Tuesday, January 24
Best-selling author offers wannabes sage advice
Curtis Sittenfeld, whose debut novel Prep was named by The New York Times as one of the Top 10 books of 2005, gave a reading and answered questions this evening in UVA’s Newcomb Hall Ballroom. Prep chronicles the high school career of angst-y teen Lee Fiora, a scholarship student at a prestigious New England boarding school. Sittenfeld herself attended Groton, on which she admitted she based her fictional campus, and taught for three years at St. Alban’s in Washington, D.C. However, Sittenfeld affirmed that Prep is a work of fiction. “People always want to think that a memoir isn’t true and that a novel is,” she said to laughter from the crowd. “I don’t know why that is.”
Wednesday, January 25
Tell on that smell!
A small item in today’s Daily Progress alerted the community that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority is on the case when it comes to “that smell.” RWSA Director Thomas Frederick has announced plans to start a telephone hotline for stankiness, so that when a member of the public catches a whiff of something nasty coming from an RWSA facility, all he has to do is call the 24-hour hotline to complain. According to the report, no specific start date has been set but the RWSA hopes to get the hotline up and running soon.
Thursday, January 26
Local artist makes bank with Greenspan paintings
After more than 18 years on the job, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is handing over his keys to the nation’s economy at the end of the month. In honor of his retirement, local artist and UVA grad Erin Crowe, who made national headlines in October with her art show of quirky Alan Greenspan portraits, is back for a second act. Crowe, who’s currently attending art school in London, has a new show, “Goodbye Greenspan,” of 30 portraits of the Fed chairman that opens tonight at New York’s Broome Street Gallery. Prior to the show she’d already sold six paintings and had been interviewed by CBS News, NPR’s Marketplace, Reuters and New York Magazine. CNBC had plans to film the opening.
Westhaven hosts a “Rent is too damn high” party
Residents, community members, City employees, UVA students and professors were all part of an overflow crowd this evening at the Westhaven Community Center for a panel discussion on housing, “The Poverty of (Re)Development.” The discussion was part of a four-part series sponsored by the Quality Community Council. People shared thoughts on, gripes about, and possible solutions for the city’s shortage of public housing and high rents. The next talk is “The Poverty of (Under)Employment,” on Tuesday, January 31 at 6pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Friday, January 27
Lifelong civil servant enters Council race
Registered Democrats across the city opened their mailboxes today to Julian Taliaferro’s official announcement that he will run for City Council in May’s election. A 43-year veteran of the City’s fire department, Taliaferro led the department for nearly 34 years. The chief says in his letter that during his career as a civil servant “my only real frustration was that my position kept me out of active participation in the Democratic Party. In the privacy of the voting booth, I have always been a local, state, and national Democrat.” Taliaferro joins public housing and poverty advocate Dave Norris as a Democratic hopeful. The party will nominate its candidates on March 4. A total of two Council seats will be up for grabs on May 7.
Saturday, January 28
City supe search: déjà vu all over again
In an eerie repeat of 2003’s search for a superintendent to lead Charlottesville’s school division, The Daily Progress today reported the names of two of three finalists for the job. Within a day, it came out that one of the candidates, Orange County supe William R. Crawford, had withdrawn his application, bringing the pool of finalists to two. The School Board botched a search three years ago when they publicly ranked finalists before offering anybody a contract and ended up with no one. This time, the board seemed to go to great pains to protect the identities of the new finalists. But in choosing to tour the finalists through schools, including Charlottesville High, early in the week the board might have made it easy for somebody to leak their names. Indeed, the DP’s Bob Gibson revealed the identity of another of the finalists, Rosa S. Atkins, in today’s edition. The third candidate has not been identified. Yet.
Sunday, January 29
Local sculptor wins grant for mature artists
Today we learned that local sculptor Richard Weaver was one of three recipients of a grant from the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund. The three artists will split a $45,000 grant given annually to artists over 40 who live near Washington, D.C. Weaver studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, and now keeps a studio at the McGuffey Arts Center.
