One of this country’s cherished ideals is that  anyone can grow up to be president. “I couldn’t grow up to be a member of the royal family, and that always rankled me,” said British-born comedienne  Tracey Ullman at Monticello on July 4. Ullman became a U.S. citizen in 2006 after living in the country 25 years. The perception of Americans abroad, said Ullman, is one of “white teeth and confidence.” She reminded the 71 newly sworn-in citizens that they’ve earned the right to be Americans and exhorted them to go forth with confidence.

At first, the television spot looks like standard political fare. Congressman Tom Perriello is talking earnestly into the camera about jobs. Then you notice something a little different as he strolls through a dairy barn.

Is he really stepping into a cow pie? And why is Perriello under a desk stringing broadband cable? And, whoa, while riding in a cop car, he’s getting broadsided by a cup of coffee.

The spot ends with a dirt-streaked, coffee-stained Perriello again talking earnestly into the camera: “I’m Tom Perriello, and I support this message because I guarantee no one will work harder to bring jobs to Virginia.”

The 5th District Congressional race is one of the most hotly contested re-election races in the country, and it includes hard-hit Southside, which suffered deep unemployment even before Perriello snagged the job away from his predecessor, Republican Virgil Goode, by 727 votes in 2008. So do voters really (more)

The sidewalk in front of Congressman Tom Perriello’s office was the scene of two protests last week. The Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice protested the war in Afghanistan, and the Jefferson Area Tea Party objected to… having to stand on the sidewalk rather than right in front of Perriello’s door.

“Our primary concern is that he’s leasing an office on private property,” says Tea Party chair Carole Thorpe. “Liberal groups are being allowed to protest unimpeded and conservatives are not.”

While the June 16 protest of the left-leaning Center for Peace and Justice also was restricted to the sidewalk or inside Perriello’s office, the Tea Partiers harken back to an earlier Peace and Justice protest on May 19 when members performed street theater in the parking lot and were neither booted off nor arrested.

Lloyd Snook, attorney for landlord Lisa Murphy, denies his client had any knowledge of the May 19 event, which went largely unheralded except for getting videotaped by Tea Party activist Keith Drake. “There is no policy of prohibiting conservative protests and tolerating liberal protests,” insists Snook.

The ranks of the 20 or so Center for Peace and Justice protesters against an additional $33.5 billion in war funding were swelled by the media, police, and Jefferson Tea Party observers, following a June 10 letter to both groups from Police Chief Tim Longo, warning them to keep their petitioning and assembling activities out of the private parking lot or face trespassing charges.

The June 21 Tea Party “Right to Redress” rally was slightly larger, with approximately 28 protesters, including 5th District Republican primary candidate Laurence Verga, and radio host Rob Schilling.

Protester Bob Quinn had a further complaint about the sidewalk: It’s not handicapped accessible. “Perriello has to be told the people who are his voters don’t like what he’s doing,” says Quinn. “We might as well have [U.S. House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi as our representative.”

Second Street SE construction still is boxing in businesses like The Box. Its owner, Chas Webster, couldn’t get into his own establishment June 10. Eleven days later, the street still is not accessible to the public.

In Texas, a high school newspaper’s last issue was pulled because of an editorial advocating legalization of marijuana. In Fredericksburg, the Massaponax High yearbook was reprinted because of anonymous confessions of sex and drug use. And even in the land of Jefferson, Albemarle High School has pulled the last issue of its student newspaper.

The controversy? An editorial suggesting cost-saving changes to the state’s physical education requirements and letting student athletes opt out of P.E. classes.

“The reason they decided not to let us publish was because they felt it would be disruptive to physical education classes,” says Sean Cudahy, outgoing editor-in-chief of The Revolution whose last issue was scheduled to come out May 20.

“The principal grabbed one,” says Cudahy, “showed it to the P.E. teachers, and they didn’t like it.

Cudahy, citing the 1988 student newspaper case, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, says that administrators can censor publications due to “legitimate pedagogical concerns,” says Cudahy. What he doesn’t understand is how an editorial questioning the curriculum could be considered disruptive. And to make sure he understood Hazelwood, he called the Student Press Law Center, and spoke to attorney Adam Goldstein, who’s worked at the center since 2003 and says he’s seen thousands of student censorship cases.

“This has got to be one of the goofiest I’ve ever seen— it’s not even controversial,” says Goldstein. “Nobody thinks (more)

Congressman Tom Perriello faces a heated run for re-election in November for his votes on health care reform and the economic stimulus package. Locally, he faces another controversy from those who contend his Charlottesville office doesn’t adequately allow constituents to assemble to petition their government.

The Jefferson Area Tea Party scratched a June 14 “Right to Redress Rally” after the group received a letter from Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo warning that protesters in the privately owned parking lot outside Perriello’s office could be arrested for trespassing.

“I thought it would be irresponsible to show up [Monday] and not think that through,” says Carole Thorpe, Jefferson Area Tea Party chair, who rescheduled the rally for June 21 and has appealed to the civil liberties group, the Rutherford Institute.

“We’re not contesting (more)

The Lane Babe Ruth League’s opening day this year was a grim one, as League President Shannon Wilder told the crowd that Albemarle County had decided to stop funding the $5,300 yearly electric bill for the field’s lights on McIntire Road. The cut was part of an effort to trim the County’s $294 million budget, but while it only represented a fraction of the County’s expenditures, the $5,300 figure represented 10 percent of the Lane League’s annual budget.

Following the Hook’s April story about the Lane lights, several local businesses stepped up to the plate with sponsorships for the League, but recently one well-known business stepped up and knocked one out of the park.

“We read the article in the Hook and decided we were in a position to help,” says ACAC’s vice president of development Chris Craytor. “So we will be sponsoring the lights for the next 18 months.”

That came as welcome news to Wilder and the League.

“We were thunderstruck by ACAC’s offer,” says Wilder. “We never expected that we would find this level of support in the community and are thrilled that there is this much support for what we have to offer.”

The league holds evening practices and games from early March through the end of October. Without lights, Wilder says, the number of practices and games would have been cut by more than half.

“ACAC is happy to help. The Lane Babe Ruth League fulfills a real need in our community,” says Phil Wendel, owner of ACAC. “It is a small price to pay for keeping kids in the game.”

Jimmy Dean, the man whose name adorns a line of sausage meats and whose country novelty songs were mainstays of 1960s AM radio, has died at his Richmond-area home at the age of 81, according to a New York Times obituary. In his later years, he conducted an effort to secure state-song designation for “Virginia,” a song he wrote with his wife, Donna, who survives him. Virginia never did choose a state song. “When politics enters,” Dean told the Hook in 2007, “out goes reality.” Following his February election, Dean has been slated for posthumous induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October. A day before his June 21 funeral and burial, there will be a public visitation from noon to 8pm at Nelsen Funeral Home.

Conventional wisdom prevails as Tea Party target and State Sen. Robert Hurt wins the 5th district Republican primary race with 48 percent of the vote and will face Rep. Tom Perriello (D) in the fall. Wealthy Hook-dissing lady’s man Jim McKelvey came in second with 25.8 percent, fly-boy unknown Michael McPadden comes in third with 10 percent, local BOS-man Ken Boyd gets 7.3 percent (Boyd won among County voters, but came in third in the City), hot-headed “family values” candidate Feda Morton Kidd gets 4.6 percent, Thelonius Monk lovin’ conservative political novice Laurence Verga gets 2.2 percent, and long-shot Reagan worshiping funny man Ron Ferrin gets 1.6 percent. However, the big story may be how little anybody cared about this primary. Just 8 percent of active voters in the 5th district bothered going to the polls, and in Charlottesville just 2.3 percent gave a hoot.  Fun fact: In the County 5,219 people voted compared to just 649 in the City.

City Council tonight is set to name the McIntire softball fields in honor of Carl “Chubby” Proffitt, 92, a local World War II hero who was also a talented baseball and softball player. Just two years ago, the City had plans to replace the fields at McIntire Park with an artificial-turf athletic field, but outraged softballers put the kibosh on that item in the McIntire Park master plan. However, another name already adorns the battered scoreboard of one of the fields at McIntire. Dewey D.S. Shiflett, who was born in humble circumstances in Albemarle, eventually became a vice president at local beer distributor J. W. Sieg & Co., as well as a softball legend. “He was very instrumental in men’s fast-pitch softball when it was an important sport in Charlottesville,” recalled Downtown Athletics’ David Deane in a Hook story on the park. Riverside Lunch owner and longtime friend Carroll Shifflett (no relation) recalled Shiflett hitchhiking back and forth to Albemarle High School to play. “He was a leader; he kept the guys involved,” said Shifflett. ” He would go the extra mile to help guys out.” After Shiflett’s 1986 death— around the time the park was being reconfigured— in his memory members of the community created the Dewey D.S. Shiflett University of Virginia Cardiology Fund and pushed the city to create a softball memorial for him. However, according to Council clerk Paige Barfield, (more)

The per-pupil cost of education in the City of Charlottesville stood at $16,200 in 2009, or nearly double the typical cost of private school education, according to an op-ed column in the Sunday Progress, which notes that most citizens didn’t realize the cost was this high.

