The Charlottesville area is smack in the middle of what Public Works Director Judith Mueller called the worst drought since 2002. With scant rainfall in August, typically the area’s driest time of year, the city and county declared a Drought Warning on August 16, complete with mandatory restrictions on watering plants, washing cars and serving drinking water at restaurants. Since then, the total demand for water has dropped 7.9 percent, according to Thomas Frederick of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA). But even combined with last week’s rainy days, that doesn’t mean the warning will be lifted anytime soon.
"We won’t be able to determine the time frame [for ending the warning] in advance," says Frederick. "We continue to look at the risk assessment of running low on water supply based on the current weather conditions."
The 7.9-percent drop in water usage exceeded RWSA’s goal of 5 percent. Frederick says that stream levels, after running as low as 15 percent of normal volume in the past two weeks, are back up to 28 percent. Area reservoirs, however, are down. The Sugar Hollow Reservoir is the lowest, sitting at 7′ below run-over.
If current conditions don’t change, the area could move from a Drought Warning to a Drought Emergency, which would impose tighter water-use restrictions. The goal for water-demand reduction would rise to 20 percent.
"That’s pretty challenging," says Frederick. "If we get some rain within the next 30 days, we may not have to go to an emergency. If rainfalls stay scarce, then unfortunately that will increase the risk that we could have to."
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Like a child leaving the nest, negotiating with her parents for more autonomy, UVA is seeing that increased independence also means a stingier Daddy State-bucks. The Commonwealth fell short in its budget this year, and most state agencies are seeing cuts at around 5 percent. But UVA, as a school that has restructured its relationship with the state, will see a 7.5 percent cut in state funding, which translates into $11.4 million.
Colette Sheehy, UVA’s vice president for management and budget, says that UVA has until September 10 to submit plans for trimming the $11 million, which will likely be a combination of cuts and some reserve spending.
"We were warned of it several months ago," says Sheehy. "It was a little hard to gauge how serious that would be. It’s hard to take some permanent cuts this year, since your faculty is hired and your services are in motion."
Only 9 percent of UVA’s revenue comes from the state, and $11.4 million is a mere 0.5 percent of the $2.1 billion budget. Presumably the University doesn’t want to start dipping into the money it has raised as part of the $3 billion capital campaign, so to help UVA get its thinking cap straight, C-VILLE came up with a few ideas for filling the gap.
Host a car wash. Why wouldn’t the classic high school deus ex machina work for the nation’s No. 2 public university? A topless former Marine, Leonard Sandridge, could provide the eye candy, while Larry Sabato could use his mustache as a chamois.
Turn the Lawn into a B&B. Kick out all those whiney upperclassmen who don’t seem to appreciate the value of fundraising and give wealthy alumni the thrill of walking outside to shower in front of gawking tourists.
Impose bad music fees. Taking a page from the Commonwealth’s transportation plan, UVA could levy $1,000 fines on frats for reckless Bon Jovi playing or $2,400 fines for deejaying while impaired.
Gut the Rotunda for a yard sale. There’s got to be something of value in there.
Send Frank Batten an early Christmas card. After he donated $100 million all at once, what’s a mere $11 mil?
Sell Thomas Jefferson’s baseball card collection. Mama Cav found it gathering dust in the basement of Old Cabell Hall and was going to throw it out anyway.
Raffle a chance to coach the football team against Duke. Give that rabid Wahoo fan a thrill of a lifetime and a guaranteed win. Actually, Al Groh really needs that one for his record. But he might be willing to sit out the Virginia Tech game.
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UVA students, faculty and staff, excluding the health system, are beginning the academic year with new ID cards, and a conundrum.
Brad Sayler is concerned that UVA is now taking driver’s license info for the new IDs—another bit of personal data that could be compromised.
The cards, according to Shirley Payne, director for security coordination and policy, are part of an overall initiative by the University to discontinue the usage of social security numbers. In place of these are University ID numbers, created after the bar codes on the backs of driver’s licenses are scanned (unless a passport or military ID is presented as a form of identification). This process, says Payne, "adds assurance that we are giving a card to the right person."