Monday, January 30
Technical glitch keeps liberal radio off the air
It’s just a technical glitch, not a vast right-wing conspiracy that has kept progressive radio off the air in Charlottesville. Today The Daily Progress reported that the recently launched WVAX 1450AM has been taken off the air while a “technical issue” is being resolved. The station manager, Dennis Mockler, says the station should be back on air soon.
Written by John Borgmeyer from staff and news reports.
UVA law professor hits big with L.A. Times column
Rosa Brooks got a boost from Bill O’Reilly
Not many liberals can say that “The O’Reilly Factor” furthered their careers, but Rosa Brooks, a fifth-year law professor at UVA, owes her position as a weekly columnist at the Los Angeles Times to her feisty performance on the show in February 2005. As counterpoint to O’Reilly, she so impressed the paper’s editorial editor, Michael Kinsley, that he e-mailed her after the show to ask if she wanted to write a column. “I just thought he had a few too many beers,” says Brooks. “I’ve got to believe that his entire editorial staff must have thought he lost his mind.”
Her columns have ranged from lamentations about the Iraq war to a Dr. Seuss spoof with O’Reilly as the Grinch. We talked to Brooks as she was gearing up for a new semester.—Will Goldsmith
C-VILLE: Did you enjoy being on “The O’Reilly Factor”?
Rosa Brooks: Enjoyment is the wrong word. It’s scary—lots of people are watching you who are predisposed to disagree with you before you even open your mouth. And he interrupts and controls the agenda and controls the questioning, and as any law professor knows with the Socratic method, it’s pretty easy to make a well-prepared person look like a fool if you control the agenda. So you know it’s going to be an uphill battle just to not sound like an idiot, much less to communicate anything.
If it’s that bad, why did you appear three times?
I think I felt it was almost my civic duty. If people who are liberal don’t go on it, then how will the media be balanced if one side just says, “I’m not going to play”? But now I have the column as an outlet to get my views out.
Do you ever worry whether your columns could damage your position with your colleagues and your future in the legal field?
[Laughs]Fifth Amendment. I worried a little that there would be people out there who would say, “Oh, she’s frittering away her time on this popular stuff.” There is such a gap today between the scholarly world and the world of public discourse that sometimes the public world looks at the scholarly world as rarefied and irrelevant and the scholarly world looks at the public world as superficial. I think it’s incredibly important for scholars to try to connect to the broader world—if we can’t do that, then I wonder what the point is of all our scholarship.
All quiet between Dena Bowers and UVA
Fired union member contemplating lawsuit
The uproar surrounding the No-vember firing of 17-year UVA employee Dena Bowers has gone quiet. Bowers’ firing sparked a small uproar among some, with the Staff Union at UVA leading the charge, and culminating with a protest in front of Madison Hall on Grounds.
Since then, things have been calmer. Bowers’ supporters have decided not to push forward with a grievance against the University. Instead, they have set up a defense fund for Bowers’ attorney fees, if and when she files a lawsuit. Bowers and her lawyer have two years to file any lawsuit against the University.
In the meantime, Bowers is not speaking to the press on the advice of her attorney, Debbie Wyatt.
SUUVA President Jan Cornell says the defense fund is the best way Bowers’ supporters can help. According to Cornell, any issue with UVA’s handling of the Bowers case will be most successful in court and not through any of the internal UVA procedures.
As evidence of wrongdoing, Cornell cites UVA’s changing position as to why Bowers was fired and what she regards as questionable practices by administrators during Bowers’ termination.
The whole saga started when Bowers, a recruiter in UVA’s human resources department, sent an e-mail critical of UVA from her employee account, which eventually got forwarded on to the entire staff of the College of Arts and Sciences. Originally, news sources reported that Bowers was fired for misuse of UVA’s e-mail program. However, it appears now that Bowers was fired, in part, because of her conduct during the investigation, which began a month after Bowers sent out the message.
