This year, a few stories did a number on us. In return, we decided to put a number on those same stories. C-VILLE scrutinized Charlottesville’s landmark events, and ranked each for its impact during the last year and implications for the next. From happenings that struck our community dumb with dismay to those that rejuvenated our spirits, the stories represented here not only captivated us in 2010. In many cases, they form the foundations for our community in 2011.
1. City Council supports Downtown business efforts to silence homeless on the Mall
If home is where the heart is, then homeless people found little love in Charlottesville this year. When the arrival of a new day shelter offered a growing homeless population a gathering place near Charlottesville’s picturesque Downtown Mall, a few business owners launched a campaign to keep beggars out of the frame—an effort that could launch a First Amendment battle in 2011.
That shelter, the Haven, began 2010 as a symbol of generosity—purchased, renovated and gifted by filmmaker Tom Shadyac, and opened by the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless (TJACH) one month after former Governor Tim Kaine proposed $450,000 in cuts to the state’s Homeless Intervention Program. The former First Street Church, located one block from the Mall, offered resources from showers and food to health advice and legal advocacy. It seemed like a good fit for a town that prides itself on a commitment to social justice—a progressive haven, if you will, in a conservative state.
By mid-year, however, a very vocal crowd began to wonder what the Mall would look like if Shadyac’s gift were returned.
Following the Haven’s arrival, some Downtown business owners bent the ears of city officials about what they claimed was an associated “surge” in aggressive panhandlers. In fact, police records showed no panhandling citations on the Mall in nearly three years. Yet the all-Democratic City Council sided with business owners’ interests, and unanimously approved an ordinance that banned any kind of begging within 50′ of the Mall’s Second and Fourth street intersections.
Free speech advocates were quick to denounce the ordinance as a violation of a constitutionally protected right. “Sidewalks are traditional public forums where individual expression is protected by the First Amendment,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. Local attorney Jeffrey Fogel questioned the constitutionality of council’s decision and announced intentions to see the ordinance revised.
In November, a giving campaign developed by TJACH and the Downtown Business Association collapsed when the two organizations couldn’t agree on a slogan. The phrase “Support the homeless, not panhandling” lumped the Mall’s vilified beggars in with the Haven’s population. It also offended members of TJACH as derogatory, and both groups went back to their respective corners.
“What could be simpler than one member of our society giving another member of our society something that they need?” asked Kaki Dimmock, TJACH’s executive director, after the meeting. The answer in 2010? Move the offending individuals out of commerce’s path.
For more on this story, click here and here.
2. Water debate wreaks havoc on city-county cooperation
The year’s second biggest story will likely top the list in 2011. While debates about solid waste services (No. 22) and a budget-confounding revenue share (No. 11) strained the hull of city-county negotiations this year, it was the debate over the long-delayed Community Water Supply Plan which ultimately cracked, flooded and sank any possibility of cooperation in 2010.
When City Council unanimously voted in September to “readopt and reaffirm its prior June 2, 2008 approval” of the plan, it added—here comes the hairball—“modifications,” including maintenance dredging of the South Fork Reservoir and a phased build-up of the Lower Ragged Mountain Dam. Less than 24 hours after council’s “reaffirmation” that looked a lot like a new plan, those modifications prompted the resignation of one county water official and plugged up communication lines even worse than before.
But it takes more than one dump to clog a drain. In May, Schnabel Engineering presented city and county officials with a proposal for a new Ragged Mountain Dam—part of the original water supply plan—at a projected cost of $28 million to $36 million. One week later, the City of Charlottesville hired Black & Veatch engineering company to study the feasibility of building on top of the existing dam.
With differing reports to support differing opinions, Albemarle and Charlottesville officials set off in different directions. On October 21, the county agreed to pay Schnabel $869,000 for a final design. This month, Black & Veatch reviewed and increased cost estimates for fixing up the old dam, which Norris interpreted as an endorsement of the city’s amendments. However, a host of organizations—pro-business and pro-environment, hailing from city and county alike—promptly united to oppose Council’s modified plan and reaffirm support for a new dam, proving the waves of discontentment remain choppy.
For more on this story, click here and here.
3. Yeardley Love’s violent death shocks UVA
At 2:15 am on May 3, the year’s most lurid crime case unfolded when police discovered the bloodied body of Yeardley Love, who had allegedly been beaten to death by UVA athlete George Huguely. Huguely, like Love a lacross player, withdrew from UVA following his incarceration, was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of his former girlfriend. At that time, his lawyers, Rhonda Quagliana and Francis McQ. Lawrence, characterized Love’s death as “an accident with a tragic outcome.”
Amidst an unprecedented media frenzy, the University community was left to face the hard reality of Huguely’s documented history of violence and underage drinking, attested to by police records and witness accounts. The inaction or unfamiliarity of UVA officials with regards to Huguely’s violent past left the entire community asking whether Love’s horrible death could have been prevented.
