4BETTER OR WORSE- The week in review
First snow: Area roads are paralyzed January 17 when the white stuff starts sticking around commute time, vehicles start sliding, and then both public school systems decide to evacuate.
Most wrecks: Albemarle police respond to 84 accidents and approximately 40 calls for service between 7:45am and 3:45pm on snow day.
Most overwhelmed: Because of the large number of calls that morning– 140 to 180 an hour– county police operate on a "modified response status" and respond only to accidents that involve injuries or vehicles blocking the road. Everyone else is told not wait for police and given two days to report the accident, according to a county release.
Most likely to go postal: Scottsville citizens lose their downtown post office to a new location about a mile away, Jeremy Borden reports in the Daily Progress.
Worst Spivey backlash: A Virginia advocacy group called Generation Y calls for the resignation of Charlottesville School Board member Alvin Edwards for his moral support of a convicted sex offender– Jonathan Spivey, the former choir director at CHS and music director at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Edwards is pastor. WCAV reports that the group calls Edwards' actions "reprehensible and disturbing." Voters in Charlottesville seem less perturbed– they reelected Edwards, who is also a former mayor, to the School Board in November.
Worst truck fire: WINA reports a flaming dump truck turns I-64 into a parking lot January 16.
Greenest bandwagon: Charlottesville plans to install a green rooftop on City Hall and the police station, according to Seth Rosen in the Progress. Three inches of soil and succulent sedums will cost around $650K and take two years to become "green." Albemarle put on its green roof in 2005.
Most auto dials: Albemarle public school officials hold their first telephone town hall meeting January 16, targeting 24,000 households of registered voters. Approximately 750 people take part, according to School Board Chair Brian Wheeler's blog.
Biggest phone bill: The conference call will cost at most $6,300, according to Wheeler– or $8.40 per citizen reached.
Most Balilean: The Virginia Bar Association renames its service award for former governor Gerald Baliles, now director of UVA's Miller Center. He presents the eponymous award January 18 to Supreme Court of Virginia Senior Justice Elizabeth B. Lacy.
Most applications: UVA breaks last year's record of hopeful students, logging 18,776 apps, up four percent from 2007, despite this being the first year without early decision.
Most dead wood: UVA takes down a 100-year-old red oak January 21 near New Cabell Hall off JPA after extensive root and trunk rot is found.
Best land-use suggestion for Nelson County: A veterans' cemetery is proposed by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the request of Virginia's Department of Veterans Services. The Center study concludes that veterans' cemeteries should have a 50-mile distance service standard, and Nelson would serve Lynchburg, Buena Vista, Lexington, Waynesboro, and Charlottesville.
Winningest: The CHS girls swim team boasts an 8-0 record and wins the City-County Invitational, which is usually dominated by county teams, according to a city release.
Battiest: A bill to ban aluminum bats in high school baseball and softball games has been held over for a year at the request of its sponsor, "baseball mom" Delegate Paula Miller, according to a Bob Gibson dispatch in the DP.
Most PC: State Senator Janet Howell is pushing legislation to remove the words "mentally retarded" from state code and replace them with "persons with intellectual disabilities."
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