UVA spokeswoman Carol Wood says UVA is not permitted to discuss the specific details of Bowers’ case, but says UVA has maintained the same reasons for firing Bowers from the beginning.
“Our position has remained consistent and there has been no change from the document we gave her. Early reports in the news media were not correct,” Wood says.
Bowers has been unemployed since her termination on November 22. Because Bowers was fired for “misconduct,” she is not eligible for unemployment assistance.—Dan Pabst
Police chief to politicians: Get tough on Toms
Longo says serial rapist also a Peeping Tom
In the past year the Charlottesville and Albemarle police departments have each made three Peeping Tom arrests. While it may not be the most common offense, it’s a serious one, according to remarks City Police Chief Timothy Longo made to the Subcommittee on Crime in the Virginia House of Delegates.
Longo was speaking in support of a bill proposed by Del. Rob Bell (R-Albemarle) that would increase a third peeping conviction from a Class 1 misdemeanor to a Class 6 felony. The chief says that the serial rapist, who has been active in Charlottesville for almost 10 years, “is and has been a peeper.”
Should the bill become law, it would require anyone convicted within 10 years of three or more peeping incidents to register with the Virginia Sex Offender Registry. Selected excerpts from Longo’s remarks to the subcommittee follow.—Nell Boeschenstein
Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo’s remarks to the House Subcommittee on Crime:
“Peeping Toms have long been viewed as individuals with a perverted sense of reality, but harmless and certainly not viewed upon as dangerous. I can assure you, nothing is further from the truth… As many of you are aware the Charlottesville Police Department is currently pursuing a serial rapist that has plagued our community for almost a decade. He has left over seven women in his wake. Throughout this investigation, we have sought the counsel of numerous agencies… Each of these agencies introduced a common theme to the investigation: THIS GUY IS AND HAS BEEN A PEEPER. Here are but a few examples of what these notable agen-cies convey:
• ‘It is common for him to surveil his victims in advance. Peeping Tom activities are not uncommon.’
• ‘He spends his time window peeping in an attempt to not only identify future victims, but to satisfy his fantasies as well. During his peeping times, he will be on the outside and while watching the victim, he will be engaged in masturbatory activities.‘
• ‘He may have had prior arrests involving nuisance crimes, sexual offenses, Peeping Tom, etc. This type of offender does not wake up on Monday and decide to begin to rape; rather, he moves up a deviant continuum of “nuisance” type offenses, which include peeping. It is not uncommon for him to have been arrested for these types of offenses in the past.’
“[This legislation] is a perfect example of the potential this law would afford law enforcement.
“One of our rights as a citizen is our expectation to privacy afforded to us by the Constitution of the United States. When that right is taken from us by a voyeur, it is degrading and potentially life-altering for many victims. If we continue to maintain status quo and allow peepers to continue with consequences that yield the same result, we minimize the importance of our constitutional guarantee…”
Bell’s bills target sex offenders who’ve done their time
Can sex offenders ever pay enough for their crimes?
An 11th hour addition to Del. Rob Bell’s (R-Albemarle) 2006 legislative offensive on sex offenders proposes to bar those registered with the Virginia Sex Offender Registry from working at elementary and secondary schools. Moreover, in the most serious cases—such as rape or aggravated sexual battery of a child—the defendant would not be able to volunteer at schools, either.
There are currently 90 cons in the Charlottesville-Albemarle area listed with the State registry. According to the Sexual Assault Resource Agency, however, the reg-istry represents only 10 percent of sex of-fenders: 90 percent are acquaintances of the victim and their crimes are never reported.
Bell drafted the bill two weeks ago after hearing about a case in Madison in which a 10-time sex offender and felon visited a primary school dressed as Santa; school officials did not find out about his criminal past until after the fact. Although no children were harmed, Bell saw a loophole that needed closing.
Bell cites high rates of recidivism; a 2003 study by the Department of Justice, for instance, says 40 percent of sex offenders reoffend within a year of discharge. He also cites evidence that sex offenders don’t “age out” of their crimes, and Bell characterizes continued monitoring of sex offenders not as a “double standard” but as a “different standard.” According to Bell, whereas crimes like armed robbery are “a young man’s game,” a sex offender’s capacity for crime persists throughout his life.