A former Nixon administration official who underplayed his role in a paranoid counting and then demoting of Jews in government has won the chairmanship of a panel to restructure Virginia’s government. With the aid of Miller Center recordings and transcripts, a Slate columnist asserts that Governor Bob McDonnell should reconsider the appointment of Fred Malek.

Comedienne and actress Tracey Ullman will speak to the nation’s newest citizens at Monticello’s July 4 Naturalization Ceremony. Ullman, whose 1987 Tracey Ullman Show gave the long-running The Simpsons its start, has lived in the United States for 25 years and became an American citizen in 2006, while holding onto her U.K. citizenship.

The 48th Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello begins at 9am and is free and open to the public. Previous speakers have been President George W. Bush, actor Sam Waterson, and artist Christo.

“We worked through our usual network,” says Leslie Greene Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “Our board members have excellent contacts.”

And Ullman is “truly honored” to be the speaker at Monticello, says Bowman, and will likely bring a “lighter” touch to the new citizen experience.

Earlier this month, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors made it a little easier for local farm wineries to make a buck— which will make it easier for foodies to enjoy what they produce.

Surprisingly to some, existing zoning prohibited farmers from using farm stands that weren’t on their property, limited the size of their on-farm stores and what they could sell, restricted the number of events they could have and the number of people they could invite, and prohibited them from operating restaurants. But the BOS amended all that, allowing farmers to sell stuff at remote stands, expand on-site shops to 4,000 square feet, sell whatever they want, and hold unlimited events per year, inviting up to 200 people, even more with a special use permit.

Alas, though farm wineries still can’t operate restaurants, they can now have kitchens to make things like appetizers, finger foods, and soups.

A hearing scheduled for Friday, May 21, in Gerry Mitchell’s $850,000 suit against the City of Charlottesville and two police officers has been indefinitely delayed after retired Augusta County Judge Thomas Wood, appointed to hear the case after Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire recused himself, withdrew this week due to an undisclosed health issue.

In November 2006, Mitchell, who is confined to a wheelchair, was struck in a West Main Street crosswalk by an Albemarle County police cruiser, then ticketed in the UVA emergency room by Charlottesville police officer Steve Grissom. Mitchell filed suit against the City, Grissom, and the Albemarle County police officer who struck him, Gregory C. Davis, in June 2009, alleging negligence, malicious prosecution, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Lawyers for the City and for  Grissom had filed a motion to dismiss the case based on the legal concept (more)

The traditional family values candidate who once lost custody of her children is in the news again for alleged plagiarism. The Daily Progress reports that an editorial purportedly written by Fluvannan Feda Kidd Morton, who is running for the 5th District Republican nomination, contains at least eight passages that duplicate or closely resemble an article by syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran. The similarities were discovered by former Western Albemarle teacher Mark Crockett, who noticed that a February 24 piece in the Media General-owned Rural Virginian sounded different from Morton’s previous writing. He started Googling phrases from the column and turned up Sobran’s widely cited article, “How Tyranny Came to America.” “Restating the principles of the Constitution is no different than restating the Ten Commandments,” Kidd responds in a statement.

In November 2007, wheelchair-bound pedestrian Gerry Mitchell was tossed into the street when he was struck in a West Main Street crosswalk by an Albemarle county police cruiser, then ticketed by Charlottesville police. At a hearing set for Friday, May 21, attorneys for the City and the ticketing officer, Steve Grissom, plan to ask a judge to toss the $850,000 suit Mitchell filed last year.

“Maintaining a police force is a governmental function, and accordingly, the city is immune from liability for a police officer’s negligence in and intentional acts during performance of his duties as a police officer,” writes the city’s attorney, John Zunka, in the motion to dismiss, which cites the legal concept of “sovereign immunity”— the idea that government can do no wrong, at least legally. Zunka did not return a reporter’s calls for comment.

Mitchell’s attorney, Richard Armstrong, however, says he is confident Judge Thomas Wood— appointed to the case when Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Edward Hogshire recused himself— won’t (more)

Could one of the top “family values” candidates have a big family problem? Documents reviewed by the Hook suggest that Feda Kidd Morton, a Republican seeking the nomination to run for U.S. Congress in the 5th District, lost custody of her four minor children in 2004 over her alleged “anger and bitterness.” Morton has moved to block the custody story, having allegedly secured a temporary injunction stopping anyone from publishing such documents.

“The Fluvanna Circuit Court Judge entered a temporary injunction Friday afternoon [May 14], enjoining and prohibiting [the candidate's ex-husband] and others from possessing, disseminating, and/or publishing any and all information, documents, and/or transcripts arising from the proceedings in the juvenile court which you are now in possession of,” Morton’s campaign manager, Aaron Evans, wrote in an email to the Hook one day after a reporter interviewed Morton.

The Hook has seen a copy of a transcript of the 2004 child custody hearing in which a judge, expressing concern about their well-being, placed the four children in their father’s custody.

Campaign manager Evans advised the Hook not to publish anything about the matter until a full hearing in Fluvanna Circuit Court. “To do otherwise may be at your own peril,” he warned.

“I’m not going to acknowledge that anything was filed, (more)

Hook Hot Seat sitter and Charlottesville resident Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the Supreme Court for Slate.com and is a Newsweek contributing editor, bantered about Elena Kagan’s nomination on the Tuesday, May 11 Colbert Report.

3:0opm May 13 update: The city has reversed its position and will allow the mural to stay, according to Tandem teacher Eliza Martin, who expresses gratitude for a public outpouring of support. Neither Mayor Dave Norris nor city spokesperson Ric Barrick immediately returned the Hook’s call for comment.

Original story:

“Art is what you can get away with,” reads the Andy Warhol quote freshly painted on the side of Richmond Camera on High Street along with a Warhol-inspired mural of four cameras created by a group of students from Tandem Friends School in late March as part of a school project.

Alas, it seems Richmond Camera won’t be getting away with this art after the city threatened the camera business with a $5,000 fine for violating an ordinance for entrance corridors. The store has until May 28 to restore the wall to a blank gray.

“I’m pretty upset about it,” says Eliza Martin, one of two Tandem teachers who helped 16 students design and paint the mural as part of the school’s “Emphasis Week,” an annual tradition in which students and teachers take a week off from traditional studies to do community oriented projects.

Martin had selected a mural painting as the project she’d hoped to lead that week when Richmond Camera coincidentally contacted the school and asked if students there would like to beautify the store’s exterior wall facing Meade Avenue.

“It was really exciting,” says Martin. “The kids were really into it.

The store did not commission the work– instead, says Martin’s colleague Jay Kuhlmann, who helped lead the mural project (and who has also done freelance photography for the Hook), “We submitted a couple proposals and eventually decided on this good-natured spoof of Andy Warhol’s silk screen designs from the 60s.”

While community response has been positive, says Martin, the city was less than pleased with the unexpected artistic addition. According to city spokesperson Ric Barrick, that’s because the store already had four signs– two more than is allowed on an entrance corridor– and did not seek permission from the planning commission before painting the mural. (more)

New York Times White House Correspondent and former Washington Post Reporter Peter Baker explores the legacy of the George W. Bush administration and the struggles that President Obama is currently facing as he balances national security and the protection of civil liberties. In a January New York Times Magazine article, which will be the subject of his talk, Baker also assesses the new administration’s handling of terrorists threats.

Friday, May 14 at the Miller Center at 11am

Albemarle Circuit Court closed for business today because the temperature yesterday “constituted a threat to health,” according to a notice posted on the courthouse door signed by Judge Cheryl Higgins. The judge also noted that the county said there was no problem with the air conditioning and that no other rooms were available in the County Office Building.

“There’s some sort of malfunction in the temperature setting,” says Albemarle spokeswoman Lee Catlin. Because the number of bodies occupying the courtroom can heat things up, facilities is looking at the preset temp, says Catlin.

The cancellation of court means that the Western Albemarle student accused of threatening classmates on Facebook, Patrick Crider, did not get his day in court again. A week ago, Judge Higgins had him play the violin to determine whether she had a conflict of interest, and Crider was rescheduled to enter a plea today before Judge Paul Peatross.

Also on today’s docket: accused Mill-Creek-HOA embezzler Kevin O’Connor. Those cases have not been rescheduled, according to Judge Higgins’ assistant, Denise Hodges.

The Virginian-Pilot has the scoop on the active attorney general and the bosom of Virtus.

A citizen icon of the property rights and environmental movements spent the night behind bars, charged by Charlottesville Police with a felony, but according to a witness to the arrest, Louis Schultz was simply staging a peaceful defense of his own private property.

“It was kind of like a low-grade Tiannamen Square,” says Rob Schilling, host of WINA’s Schilling Show. “Louis had the nose of the car up to the bulldozer, blade-to-blade with the bulldozer. It was eerily reminiscent of 1989.”

That proximity, however, say police, is what cost Schultz his freedom.

