Supe's surprise: Supervisor Ken Boyd seeks 3rd term
-
Four more years: Ken Boyd announces he's running for reelection.PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
When Albemarle Supervisor Ken Boyd made an unsuccessful run for the 5th Congressional District Republican nomination in 2010, he said he would not be seeking another term on the Board of Supervisors. But at a hastily called May 12 press conference, the incumbent representing the Rivanna District– despite mentioning the "toll on you and your family" from 12 years of public service– threw his hat back in the ring.
"My wife allowed me to," said Boyd.
Boyd is the last of the three term-expiring supervisors to announce plans. Scottsville Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier will not seek a fourth term, but White Hall supe and board chair Ann Mallek will run again.
"This year, I've been honored and humbled by the number of people that have asked me to run again," said Boyd, who typically votes with the more ostensibly conservative board block that includes Samuel Miller's Duane Snow, the Rio District's Rodney Thomas, and Dorrier. So far, no one has announced a run for Dorrier's seat.
Boyd, who formerly served on the School Board, cites accomplishments such as "a world class educational system," the near completion–- at least the county's portion–- of the Meadow Creek Parkway, the start of the Hillsdale Connector, the higher than average salaries coming with the taxpayer-assisted expansion of MicroAire Surgical Instruments, and the county's AAA bond rating.
"We've downsized government considerably without laying off employees," say Boyd, of his leadership during the a recessionary economy. And he noted proudly that during his tenure Albemarle has added over 1,000 acres of park land, including the newly opened Preddy Creek Park.
Boyd listed some work that remains: the completion of the controversial Ragged Mountain dam water supply plan, the Meadow Creek Parkway, and the relocation of a waste pumping station that's long plagued the Woolen Mills area–- projects that have been criticized on cost and other grounds.
Even close supporters, including Supervisor Duane Snow and former board member David Wyant, were telling associates they weren't sure whether Boyd would run again. But now that the decision to run has been made, Boyd supporters can rest assured. Said Pat Earle, who was present at the press conference: "I'm relieved."
Correction 2:15pm: The 12 years of elected office Boyd has served includes one term on the School Board and two on the Board of Supervisors, and were incorrectly calculated in the original version.
35 comments
4th term? 2003-2007 (1), 2007-2011 (2).
Won't this only be his third term?
Puhleeze GO AWAY!
I am more amused by the front page ad in the upper right corner, where it notes proudly that the Charlottesville police volunteer for the Special Olympics.
Long has this been suspected and, at last, confirmed. Who knew contestants were in such short supply?
Not what the County needs.
Definitely good news for those opposed to wasteful spending. Similar candidates need to come out to defeat Mallek and fill Dorrier's seat.
I be like KEN.....can you teach me how to Dougie?
Please, can someone else run that will represent the people of the district!! "My wife allowed me too" - Ken, please spend more time with your wife....
It's highly laughable to me to read his self-proclaimed "accomplishments." Most of those things he has consistently complained about being too expensive, not necessary, not being handled right, etc. etc. In Boyd's mind, ALL spending is wasteful. He didn't want to fork over one cent on the tax rate to pull down matching state transportation dollars which a) double the county's money, b) relieve traffic congestion and c) will help facilitate the commercial growth he's always talking about. It's like he wants all these things to happen, but won't invest in them. Add the ICLEI paranoia to it and yikes! Come on, Albemarle. You can do better than this. He would rather save the average homeowner $36 a year than get a road built, but really he just wants a soundbite that says "I voted against raising taxes." I'm sorry, it's just not intelligent politics. The tea party is dying. It's time for reasonable leadership. And no, that doesn't mean bloated government and jacked-up tax rates. It means exercising common sense for the betterment of the WHOLE community, not just the developers and business interests that are in Boyd's back pocket. Too many meetings behind closed doors for my taste. He's not all bad but there has GOT to be somebody else out there who believes in balanced leadership...and transparency!!
Go Ken! You got my family's backing. And PLEASE get rid of Mallek - out of date, out of touch, out to lunch!
KB be doin big things, mane. I see ya out dere doin ya thing boi
Oh, wait, so he flip flopped again?
What's new?
So is he for or against irresponsible development, he says he's against it but votes for it every time.
What a phony.
Ken Boyd is a conservative Republican. In his failed campaign for Congress, Boyd claimed to have an “extensive background in banking and finance.” He seems not to have learned much from it.
As a loyal conservative Republican, Boyd presumably voted for Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush , and George W. Bush. And, he likely voted against Democrat Bill Clinton.
In voting for Reagan, Bush and Bush, Boyd must have known he was voting for supply-side economics; giving tax cuts to the wealthy (what supply-side guru George Gilder refers to as the “proliferation of the rich”) and sticking others with the bill for it.