While agreeing that sex offenses are among the most serious out there, UVA Law Professor Anne Coughlin warns that assumptions about those offenders that bar the possibility of rehabilitation are dangerous.
“We’re committed to labeling these people as forever corrupt,” says Coughlin, who believes the laws currently on the books are sufficient. “That’s a very strong statement. Are we confident?”
In addition to the school bill, Bell is the co-patron of another bill that would increase the mandatory minimum prison term to 25 years for sex crimes against children and require a minimum of three years of monitoring by a global positioning system after the offender had served time.
Whereas Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo says it is important to be aware of whether convicted sex offenders are interacting with children on school grounds, he “would rather not get into the whole GPS thing because that takes it to the next level.”
Coughlin agrees and points out that, in light of the recent disclosures that the Bush Ad-ministration has condoned mon-itoring the comments and move-ments of private citizens, the GPS question could create a Fourth Amendment issue.
“Certainly [GPS tracking is] the use of technology to gather information about people’s thoughts, comments, movements,” she says. “And this is all very much in the public eye.”—Nell Boeschenstein
Virginia Oil seeks permit for gas pumping
DEQ accepting public comment until February 8
The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and its Air Pollution Control Board have issued a notice inviting public comment on a permit for the Virginia Oil Company’s bulk petroleum facility located at 1100 Harris St. in Charlottesville.
The Virginia Oil Company applied for a permit that would officially limit the daily “gasoline throughput” at its facility to 75,700 liters, or 20,000 gallons. Janardan Pandey of the DEQ’s Valley Regional Office in Harrisonburg says that the facility has operated at its current location since 1974 and “there is no big expansion going on, this is just a preventative measure.”
Pandey says that the Virginia Oil Company facility already operates below the 20,000 gallon-a-day throughput standard. Still, Pandey says that “if the facility does more than 20,000 they have to meet some additional requirements—they have not exceeded [the 20,000 limit] and they are not going to exceed it; they’re doing this mainly to avoid federal standards.”
Pandey says that while State Operating Permits do not expire and do not have to be renewed, such facilities are inspected regularly. He does not anticipate any significant public opposition to the issuing of this permit.
The DEQ will be accepting public comment or request for a public hearing until February 8; they must be written and sent via e-mail, fax, or postal mail. For more information regarding the permit, contact Pandey at (540) 574-7817 or jrpandy@deq. virginia.gov.—Esther Brown
Places29 stays on schedule
County wants to tell more workers to take a hike
According to Judy Wiegand, Albe-marle County Senior Planner, Places29 is on schedule, as the Northern Development Areas Master Plan will be presented to the Planning Com-mission on February 14.
“We are working on three alternative framework plans for residents and the community to consider,” she says. The goal is to preserve the character of rural areas with good planning in the county’s four northern development areas, which form an 11-mile corridor on Route 29N between the 250 Bypass and the Greene County line.
Some of the County’s goals include: preserving existing neighborhoods; promoting the principles of the County’s Neighborhood Model; and improving the quality, diversity and affordability of new housing. The County Board of Supervisors will decide whether to adopt the 29N master plan sometime this spring.
The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is concentrating on the transportation component of the Places29 Master Plan. TJPDC director Harrison Rue sees Places29 as a “no-excuses plan” that will guide and connect land use and transportation.
“We can do a bet-ter job of design-ing roads for pe-destrians and bikes as well as transit,” he says. This could mean more parallel roads, such as extending Berkmar Drive up to Hollymead Town Center, or the Hillsdale extension that will divert traffic off Hydraulic Road. He points out that in Charlottesville’s more urban areas, between 16 percent to 48 percent of adults can walk to work. In the county this figure drops to 2 percent to 3 percent. Even the proposed Ruckersville Parkway will be considered as part of the planning process.