The circumstances surrounding Love’s death prompted a series of domestic violence campaigns and a fundamental change in University policies. After learning of police run-ins of Huguely and other lacross players, UVA, under the new leadership of President Teresa Sullivan, instituted an on-your-honor self-reporting system. All UVA students are required to disclose any arrests or convictions before they access their e-mail or course materials via the school’s computer networks. According to Dean of Students Allen Groves, a portion of the screen will remind students of their obligation to report new incidents within 72 hours of occurrence. Student athletes, however, have only 24 hours to report any infraction. Failure to do so could result in expulsion.
Huguely remains in solitary confinement at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail, awaiting a January 21 hearing. His attorneys, however, recently laid the groundwork for a defense based on an alternate cause of death, tied to medicine found in Love’s room. Turn to page 9 for the latest on a case we’ll track closely in 2011.
For more on this story, click here and here.
4. Meadow Creek Parkway opens in county, while city portions lag behind lawsuits
After 43 years of contentious debate over the legality and scope of the project, the Albemarle County portion of the Meadow Creek Parkway (MCP) opened on October 12 as a six-week temporary detour off of Melbourne Road, while work was completed on the northern connection of the parkway at East Rio Road.
But any who thought completion of the county portion would silence MCP opposition are sorely mistaken. Debate over the water supply plan (No. 2) aside, the opening of the two-lane road is another obvious example of the political disconnect between the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
As if in a parallel, yet distant universe, the city portions of MCP—the McIntire Road Extended (MRE) and the 250 Interchange—are still stuck behind a slew of procedural hurdles and legal lawsuits brought by the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park, a group of residents decrying the destruction of what some call the “Central Park” of Charlottesville. Since the start of construction of the county road, the group pressed legally to have it stopped. Although the injunction was not successful, the exposure gave the coalition support and money to keep its cause alive.
Now, coalition members are preparing for a new season of legal challenges. They believe the environmental impact of the two-mile road will be devastating for the city residents, due to increased traffic, noise pollution and the mutilation of the city’s biggest open space.
For more on this story, click here and here.
5. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli sets us back. Way, way back.
It took Ken Cuccinelli eight years to move from state senator to Attorney General of Virginia, a post he assumed in January. After a matter of months on the job, it became clear that the Commonwealth might need another eight years to unscrew itself once Cuccinelli leaves his post. In no time flat, Cooch rolled out a series of legal opinions, lawsuits and public comments that managed to offend gay people, academics, those seeking health care and people who like to breathe.
He filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, claiming the agency’s findings were based on “unreliable, unverifiable and doctored science.” He promised to do the same against the EPA’s fuel efficiency standards. He told Virginia colleges to remove “sexual orientation” from their nondiscrimination charters as a matter of procedure. He covered the exposed breast of the goddess Virtus on pins bearing Virginia’s state seal as a matter of—what, prudishness? Rampant social conservatism? Beats us.
As part of his ongoing efforts to debunk scientific evidence of global warming, Cuccinelli launched a fraud investigation of former UVA climate scientist Michael Mann, and demanded that UVA turn over grant information—a move criticized by researchers for posing a threat to academic freedom. When a judge set Cooch’s first demand aside, the AG filed a second one, and cited a single study in Mann’s CV as his justification.
Feeling ill? It gets worse: On the day that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Cuccinelli promptly filed a lawsuit, claiming that health care reform violated the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Less than a year later, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson gave Cooch an early Christmas when he declared the act’s individual mandate unconstitutional.
Before Hudson’s ruling, Cuccinelli wrote on his website that a loss in court could mean “the end of federalism as we have known it for over 222 years.” He then urged readers to “unsubscribe from anti-constitutionally biased newspapers.” If you’re so inclined, stay tuned to C-VILLE for continued Cooch coverage—protected under the First Amendment.
For more on this story, click here and here.
6. Martha Jefferson Hospital sells Downtown site, merges with bigger player
Martha Jefferson Hospital (MJH) officials were busy in 2010. In a span of a couple of weeks, MJH first announced it had sold its northeast Downtown location to local developers Octagon Partners, and agreed to merge with Sentara, a nonprofit health system that generated $1.7 billion in revenue in 2009.
We’ll have to wait and see if Octagon Partners and MJH’s Locust Avenue campus are an ideal match. However, the sale of the property has eased neighborhood worries. Octagon has a reputation for successfully rehabbing historic structures and is behind some of Downtown Charlottesville’s most modern retrofits. Residents are relieved that there won’t be a big, vacant blob in the center of their lively neighborhood.
For more on this story, click here and here.
