The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has voted to build a new sewage facility not in the Woolen Mills neighborhood, but instead a short distance away, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. A bare majority of the board voted to build it a short distance away, in a less populous area, rather than expand the unpopular existing facility in the Woolen Mills. Neighborhood residents complained that the new building would be enormous, totally out of scale for the neighborhood, and exacerbate the longtime problem of the terrible smell. County RSWA board members are unhappy about the cost of this option, with Supervisor Ken Boyd calling on the city to voluntarily pay the $13M difference. The new facility is necessary because the existing one cannot handle peak capacity, overflowing sewage into the Rivanna.
cvillenews.com
Media General has put up a paywall in front of Daily Progress website content. The media conglomerate entered into a relationship with Journalism Online earlier this year, the company that has developed the “Press+” platform. It limits readers to reading ten “premium” articles each month (no word on what constitutes “premium”) before they have to buy an online subscription, which runs $7/month.
I was an early alpha tester for the then-unnamed Press+ a couple of years ago, when I worked for a magazine, but after reviewing the meager and misguided technical documentation for their product, decided Press+ was much too crude to work. Simply blocking the URL http://s.ppjol.net/pp.js in a program like Ad Block Plus, or running a browser in “private” or “incognito” mode when visiting an Press+ affiliate, are enough to prevent it from working entirely. The whole article is sent to the browser along with the payment requirement—a bit of code is simply used to display a little box above it; suppress the box, which is easily done, and you can read the article.
It’s also based on a model of charging a monthly fee per media outlet, which isn’t how many people read news now—in the Google News era, we sample our news from a great many sources, and are reluctant to commit financially to a media outlet like that. Instead, media outlets need to be charging micropayments on a per-read basis, anywhere from 1–25¢ per article, for which we’d all have a single monthly charge on our credit card. But to work, those need to be aggregated across dozens or hundreds of media outlets, and only an existing online retailer with a huge file of credit card numbers could make that work, which really means Amazon or Apple. (Google is trying this with One Pass, but they just don’t have an existing financial relationship with enough people.) Until that happens, companies like Media General are stuck with solutions like Press+, which a lot of industry experts are dubious will pay off. Media outlets eager to find new sources of revenue to replace sagging print subscription income are understandably flirting with the Press+ model, because what other options do they have?
This obviously leaves me in an awkward position for linking to news from here, since I’d routinely be sending people to articles they may well not be able to read. Luckily, a few alternatives are available. The first is to link to original stories on Charlottesville Tomorrow, which not infrequently is the ultimate source of the sort of Progress stories I tend to write about here. The second is to link to coverage on NBC-29 and CBS-19, which frequently gets their daily headlines from the Progress. While that’s really not fair to the Progress reporters, that does have the benefit of being a useful link. And the third alternative is to summarize stories in more detail, so that folks who cannot click through can still get the gist of the article. This is, again, not really fair to reporters. I’m open to suggestions here!
VDOT expects to have the Albemarle portion of the Meadowcreek Parkway open in a month’s time, Aaron Richardson writes for the Daily Progress. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ask the Virginia Department of Transportation to open the county’s completed chunk of the road, and City Council doesn’t oppose that, though they want some minor improvements made at the road’s beginning and end.
Artist, humanitarian, and activist Gerry Mitchell has died. Unfortunately best known recently for being hit by a police car (and then ticketed), Mitchell was known and loved in the area long before then. He’d been diagnosed with AIDS back in the 1980s, and despite awful complications (he was confined to a wheelchair), Mitchell was active in the community, an outspoken supporter of hospice, and racked up thousands of miles in his electric wheelchair in his travels. Mitchell was 58.
To learn more about Mitchell, see this short documentary about him, filmed five years ago.
Delegate Rob Bell has announced that he’ll seek the Republican nomination for Attorney General in the 2013 election, Ted Strong reports for the Daily Progress. The Republican, an attorney, has represented the conservative 58th District since 2002, a district that draws the bulk of its population from Albemarle County. Bell’s interest in the job has been well-known for years, and he’s long maintained one of the largest amounts of cash on hand in the House of Delegates, despite being in a safely conservative district. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said yesterday that he intends to run for governor, so the Republicans interested in running for AG weren’t going to wait long to make their candidacy announcements. Bell has clearly been preparing for an AG race: he’s the chair of the Virginia Crime Commission, and legislative portfolio has always consisted mostly of crime-related bills. (During this year’s session alone he introduced a dozen bills on that topic.) He’s never faced a strong challenger, having been challenged in only half of his races, winning those races with 60%, 62%, and 67% of the vote.
Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg) is another likely candidate, and he’ll pose a strong challenge to Bell. Obenshain comes from a powerful Virginia family. His sister, Kate Obenshain, used to be the executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia, and his father, Richard Obenshain, was a major political figure in Virginia for two decades, until his death in a 1978 plane crash. (Obenshain was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate at the time. John Warner was selected to replace him, won election, and remained in that position for 31 years.) The Republican Party of Virginia’s headquarters, in fact, is named the The Richard D. Obenshain Center. Sen. Obenshain is also a friend of Cuccinelli’s, no small detail for those interested in having a unified ticket on the 2012 ballot.
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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