Manhunt at Afton

Published by Waldo Jaquith on April 6, 2010 in Crime. 5 Comments

Bajillions of cops are looking for a shooter on the Blue Ridge Parkway, lots of media outlets are reporting. They’re looking for a white male with long, gray hair driving a red sedan. He’s shot two people (possibly three, that’s not clear), both of whom are hospitalized at UVA. One of the victims is known to be an 18-year-old female; nothing more is known about the male victim. Based on the search that reporters have seen police conducting, they appear to believe, or have believed, that there’s a third victim that they need to find. Federal, state, and local police have closed the parkway between miles 0 and 13.

5:30pm Update: Courteney Stuart has a lot more information now. There are just two victims, the second being a 27-year-old male, Tim Davis, who is the host of WNRN’s “The Boombox” show using the name “DJ Prolapse.” The female victim’s brother says that they were shot in the back by a shotgun-wielding man in a car, out of the blue. The assailant got out of the car and pushed the two over the side of Rock Point Overlook, throwing rocks down on them. After he left the two for dead, the woman climbed back up and stopped a car, who helped. Davis is in critical condition, having fallen more than a hundred feet in addition to being shot. Police say they’re looking for a white guy in his fifties with long, gray hair.

City May Cut McIntire Recycling Center Funding

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 30, 2010 in Government. 29 Comments

The city is looking at eliminating funding for the McIntire Recycling Center, Rachana Dixit writes in today’s Daily Progress. Many of the materials that people can drop off there are collected curbside by the city, making the facility largely redundant. It’s jointly funded by the county, via the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, since folks in the county need to drive their recyclables to McIntire. The catch is that it’s not clear that the facility could continue to exist without city funding, which would eliminate recycling for many Albemarle residents.

City Avoids Major Cuts, But the Worst is to Come

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 29, 2010 in Government and Taxes. 10 Comments

In the Daily Progress, Rachana Dixit has written a two-part series [1, 2] about Charlottesville’s proposed budget. While basically every municipality is cutting services pretty deeply, Charlottesville is cutting a bit more than 1% from spending while avoiding eliminating any services or laying anybody off. Outgoing City Manager Gary O’Connell says that the reason for this is simple: the city started preparing for the effects of an economic downturn three years ago. Mayor Dave Norris points out that the city has one of the lowest tax rates of any city in Virginia, at $0.95 per $100 of assessed value. But, city officials warn, things start to get bad with the 2012 budget. With the state continuing its decade-long trend of reducing local funding, and federal economic stimulus funds due to expire in a year and a half, the current arrangement may just be masking the underlying financial trouble.

Regional Transit Authority Shelved

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 25, 2010 in Government, Taxes and Transportation. 8 Comments

The plan for a regional transit authority is apparently dead, Brian Wheeler writes for Charlottesville Tomorrow. The city and the county have been looking at consolidating their efforts by creating a single entity to oversee mass transit, and while they’ve got permission from the General Assembly to do so, there’s no funding to make it happen, nor is there likely to be any time soon. The result is that the city is reluctant to expand the bus lines to include more of the county (such as out to MHS and Mill Creek), since the county isn’t funding those lines.

BoS Agrees to Fully Fund Library

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 18, 2010 in Education, Government and Politics. 17 Comments

The Board of Supervisors has approved full funding for the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, Brandon Shulleeta reports for the Progress. After JMRL threatened to close their Crozet and Scottsville branches if they didn’t receive enough funding to keep them open, one supervisor threatened to withhold all funding and another claimed that they’d lose a whole bunch of funding if they closed down the Scottsville branch. There was even talk of leaving JMRL and starting an Albemarle-only system. Now the board has agreed to maintain the existing funding level for county’s contribution to the library system, leaving JMRL $85,000 short, which their board will likely try to make up on their own.

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