7. Noisy neighbors silence Belmont and Fontaine restaurants
The tale of the Belmont noise controversy began with a zoning request for a restaurant and ended with a 55-decibel limit noise ordinance, a fugitive (No. 18) and a migraine.
Andrew Ewell and Hannah Pittard wanted to open Southern Crescent, a small, upscale Southern restaurant. Nearby residents, worried about more nighttime ruckus, indecent behavior and property depreciation, came out full force to oppose an additional restaurant and picketed City Council to change the nature of the neighborhood’s nightlife.
It turned out that the restaurant actually troubling neighbors was Bel Rio, whose unresponsive co-owner was operating a music venue there. City Council gave Ewell and Pittard their zoning variance for 814 Hinton Ave., but succumbed to Belmont neighbors, too, by twice lowering the after-11pm decibel level. It now stands at 55, the level of normal conversation. For good measure, Council threw the Fry’s Spring neighborhood into the mix, too.
After all that and within months, Bel Rio was a non-issue as controversial co-owner Jim Baldi disappeared, accused of defrauding other local restaurateurs of hundreds of thousands of dollars with his accounting business. In December, Baldi was indicted on two counts of embezzlement by an Albemarle Court grand jury. His former business partner is suing him for fraud, to the tune of $300,000 in punitive and compensatory damages.
And Baldi is still on the loose. Had City Council waited the fight out, Baldi would have been gone and the noise issue would have been resolved without so many headaches and such far-reaching measures.
For more on this story, click here and here.
8. Unshockingly, Robert Hurt wins the Fifth District
With Republican Robert Hurt’s win in the Fifth District Congressional race against freshman incumbent Tom Perriello, Charlottesville retained its status as a liberal outpost, a blue dot in a sea of red. On November 2, 57 percent of Albemarle residents and 80 percent of Charlottesville residents went to the polls and voted for the Democrat, Perriello. In the entire district, 110,562 did the same, but the majority went the other way, returning the gerrymandered Fifth to its natural order as a Republican district.
Judging from the overwhelming dissatisfaction of the policies instituted in Washington, D.C., Perriello’s loss was predictable. And though President Obama’s visit to Charlottesville just a few days before the election brought a strong surge of Democratic enthusiasm to the blue island, it was not enough to overcome the Fifth District conservatives.
Curiously, however, the same group that proved itself powerful on the national scene failed to garner much power here. The Tea Party didn’t endorse Hurt and stayed out of the fray, even when a spat between Independent candidate Jeffrey Clark and Hurt prompted the latter to refuse any participation in debates where Clark would be present.
For more on this story, click here and here.
9. Lead proves unfruitful as Morgan Harrington case remains unsolved
Nearly a year after the decomposed body of Morgan Harrington was found in a remote part of a 750-acre Albemarle County farm, state police still have no suspect in custody for the homicide of the 20-year-old Virginia Tech student. Neither has there been mention of how Harrington made the 10-mile journey to Anchorage Farm from the Copeley Road bridge, where she was last seen alive after leaving a concert at the John Paul Jones Arena.
Harrington’s death remains a gruesome specter, a “Who killed Laura Palmer?”-type mystery that resurfaces at vulnerable moments. When a 26-year-old Fauquier County woman—also blonde and blue-eyed, similar in height and weight—vanished following a Phish concert in Portsmouth, many feared a repeat of Harrington’s disappearance. When she resurfaced, safe, at the band’s next gig, those following Harrington’s case exhaled and returned to a state of unease.
In July, Fairfax police announced a forensic link between Harrington’s death and a 2005 assault in Northern Virginia, and released a sketch and description of the suspect—a black male, age 25 to 35, 6′ tall, medium build. While Fairfax police received additional phone calls concerning the 2005 assault when it was linked to Harrington’s death, one officer told C-VILLE that “nothing panned out.”
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller told C-VILLE that tip lines remain open. According to Gil Harrington, so does her daughter’s phone account. In October, Gil Harrington said she still calls the number to hear her daughter’s voicemail.
“I don’t know if we’ll do it forever,” she told us at the time. “It’s just nice to have it there and call her.”
For more on this story, click here and here.
10. Supervisors preserve county tax rate, threaten education instead
Sometimes less is more. This year, when it came to Albemarle County’s tax rate and public schools, less meant decidedly less.
More than 150 local residents registered to address the Board of Supervisors (BOS) during a six-hour public hearing on Albemarle County’s proposed FY2011 budget. A majority of those residents placed their kids’ education at the mercy of the supervisors, and asked the BOS to fully fund Superintendent Pam Moran’s $145.2 million budget request for county schools—even if it meant hiking the real estate tax.
