cvillenews.com reader Brent has started a new community blog, hburgnews, which is to Harrisonburg as this site is to Charlottesville. I know there are a bunch of regular readers of this site who are closer to Harrisonburg than they are to C’ville — I hope y’all will get in the habit of reading and contributing to hburgnews and help build up the valley blogosphere.
cvillenews.com
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Last year Money Magazine ranked Charlottesville #90 on their Best Places to Live listing. (Or, as David Sewell rightly named it, “Best Places to Live if You Have Lots of Money and Don’t Like Living Around Poor People.”) Good news, kids: we didn’t make the list at all this year. And with Reston, Columbia, and Cherry Hill all featured , I’ll think of this as a list of 100 places I’d never want to live. Fort Collins, CO, we wish you luck with your inevitable unsustainable growth.
UVa Dean of African-American Affairs M. Rick Turner has been placed on administrative leave after admitting that he lied to federal investigators in a drug investigation, Bob Gibson reported in Friday’s Daily Progress. Turner signed an agreement with the U.S. District Court stating that he’d intentionally misled investigators about “the activities of a known drug dealer,” placing him on a year of probation with the feds to avoid prosecution. Turner will be assigned a probation officer and will have to be tested regularly for illegal drug use in order to keep the charges at bay. What in the world is going on remains unclear, but presumably more information will become available this week.
City Council has sold off downtown’s free parking lots over the past fifteen years, transitioning to a private model in which the city relies on the Charlottesville Parking Corporation’s garages and open lot to provide adequate parking for those who live, work, and visit downtown. Last year the rates increased by 50% an hour, from $1.00 to $1.50. Now the hourly rates are going up again, from $1.50 to $2.00. (The Water Street garage stays $0.50 behind the other spots, and is just now going from $1.00 to $1.50.) In today’s Daily Progress article about the change, John Yellig and Liesel Nowak toss out this bit without further elaboration:
In March, CPC raised the fee downtown businesses pay to validate customers’ parking stubs. Under the program, a business can stamp a paying customer’s ticket for up to two hours of free parking. The minimum fee went from $60 to $75 per month, but larger businesses saw higher increases, [CPC President Bob] Stroh said.
Motorists will no longer be able to use the two-hour validations at the Water Street lot.
(Emphasis mine.)
It’s not clear to me whether that means that the Water Street lot will not accept any validated tickets, or just not two-hour validated tickets, but in either case, I worry that this is the camel’s nose in the tent. 
The model for parking under which City Council has eliminated the free lots has been one in which the merchants foot the bill for customers and employees to park downtown. It’s awkward for out-of-town visitors, but it’s basically worked. Eliminating validated parking would completely change the model.
Something that I can’t fit into this puzzle is last year’s news that this very lot on Water Street is for sale. That chunk of land has been assessed at $7M, which must make it a tempting sale for CPC shareholders. But the company, established in 1959, has always prided itself on having a mission of providing inexpensive parking downtown rather than profit-seeking, so it’s not clear how the two interests intertwine.
As a private enterprise, CPC can do whatever it likes; if they want to charge $50/hour and the right to take your car on a joyride, that’s their business. Here’s hoping that the two garages — unlike the open lot — are governed by arrangements with the city that would prevent the elimination of validation. If the city has allowed itself to become dependent on CPC for parking without ensuring that the company would continue to provide free-to-visitors parking, that would be a tremendously nearsighted move.
The ginormous sinkhole on Rt. 29 is back. It’s nine feet deep, seventeen feet wide, and it’s getting bigger. Southbound 29 in front of the Seminole Commons shopping center is down to one lane. Presumably it’s caused by the same drainage problems that caused it last year, indicating that repair crews probably didn’t fix the problem, just its sinkhole symptom. VDOT intends to get the road opened in a couple of days. I think we’d give them a whole week if they could make sure it wouldn’t happen again next year.
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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