Brian Wheeler, executive director of Charlottesville Tomorrow, calls Places29 an important process for the County. “We need everyone at the table—property owners, the public and developers—so that expectations can be set and the County can work toward that plan.”
Wheeler says one study put the county’s 10-year need for retail at an additional 1 million square feet. With major commercial centers like Hollymead Town Center, Albemarle Place and Northtown Center all in the development pipeline, he questions whether the County should delay approval of another huge shopping center, the proposed North Pointe project, until the Places29 master plan is complete. The County Board of Supervisors will make the final decision on rezoning North Pointe from rural to highway commercial as part of the designated growth area. Public hearings on that topic are scheduled for March.—Jay Neelley
RWSA plans massive construction projects
Local sewer bills could get stinky unless the State steps in
The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has announced ambitious plans for new construction over the next few years.
On Monday, January 23, the RWSA—which manages the City and County’s reservoirs and wastewater treatment plants—introduced a five-year, $92 million capital improvement plan. The cost includes a $26 million project to expand the local water supply and $1 million for upgrades to the Crozet and Scottsville water systems.
“We are also watching a disconcerting trend of increasing prices in the construction industry due to higher global demands for construction materials…and very aggressive regulatory demands well beyond what has ever been tested in the marketplace,” writes RWSA director Tom Frederick in a report on the coming expenses. “These pressures will…challenge our efforts to keep wholesale rates competitive.”
A preliminary RWSA analysis predicts that wastewater rates could increase by up to 38 percent to meet the costs of the proposed five-year plan (see www.rivanna. org for more information).
One of the major new expenditures will be upgrades the RWSA must make to satisfy new State pollution regulations.
In November, the Virginia State Water Control Board passed strict limits on the amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus that wastewater treatment plants can discharge. The new limits, which have not yet taken effect, are designed to protect the James River and the Chesapeake Bay.
Nitrogen and phosphorus in the water are not toxic to people, but huge concentrations of the elements contribute to algae blooms that can deplete oxygen in water and kill fish.
According to Frederick, none of Vir-ginia’s 125 wastewater treatment plants are equipped to meet the new State regulations. The RWSA is asking the State to help pay for the upgrades, which Frederick says could cost the RWSA $18 million and will be one of Rivanna’s largest construction projects ever.
If the State does not help localities pay for the costs of meeting the new regulations, Frederick estimates that the upgrades could increase wholesale wastewater rates by 50 cents per 1,000 gallons, meaning that an average customer could see his bill go up by an extra $60 per year.—John Borgmeyer
New vendor rules take effect
Impact on the supply of Tibetan wallets yet to be seen
A new vendor policy for the Downtown Mall has now taken effect. Vendors can now buy spots in designated areas spread throughout the Mall. According to City zoning inspector Ryan Mickles, this change is needed because vendors did not space themselves properly, sometimes concentrating around the center of the Mall, sometimes directly in front of stores or along the fire lane.
The vendors can now choose to rent an assigned spot that will be theirs on a yearly basis. The other alternative is to rent unassigned spots that work on the principle of “first come, first served.” In both scenarios there are two types of spaces: one is 10’5"x10’5" and the other is 5’x10’5".
The rents for assigned Mall spots vary from $600 to $800 a year, depending upon location (Central Place is the most coveted, and most expensive) and size. As for the unassigned spots, rent varies from $450 to $500 for the same considerations. This is a change from the $400 rent that vendors paid until last year.
There are 31 spaces, of which 21 are larger and 10 smaller. One six-year vendor, who asked not to be named, said it’s hard to tell how the changes have affected the vending scene. “It looks like there are less vendors, but it could just be the weather,” she says. “I think it was good for vendors who have been here for a long time, but I’m not sure how well it will work for others.”—Priya Mahadevan
Dominion’s proposal meets some anti-nuke demand
New reactor design is kind to striped bass
Earlier this month Dominion Virginia Power submitted a revised proposal for a new nuclear reactor to be built on Lake Anna in Louisa County, 30 miles from Charlottesville.
