Tuesday, September 14
Presidential hopeful on Grounds
Paying his first-ever visit to “Mr. Jefferson’s University,” Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, who will be on Virginia’s November 2 ballot, smoothly courted a crowd of about 200 college students—and a few other types—in a balloon-decorated campus auditorium this evening. Befitting a self-declared defender of the Constitution, Badnarik invoked TJ’s name more frequently than either of his major party rivals. He anticipated the spoiler issue, saying to the polite crowd in his prepared remarks that “the only wasted vote is one you cast for a candidate you do not respect.”
Wednesday, September 15
More props for UVA
UVA may no longer be able to brag about being the No. 1 public university—having been leapfrogged on the U.S. News & World Report list by U.C. Berkeley—but it can tout its new ranking as one of the “50 Best Colleges for CosmoGIRL!s.” Editors of CosmoGIRL! magazine consulted with guidance counselors and admissions offices and looked at six key factors, including the number of prominent female faculty members and the strength of women’s sports programs, to determine the ranking. The list won’t boost UVA’s overall ranking, however, as U.C. Berkeley is a CosmoGIRL! hotspot as well.
Thursday, September 16
Worth a nickel?
The same visage of Thomas Jefferson has graced the front of the 5-cent piece since 1938. But the design for the 2005 nickel, which was released by the U.S. Mint today, zooms in closer to Jefferson’s face. Even more shocking is news that Monticello has been bumped on the back of the nickel for pictures of a bison and view of the Pacific, according to the Associated Press. Monticello was previously replaced on two 2003 nickel pressings, which also featured Lewis and Clark-themed scenes. The two new nickel designs will only be minted for one year, with Monticello’s hallowed arches landing back on the coin in 2006.
Friday, September 17
The best is yet to come
Tony Bennett, who famously croons, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” will be the first performer to hit the stage at the reopening of the Paramount Theater. The new schedule, released today, begins with Bennett at a “pre-opening fundraising gala” on December 16. The official opening comes two days later with a day of classic movies and 25-cent admissions. The Paramount’s first season, which unfortunately includes “1-800-CALL-ATT” star Carrot Top, brings a fairly wide range of acts, such as Broadway musicals, dance performances, country star Ricky Skaggs and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
Saturday, September 18
Tornado alley
As the remnants of Hurricane Ivan blew through the area on Friday, the spinning of the powerful storm spawned at least 40 tornadoes across Virginia—far more than the state receives in a typical year—according to a statement issued today by the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. Gov. Mark R. Warner declared a state of emergency, the third such weather-related declaration in five weeks. The twisters spared Charlottesville and Albemarle, but slammed many areas along the Route 29 corridor, including Greene County, where the storm destroyed four homes and damaged 65.
Sunday, September 19
Bashing the conservative media
Liberal group MoveOn.org helped director Robert Greenwald produce a documentary on Fox News Channel, called Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, which sold 100,000 DVDs this summer. MoveOn has been screening the movie around the country, and today showed it at the Charlottesville Ice Park to 150 attendees as part of a fundraiser for Sen. John Kerry. In his review of the film, Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson describes how one Fox reporter claims to have been suspended for airing footage from a poorly attended event at Ronald Reagan’s presidential library. “This kind of firsthand, detailed testimony,” Thomson writes, “even in the context of a liberally biased film, is not easy to dismiss as propaganda or the lamentations of the fired and disgruntled.” The event raised $2,000 for MoveOn’s political action committee.
Monday, September 20
Commonwealth’s top poet
Though the appointment isn’t quite as cool as being Poet Laureate of the U.S., which she was during two years of the Clinton Administration, UVA poet Rita Dove today is sworn in as Virginia’s Poet Laureate in a ceremony in Charlottesville’s U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building. Dove, a Commonwealth Professor of English at UVA, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987. The publisher’s abstract on her latest book of poems, American Smooth, says Dove “pay[s] homage to our kaleidoscopic cultural heritage—from the glorious shimmer of an operatic soprano to Bessie Smith’s mournful wail, from paradise lost to angel food cake, from hotshots at the local shooting range to the Negro jazz band in World War I whose music conquered Europe before the Allied advance.”
—Written by Paul Fain from local news sources and staff reports
ELECTION WATCH
Take a stand for your man
Can’t decide about the upcoming 5th District election? Take our helpful quiz
We keep hearing so much about undecided voters—the folks who don’t care a lick about a candidate’s policies, his personal history or stance on the issues. They vote from the gut, for the candidate whom they “relate to,” or “identify with.”
If you’re not sure whether you’d rather have a beer with 5th District Congressman Virgil Goode, a Republican, or his Democratic challenger, Al Weed, take the following quiz and find your man.
You know you’re voting for Virgil Goode if:
…you’re a Democrat. No wait, you’re an Independent—no, wait, you’re a Republican.
…you learned how to identify with the trials and tribulations of hard-working Americans—at UVA law school.
…your favorite fruit is tobacco.
…the only Spanish you want to hear is “Taco Bell.”