Before supporting Bush2, Boyd must have known that Reagan-Bush1 policies (1981-1993) quadrupled the national debt. He must have been aware that the Clinton presidency produced balanced budgets and surpluses that were squandered by Bush2’s tax cuts and unfunded Middle East wars.
The result of this fiscal profligacy was another doubling of the national debt, with the debt hitting $11 trillion in March, 2009 and with Bush2 leaving newly inaugurated President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2010. Republican supply-side policies plunged the nation into the Great Recession, caused in large part by wholesale deregulation of the financial and banking industries. Boyd still refuses to acknowledge the deleterious effects of these conservative policies.
Locally, Boyd has been instrumental in protecting and expanding Albemarle County’s land use tax subsidy program. Sixty percent of county land parcels are in the land use subsidy program even as jobs and production related to agriculture continue to decline and make up only a fraction of the county economy. No locality in Virginia uses the land use subsidy more than Albemarle County. That subsidy costs the county nearly $20 million a year in lost revenues and places the tax burden on the other 40 percent of property owners.
Ken Boyd is the prototypical conservative Republican. Refuse to take any responsibility for your failures, and try to take credit for accomplishments that were not your doing. Shower tax cuts and tax breaks on the wealthy, and let everybody else pay for it. Say one thing, do another.
County voters would do well to elect someone other than Ken Boyd.
Democracy, does that mean Ken cannot depend on your support? Why no complaints of your perceived underpaid veteran teachers job? Your plan of higher property taxes for Albemarle farm owners resulting in more wasteful spending and hoping for yet more money in your pocket for teaching less students is self serving. I know many conservatives or independents that voted for your man in the white house hoping for real change only to see the same policies continue leading to the ouster of many of his party's congressmen at midterm elections. Your man is more occupied about being re-elected than dealing with the real problems that face this country like the debt, economy/jobs, value of the dollar/China, trade imbalance, immigration issues and crime. When the economy is expanding and thus tax in flow increases any president looks good even your womanizing hero Clinton. Much of this is luck and cyclic from which Clinton benefited as well as from Lewinsky. What we need are talented citizens that are not career politicians with agendas and personal financial ambition to give their time and expertise to lead this country back to where we were post WWII as was originally conceived by the founding fathers.
Democracy - you must have failed basic government class; Presidents don't pass budgets, nor make appropriations, the Congress does, and Reagan and Bush 1 didn't have Republican majorities in Congress. Clinton was constrained after the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994.
Your bias is showing.
@ Tom Cross and County Farmer
Tom - You obviously do not know what you are talking about....while Congress passes the budget, the president is the one who submits it...and neither Reagan nor Bush1 EVER submitted a balanced budget (Clinton did, multiple times). In fact, Congress had to pare back some of Reagan's budgets. Moreover, neither Reagan nor Bush1 nor Bush2 EVER vetoed a budget passed by Congress...perhaps you were absent from government class when vetoes were discussed...maybe you didn't do your reading....maybe you're a bit slow (like County Farmer).
The 97th Congress (1981-83) had a House controlled by Democrats (242-189) while the Senate was controlled by the Republicans (53-46, 1 independent). The 98th Congress (1983-85) had a House comprised of 268 Democrats and 167 Republicans, while the Senate was controlled by the Republicans 54-46. The 99th Congress also had a House with a Democratic majority (253-182) but Republicans continued with a majority in the Senate (53-47). It was not until the end of Reagan's presidency that the Democrats had a majority in both houses of the Congress, so Tom Cross, it seems to me that you should have your facts straight before you go spouting off nonsense (although conservatives seem to have quite an aptitude for that).
County Farmer displays another conservative trait ( like his boy, Ken Boyd). Farmer whines that Obama is
no addressing "the real problems that face this country like the debt, economy/jobs, value of the dollar/China, trade imbalance, immigration issues and crime." Of course, most of these were caused by conservative presidents and conservative politicians and conservative policies. Conservatives preach personal responsibility but they refuse to practice it. They refuse to take any responsibility for the economic and financial damages they caused (they pass the blame, don't they County Farmer?), and they try to take credit for things they didn't do (getting bin Laden, for example.....County Farmer must have been asleep when that happened.).
It was under the supply-side policies of Reagan, Bush1 and Bush2 that big budget deficits accrued (at the beginning of Reagan's term the total national debt was less than $1 trillion) and the national debt ballooned (at the end of 12 years of Reagan-bush1, the national debt had more than quadrupled). Then came the real nightmare. Terrorist threats were ignored in favor of pushing unfunded tax cuts. An unnecessary war was started based on phony and manipulated intelligence (where were those weapons of mass destruction?). Millions of jobs were lost. Wall Street was abetted and enabled in becoming a taxpayer-subsidized casino.
Big budget deficits returned, the economy was wrecked and the national debt more than doubled. The whole sordid story is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/running-in-the-red-how-th...