Dominion runs two nuclear reactors on the 9,600-acre lake. In December 2004, Dominion became the first U.S. company to receive a regulatory recommendation for a new reactorsite permit. Local anti-nuclear activists as well as the Washington, D.C. group Public Citizen protested the new plant. Another group of Lake Anna homeowners, called Friends of Lake Anna, formed to say they were not against nuclear power, but they asked Dominion to mitigate the environmental impacts for the two new reactors the company plans to build on the lake.
It seems the activism has done some good. Dominion’s latest proposal marks a change to a more environmentally friendly nuclear reactor—maybe.
The dangers of meltdown and radioactive waste aside, nuclear reactors have two major environmental impacts—their cooling towers use enormous amounts of water, and they release heated water back into the lake. The low water levels hurt recreation, while higher temperatures can harm fish.
Dominion now proposes to use two different systems to cool the new reactor. One system uses less water, while the other system keeps the water cooler. “We’re in the process of analyzing Dominion’s proposal,” says Melissa Kemp of Public Citizen. “We’re trying to determine whether this would indeed reduce the thermal impacts on the lake.” She says the proposal is vague about how Dominion will use the two new towers, so it is unclear whether the company’s proposal will really solve concerns about lake depth and temperature.—John Borgmeyer
GENERAL ASSEMBLY WATCH
Deeds backs anti-gay amendment
A proposed amendment to the Virginia Constitution that would ban same-sex marriages in the Commonwealth sailed through the Senate last week on a vote of 28-11. Charlottesville’s Senator, Creigh Deeds, a Democrat, voted for the amendment that critics say is unnecessary and dangerously vague.
Conservatives designed the amendment to Virginia’s 230-year-old Bill of Rights to prohibit gay marriage in the state, and prohibit the government from recognizing gay marriages or civil unions performed in other states. The bill is an insult to the spirit of freedom and equality enshrined in Virginia’s historic Bill of Rights, say critics. Virginia already has a law banning gay marriage, and critics say that the proposed amendment’s vague wording could be used to void business contracts and other legal arrangements between people of the same sex.
Supporters say the amendment is necessary because legal gay marriages could “destroy” heterosexual marriage.
The Senate vote means the referendum will go before Virginia voters on November 7.
When they outlaw guns, only delegates will have guns
Just when you thought, Hey, maybe the House of Delegates isn’t wilder than the Old West, here comes pistol-packin’ Del. John Reid. The Republican from Henrico County accidentally shot off his .380 handgun in the General Assembly building last week.
Reid, 63, was unloading the semi-automatic pistol, which he says he carries for protection, when it accidentally went off on Thursday, January 26. By a zany coincidence, the projectile lodged safely in the bulletproof vest that Reid keeps hanging in his office (it was a gag gift from the Henrico County Sheriff).
The 16-year delegate apologized on the House floor. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that a list was circulating among delegates of phrases to avoid in Reid’s presence, such as “take your best shot.”
Presenting the year’s dumbest bill (so far)
Last year it was the so-called droopy- drawers bill that would have required kids to pull up their pants. This year, the “I-can’t-believe-he-did-that” bill is the “Home Serenity and Tranquility Act,” proposed by Del. Robert Hull (D-Falls Church).
Hull apparently introduced the bill at the request of one suburban family who wanted legislators to silence the sounds of children playing near their home. The bill would prohibit the use of athletic fields before 8am and after 6pm, and on Sundays, without the “unanimous written consent of the affected homeowners” within 65 yards of the field. “It’s the bad bill of the year,” says Charlottesville Dele-gate David Toscano.
As written, the bill would have made it almost impossible for children to play organized sports, even on public fields paid for by taxpayers. Not surprisingly, angry letters from soccer moms (and, to a lesser extent, the Frisbee dog lobby) poured into the General Assembly from across the Common-wealth—so many that even Hull himself was forced to say he had put the bill in “by request” and did not necessarily support it, either, according to The Daily Progress.—John Borgmeyer