…your idea of an economic recovery is a community yard sale.
…you think Bush is a sissy if he doesn’t send our kids to Damascus and Paris once they’re done in Tehran.
…Rhett Butler is your idea of a real man.
You know you’re voting for Al Weed if:
…your idea of a fundraiser involves breaking open a piggy bank and counting the change.
…Robutussin is what you call fine wine. (Just kidding, Al—we love ya!)
…your idea of a good time is field-stripping an M-16 and then working for 12 hours on your farm.
…your cell phone ring plays “The Fighting Green Berets.”
…you’ve heard all the 4:20 jokes and they’re just not funny anymore.
…you carry pictures of Meredith Richards, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis in your wallet.
…you get most of your news from Al Franken.
Blinded by the light
“Improved” wireless tower stirs up Ashcroft neighbors
The door to Diane Gregory’s ridge-top home in the Ashcroft subdivision of Albemarle County swings open to reveal a spacious living room. Clearly visible from the front stoop, through the windows at the back of the house, is a dark tower with a flashing white light.
Gregory noticed a dramatic change in the tower, which sports equipment for six wireless telephone companies, in February. The previous structure “looked like a stick with a dull red light on it,” Gregory says. After Valentine’s Day weekend, however, a shorter tower that was substantially thicker and featured a powerful flashing beacon had replaced it.
“At night, the whole neighborhood was lit up like a firecracker was going off,” Gregory says.
Alan Higgins, who lives to the east of the tower in Boyd’s Tavern, likens the early effect of the new beacon to “a mild lightning flash” in his bedroom. “It drove us crazy,” he says.
Gregory and Higgins aren’t the only county residents to notice the altered tower, which stands to the south of Ashcroft and about a mile northeast of where 250 East hits I-64. But to the Albemarle County Supervisors, who approved the tower construction in March 2002, the new tower was meant to be an improvement on the old one.
After a few days and several complaints, the strobe was turned down and switched to a standard red light during evening hours. But though the light is now less blinding, Gregory is still irked by the more obtrusive tower.
“If I had seen that tower, I’m not sure I would’ve bought this home,” says Gregory, who moved to the swanky neighborhood two years ago.
It’s probably too late for Gregory and her neighbors to do anything about the tower, which is owned by Boston-based American Tower Corporation. According to Stephen Waller, a senior planner for the County, American Tower has complied with the County’s conditions and the tower facility has passed “final inspections.”
Yet the tower has a particularly contentious history, and is illustrative of the challenge Albemarle faces in balancing wireless coverage with ugly towers that block its famous rural vistas. Wireless antennas are discussed often during Planning Commission meetings, with Waller estimating that two to four applications for new wireless facilities are filed each month. American Tower alone owns 11 towers in Charlottesville and Albemarle.
Originally built in the 1960s for radio, the Ashcroft tower was 296′ tall and comprised a latticework of thin bars. American Tower, which bought the structure from Eure Communications in June 1999, wanted to rent space for more wireless antennas than the old tower could support. The company began negotiating with County planners for a new tower at the Ashcroft site, but eventually submitted a compromise plan: They would keep the original tower by building reinforcements around it while also cutting it down by 36′.
That plan didn’t cut it for the County Planning Commission, however, which nixed the application in February 2002, calling the tower “highly visible” and inconsistent with the County’s wireless zoning policies.
“You can put earrings on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” said Planning Commissioner Pete Craddock before voting against the tower, according to minutes from the meeting.
American Tower had better luck a month later with County Supervisors, who, in March 2002, approved the tower construction. Valerie Long, a local lawyer who represented American Tower during the Supes’ lengthy debate, argued that the tower would not be “any more visible than the existing tower” because of its reduced height and design enhancements that would give it a “a narrower profile.”
Homeowner Diane Gregory scoffs at this claim, and her complaints are bolstered by the tower’s thick dossier in the County Office Building. A diagram of the extensive reinforcing bars shows a structure that is clearly wider and less transparent than its predecessor. Also in the file is a description of the state-of-the art beacon, which is designed to beam only straight out and above the horizon, signaling to aircraft but not shining at the ground around the tower. The bummer for Gregory and other Ashcroft residents is that most of their neighborhood sits on a ridge about 250 feet above the tower site—directly at eye level with the beacon.
“It was sort of obvious that they did not think it through,” says Ashcroft resident Dot Kelly of the changes to the tower.
Asked if County Supervisors were sufficiently warned about the aesthetic effect of the new tower, attorney Long offers a short pro forma statement from American Tower. To wit, the company has complied with County rules and tower neighbors are welcome to review the tower site’s files at the planning office.
Stephen Waller, who indeed reviewed the tower application, says it’s hard to gauge what a tower will look like or whose view it might obstruct when considering a design on paper.
“Anything that you’re looking at in the planning situation, you’re going to have to look at the tradeoffs,” Waller says. “There’s no way to visit every site in the County where this site is visible from.”—Paul FainIn the last U.S. presidential election, more than half of eligible voters didn’t turn out at the polls. Kind of makes you wonder how America can truly be called a democracy when 100 million people aren’t participating in one of our most democratic processes. You can help get outthe vote. The Charlottesville/Albemarle headquarters for the campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry need volunteers.