Here's a nice little excerpt: "Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate."
Conservatives love to (falsely) idolize Reagan. But, both Reagan and Bush2 increased the size of government. Clinton reduced it (and gave Congress balanced budgets...and surpluses). Reagan showered tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy, but while "wealthy Americans benefitted from Reagan's tax policies, blue-collar Americans paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in." . Sort of like what Ken Boyd and County Farmer advocate for Albemarle County.
Tom Cross and County Farmer exhibit not only extreme bias but also a well-developed and seemingly impervious level of ignorance.
Push the mega-dam to hold water we won't need for forty years. It's great that we can pay for that excess storage now through continued increases in water rates to service the debts we are incurring now.
"KB be doin big things, mane. I see ya out dere doin ya thing boi"
This pretty much sums up the intellectual depth of the Ken Boyd voter.
As far as keeping taxes at a low level for homeowners, that's fine. But then Boyd really can't complain when this road or that road isn't complete, or when staff isn't getting this done or that done to meet his time standards. Again, you can't have it BOTH ways.
Intelligent people know this.
This is only a test.
Repeat -- GO AWAY!!!
We don't need no stinkin' KB for another four years
Gee County Farm, I don't know that there are any real farmers left in Albemarle County. They've all been run out by the gentlemen farmers who seek massive tax breaks for their private estates. Wasteful spending? Yeah, Albemarle is full of that these days, with huge handouts to developers, and unneeded dams, and a slew of other expenditures.
You are right though. Obama hasn';t changed much of anything. But you do realize that change meant Obama wouldn't be taking any more ideas for your right wing playbook right? He would cut defense, he would stop giving the super wealthy massive tax breaks, he would actually reform healthcare, instead of catering to the AMA and health insurance companies, he wouldn't be preaching drill baby drill. Oh, and he would stop calling SS and Medicare entitlements. People who actually work for a living producing something pay their entire working lives for those benefits. They aren't unearned entitelments, like bank bailouts, and government subsidized CEO bonuses, and yes, even veterans benefits.
Looks like Betty's still sore from not getting her way on the dam. After all the distortion and tortured logic of the water gang's rants public officials saw the light and voted for the only plan that secured the water supply for decades to come. Betty's small groups attempt to limit Albemarle's growth by any means necessary lost out to the majority. Being bitter about it won't change the outcome but I'm sure you will try anyway.
And the Meadow Parkway ( the county's portion) is built and if the city doesn't HONOR their agreement the county can open it's part without the city's permission. Good luck to all those folks on Meadowbrook Heights and any Friday night football game traffic at Charlottesville High School if that happens.
I look forward to the voters of Rivanna being given a choice and think that Betty should move there and challenge Ken Boyd in the next election. Surely they will embrace her many views on what the County should do.
There is more than one person named Betty in the world and the above poster I am not.
Mr. Boyd is the elected representative for water, sewer, and solid waste county ratepayers and taxpayers on the Rivanna Water, Sewer, and Solid Waste Authority Boards.
Do I believe Mr. Boyd, and others, made a costly mistake in voting for a water plan to build a dam we don't need, and let our most productive reservoir fill with silt, YES.
Do I believe Mr. Boyd's decision to spend taxpayer money suing Van der Linde Recycling was a mistake , YES
Do I believe Mr. Boyd's handling of solid waste decisions is short sighted , YES
Do I believe Mr. Boyd's decisions will mean higher water rates, in the future, than would be necessary if we dredged South Fork Rivanna Reservoir for our water supply, YES
I am not a county resident and it will be up to others to determine if he should be re-elected.
How is a reservoir with no plan to fill it going to secure the water supply for decades exactly? And realistically, it is much more accurate to characterize the pro-dam group as a small group who want to push their own agenda and have the taxpayers fund their development schemes by first forcing the dam plan ahead. Once it can be used as justification, they will drop the bomb of the actual astronomical cost of getting it filled on the taxpaying public who will at that point be forced to suck it up and pay. The comment about Meadow Creek Parkway demonstrates exactly that strategy.
The Parkway will be a disaster for anyone trying to drive through Downtown from Market St to Preston or Water St to Main, not to mention what it will do the rest of 5th St. It has sold out the interests of city resident to facilitate cut through traffic because the county has been to lazy to solve its own transportation problems and because we in the city have elected fools to take care of our assets.
Ah Betty-
The County has agreed to look a SEPERATE proposal to allow dredging as part of an overall plan just not the only plan.
Why did Van de Linde pay nearly 3/4 of million dollars to not go to court (and before your say it it would not have cost him that much to go to court).
He paid because it was cheaper than losing which could have cost him much more. Please paint him as a saint, I will view him as a guy who would pay tipping fees and thereby making me and others pay more.