According to Charlottesville Police Lieutenant Gary Pleasants, Charlottesville Public Works employees under orders to (more)

Marsha Garst, the commonwealth’s attorney who raided the office of the James Madison University student newspaper, the Breeze, on April 16 and threatened to take all of its computers and equipment, essentially shutting it down, has been denounced by the Libertarian Party of Virginia, which calls for her resignation. “This is absolutely chilling,” said Bill Wood, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Virginia in a release. He compares the Harrisonburg/Rockingham County prosecutor’s actions to those of the former Soviet Union. “Based on her actions, she is unfit for public office,” he says. ” Any government official who violates the Bill of Rights should be removed and prosecuted.” Garst came in with a search warrant and police officers and demanded unpublished photographs of the April 10 Springfest riot, and took more than 900 photos. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli tells the Breeze he doesn’t believe the raid is a First Amendment issue and that he supports Garst’s actions. “I support any and all legal means to gather information to build a case against people who allegedly harmed or intended to harm law enforcement officers,” Cuccinelli says in a statement.

Peter Yarrow, one third of the historic folk group Peter, Paul and Mary, will speak on the music of the 1960s at Old Cabell Hall on Wednesday April 28 at 8pm to kick off the Golden Anniversary Series put on by the Center for Politics. The decade-long series will examine various 1960s events on their fiftieth anniversaries. Yarrow, who earned five Grammys and has had multiple albums go platinum, will also perform some of his classics “Puff the Magic Dragon” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” Tickets are free and must be picked up at the UVA Arts Box Office in the lobby of the Drama Building at 109 Culbreth Road between noon and 5pm Monday through Friday.

You’ve been doing it for years—dutifully separating recyclables from your trash, rinsing jars and removing caps, tying your cardboard, and placing them in the assigned bin if you use the City’s curbside service; the guidelines for which you have memorized. You also use the McIntire Recycling Center, the Paper Sort facility, and the Ivy Transfer Station and keep track of special collections days for bulky waste items, electronics, and hazardous waste. You take your metal to Coiner’s Scrap, your plastic shopping bags back to the grocery store, your clothes to Goodwill, your styrofoam and bubble wrap to Mail Boxes Etc. or Pack N Mail, your used construction items to the Habitat Store, and your used ink cartridges to Staples. You are dedicated to recycling. You are greener than thou. Okay, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re lucky to get a few bottles, cans, and some paper out to the curb before you have to rush to work, or only have time for a few runs to the McIntire Recycling Center each month. Maybe you’ve got a big bin of recyclables at home you’ve been meaning to get rid of.  Maybe, to be honest, you find recycling to be a pain in the… Don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. Despite how “hip” it has become to recycle, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest figures, only 33.2 percent of the 250 million tons of trash generated by Americans gets recycled. Locally, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Committee puts the recycling rate at 34 percent. What’s more, the average American now throws away 4.5 pounds of trash every day, compared to just 2.7 pounds in 1960. But you know that. You know how fast your kitchen trash can fills up. Basically, our elaborate efforts at recycling have been undermined by our capacity to create more and more trash. “The demands of source separation have been the biggest impediment to participation in recycling,” claims Peter Van der Linde, who believes his state-of-the art Material Recovery Facility (MRF) in Zion Crossroads is a solution to the problem.  “Consequently, most of the population doesn’t even attempt to recycle.” However, now that many local trash haulers have dumped the services of the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority in favor of using Van der Linde’s new MRF, giving up on recycling could be the best way to recycle. Say what?! Allow us to explain. After surviving a $20 million RICO law suit brought against him by the RSWA— which was supported by both local governments and finally settled out of court in January— Van der Linde has been able to focus on operating his “landfill of the future,” which uses two state-of-the-art recycling machines, combined with hand labor, to sort and recycle construction and demolition debris, commingled recyclables, and even household trash. Because all the sorting and recycling is done at Van der Linde’s facility, customers of those local trash haulers— including Dixon Disposal, Time Disposal, SDI Disposal, Fluvanna Disposal, Kingrea’s Disposal, M&M Disposal, All American Trash Services, Ace Disposal, and Sandridge Disposal— can simply throw everything into one big bin. According to Boyd McCauley of Time Disposal, many of his customers don’t even know they’re recycling. “Van der Linde has changed everything,” McCauley told the Hook. “Even our customers who don’t recycle are now recycling. It don’t get no easier.” Indeed, even when you attend a concert at the Pavilion or the Jefferson Theater, you’re recycling with Van der Linde. “It’s saving us a ton in labor costs,” says Kirby Hutto, manager of the two music venues, on why he chose to dump the City’s trash service and partner with Dixon Disposal. “We had to pay our staff to sort recycling, but once we switched to Dixon we didn’t have to do that. ” For about the same cost of city trash decals, Hutto says Dixon will pick up trash when the bins are full, not only during scheduled routes. What’s more, because there was such a large volume of trash generated at the Pavilion, Hutto says the City wouldn’t allow it to use the McIntire Recycling Center, leaving the Pavilion with few recycling options. Now all the trash and recycling generated by the 3,500-person venue is sorted at Van der Linde’s facility. “As far as trash collection and recycling goes, this is transformational,” says Hutto. “There’s a new game in town.” Waste of money? Apparently, our local governments didn’t get the memo. The County recently decided to support the RSWA for another year to the tune of $350,000, while the City is still locked into agreements with the financially ailing Authority and its corporate partners, Waste Management and BFI/Allied/Republic, to the tune of around $2.6 million a year. Last February, after giving interested companies just 15 days to respond to an Invitation to Bid, the city signed a five-year contract worth $3.7 million with Waste Management to collect household trash. Two months later, the city renewed a one-year contract with BFI/Allied/Republic Services worth over $400,000 a year to collect curbside recycling, with four more renewal options available to the company. In addition, the city pays over $900,000 a year in disposal fees to the RSWA. Under the contract, Waste Management must bring city trash to the Authority-sponsored BFI/Allied/Republic transfer station in Zion Crossroads (which happens to be right next to Van der Linde’s MRF), due to the city’s service agreement with the Waste Authority. From there, the trash is trucked 77 miles away to a BFI landfill, while the City’s curbside recycling, picked up by BFI/Allied/Republic and sorted at its transfer station, is supposedly trucked 87 miles away to a MRF in Chester, Virginia. Waste Management also has a $1.4 million annual contract with the RSWA to haul waste loaded in trailers at the Ivy Transfer Station to a company’s landfill in Amelia, Virginia, and the RSWA also pays BFI/Allied/Republic $675,000 annually for the services of its Zion Crossroads transfer station. Of course, as trash haulers that own giant holes in the ground, BFI/Allied/Republic and Waste Management are clearly not inclined to pay to use Van der Linde’s MRF. In fact, Van der Linde began ruffling feathers the moment he broke ground. Last December, Valley Department of Environmental Quality waste manager Graham Simmerman, who issued Van der Linde his permits, revealed that “people were trying to use our agency to irritate Mr. Van der Linde.” Simmerman described the many anonymous, unfounded complaints his office received about the facility since it first broke ground, which he believes came from “players in the trash business” and happened because the facility was “upsetting the status quo” by diverting waste “away from the RSWA and BFI.” RSWA and BFI claim innocence. With more homeowners (Van der Linde reports that the Lake Monticello community, home to 4,200 homes, is currently discussing going with him via local haulers) and businesses like the Jefferson Theater and the Pavilion going with local haulers aligned with Van der Linde, tonnage rates— and therefore tipping fees— at the government-sponsored transfer stations have been declining. Tipping fee revenues were down $364,000 in the RSWA’s 2007-2008 budget cycle, before Van der Linde opened his facility, but that figure jumped to $758,000 the following year after Van der Linde opened. Currently, the Authority is attempting to save itself by privatizing the operation of the Ivy Transfer Station, having issued a Request for Proposals in January. To date, no proposal has been selected. Meanwhile, the City appears to be contemplating closing the money-losing McIntire Recycling Center and ending its agreement with the beleaguered Authority, which expires at the end of June. “That’s providing us a rare opportunity, a welcome one in my book, to take a comprehensive look at our solid waste management system,” says Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, “and consider ways we might reform it to reduce costs and steer more materials away from the landfill.” However, while the governments continue to plan and discuss, local haulers may have already made those plans obsolete. Trashformation If the city were to simply allow local haulers like Dixon to take over, the expensive budget for “waste collection services” could potentially be reduced to zero. Plus, Van der Linde’s facility could potentially steer approximately 3,000 tons of city household trash away from landfills, recycling rates could increase, and trash service might actually be cheaper for city residents. For example, Dixon is currently charging city residents $19 per month to pick up a 96-gallon container of trash and recycling every week, which adds up to $228 per year. That’s $55 less than the $283 cost of an annual city trash decal for a 96-gallon container. Of course, the city’s “pay as you throw” sticker system, which generates about $1 million a year, allows people who don’t generate a lot of trash, or who strive to recycle more, to save money as they save the planet, as 13-gallon stickers can be purchased for just $1.05. “Our household of two, using free curbside, puts out a large can of household trash every three weeks,” says City Councilor David Brown, who sits on the RSWA board and claims that he spends only $3 a month on trash stickers. “I think this issue needs a lot of looking into,” says Brown of a possible deal with Van der Linde. “If we can achieve a good recycling rate with a MRF, great. But let’s make sure before we move in that direction.” However, as Van der Linde points out, under the existing system, the recycling rate for the approximately 7,800 tons of city household trash collected every year is exactly zero percent. “The recycling rate for our dirty MRF isn’t perfect, yet,” he says, “but isn’t it better than all of it going to the dump?” As Van der Linde explains, his survival depends on diverting as much as he can away from a landfill, thereby avoiding tipping fees and associated transportation costs. “The more material we send to the landfill, the higher our cost of operation,” he says. In addition, Van der Linde says there’s money to be made in a steadily expanding local market for recyclables, including cardboard, paper, metals, wood products, plastics, commingled recycling, brick, block, concrete, and drywall. He also mentions that a new $5 million tire recycling facility recently opened in Louisa County. Van der Linde claims his current recovery rate for construction and demolition debris is consistently 90 percent, that the rate for commingled recyclables (recyclables that have been separated by businesses or home owners) is 95 percent, and the rate for household trash is currently at 38 percent, a number he hopes to raise with recently-purchased equipment. But Brown wonders if Van der Linde’s facility could handle the 7,800 tons of trash the City generates, plus all the recycling and construction and demo debris. And what about the quality of recyclables collected this way? Doesn’t much of it get contaminated? Van der Linde claims his permit allows the facility to process a thousand tons per day. He admits that recyclables get contaminated, as some “pretty weird things end up in there,” but he also points out that much of it gets contaminated before it gets into the trash can— bottles containing cigarette butts, oil-soaked pizza boxes, and uncleaned peanut butter jars, for example. In the end, he says, the potential increase in the overall recycling rate among the local population as a result of his facility more than makes up for the amount that gets contaminated. What’s more, he says his facility has a newly installed recovery system for contaminated materials, which are sent to a massive ‘waste-to-energy” facility in Harrisonburg that heats and cools the James Madison University campus by burning household waste. As a recent article in the New York Times pointed out, a 2009 EPA study favored these waste-to-energy plants over landfills “as the most environmentally friendly destination for urban waste that cannot be recycled.” In Europe, the Times noted, there are about 400 such plants producing heat and electricity, many of them state-of-the-art, while there are only 87 plants in the United States, nearly all of them built more than a decade ago. “Maybe the best system would be to continue to offer curbside recycling,” offers Brown, “but put all remaining trash through a MRF.” However, as Van der Linde mentions, dedicated recyclers like Brown can reduce the chance of contamination by simply putting food waste in one bag and everything else in another. More importantly, though, by dropping them both in one container,  it eliminates the need to run two separate pick-up routes. The appeal of working with Van der Linde, says Dixon’s Randy Dixon— besides not having to run a separate route for trash and recyclables, which had made offering curbside recycling cost-prohibitive— is feeling confident about telling his customers that their stuff is getting recycled. In contrast, while BFI/Allied/Republic told the city they collected 3,332 tons of curbside recyclables last year, the city has no idea how much of that actually gets recycled. Under the city contract, the company basically “owns” the recyclables once they get picked up on the curb, and is under no obligation to report what’s done with them. “We have no reason to question that all of our materials are recycled,” says city public works director Judy Mueller, though she admits to not knowing what and exactly how much actually gets recycled in Chester. However, some of the haulers the Hook spoke to have been questioning how much the City and BFI/Allied/Republic actually recycles for some time, which is why they says they were happy when Van der Linde’s facility finally opened. “I know it’s being recycled at Pete’s place,” says Dixon. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed “green” city of Charlottesville continues to pay big bucks to have 7,800 tons of the trash thrown in a landfill. However, there might be a way out. According to the contract with Waste Management, the city can terminate the agreement at “any time” and “for any reason” with 30-days notice. So might the City dump the RSWA and its corporate partners in favor of our local haulers? “Everything’s on the table with regard to how we collect and dispose of or recycle solid waste in the City,” says Mayor Norris, who mentions that City Council held a work session on waste disposal April 19, after this special section of the Hook went to press.  “Including privatization.” Update 4/22/2010 3:46pm: Charlottesville Tommorow provides a podcast of the April 19 Solid Waste work session.