The conundrum is this: While the elimination of social security numbers takes care of one personal-identity security concern, the inclusion of driver’s license numbers into the University database introduces another. And UVA has had some major breaches in its recent past. It came to light in April that hackers accessed personal info, including social security numbers, of 5,735 current and former UVA faculty members. Last October, UVA’s Student Financial Services inadvertently sent 632 e-mails containing students’ personal info and social security numbers to the wrong students.
Not surprisingly, Payne says the driver’s license numbers will be kept confidential. But that doesn’t appease Brad Sayler, who’s worked for 15 years doing computer support for the civil engineering department. The University has "taken two steps forward and one step back," in Sayler’s opinion. "The University’s track record clearly indicates that they don’t have the ability to stop all hack attempts," he says.
But there’s more to Sayler’s beef than concerns about security. "They’re not telling that they’re adding [driver’s license numbers] to the database," he says. "That’s what’s so disconcerting about the whole thing." He doesn’t understand why the University needs to store the numbers. "Why can’t they just look at the driver’s license?" Sayler wonders.
And there’s something else the University isn’t publicizing: the fact that upon an individual’s request, the scanned information will be removed from the database. After hearing second-hand from an ITC representative that this was possible, Sayler himself returned to Sponsors Hall, where the ID cards are distributed, and had his information removed. Still, he says, "there’s no way of verifying that it actually was taken off."
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
At Buford Middle School, optimism was up this year even before parents found out that the school, for the first time in four years, met the performance goals imposed by the federal government. "The parents just seem to have a very positive reaction to the new principal [Eric Johnson], and to the school in general," says Sumner Brown, parent of an eighth grader and president of the Buford PTO. "You can just feel it. They seem to feel a lot better about it even before people heard about this."
While August 22 was the big day for students, August 23 was almost as big for administrators. That’s when the state issued preliminary "report cards" for Virginia schools, revealing which met all 29 criteria set by the federal government and made what is called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
It was a first for Buford—and for Charlottesville City Schools as a whole—to make AYP. Many of the criteria for AYP come from English and math scores on state tests, as well as figures like attendance rates. At least 73 percent of students in a district have to pass English tests and 71 percent have to pass math tests in order to make AYP.
But while one middle school celebrated, many other area middle schools got disappointing news. Four of five Albemarle County middle schools did not make AYP. Where many districts run into trouble is that all sub-groups—such as African-American students, "Limited English Proficiency" students or special ed students—have to hit the passing rate. As a whole, county schools fell short because not enough "disadvantaged" students passed English and math tests.
"In math, we missed it by 11 students. Eleven," says Bruce Benson, the county’s assistant superintendent for student learning. "We have 12,460 students, and we missed it by 11. In reading, we missed it by 55, which in a division our size isn’t a large number of students. But it really emphasizes the issue that every kid counts. …We’re going to make it next year." "We know that our middle schools are a place that we need to put additional resources," Benson says. "We’ve already begun conversations with our principals that will cause our data to look different when we have this conversation next year."
Stakes are even higher for schools like the city’s Johnson Elementary, a Title I school that receives significant federal funding because 85 percent of students are considered poor. As the federal government has so much funding leverage, it can impose significant penalties on underperforming Title I schools, including taking them over if they don’t meet standards in five years.
In the 2005-06 school year, Johnson did not make AYP. But for 06-07, 89 percent of students passed English tests, up from 68, and 87 percent passed math tests, up from 67. "[Teacher] morale is really at a high level, and people are really excited," says Johnson’s new principal, Vernon Bock. "The results are great, but we can’t rest until we’re at 100 percent, because if we’re not, there are students who are not passing and not achieving."
The state itself failed to make the grade, largely because of the limited English students.
Local schools that didn’t meet federal standards in 2006-07
There was a lot that could’ve distracted Mike Sager from his 51st birthday. A writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, Sager was on assignment in Las Vegas with Kobe Bryant, the L.A. Lakers guard, when August 17 rolled by; his latest collection of narrative nonfiction pieces (Revenge of the Donut Boys, in which Sager embeds himself with Roseanne Barr long enough to chat with her multiple personalities and spends Christmas Eve with Fredericks of Hollywood model Brooke Burke while she contemplates gifts under her tree) was released days before.