Where is your outrage about the work on the sewer system that was deferred by Rich Collins and Jack Marshall when they controlled what money was spent. They seem to take great pleasure in spending no money on our infrastructure. Rates are going up now because of their mismanagement. Where is your outrage for that??
Sorry meant to say per Van de Linde "as a guy who wouldn't pay tipping fees"
We don't need a separate proposal to dredge. We need to dredge now and not build a new dam. The new dam- that creates a reservoir that can't fill ( without a 10 mile uphill pipeline, through some of the costliest real estate in Albemarle County, is a decision made by Mr. Boyd that ratepayers will live to regret and must be stopped; by electing officials that support dredging for our water plan .
Voters can stop the dam plan. They just need to make sure they elect officials that support dredging and not dam building.
Everyone's talking about the water supply but precious few are talking about HAARP and the aerosol chemtrail program which includes inhalable and brain nueron bonding nano barium and aluminum particulates being sprayed from commercial jets whose pilots don't even know they're engaging in a genocide/weather modification program because it's mixed into the jet fuel by northrop grumman (unless it's being sprayed from a military tanker aircraft or a blimp flying so high you can't see it without a telescope). I've watched countless radar blips since the program began full scale around here around 2004, of massive summer storm squalls coming across West Virginia while simultaneously observing the chemtrails being sprayed on a mass scale in the skies of central Virginia and magically the storm squalls completely disipate into a milky haze when they reach the chemtrail blanket of artificially warmed air in the upper atmosphere where the thunderheads would normally have developed but now are prevented from doing so due to the trapping of solar radiation by the chemtrail blanket which makes further convection and condensation impossible. It's not rocket science, folks. They've been able to knock out 70% of any hurricane's strength for a couple million bucks worth of plane flights to spray chemicals into the center of the storm since the 1960's completely documented and verified but insted they create and/or strengthen storms like Katrina with their scalar beams and doodads so they can bring FEMA in and gauge the public's reaction to their information-gathering experiments to be put towards future operations. But let's talk about the dam and the drought and let's ignore the genocide and nanoparticulates and nanobots, because compared to Fukushima it's like Glade Potpurri anyway.
John, since foaming at the mouth is so hard to detect over the internet, everyone is going to ignore you unless you post IN ALL CAPS to show just how urgent your message is.
Who said it was urgent? I think it's great the military is killing and sterilizing everyone, and controlling the weather with chemicals while the dumb peons crack rabies jokes and talk about dam construction, don't you? It' the great tribulation we've all been waiting for so long! Earthquakes, floods, and rumors of war, baby!!!
Plus they're gonna put up a circus tent at Fukushima! Can't wait to ride the elephants...
I'm running for circusmaster of Unit 1. Sigfried and Roy will be there too! Vote for me!
@John Giuliano , what do your comments have to do with Ken boyd's running for re-election? Medication, medication, medication on a regular basis.
@NotBettyMooney, the reason the dredging proposal was separated out is because Liz Palmer, el al., of the ACSA do not plan to vote for the county's participation in sharing the costs, yet the maga-dam plan can continue due to separate funding. I think you have the wisdom of Councilor David Brown. Congratulations!
@Cville Eye, Just how wise David Brown is won't be known without keeping a close eye on him after he leaves office to see just how he ultimately benefits from what he's voted for recently.
HIs backtracking on the RWSA pumping station last night was laughable and a far cry from his recent statement that he doesn't work for council when representing it on the RWSA board. I think what he meant to say, was "I got caught this time in some shady deal making."
http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2011/05/pump...
"Brown said he had supported option C at the RWSA because he thought it would be less intrusive than another proposal to replace the existing station in place.
“What I’ve learned since then is that it’s not that simple,” Brown said. “The impact on the neighborhood could be overwhelming.” "
C-ville eye, my comments relate to Ken Boyd's candidacy because here we have a candidate for public office who doesn't discuss the obvious issues that relate to the people of Albemarle County, such as mass genocide and drought causing weather modification as a result of the spraying the military is carrying out, admittedly, out in the open, with impunity because folks like Kenny Boy and the rest of you can't face the horror of what's going on, let alone discuss it openly so that something can be done about it. Guess he's afraid of being told to take medication. I'm only afraid of being forced to take it, so your ignorant comments don't phase me. Ha ha! Fukushima's gonna sterilize your kids and you're never gonna have grandkids because you won't keep them inside when it rains and buy them food to eat from the southern hemisphere! Ha! Ha! Ken Boyd's not gonna do anything about the toxic wase fluoride mixture they're deliberately adding to the public water supply to reduce your I.Q., testosterone levels, and make you better slaves, and it makes you so feel good to attack me that you'll never investigate what I'm saying to find out it's all true and therefore you'll never take steps to protect you and your family from what has happened, what is happening now, and what will happen sooner than you expect! Ha ha!
@John Walton Giuliano , it is interesting that you can see what nobody else can.