More GREEN HOME– eBikes: Recent advances make ‘em viable for Charlottesville Concerned about slowing down automobile drivers on the Belmont Bridge, City zoning inspector Craig Fabio used to avoid making his rounds on his old Schwinn. Today, however, Fabio bicycles confidently over that same bridge on his way to inspections.

The difference? Fabio now gets a boost from the City newest green addition: a pair of bicycles whose pedals literally leap when he shifts on his onboard battery pack. Rather than fight the bridge uphill, he now cruises without strain.  READ MORE

Harrisonburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst, bolstered by a search warrant and at least six or seven cops, shows up April 16 at the James Madison University student newspaper, the Breeze, and demands all photos taken of the Springfest riot the previous weekend. Garst threatens to seize all computers, which would essentially shut down the paper, if the photos weren’t turned over, the Breeze reports. Breeze editor-in-chief Katie Thisdell complied, but says she believes the warrant violates the federal Privacy Protection Act that prohibits law enforcement from seizing news reporting materials for criminal investigations. The Student Press Law Center is representing the Breeze and its lawyers reached an agreement with the prosecutor to temporarily seal the 926 confiscated photos. UPDATE 2:30pm: The Society of Professional Journalists condemns the raid and sends a letter to Garst expressing the organization’s outrage and demanding the return of all materials taken. UPDATE 1:45PM April 20: Spelling of Katie Thisdell’s name corrected.

Tea party protesters and last-minute tax filers congregate at the congested U.S. Post Office on Seminole Trail April 15. See the Hook’s photo gallery of the event by clicking here. Updated April 19.

Bill Hay founded the Jefferson Area Tea Party in 2009. This year, when Tax Day rolls around, the local tea party finds itself with a new chair: Charlottesvillean Carole Thorpe. Hay has endorsed and is now employed by Laurence Verga, one of six Republicans vying to challenge 5th District Congressman Tom Perriello. That’s why he decided to resign his chairmanship of the local tea party, which has not endorsed a candidate. “It didn’t seem right,” says Hay. “I’m still part of the tea party and support it.” The Jefferson Area Tea Party rallies again April 15 at the U.S. Post Office on Seminole Trail.

Albemarle County tightened its budget belt today when the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a $292.2 million fiscal 2010/11 budget that’s $11.9 million lighter than the previous year. The supes were divided on maintaining the current 74.2 cents per $100 assessed value real estate rate, which amounts to a tax decrease for homeowners because of falling assessments. Ann Mallek and Dennis Rooker were outnumbered in a 4-2 vote to keep the same rate, and they joined in with the majority to approve a budget that’s almost 4 percent less than 2009/10 and 12.4 percent lower than two years ago.

It was a beautiful day for the Lane Babe Ruth League’s 52nd opening ceremony on Saturday, April 3. Dozens of 13-15-year old boys lined up in the infield in their crisp white pants and colorful shirts, the Boy Scouts raised the American flag, and two Albemarle High School girls sang the National Anthem. But an otherwise perfect day for baseball was marred this year by the County’s budget woes.

“There’s a storm cloud gathering over the county office building,” League president Shannon Wilder told the crowd, turning a typically brief opening statement into a plea for help, “but we’re not going to let it rain on the Lane League.”

Just two weeks ago, Wilder said, the County informed the league that it would no longer be paying the electricity bill for the field lights as of July 1, an expense the County has been covering since the lights (more)

The woman who spent a month in jail for publishing an undercover police officer’s address was arrested March 27 for allegedly violating a court order.

“I have no idea what I did,” say Bedford resident Elisha Strom. “They couldn’t even tell me what I did. This is ridiculous.”

Last year, Strom captured some ire from the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force as well as some help from the American Civil Liberties Union with her I HeArTE JADE blog. She was arrested July 16 under an obscure state statute that the ACLU calls unconstitutional.

That law, which forbids (more)

“This country is bitterly divided,” says U.S. Senator Jim Webb, whose recent comments fix much of the blame on the Obama administration over its handling of the recently passed health care reform legislation.

“We moved forward without a clear-cut plan,” said Webb. “A really good example of how not to pass a bill.”

Webb’s comments came March 31 in the UVA classroom of political science professor Larry Sabato, who played host less than a month ago to another leading Democrat with a similar rebuke to the Obama administration’s methods. On March 3, former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder told the poly-sci students that (more)

Mega-best-selling author and well known Democrat John Grisham was surprised to learn he’s an Obama basher. The New Yorker has the story of an Italian journalist who made up interviews with famous authors Grisham and Philip Roth allegedly to satisfy his conservative readership.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is on the warpath for Rep. Tom Perriello, whom Adam Clymer (famous for being called a “major league ***hole” by President Bush) has dubbed “The Most Courageous Man in DC” in a story for the Daily Beast. Dean penned a fund-raising email for the Congressman in which he calls the race for the 5th District seat “a proxy for the struggle with the far right who want to intimidate Democrats” and sets his re-election up as a “rare opportunity to show the country that voters reject the Palin fringe.”