So Curtain Calls was surprised to hear from Sager at all, much less after receiving word that he’d been stopped by security for travelling with an expired license ("Coming home from Vegas yesterday, the sec guard jacks me up: ‘Your ID has expired.’")
Esquire’s lead man: Mike Sager talks Roseanne, local ties and tactics for his latest collection of stories.
Here’s the local payoff (or what Sager might call parts of his "pointillist profile"): The Washington Post/Rolling Stone/GQ alumnus has quite a few ties to our neck of the woods. Born at the UVA Hospital (delivered by his med student father’s obstetrics professor), Sager lived in Charlottesville for a few years before his family moved to Baltimore and, though accepted by UVA, opted to attend Emory to play soccer. Sager’s wife, Rebekah, made her own local mark; she spent the summer of 1992 performing at the Heritage Repertory Theatre (darker than a dungeon this season).
Sager calls 15 minutes early, and talks with Curt for 45 minutes or so about being turned away from Kobe’s home and personally turning down an invitation to Gary Condon‘s sanctuary while on assignment in connection to Sager’s anthropological approach to journalism.
"You want to observe your subjects in sanctu," Sager says. "It’s like dating: You want to get in their bedroom."
Ready for some promiscuity, folks? Let’s get naked and start bed-hoppin’!
Good cop, bad cop
"If you want to see Driving Miss Daisy, there’s a good chance it’s playing somewhere," says Kevin Postupack, founder and director (or self-described "benevolent dictator") of the Kronos gallery in Staunton. "If you want to see, say, early Sam Shepard, it’s hard to find a place. So I thought, ‘We’ll be the center for that.’"
Sure, early Sam Shepard. And art. And maybe poetry nights, opera, heavy metal, two dudes playing Keanu Reeves performing Shakespeare and three performers in pink, neon-fetus duds for a play called "Deliver Us Not, or Birth, Where is thy Sting?" which incorporates garden hose umbilical cords and an elevator shaft birth canal (and was a "packed house" at 30 or so audience members each night).
Staunton’s madhouse of multimedia, Kronos makes room for opera, poetry, paints and punk rockers. But who are the beasts behind this behemoth?
And on Friday, August 24, a reading from the novella Marsupial Man, by an author identified as only "PSM" but who is remarkably straightforward regarding his identity ("We’ll skip ahead: My name is Paul McCormick"), his book (he tells Curt it will "hit you over the head—parricide, drugs, alcohol, suicide…") and his sales record ("Maybe 45 copies over the last few months").
McCormick’s inspiration stems from work in psychiatric hospitals and seven years working at an unspecified police department. So which department is the lucky one?
"That’s where my sheriff would draw the line," McCormick says before CC can even finish the question, explaining that some people might fail to understand that "fiction is fiction."
Squeamish? Agreed.
Down in front
Proving yet again that you can’t dim the lights with a handful of bright filmmakers in the room, Light House Studio will host its sixth annual Youth Film Festival at Live Arts on September 7. The evening’s films include a music video by The Dreamers, a teenage quartet of girls from the I Have a Dream Foundation that recorded the song "Somebody" at the Music Resource Center (with a hand from locals Damani Harrison of the Beetnix and Heather Maxwell) and 16-year-old fashion designer-hopeful Quintin Franklyn‘s film, "Sew What?" winner of the Listen Up! national documentary prize.
Video clips from movies that will appear at Light House’s Youth Film Festival.
Bag o’ SWAG
Curt was thrilled to receive the press release from the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA announcing the Build-A-Bear Workshop‘s $5,000 grant to encourage the spaying and neutering of stray animals (read: C-VILLE’s culture section is pro cat-stration), in which "Foundation Bear" Matt Oldani stresses that "animal welfare is an important concern to the guests of Build-A-Bear Workshop." In CC’s opinion, the release raises a few provocative questions, namely:
1. Isn’t it funny that a toy company that encourages the creation of genderless animals supports spaying Sparky?
2. There’s a person that gets paid to be a professional "Foundation Bear"?
Dear Ace: It’s hot and I don’t have a pool. Can I bathe in public fountains?—Steve Freefontaine
Steve: Nothing beats the heat quite like wallowing in filthy water. Just ask any water buffalo. And hey, if you’re in a fountain, you can probably make quite a racket out of collecting the coins people toss in. By doing so, as Ace understands it, you’ll also be harvesting any wishes associated with said coins. It’s simple sorcery. So yeah, bathing in public fountains is a pretty sweet deal. But is it legal? Ace checked with Ric Barrick, Charlottesville city spokesperson, to find out.
