President Obama Campaigning Here

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 22, 2012 in Politics. 22 Comments

President Obama will be campaigning for reelection in Charlottesville on Wednesday of next week. UVA is the most likely location for his visit, though specifics are not yet available. Rumor has it that first dibs will go to folks who held tickets to the Michele Obama’s cancelled visit last month.

08/24 Update: In an interesting twist, UVA has declined the Obama campaign’s request to use their facilities. There were two locations that the campaign inquired about (adjacent to Alderman Library and the McIntire Amphitheatre), and using either of those locations would have been enormously disruptive on the second day of classes. The university offered the use of the John Paul Jones arena, but it wasn’t what the campaign was looking for. The downtown amphitheater is said to be the next most likely place.

Council May Beef Up Noise Violation Fines

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 18, 2012 in Crime and UVa. 5 Comments

City Council is considering quadrupling fines for noise violations, Graham Moomaw writes for the Daily Progress, in an effort to deal with noisy parties around UVA. Currently the top fine is $250, which apparently is treated as the cost of throwing a big party by some students. The proposal is to move the offense from a Class 4 misdemeanor to a Class 2 misdemeanor, which would allow a fine of up to $1,000 and, theoretically, six months in jail. (Six months in jail is inherent with a Class 2 misdemeanor—increasing the fine means raising the possibility of jail time.) For somebody convicted twice in a one-year period, that’s a Class 1 misdemeanor, which is a fine of up to $2,500 or a year in jail. A city representative says that they don’t intend to pursue jail time except for people who demonstrate no interest in complying with the law. Council will take up the issue on Monday night.

Strine Resigns from UVA

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 7, 2012 in UVa. 19 Comments

UVA COO Michael Strine is stepping down, effective immediately, CBS-19 reports. Strine was brought on by President Teresa Sullivan as a part of her core team on July 1 of last year, replacing Leonard Sandridge. It’s a fair guess that Strine’s resignation is connected to Sullivan’s near-death experience at the hands of Board of Visitors Rector Helen Dragas, although right now nobody’s talking.

County Looking at Building STEM High School

Published by Waldo Jaquith on August 4, 2012 in Education. 1 Comment

Albemarle Superintendent Pam Moran has been talking with UVA about locating a new high school at the UVA Research Park in northern Albemarle, Aaron Richardson reports in the Daily Progress. The Progress was FOIAing e-mails from UVA on a different matter when they stumbled across UVA communications that referred to the discussions about establishing a school focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). It sounds like things haven’t progressed very far at this point, with UVA saying that the university’s administration hasn’t been briefed on it and School Board member Diantha McKeel saying that she didn’t know that Moran had approached UVA.

Local Boards Reject Chloraminated Water

Published by Waldo Jaquith on July 26, 2012 in Government. 5 Comments

At yesterday’s meeting of the two water boards, City Council, and the Board of Supervisors, they unanimously rejected the use of chloramines to purify the regional water supply, Lisa Provence reports for The Hook. Faced with a choice between an $18M granular activated carbon filtration system or a $9M chloramine-based system, they were considering adding the ammonia derivative to save $9M. Most public water supplies in the state are purified with chloramines, but the catch is that they can suck the lead right out of old pipes, which is particularly dangerous for children. Concerns about chloramines were widespread, with dozens of people speaking against chloramines at yesterday’s meeting, but nobody speaking in favor of them. Next up: Ginning up another $9M to fund a new carbon filtration system.

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