Writers for the New Yorker seem to be staking out Charlottesville restaurants. First, Calvin Trillin created a stir by writing about Taste of China, now journalist George Packer is predicting “Armageddon in Virginia” from Arch’s Frozen Yogurt.

On his New Yorker blog, Packer writes about having lunch with Perriello challenger Laurence Verga, a Monterey, California native and “hard-line libertarian conservative” who moved here six years ago, and who decided to seek Perriello’s 5th District seat after the thwarted Tea Party protests in front (more)

The Democratic National Committee and President Obama’s “Organizing for America” are trumpeting the incident involving a severed hose on a portable gas grill at the home of Rep. Tom Perriello’s brother on their blog and in fundraising e-mails to supporters, characterizing it as retaliation from the “extreme right-wing” over healthcare reform.

Update 3/28/10: Now the DP is reporting that Rep. Perriello’s brother received a threatening letter in the mail the same day the tube on his gas grill was cut. Update 3/26/10 2:53pm: The DP’s Brian McNeill reports that bricks were thrown through the windows of the Albemarle County GOP headquarters in the Albemarle Square Shopping Center last night, in what is believed to be another act of politically motivated vandalism. Police are investigating the incident. Update 3/26/10 2:30pm: The New York Times’ Micheal Cooper, reporting from Ivy, Virginia, deems the cut gas line on a portable grill at the home of Rep. Perriello’s brother “potentially the most dangerous of many acts of violence and threats against supporters of the bill in the last week.” The article goes on to highlight similar acts of vandalism across the country, complete with photo of the Perriello home. “I think people have to realize what it means to say in a Democracy that ‘I will kill your children if you don’t vote a certain way,’ ” Rep. Perriello told the Times. “What’s at stake here is the sanctity of our democracy.”

***

Update 3/25/10 4:50pm:  The Albemarle County Fire Marshal’s Office and the FBI have confirmed that the supply hose of a portable gas grill at the home of 5th District Representative Tom Perriello’s brother, at 303 Heron Drive in Peacock Hill in Ivy, was a “deliberate act of vandalism” and that it was “intentionally cut,” according to a statement released this afternoon by County spokesperson Lee Catlin. Catlin says that Perriello family members returned home and smelled gas coming from the grill, located at the back of the property, and noticed that the hose was severed. “While there was no immediate threat to the residence and its occupants,” the statement reads, “ investigators believe the leaking gas could have posed a danger had there been an ignition source nearby.” Anyone with information on this incident or other unusual behavior in the neighborhood is encouraged to call Crime Solvers at (434) 977-4000.

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The day after former VP candidate Sarah Palin encouraged her Facebook friends to “print pink slips” for members of Congress who voted for President Obama’s “disasterous” healthcare package, including 5th District Representative Tom Perriello, Politico reports that the FBI is investigating a cut gas line at the Charlottesville home of Perriello’s brother— who is married and has two small children— which County spokesperson Lee Catlin is calling a “suspicious incident.” The mistaken address was posted on Lynchburg Tea Party activist Mike Troxel’s blog, who believed he was posting brother Tom’s address. According to Politico, Troxel encouraged tea party activists to “drop by” Rep. Perriello’s home. MSNBC reports that the Lynchburg Tea Party chairman posted a statement on the organization’s website, which appears to have crashed at the time of this post, saying that Troxel’s post had not been sanctioned or endorsed.

Former VP candidate Sarah Palin instructs her friends on Facebook to take aim at 5th District Representative Tom Perriello and 19 others who voted for President Obama’s healthcare package and replace them in November with “Commonsense Conservatives.”

Like it or hate it, health care reform passed. The Washington Post has a simple tool that asks a few questions, then explains how you’ll be affected.

Is the ink on President Obama’s new health-care bill dry? That’s the question that will determine when Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli files suit to stop it as unconstitutional. The law comes with high hopes for creating a more equitable health system that doesn’t bankrupt families if a health crisis strikes. But because the bill’s backers— who include 5th District Representative Tom Perriello— typically invoke the commerce clause to satisfy Constitutional concerns over the bill’s requirement that every American buy health insurance, Cuccinelli may have an opening. “Just being alive,” Cuccinelli writes in a release, “is not interstate commerce.”

The County’s 1,200-acre Biscuit Run has been getting all the attention lately, after its would-be developers sold it to the state for $9.8 million plus an undisclosed number of tax credits. But Albemarle is not the only place where private land is turning public. The City of Charlottesville has announced the recent acquisition of 27 acres of parkland adjacent to Meadow Creek.

“This land is not going to be playgrounds,” says Chris Gensic, parks and trails planner for the city, explaining that the heavily-wooded tracts, much of the terrain in floodplain, will instead protect the creek and help get the city-wide trail system together.

Eighteen of the recently acquired acres lie behind the Seminole Square Shopping Center, donated by Ja-Zan LLC, the real estate corporation owned by siblings Jay Jessup and Suzanne Jessup Brooks, who also operate the Pepsi Cola Bottling Company of Central Virginia.

The remaining land is about eight acres near Holmes Avenue. The city purchased 2.3 of those acres for $10,300, and the remaining six were (more)

New signs, such as this one on Market Street at Lee Park, have just begun to dot the area surrounding the Downtown Mall to keep hapless visitors from circling for hours. The budget for the new “wayfinding” program— which reaches out beyond the Mall— reaches nearly half a million dollars.

Frosh Congressman Tom Perriello spoke candidly/cynically about a Congressional tendency to spend, and that won him a headline Thursday— “Dem Congressman: ‘If You Don’t Tie Our Hands, We Will Keep Stealing’…”— on the heavily-trafficked Drudge Report. (Conservative radio host Rob Schilling takes credit for the video.)

The neighborhood already reeling from getting declared a no plow zone in December just got another unhappy surprise when residents learned that they can no longer park at the end of their cul-de-sac. Now, some residents of this south-of-downtown neighborhood say they don’t know where they’ll park.

“I have a roommate, a 23-year-old nurse who works nights,” says resident Maurie Sutton. “She’s going to have to walk through a neighborhood that isn’t safe.”

And safety isn’t the only concern at Roy’s Place, (more)

Even though snow blocked sidewalks all over town for weeks following major snowstorms in what was a record-breaking winter, no one has been convicted under Charlottesville’s ordinance requiring snow removal from public sidewalks.

Police declined to issue citations following the December 18-19 Snowpocalypse because the city had done such a poor job clearing its own sidewalks.

The snow removal ordinance hit another hurdle this week when judges dismissed charges against five people and businesses, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Yellow Cab, who were cited in February for not shoveling.

Defense attorney Andre Hakes argued in Charlottesville General District Court March 12 that Virginia’s Dillon’s Rule, which says a locality can only adopt laws that are allowed by state law, does not give the city authority to make (more)

The Crozet Library gleams in the afternoon light of February 28. For a while, there was a plan to replace the former railroad depot with a mammoth new library nearby. Although a house was demolished to make way, the proposal fell victim to the Albemarle County budget crisis. The budget crisis got so bad that there was even a threat to close this small library

The Virginia General Assembly has sent the governor a bill that clarifies the law that allows parents to serve alcohol to minors. The law already requires that the parent or guardian of any drinking minor be present., but HB 1293, introduced by Roanoke Republican Bill Cleaveland, stipulates that such drinking must occur in the home of the provider. Advocates of serving alcohol to minors point to Western Europe, where parents reportedly teach responsible drinking at home and where some nations have no drinking age at all. The United States, by contrast, has one of the highest legal drinking ages in the Western world, based on the theory that drinking and driving go hand-in-hand. In other alcohol news, Virginia legislators appear to have shot down bills (1, 2, 3) that would have fulfilled the governor’s promise to privatize the the state-owned liquor, or ABC, stores. However, the lawmakers did pass a measure that would allow the ABC stores to hold free tastings.

Satellite dish in my yard
Tell me more, tell me more
Who’s the king of your satellite castle?

We may not know exactly what Dave Matthews meant in his song “Satellite,” but last month Cherry Avenue resident Susan Blake had no doubts about what a letter she received from the city had to say about the dish in her yard: relocate it within a month— or face legal action with fines up to $5,000.

After losing her job with a construction company, Blake was looking for ways to save money, and switching from cable to satellite television was one of them.

“I was paying $62 per month for Comcast, but now I’m paying $27 per month for DirecTV,” says Blake. “That savings practically pays my electric bill.” Of course, those $27 offers are only good for the first year, but with things so tight for folks like Blake, many people are switching over.