Think before you leap in: The water in public fountains like this one on the Downtown Mall may be less pristine than it looks.
"It depends on where it is," explains Barrick. "If it’s on the Downtown Mall, for example, that isn’t considered a parkland, so we can’t impose stringent regulations. We can’t force people to wear shirts"—though Ace reckons maybe they should anyway, given some of the folks he’s spotted waddling down the Mall—"or stay out of public areas." Basically, the city really doesn’t want you swimming laps in their fountains, but they can’t do anything about it if you so choose. Unless, of course, you’re indecently exposing yourself. If, say, you’re making your own private fountain in a public fountain, one of Charlottesville’s Finest will probably be throwing a pair of bracelets on you faster than you can say, "But officer, it’s perfectly natural!"
But (and there’s always a but, though not the kind that’ll get you arrested under decency laws, har har) Barrick advises against even the most Victorianly attired dip in a public fountain. "I certainly don’t want to encourage people to do it," says the city spokesperson. "If I saw someone in a fountain, I would probably personally go up to them and let them know that the water’s not filtered and not particularly clean." Ever notice that it’s actually pretty difficult to climb into some of these fountains? That’s largely because the city doesn’t want you catching malaria from the mosquitoes that breed on the surface of standing water, or any other nasty disease that might be lurking in the murk that settles at the bottom of fountains. But if the heat’s really getting to you, Steve, Ace recommends a long sit-down on your front porch with a mint julep or seven. You’ll stop noticing that 99 percent humidity in no time.
More out of curiosity about atmosphere than a specific craving, we decided to lunch at The Pointe, which is the Omni Hotel’s oft-overlooked—and very acute—eatery. From inside the angular, formal dining area, through acres of shaded glass that define the seven-story atrium, the Downtown Mall was visible but seemed a world away. And the meal—a baby spinach salad with crab meat, mandarin oranges, red peppers and Virginia peanuts—was hotel-fancy too: heavy silverware, butter served in balls and a very attentive waiter. It all seemed like a visit to an alternate, but nearby, universe.
Won a commitment from the State Board of Education to become one of the first states to include graduation rates as a factor in school accreditation. This supports schools that work to retain students, raising awareness (and the funds the accompany it) of public school retention.
Educated social workers and foster-care providers about the most effective ways to promote education opportunities for children in their care. JustChildren also helped to educate policy makers about the need to promote educational stability for such a vulnerable group of children.
Served as a community organizer to build a core of parent advocates in low-income communities. JustChildren provides them with tools and information needed to improve the education for at-risk children.
Received funds form the Legal Services Corporation of Virginia to become the statewide support center for education advocacy for all legal aid programs in the Commonwealth. JustChildren will provide training to attorneys through the state, manage an education-law task force and listserv, and lead policy reform for low-income students.
Been selected as one of only eight child advocacy organizations to participate in the National Children’s Law Network. Because of this, the Youth Law Center provides funds for increased resources to assist children in the Richmond area involved in the juvenile justice system.
Become a part of the National Campaign 4 Youth Justice, which funds a full-time attorney working with JustChildern, who is exploring ways to reduce the num-ber of juveniles transferred to the Virginia adult correctional system.
Began publishing its handbook "Helping You Help Your Child" for parents and service providers.
Worked with the American Bar Association to publish a report that details the Virginia juvenile justice system’s shortcomings.
Partnered with UVA’s School of Law to run the Child Advocacy Clinic, which allows law students to work with many of the issues facing children in Virginia.
Positive statewide system reforms:
The 2006 state budget amendment that increased per-pupil funding for the Virginia Pre-School Initiative.
The 2007 funding to improve educational opportunities for children in foster care.
