Albemarle BoS Podcast

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 10, 2006 in Politics. Closed

On the heels of the Albemarle School Board’s announcement they’ll be providing MP3s of each meeting, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors now has a podcast of their meetings. (The difference between a series of MP3s and a podcast being that it’s possible to subscribe to a podcast, whereas MP3s have to be sought out and downloaded individually.) The only problem is the size of the files — the July 5 meeting is an enormous 94MB. It’s properly compressed and is fine in all technical senses; the problem is that the meeting is a staggering seven hours long. Bravo to Albemarle County for putting together this great resource. (Via Charlottesville Tomorrow)

As long as I’m writing about podcasts, Albemarle High School principal Matt Haas has his own podcast, though it’s been expanded to include audio from other events of interest to AHS students and parents.

Violent Crime Down, Theft Up

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 10, 2006 in Crime. 17 Comments

The good news is that violent crime has dropped in Albemarle and Charlottesville this year: homicides are down 100% in Albemarle and 50% in Charlottesville; rapes are down 19% in the county and 22% in the city; and aggravated assaults are down 12% in the county and 13% in the city. The bad news is that theft is on the increase — it’s up by 50% in Albemarle and 31% in Charlottesville. This after years of declines in burglaries in the county, dropping annually from 2000 to 2004. Given the small number of actual crimes (88 burglaries in Charlottesville from January 1 – May 31), police figure that this is a result of a small burglary ring at work. These break-ins are happening not at night, as was going on last year, but in the daytime, when people are less likely to be home. Note that the Albemarle statistics are just for the first quarter, while Charlottesville’s are for the first five months of the year. Rob Seal has the story in today’s Daily Progress.

Albemarle county provides some aggregate crime statistics on their website, while Charlottesville provides only this puzzling chart. I wish the area police departments would provide raw incident data on their site — date, time, crime classification and block address — to permit citizens to find out exactly what’s going on in their neighborhood or, better yet, compile their own crime statistics. I’d love to put together a Google map plotting crime locations over time, create a scatterplot of crime trends, or create an RSS feed to track auto thefts.

Bundoran Development Continuing

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 10, 2006 in Development. 2 Comments

In Saturday’s Daily Progress, Jessica Kitchin and Rob Seal wrote that Qroe will continue with their plans to develop Bundoran Farm, despite the death of two top company officials in a plane crash on the property last month. Company CEO Robert Baldwin died in the accident, but his son, who has taken over the business, says that there should be no delay in moving forward with the project.

Carl Carter Dies

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 6, 2006 in General News. 9 Comments

Carl CarterI’m told that downtown entertainer and Mudhouse chess maven Carl Carter passed away a couple of months ago. It was cancer that did it. He was in Tennessee at the time. Nobody who saw Carl could forget him, performing on the Downtown Mall in a clown costume, wearing a pig nose, fairy wings, waving a rubber chicken and playing violin or a child’s keyboard. He was almost always in character, but would drop it long enough for a chess game or a good conversation. Claudia Pinto interviewed him for the Progress a few years ago, but that article is no longer in their archives. Like Dancing Man or Singing Lady, Carl will long be remembered.

The SPCA’s Falling Kill Rate

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 6, 2006 in General News. 4 Comments

Animal shelter pressure group The No Kill Advocacy Center writes in their latest newsletter that in 2005 the Charlottesville Albemarle SPCA saved 87% of their dogs and 67% of their cats, but that things have improved since new director Susanne Kogut came on board:

So far this year, 95% of the dogs are leaving the shelter alive. If that holds, Charlottesville, VA will become the safest community in the U.S. for dogs. As for cats, saving 7 out of 10 makes them the envy of most communities in the nation. But, once again, Kogut wants more.

Impressive! Thanks to Dave for the tip.

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