However, that small piece of mind was shaken by the letter she received from (more)

City residents who want to affect the upcoming budget will get their chance next week. While Albemarle’s fiscal year 2010-11 budget cuts to the bone, Charlottesville’s $126,001,345 operating budget is just .77 percent less than last year, promises no cuts in services, no real estate tax increases, and is fattened by $18.45 million in revenue-sharing from the county. The city’s total budget is $140.7 million, down 1.19 percent from the previous year. While Albemarle pushes its capital expenditures out five years, Charlottesville is spending money for new sidewalks, stormwater programs, parkland acquisition, greenway enhancement, and (more)

Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder lamented President Barack Obama’s methodical approach to enacting a national health care package, extolled the virtues of his threatened one-handgun-a-month law, and defended his recent call for the president to fire Tim Kaine as chair of the Democratic National Committee. The always-outspoken Wilder made his remarks Wednesday afternoon, March 3, in the political science classroom of UVA professor Larry Sabato. “Virginia used to be known as the gun capital of the world,” said Wilder, pointing to the 1993 handgun law, which reduced the appearance of Virginia-bought weapons involved in Northeast crime by 66 to 71 percent, as — along with the fiscal conservatism that earned Virginia “best managed state” honors— as a key achievement. “One handgun a month,” exclaimed Wilder, who notes that he owns a handgun. “Isn’t that 12 a year? And if you’re married isn’t that 24 a year? How many do you need, for God’s sake?” Much to Wilder’s relief, the repeal bill, HB49, which was proposed by Republican Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, was officially killed on Monday, March 8, when it was left in a Democrat-controlled General Assembly subcommittee. Wilder defended his criticism of Kaine in the wake of key election losses in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and in their home state of Virginia. “We haven’t been beaten like that as Democrats in 50 years,” said Wilder of Republican Bob McDonnell’s lopsided victory in the recent gubernatorial election. As for health care, the former Virginia governor (whose 1989 election as an African-American blazed a path much like the one blazed by the current president nearly a decade later) suggested that Obama has taken too tentative an approach. “If I had 60 votes and if were the president of the United States and I have a year to go, you’d have health care today.” Quicktime audio of the whole talk is archived here at readthehook.com. –expanded at 12:41pm Tuesday, March 9

The Charlottesville Transit Service, long referred to as CTS, has changed its name to Charlottesville Area Transit, reports Sean Tubbs for the Daily Progress/Charlottesville Tomorrow. However, the acronym for the new name could present some challenges (and opportunities) for local media. For instance, a recent NBC29 story would have been “CAT rider numbers Not Slowed By Storms,” and an old Hook headline would have been “CAT usage up 11.5 percent.” Plus, how are we going to be able to avoid saying, “CAT officials are purring over their new multi-million dollar facility”? Oh, and believe it or not, the new CAT logo has an image of a black cat on it. Technically, CAT officials say it’s a mountain lion, an image that will also be placed on the side of the buses. Hmmm…mountain lions in Virginia? Maybe CAT officials know something the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries doesn’t. “It’s thoroughly depressing to me,” City Councilor Satyendra Huja is reported by Tubbs to have remarked. Huja, along with Councilor Holly Edwards, voted against the name change, pointing out that no decision yet has been made on creating a regional transit authority, a decision that could eventually make any current branding effort obsolete.

Unlike deeply cut Albemarle, Charlottesville proposes a $141 million budget that will fall just 1.19 percent while still funding new sidewalks, storm water programs, parkland acquisition, and housing initiatives. The budget keeps the current 95 cents per $100 value tax rate and provides a $2.8 million economic downturn fund. Updated 2:45pm

Despite pleas from several music-lovers that it might kill a burgeoning part of the Charlottesville music scene, City Council voted 5-0 Monday night to create a new ordinance to ban amplified evening music over 65 decibels in two Charlottesville neighborhoods, including the Belmont district where— one police officer testified— “100 percent” of the noise complaints are aimed at just one place: Bel Rio restaurant. Unlike the last City Council meeting, when only one pro-ordinance speaker appeared, several told tales of pounding bass and rattling windows late into evenings. “Ordinances are not punishment,” said Councilor Kristen Szakos, who urged a more restrictive measure of 55 decibels after 11pm. However, Councilor David Brown, finding that too restrictive, made a motion for the compromise 65dB ordinance in the city’s two “neighborhood commercial corridors,” i.e. JPA/Fontaine and Belmont. The sound would be measured at a residential property line, and Council will revisit the ordinance after three months. “It’s allowing Bel Rio to be Bel Rio on a typical night,” said mayor Dave Norris, “but clamping down when it’s so noisy that it’s keeping citizens awake.” –last updated 6:58am Tuesday with mention of corridors and measurement location

It was part of L. Douglas Wilder’s campaign platform, but two weeks ago it appeared that the former governor’s 17-year-old ban on buying more than one handgun a month seemed headed for repeal. Wilder had always described the ban as a commonsense way to end Virginia’s dubious reputation as the weak link in the interstate effort to keep handguns out of the hands of thugs. And Delegate David Toscano seemed to agree. But in a 61-37-1 repeal vote, the House of Delegates— including Charlottesville-area Delegate Rob Bell— moved the other way. The Washington Post inveighed against potential “mayhem,” and along with a measure to allow guns in bars, Virginia was getting some national attention for such controversial measures. But in the Senate, according to a Post political blogger, the bill undoing the gun-a-month law now appears doomed to die in a special subcommittee.

For over two years, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority publicly branded Peter Van der Linde a cheat and attacked the recycler with an anti-mafia statute as part of a $20 million lawsuit, based largely on the unsubstantiated testimony of a disgruntled former Van der Linde employee, now serving jail time for attempted extortion.

But a curious thing happened when the Authority dropped its lawsuit on January 20. As Van der Linde agreed to pay $600,000 to settle it, the Authority’s corporate partner in trash, BFI/Republic, also agreed to pay a six-figure sum.

“The big question,” says vocal lawsuit critic Betty Mooney, “was why BFI agreed to pay when RSWA had never named them in their lawsuit. Is this now an admission that BFI owed funds to the community?”

The Hook asked BFI, RSWA board members, and City Councilors why BFI agreed (more)

With the University of Virginia as the big employer in town, Albemarle County has often been thought to be sheltered from the financial pain other parts of the country are suffering. The fiscal year 2010-11 budget County Exec Bob Tucker unveiled February 25 dispels that notion.

Tucker’s $293,850,901 budget is $10.3 million trimmer than last year and nearly $40 million less than fiscal year 2008-09.

The good news for homeowners is that the property tax rate holds steady at 74.2 cents per $100, so while homes lost value in the county on average 3.96 percent, at least those tax bills will be a few bucks less.

The bad news: All those best-place-to-live attributes (more)

Supporters of two bills on marijuana— one to decriminalize possession of small quantities and one amending Virginia’s on-the-books medical marijuana law— accuse Delegate Rob Bell in a YouTube video of leading the charge to derail legislation that might have provided relief to cancer victims.

Michael Krawitz, with Virginians Against Drug Violence and Patients Out of Time, complains that Bell ignored human suffering and used “straw man” arguments during a January 27 subcommittee hearing by alleging that the measures would lower the penalties for an adult selling pot to a third grader— an “inflammatory” allegation bearing little connection to the real world, says Krawitz.

Bell, however, says he remembers a respectful hearing, and that he questioned a witness who claimed decriminalization would save $75 million a year by keeping Virginia’s 20,000 pot arrestees out of jail for 30 days.

“That was inaccurate,” says Bell. “I can’t recall a case where anyone spent 30 days in jail for pot.”

House bills 1134 and 1136 were carried by Republican Delegate Harvey Morgan from Gloucester, and have been tabled for a year.

The makers of the video “had an agenda,” says Bell. “I am not as important as they think.”

As a new winter storm veers eastward and amid a multi-day mop-up operation of past storms, a City pickup truck hauls a load of snow west on the Downtown Mall, as photographed at 9:32am Friday, February 19.

Charlottesville Police have gotten tough on businesses and individuals who have not removed snow from public sidewalks, and issued five summons for noncompliance with the city’s snow removal ordinance.

McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Yellow Cab got tickets February 11, and individuals in the 1700 block of JPA and in the 700 block of Monticello were written up this week.

“We’ve received over 150 complaints,” says Lieutenant Gary Pleasants. “The majority were warned, and most complied.”

Since the December snowpocalypse, police have come under fire for not enforcing the sidewalk ordinance, which requires that residents clear walkways within 12 hours after snowfall ceases.

At the end of January, Chief Tim Longo admitted that (more)

Albemarlean Sissy Spacek was at the General Assembly Tuesday, February 16 with Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling (and with her husband Jack Fisk) to beseech lawmakers to pass incentives to attract filmmakers to Virginia. According to the Washington Post, the Academy Award-winner was attired like a horsewoman and tired of leaving the state to work. “I just think it’s time for Virginia to get a piece of the pie,” said Spacek. After the press conference, state Senator Creigh Deeds escorted her to the Senate dais. His rival for the governorship, Bob McDonnell, is pushing movie-making in the state to create jobs. Two bills going through the General Assembly offer income tax credits to productions spending at least $250K in Virginia.

