For years now The Hook‘s consumer columnist, Barbara Nordin, has been on Lethal Wrecker like white on rice. Time and time again she’s caught the company violating the state and local laws that regulate consumer affairs and towing practices. Anybody following the years-long Lethal saga will smile at Liesel Nowak’s story in today’s Progress that reports that Lethal has lost a lawsuit brought by one of their victims, and they now a total of $1,120 to twenty one people. It’s not enough to bring down the company, but I’d like to think of it as another nail in their coffin.
cvillenews.com
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
City Councilor Blake Caravati, who recently announced that he’s retiring from Council, is sounding mighty feisty on the topic of the budget. In today’s Daily Progress, John Yellig writes that Caravati said: “What I’m saying is, don’t be bellyaching about ‘we’ve got all this new money and we want to cut rates to reduce the amount of money,’ and then not talk about services. We all do it, and I’m saying I don’t have to worry about it this year, so I’m going to raise hell about it.”
Caravati is particularly peeved with lone Republican Councilor Rob Schilling, who has not participated in the budget process in the past, and has also voted against every budget in his single term on Council. “Rob doesn’t want to argue about it because he’s an ideologue…. I’m not a lame duck. I’m a wounded duck. And you know what happens when animals are wounded.”
I have to admit that I’m a bit puzzled by Caravati’s comments. Given that assessments are up 18.8% this year, a properly-crafted rate cut wouldn’t need to result in a decrease in funding of city services, as has been done in past years. I, too, deplore passing tax cuts without spending cuts, but it seems to me that, in this case, we can have our cake and eat it, too, at least rhetorically.
Bryan McKenzie has a great piece in today’s Daily Progress about geocaching:
Go online to a game site such as www.geocaching.com and look up your Zip code. Choose a cache to find, download the coordinates into your GPS or print out the topographic map and go hunting. Some are hard to find, some are easy. But they are everywhere.
[…]
Within a 10-mile radius of downtown Charlottesville there are 36 caches. Within 25 miles there are 88. Draw a 100-mile circle around town and you can hunt for 1,957 bits of hidden treasure. Caches come in all sizes. There are small caches the size of a Starbuck’s vanilla mint tin. There are some as small as your fingertip and some the size of a 5-gallon bucket.
Having gotten a GPS for Christmas, I’m totally geeked at the prospect of so many caches in the area.
Three teenagers have been arrested for planning a violent attack on a pair of area high schools, NBC 29 reports. Three students from WAHS, AHS, and Jack Jouett are being held at Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center, a result of a tip.
The question will be whether these kids were both serious and capable of such an attack, or if they were just venting. If such cases around the country in the past few years are any indicator, the latter is certainly more likely.
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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