The 2005 legislation to insure children leaving Juvenile Correctional Centers received mental health services.
The 2006 Board of Education requirement that children leaving Juvenile Correctional and Detention Centers be immediately enrolled in school.
The 2005-06 legislation requiring children to have access to legal counsel at their initial detention hearing in juvenile delinquency proceedings.
The 2007 legislation making automatic transfers of juveniles to Circuit Court less frequent. This reduced the numbers of children tried, convicted and confined as adults.
Even Mayor David Brown admits that bringing up the idea during a drought warning may not have been the best move, marketing-wise. But Brown says it’s an idea that he believes in. So at the end of the last City Council meeting, he proposed that the city stop buying bottled water.
Bottled water, begone! City Mayor David Brown wants Charlottesville to take a small symbolic step by refusing to buy bottled water with city funds.
It’s a largely symbolic gesture, says Brown, since the city provides bottled water on a small scale, at meetings, during city events and through vending machines. But it’s a small symbol that highlights a much larger issue.
If the city stops buying water, it would be following the lead of cities like San Francisco, which has cut off city funds for bottled water, and New York, which is running a public campaign to urge its residents to drink tap water. Chicago is considering a 25-cent tax on bottled water.
According to Harper’s Magazine, an estimated 16,000 barrels of oil were used last year to make the bottled-water containers sold in the United States. It takes twice the amount of water used to make the plastic bottles than the containers actually hold.
"It’s wasteful," says Brown. "The idea is to follow the lead of some other cities. We wouldn’t ban [bottled water], and we wouldn’t ban people bringing it in. It’s more like we’re bringing it to people’s attention. The city would basically try to set an example."
The idea met with skepticism from other Council members. At the meeting, councilors ultimately decided to have the city’s Sustainability Committee look at the idea. "I don’t think I did a very persuasive job," Brown says, laughing. "I don’t think Council was real negative, but I don’t think they were ready to move on it. Plus I brought it up late at night. That wasn’t a great idea."
Brown’s proposal is just one move in a larger trend gaining momentum across the nation at a part of the Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The initiative calls for cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels suggested in the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement the federal government has yet to sign. Not surprisingly, bottled-water manufacturers aren’t big supports of the trend to phase out the ubiquitous plastic bottles of water.
"The problem is, symbolic gestures can be hurtful," says Chris Saxman of Shenandoah Spring Water, who points out that Shenandoah’s building is geothermally heated and each five-gallon bottle they sell is reused and recycled. "We contribute to the economy. We produce something that otherwise would not be produced. It confounds us why we’re being singled out."
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
It’s easy to miss the graffiti on the side of the Lewis, Clark and Sacagawea statue. You have to be pretty close to even see it—a jagged black box with lines fanning off the top that brings Chinese characters to mind.
Still, it’s there, and it’s been there since 2004, when a tagger spraypainted what Charlottesville spokesperson Ric Barrick describes as a "peace sign" onto the granite just below a crouching Sacagawea. Regardless of any social or artistic criticisms the statue has received, it seems odd that the mark still remains on one of Charlottesville’s most visible historical monuments. So what’s it still doing there?
It’s not so much a problem of budget or bureaucracy. Barrick says there had actually been a previous attempt to remove the graffiti shortly after it was reported in 2004, though a variety of chemical solutions were unsuccessful. City maintenance workers faced a challenge: How to remove paint from the statue’s porous granite surface without marring it for good?
"We have taken every measure that we can without damaging the statue," says Mike Svetz, the director of the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department. The city went as far as sandblasting in 2005, according to Barrick, without luck.
The city hasn’t given up hope. Svetz says that property maintenance crews will try removing the graffiti again this fall with a new batch of chemical solutions and more sandblasting if necessary.
While it’s apparent that the city wants to see its statue restored, this isn’t the first time that graffiti has struck this monument, or its confederate cousin, Robert E. Lee, whose figure adorns Lee Park. Even though these sites are the occasional victims of vandalism, the political commentary behind these acts is not always well established. As with the Lewis, Clark and Sacagawea statue, Barrick says that the city "did not locate the person who damaged the statue and cannot determine why or if it was targeted."
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.