The Democratic headquarters, located at 309 Water St., is trying to get folks to knock on every door in the city and county, handing out voter registration forms and promotional materials about Kerry along the way. Volunteers are also needed to staff tables at Fridays After 5 and the City Market on Saturdays, as well as to make reminder phone calls on Election Day and give rides to the polls. Call the Democratic headquarters at 296-1865.
The Republican headquarters, located at the end of Holiday Drive, has plenty of volunteer opps, too. Help is needed with get-out-the-vote phone calls, rides to the polls and administrative tasks. Contact the Republican headquarters at 974-1617.
City schools
blowup blows over?
It was, as Dr. Scottie Griffin says, an “almost insane” few days. Just four weeks into the school year and three months since she assumed her new post as superintendent of city schools, Griffin became the focus of a flurry of strongly-worded e-mails from parents that were widely circulated among teachers, parents and the media over the September 11 weekend.
Some of these complaints, which focused on specific policy moves as well as management style, rankled school officials and leaders in the African-American community who thought parents had unfairly targeted Griffin, Charlottesville’s first black superintendent.
At a jam-packed and emotional School Board meeting on Thursday, September 16, parent Jenny Ackerman acknowledged the “divisive and hurtful effect” of some of the e-mails, including a widely posted laundry list of complaints that she and her husband had authored, adding, “we understand that the debate cannot take on personal or racial overtones.”
After Ackerman’s apology, School Board Chairperson Dede Smith expressed the Board’s “100 percent” support for Griffin, who then briefly spoke. Two hours of public statements followed, several of which touched on the race issue.
A smattering of boos and hisses greeted Dr. M. Rick Turner, Dean of African-American Affairs at UVA, when he said that people who have criticized Griffin’s initiatives “really can’t accept the color of her skin.”
Rev. Alvin Edwards, a former mayor, took a more instructive tone, saying the “disturbing e-mails” contained “harsh rhetoric that can and will divide our community.”—Paul Fain
Big bid-ness
Taking chances at the City auction
Clyde Nicholson is a large, round man with a boonie hat covering his gray-streaked hair and a shirt pocket stuffed with an eyeglasses case, pens and a toothbrush. From the back pocket of his pants he pulls out a creased newspaper. That’s where he saw an ad listing the two late-model Chevy pickups that brought him here today to the city yard on Fourth Street for Charlottesville’s annual public auction.
Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran, is no stranger to the auction game. A used furniture dealer with a shop in the nearby Shenandoah Valley town of Grottoes, he entered the trade after retiring from the Army in 1980.
“I buy everything at auctions,” he says.
In fact, the work truck he’s looking to replace he bought at auction nearly 10 years ago for $800. He says that truck paid for itself the next day when he used it to haul away a solid mahogany chest of drawers he got a deal on—auction quarry, yet again.
Still, even for an experienced hand, auctions involve a roll of the dice. “You can’t keep track of all the things going on,” Nicholson says when asked about trying to read competing bidders and the danger of buying bum equipment at “as is” terms of sale. “People who say they never got burned are lying.”
The City of Charlottesville’s auction last Tuesday, September 14, offered a chance at bargains on scores of vehicles and large equipment pieces. Pickups, retired police cruisers, transit buses, tractors, rider mowers, a strikingly conspicuous black police stakeout van, a Sullair compressor with a very rusty jackhammer and a 1985 Tennant street sweeper were among the items up for bidding. Conditions ranged from a pair of total wrecks good only for scrap metal to new-looking rides ready for a spin.
The City’s Office of Procurement and Risk Management is charged with selling off equipment that’s been replaced, and holds a weekly sale of smaller items at fixed, non-negotiable prices. (In part because smaller budgets have reduced turnover in City inventory, the sales will likely be moved to a monthly schedule in October or November.) Certain items of greater value are from time to time posted at an eBay store the City maintains. But the vast majority of proceeds are raised through the annual big-ticket auction, which this year netted about $92,000 from about 250 registered bidders, compared with last year’s $60,000. This year, everything offered was sold, except for a single transit bus.
As the sale worked its way down rows of wares, each new vehicle was announced by a revving of the engine—at least those that could turn over. To the unschooled ear, the cant of the auctioneer’s team was a tensing stream of syllables. Is he calling out the last bid or setting a benchmark for the next one? “TwocanIgohalf.” Two thousand? Two hundred? Half of what? Who’s the other guy bidding? If I can’t see him I can’t size him up. If I look too hard he’ll see into my mind.
In the end, Nicholson didn’t get his truck. The first sold for $4,800, well above his desired range. The second went for $3,000, and Nicholson regretted not making a stronger play for it the instant the lot closed. “That truck’s worth $3,100,” he said. “I was just stuck on $2,700. Gonna dwell on this one for a while.”—Harry Terris