The woman jailed for publishing the address of an undercover drug enforcer has apparently inspired a new measure in the General Assembly that might let police officers pull their addresses offline— even though civil libertarians say that the underlying law that criminalized the I HeArTE JADE blog and put its creator behind bars for a month is unconstitutional.

“This bill was inspired by a local website that seeks to identify undercover policemen,” says bill patron Rob Bell (R-Charlottesville). “The site includes photos of their homes that come from government sites. For the safety of the officers, I want to help them get that stuff off the government sites.”

Bell’s bill, HB1382 (one of 41 he’s introduced this session) was originally written so that any person or business— such as a blog or newspaper— publishing an officer’s address was required to remove it after receiving a written demand.

“It doesn’t look much like the original,” says Bell. “This (more)

Super Bowl Sunday left Crozet resident Fred Carwile “frustrated and angry,” he says. And not because the Saints won.

That was the day he discovered that his sales listings for back-issues of High Times magazine, which he’s sold for years on eBay, had been yanked without warning.

Further infuriating Carwile: He claims that two different eBay customer service reps told him the marijuana-oriented mags were pulled at the request of the federal government.

“The federal government (more)

Continuing the fight against Governor Tim Kaine’s unexplained move to let convicted killer Jens Soering return to his native Germany where critics fear his release would be imminent, the General Assembly has moved forward on a Resolution urging the U.S. Justice Department to block the transfer, according to the Lynchburg News & Daily Advance.

“Buses are currently arriving at our elementary schools, and will run their middle and high school routes as they arrive at those schools.” So says Albemarle County Schools spokesperson Maury Brown shortly after 2pm Monday, February 15, in an automated message to parents on the day that was originally scheduled as a student holiday to honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but put back in play after over two weeks of weather-related cancellations. Brown also said on her message that after-school programs were canceled but that the extended-day enrichment program will run until 6pm and that the budget public hearing would go on that night as planned. Ironically, the bulk of the snowfall ceased around the time the young ones were extricated from the halls of learning. Albemarle students got zero schooling last week, and the prior week they got just four hours (on a delayed-start Thursday). Before that, they lost time for a non-snow and then for a flood. Superintendent Pam Moran reveals her “I always will err on the side of caution” thinking on the open v. close conundrum on her blog, and the actual voice of closure, Albemarle transportation chief Josh Davis, tells all to the Daily Progress on a rural road trip taken on Valentine’s Day. As for Charlottesville City Schools, future make-up days include teacher workdays Friday, March 12; Friday, April 2; plus Friday June 11. Albemarle has all those and more— all the way to June 17, and there are still two missing days that may need to be dealt with, says County spokesperson Brown. Interestingly, one of these two days stems, she says, not from snow but from the Republican primary to pick the man to challenge incumbent Congressman Tom Perriello. As schools shut down on June 8 to become polling places (and tensions flare over delayed vacations), Republicans may question the wisdom of that endeavor. –last updated 1:26pm, Tuesday, February 16

The cul-de-sac that Charlottesville city crews won’t plow because of a dispute with the developer got mechanically scraped for the first time this season, but negotiations to get the neighborhood off the city’s  no-plow list remain at a stalemate.

“I’m going to move the snow tomorrow,” says developer Bobby Banks on February 12. “Not to say I’m responsible. The people there deserve better.”

The residents discovered their legal limbo during the December 18-19 Snowpocalypse when the city said its crews wouldn’t plow Roy’s Place because the developer had not properly (more)

City Council is expected to approve next week the appointment of Maurice Jones as Acting City Manager, following the announcement that Gary O’Connell will step down after nearly 15 years in the position. A former NBC29 sportscaster, Miller Center fundraiser, and City communications director, Jones has been an assistant city manager for two years with a focus on neighborhoods. Under Charlottesville’s council-manager form of government, the five-member City Council directs policy but leaves day-to-day operations to the City Manager. Outgoing Manager O’Connell came under fire about two years ago for pushing a controversial pipeline plan concocted by the Nature Conservancy that includes building a new dam in the Ragged Mountain Natural Area. After some investigative reporting and a mayoral counter-press toward dredging the existing reservoir, O’Connell began retreating from his “full steam ahead” position to the point that he issued a sort of stop-work order on the dam. But now O’Connell moves to the other side as the director of the Albemarle County Service Authority. That means he changes hats but gets to keep a seat on the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority that was held by Gary Fern, the man O’Connell succeeds on the ACSA. The big question now is whether Jones— who, by virtue of his new position, gets a seat on the board of the RWSA— will have the nerve to stand up for the mayor and Charlottesville citizens against the pipe-line dream of his former boss. –file photo by Jen Fariello –updated 4:16pm

What if you lived in Charlottesville, paid your taxes, but still found yourself living where public snowplows won’t go? Residents of one city neighborhood say that’s the situation they’re facing because of a dispute between the developer and the city.

After two feet of snow fell in December, residents of the 16-house subdivision known as Roy’s Place eagerly awaited snowplows. They heard one scraping on nearby Hartman’s Mill Road and Rougemont Avenue. And then it moved on.

And that’s when they learned of their legal limbo. According to residents, Roy’s Place has never (more)

Paul W. Cherington Professor of Business Administration at Harvard. Bruce R. Scott, explores how public policy has effected the business environment in the last several years…and how a misunderstanding of capitalism may have lead to the recent economic instability. February 12, 11am, at the Miller Center. Scott’s newest book is The Concept of Capitalism (Springer, 2009).

In anticipation of heavy weather, Charlottesville wants parked cars off main thoroughfares by midnight. Water and Market streets between Ridge and 10th, East Jefferson, West Main and High streets all become no parking zones at midnight, and parked cars will be towed. The city offers free parking at the Water and Market street garages, and requests that residents not park on the street if possible to make it easier to clear side streets.

Random Row Books screens the award-winning documentary, Aristide and the Endless Revolution, which examines the rise and fall of Haiti’s first democratically elected president. The screening is the first in a series of free weekly films for Black History Month. 315 W. Main St. 813-786-1636.

Charlottesville-based musical superstar  Dave Matthews— unimpressed that disgraced politician John Edwards and his career-killing paramour allegedly chose Dave Matthews Band’s “Steady as We Go” as their song and wanted the DMB to perform at a contemplated rooftop wedding— would have charged “an incredible amount of money” if he didn’t reject the arrangement outright, according to Access Hollywood. The wedding allegations will appear in an impending book by a former Edwards aide who claims the song— which features a pair of star-crossed lovers and such lines as “So if the road gets rocky, girl, just steady as we go”— resonated with the cheating ex-Senator and the mother of his love child. When the musical allegations emerged in September, New York magazine examined six songs likely to enthrall the illicit couple; however, “Steady as We Go” missed that list.

For weeks after December’s massive volume of snowfall ceased, snow remained on sidewalks in violation of Charlottesville’s City Code and causing frustration for both able and disabled citizens who use sidewalks.

The latest 10.5 inches officially recorded at McCormick Observatory for the January 30 snow brings a different grade to city efforts: much improved.

“The city has done a (more)

In office as governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 11 days, Bob McDonnell added another role to his new duties: spokesman for the GOP following President Barrack Obama’s January 27 State of the Union address.

When McDonnell was invited to provide the Republican response last week, political pundit Larry Sabato warned that the president and the pageantry of the State of the Union in Congress were a tough act to follow.

Perhaps McDonnell heeded that warning. His response in the House of Delegates chamber, surrounded by a diverse group of supporters who applauded and looked at him adoringly, prompted NBC political commentator David Gregory to note that it looked like a (more)

Gary O’Connell says that he will leave his job as Charlottesville City manager, a post he has held for nearly 15 years, in order to take the director’s role at the Albemarle County Service Authority, the body that sells water to households in the urban area.

“A few minutes ago, the Albemarle County Service Authority approved my employment as their new Executive Director effective May 1,” O’Connell wrote to supporters of news that first broke on WINA radio’s morning show. “I will stay on as City Manager the next 90 days until April 30. I’m excited about this opportunity, a good fit for my utility experiences over 35 years, and my passion for water and the environment.”

O’Connell will be assuming the vacancy that will be left when Authority director Gary Fern departs to take a role with a private engineering firm.

Ironically, in recent years, O’Connell— who has (more)

“Why would you want to write about some house I’m building?” That was developer Wendell Wood in a Hook cover story last February, when asked about the mansion he was building. The “real story” he said was the expansion around National Ground Intelligence Center and the prospect of 1,500 new jobs. “Now that’s a story,” said Wood.

Indeed, Wood’s developments along Route 29 over the last 30 years have been an ongoing story that earned him plenty of economic kudos and conservation-minded critics, but as the size of his new house becomes apparent (even from miles away), one may recall his reluctance to talk about it.

“It’s just,” he said with a smile, “that people hate me enough as it is.”

