of black students dropped out. Of the class that entered in 2005, 15.2% dropped out, nearly triple the rate of the prior year. However, it’s helpful to look at the raw numbers for perspective. Only 138 black students entered the county school system in 2005, so we’re looking at an increase of about fourteen students, or about five students dropping out per high school.

The county school system points out in a press release some of what’s behind those numbers:

Although fewer black students graduated on-time in 2009 than their counterparts in 2008, one-third of those students who did not graduate are still enrolled in school and are on track to graduate within five years. Nationally, about 71 percent of students graduate on time with a regular diploma, but barely half of black and Hispanic students earn diplomas with their peers.

“A number of our black students who did not graduate in 2008 stayed in school another year and graduated in 2009,” said Dr. Matthew Haas, Director of Secondary Education for the school division. “These students had gotten behind early in their high school careers and persisted to finish their work and graduate at nearly the same rate as their peers. As a School Division, we have now put into place more programs to help students who fall behind early in high school get caught up sooner, so that they can not only graduate, but graduate on-time.”

A school system representative tells the Progress that they’ve put retention programs into place in the past couple of years—which they say have been very successful—which are too new to have fully benefitted the most recent class of students.

That may all be true, but the headline here—”Black dropout rate in county triples”—is a bitter pill.

Slonaker Loses County Court Case Over Signage

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 18, 2009 in Business and Government. 26 Comments

General District Judge William G. Barkley has found Forest Lakes Arby’s owner Tom Slonaker in clear violation of the county’s zoning regulations, Tasha Kates wrote in yesterday’s Progress, fining him $1,000 per violation. For years Slonaker has festooned his business with advertisements for Arby’s and another, unlicensed business that exceed county standards that regulate how many square feet of ads that a business can have on their property. When pressed in court as to why he left signs up in violation of a law he was well familiar with, Slonaker claimed temporary blindness.

Back in 2003, Slonaker flew an Arby’s flag on his flagpole, and when the county pointed out that’s an ad too, Slonaker accused the county of opposing the American flag and thus being terrorist-supporters, or some such drummed-up patriotism of financial convenience. (At the time, he told the Progress: “Not only do I intend to continue to fly the Arby’s Flag with pride below our American Flag, but I will also fly the UVa Flag, our state flag and any other flag which shows our pride in America’s freedom’s which you seem so intent to abolish.”) His argument is that it’s his property, and he can do anything that he wants, without restriction, and there’s nothing that the county or anybody else should have to say about it.

One point that Slonaker has made repeatedly that have some merit is that other businesses display advertisements that would appear to exceed reasonable standards for the allowable square footage. I recently drove down 29 and took pictures of a couple of the more prominent examples. Better Living Furniture, near Rio Hill, appears to have a trailer parked permanently next to their store, covered with a large ad for one of the product lines that they carry. (Google Maps captured this, too, so constant is its presence.)

Better Living Furniture Trucks

And Ntelos’ store up towards Hollymead has an armored truck permanently parked out front that serves as a billboard for the business, something that Slonaker used to do with a sign-bearing van out front of his fast food restaurant.

Ntelos' Store on 29N

Signs are covered under section 4.15 of the zoning regulations (505k PDF), which certainly appears to prohibit both the Ntelos and Better Living signs. §4.15.7c2 prohibits

Advertising vehicles, where (i) the vehicle is parked so as to be visible from a public right-of-way in a parking space or parking area not authorized by section 4.15.6(21); (ii) the vehicle is inoperable; or (iii) the vehicle is incapable of moving on its own or is not self-propelled.

The exception specified in 4.15.6(21) is for vehicles that are “used as transportation for the business” and are parked properly. Given that neither of these things seem to move (and Ntelos has no use for an armored truck—it’s unlikely that they often deal in cash), I can’t see how they qualify.

It looks like Slonaker is right that the regulations are enforced unevenly, and he’s right to complain about it. But he’s dead wrong in believing that means that the law doesn’t apply to him.

Planning Commission Opposing Rezoning Due to Road Capacity

Published by Waldo Jaquith on October 16, 2009 in Development, Government and Transportation. 18 Comments

The Albemarle Planning Commission is set to oppose rezonings in the vicinity of Glenmore, Connie Chang writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow, because there’s simply not the road capacity to handle the traffic between there and Charlottesville. That’s good news for supporters of common sense. Traditionally, developers get to build whatever they want just about wherever they want, and we get stuck footing the bill for the sewer line capacity, road expansions, etc. to accommodate the development. It’s a net financial loser for the county. The area around Glenmore is designated as a growth area, to the perpetual horror of Glenmore, but a two-lane 250W runs between there and Pantops, and it’s already getting more traffic than it can handle. Adding the 1,000+ residential units that could hypothetically be added would require $16M in road upgrades. As the state’s transportation system hurtles towards bankruptcy, there’s almost zero chance of such upgrades happening. Wisely, the planning commission isn’t interested in approving development that our infrastructure can’t handle. It’s a practical approach that hasn’t often been taken in the county, but one that’s necessary in the face of a slow-motion economic transportation crisis that isn’t likely to be solved in the next decade.

Sideblog