According to County records, Wood’s new house will tip the scales at 15,554 finished square feet with another 14,269 square feet of unfinished basement, decks, and porches— putting it within range of Patricia Kluge’s 23,000 square-foot Albemarle House and making it not only one of the biggest houses ever built in Virginia but also (more)

Governor Bob McDonnell will provide the Republican rejoinder to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address January 27, the third Virginia-based politician to provide a presidential counterpoint in just five years.

Back in 2006, McDonnell’s predecessor, Tim Kaine, gave the Democratic response following then-President George Bush’s State of the Union address. Senator Jim Webb did the Dem honors in 2007.

“It’s a big deal,” says UVA political guru Larry Sabato. “McDonnell can crow just as loudly as Kaine did.”

Sabato says he’d predicted that either newly elected Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, or McDonnell would be picked to respond for the Republicans.

“It signifies that the national party leadership wants this person to be the face of the party,” explains Sabato.

Yet, the pundit also points out that the task brings some political peril because Obama is a good communicator and a tough act to follow.

“No one compares to the president at the State of the Union address,” says Sabato, contrasting the pageantry of addressing the full Congress, while the (more)

Amid a succession of public relations nightmares, including the jailing of its star witness and mounting legal costs (with lawyers billing as much as $515 an hour), the local government that’s been using an anti-mafia statute to sue a citizen threw in the towel January 20 as it accepted a $600,000 settlement from the citizen, Peter Van der Linde, a man whose own recycling center brought embarrassment and financial distress to the body suing him, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

“This is a good day’s work, and I’m glad to see it happen,” said Authority board member David Brown, after the unanimous vote to (more)

City employees have one extra reason to be thankful: they just got $750 bonuses. NBC29 broke the story.

Just one week after announcing a new state park without tallying the full cost to taxpayers, outgoing governor Tim Kaine has again blindsided citizens— in this case criminal investigators and family members of the late Derek and Nancy Haysom, a Lynchburg-area couple killed in 1985 by then UVA student and Jefferson Scholar Jens Soering. A German national who fled the United States and vigorously fought extradition after the in-home double killing, Soering may now be sent back to Germany where he’ll be eligible for parole in two years, under a transfer the governor reportedly approved Friday, January 15, on his last full day in office. The transfer, which reportedly occurred without input from surviving Haysom family members, has unleashed cascades of outrage including interest among some elected officials in blocking Kaine’s exit-day action. Soering, now incarcerated at the Buckingham Correctional Center, was convicted in 1990, sentenced to life in prison, and writes extensively on religion and prisoner rights. His former girlfriend and co-conspirator in the premeditated crime, Elizabeth Haysom, was the daughter of the victims and is serving a 90-year sentence at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

It appeared to be a trash match made in heaven…

In December 2008, as the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, formed in 1990 to manage the disposal of Charlottesville and Albemarle trash, began seriously struggling financially to fulfill its duties and promote recycling in our area, dumpster king Peter Van der Linde opened an $11 million state-of-the-art Materials Recovery Facility [MRF] now capable of recycling both construction/demolition debris and household trash.

Problem solved, right? With the RSWA’s expertise, and Van der Linde’s new facility, surely we could create one of the greenest waste disposal and recycling models in the State.

If only that were so.

Instead of working together, the two trash titans have been locked in a legal battle that has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and brought the community no closer to solving its waste disposal and recycling woes. As the two sides careen toward a jury trial this summer,  the Hook felt it was time to distill some of what we’ve learned about the complicated lawsuit over the last year. Consider this latest offering a busy citizen’s guide to better understanding the lawsuit. It might also give (more)

More than three weeks after the snow of the new century, Charlottesville continues to let enforcement of its sidewalk snow-removal ordinance slide— although unshoveled walkways remain.

City Code calls for clearance 12 hours after a snowfall stops. Property owners who haven’t cleared sidewalks are given a warning and another 12 hours to make the snow disappear, or they face a Class 1 misdemeanor, which carries up to 12 months in jail and/or a $2,500 fine. That’s unlikely to happen for this snow, as no one’s been cited.

“I see this as a pattern of the city failing to (more)

In an event attended by dozens of movers and shakers including Dave Matthews Band violinist Boyd Tinsley, Governor Tim Kaine visited Monticello Friday, January 8, to announce his administration’s success in securing more than 425,000 acres of Virginia land for conservation, particularly lavishing praise upon the previous owners of 1,200-acre Charlottesville-area residential development-turning-state park Biscuit Run.

Kaine thanked numerous agencies for helping the state purchase the property in southern Albemarle County for what he called the “bargain scenario” of $9.8 million on December 31. Still unclear, however, is the appraised value of the land, for which Biscuit Run owners will be entitled to a 40 percent tax credit, an additional— but unrevealed— cost to taxpayers.

“We owe a debt of gratitude,” Kaine said of the Biscuit Run deal, “and it starts with the landowners.”

Biscuit Run was purchased in 2005 by Forest Lodge LLC, a consortium headed by developer Hunter Craig and including members of the Dave Matthews Band, for a reported $46.2 million. It was planned as the site of some 3,100 homes, but with the economy tanking— and an estimated carrying cost of more than $300,000 per month— Forest Lodge seemed to be running out of money back in November when Bluefield-based First Community Bank told shareholders a $34 million loan was in  “early stage delinquency.” Less than two months later, with the state’s purchase of the property, it wasn’t clear how— or if—the bank would be repaid, nor was it clear what the property is now actually worth.

Developer Richard Spurzem says he believes the actual current value of Biscuit Run is closer to $20 million– less than half the speculators’ purchase price— and he points out that while $9.8 million is indeed a bargain price, (more)

The Albemarle County Service Authority, which sells water to county customers, has two new members on its board. Marvin Hilton, a retired engineer, is new Supervisor Duane Snow’s pick for the Samuel Miller District, a decision Snow says he didn’t make until the morning of the January 6 supes’ meeting. In the Rio District, Supervisor Rodney Thomas appointed attorney Dave Thomas, who is no relation. Out are Liz Palmer and Don Wagner, both of whom shepherded in an innovative four-tier pricing structure that rewards conservation, and who urged candidates in last fall’s Board of Supervisors’ race to sign a pledge supporting a controversial community water supply. Rodney Thomas did not take the pledge. And on the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, which supplies water to Charlottesville and Albemarle, Supervisor Ken Boyd will represent the county on that board, succeeding Sally Thomas (no relation to the previous two Thomases). Boyd also sits on the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority. Pledge takers corrected 3pm January 7 Updated January 8

Ann Mallek is selected chairman of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors at its first meeting of the year January 6. While Mallek, as former vice chair, traditionally would have been next in line for the chairmanship vacated when David Slutzky was not reelected last November, Ken Boyd made a brief run for the position in December, then remembered he was also running for the 5th District Republican nomination to challenge Tom Perriello in this year’s elections and withdrew from pursuit of the chair. New supe Duane Snow from the Samuel Miller District will serve as vice chairman. Photo updated January 7

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, who famously pushed an effort to dredge the existing reservoir, has agreed to sit on a panel stacked with such avowed dam-loving interests as Charlottesville Tomorrow’s Brian Wheeler, the Free Enterprise Forum’s Neil Williamson, and the mastermind of what some have blasted as an unnecessarily wasteful way to drum up additional water supply, Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority director Tom Frederick. The effort is a lunchtime discussion orchestrated by the equally dam-loving Chamber of Commerce boss Tim Hulbert and underwritten by Dominion Virginia Power. It’s slated for 11:30am on January 28, so there may still be time to add former Supervisor and avowed dredging opponent Sally Thomas to the panel.

It was widely assumed that City Councilor Holly Edwards, whom Mayor Dave Norris described as the “conscience of this City Council,” would be the next mayor of Charlottesville. Instead, she declined her nomination by Norris, and tossed the mayoral ball back to him. “I thought you were my friend,” joked Norris at tonight’s Council meeting before he was re-elected unanimously to a second two-year term. Edwards cited two reasons for not taking the nomination: “I believe the mayor should be an elected position,” meaning by citizens, rather than fellow councilors. She also said she favored continuity in leadership. Edwards did agree to serve as vice mayor.

With at least part of its $34 million loan already declared in “early stage delinquency” by the lead lender, Biscuit Run’s conversion to a state park may leave several banks with millions in losses.

In a November 6 federal filing, Bluefield-based First Community Bank notified its shareholders of the potentially massive problem but assured them that the loan was “adequately secured” by a “large tract of undeveloped land in Virginia.”

What First Community may not have counted on was Governor Tim Kaine’s eagerness to add new parkland or on the generosity of Biscuit Run owner Forest Lodge LLC, a consortium publicly headed by Hunter Craig.

Craig spent several years before County staff winning the right to eventually develop 3,100 homes on the 1,200-acre tract in southern Albemarle. On December 30, however, Craig’s group sold the land to (more)

After a Daily Progress article revealed that he wanted to retake the chairmanship of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, Republican Ken Boyd— who is also seeking his party’s nomination to become the challenger to 5th Congressional District Representative Tom Perriello— has announced via press release that he’s taking his name out of consideration.