Instead, supervisors preserved a tax rate of 74.2 cents per $100 of assessed value—suggesting they’d forgotten that parents are voters, too. Facing diminished state support and a revenue sharing formula that kept $2.6 million from Albemarle schools (No. 11), supervisors passed a budget roughly $6 million lighter than its last. The county changed its high school schedules to allow students to take some classes on a semester basis and some year-round—a move that would purportedly save county schools $800,000 annually, while pushing a greater workload on fewer teachers to preserve class sizes.
Amidst concerns for overworked teachers and students too busy cramming to actually retain information, the county school board reaffirmed the new, eight-period schedules for another year.
For more on this story, click here and here.
11. The revenue sharing agreement baffles, enrages city and county
It seemed like a wise idea for Albemarle County to ink a Revenue Sharing Agreement with the City of Charlottesville in the ’80s but, at the time, it also seemed like a wise idea to acid-wash your jeans.
This year, the agreement—in which Albemarle guarantees the city 10 cents for every dollar of real estate tax collected, so long as the city doesn’t annex county land—sent roughly $18 million to Charlottesville. Since the agreement is not taken into account by the state’s school funding formula, Albemarle County schools lost $2.6 million to those in Charlottesville.
After Delegate Rob Bell proposed moving the millions from city classrooms back to the county, Charlottesville seemed ready to explode while Albemarle supervisors gritted their teeth and stuck by a level tax rate. (See No. 10.) Bell’s bill ultimately failed and, thanks to some good-natured prodding from Delegate David Toscano, the two school boards seem to have reached a ceasefire on revenue sharing. Let’s see if it lasts through the next budget cycle.
For more on this story, click here.
12. City offers Waterhouse new tax break, plays ball with developers
City Council plucked a new carrot to dangle in front of developers when it agreed to an innovative tax rebate system for developer Bill Atwood’s Waterhouse, a Downtown mixed-use project first envisioned more than four years ago. Thanks to a tax increment financing (TIF) resolution, the city will give Atwood a five-year rebate on real property tax revenues valued at more than $400,000, provided Waterhouse is finished in time to honor its 10-year lease with WorldStrides, its main tenant.
Sure, some local developers were a bit miffed about why Atwood nabbed the city’s first such tax concession. On the bright side, they now have a new negotiating tool for future projects.
For more on this story, click here and here.
13. Halsey Minor remains a man of action and inaction
Although no progress has been made on the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall, its owner, Halsey Minor, has limitless energy to keep fighting the “system.” With a $6.4 million arbitration win over former Landmark developer Lee Danielson in July—and the previous $8.5 million in damages he was awarded in the Christie’s International auction house lawsuit—Minor has defied his critics.
Filing bankruptcy in August, Minor was able to unite all the lawsuits (eight) involving the FDIC and Specialty Finance Group (SFG), a real estate financing company that lent Minor $23.6 million for the construction of the hotel in 2008. Minor can’t get a hotel built, but thanks to his unlimited appetite for lawsuits, he can keep his name in the news.
For more on this story, click here and here.
14. UVA finally has a woman on top
In January, Teresa Sullivan became the first female president of the University of Virginia, an institution that only started admitting women 40 years earlier. Between the announcement of her appointment on January 11 and her first day as the head of one of the best public universities in the nation, UVA experienced a homicide (No. 3), a suicide (No. 21), and a substantial infringement on academic freedom (No. 5). To that, add the pressure on her to be a successful fundraiser, and Sullivan has walked into a job fit for a superhero of any gender.
For more on this story, click here and here.
15. Kluge kisses wine goodbye as bank buys back vineyard
Patricia Kluge and husband Bill Moses’ financial woes continue to make headlines. After the unprecedented auction of jewelry, furniture and art that raked in close to $15 million, their winery, the 906.6-acre Kluge Estate Winery & Vineyard, failed to sell and Farm Credit of the Virginias, the lender, hung on to it with a bid of $19 million.
Then, retailers nabbed cases of Kluge wines priced for as little as $2 each at a December 11 auction in Madison County. Kluge always trumpeted her big plans to dominate East Coast wine, but with this humiliating end, her bluster has died on the vine.
For more on this story, click here and here.
16. Despite lawsuits, YMCA plans advance
Despite multiple attempts at stalling or completely halting the progress of the planned YMCA in McIntire Park by residents concerned with destruction of the park, the project is nearing its final stages of design and financing.
In November, Judge Cheryl Higgins dismissed a lawsuit against Albemarle County officials filed by the Charlottesville Area Fitness Club Operators Association that claimed that private fitness club owners were impeded to bid on the services the $15 million YMCA will soon offer in its new location. Although a similar suit filed against the city has yet to be heard, the outcome is expected to be same, meaning that the Y will proceed according to its planned schedule.
For more on this story, click here and here.
17. Crozet residents overpower “Boyd Plan”
The biggest surprise Supervisor Ken Boyd sprang on Albemarle County this year? The Boyd Plan, a call for increased land development opportunities. Boyd described the unvetted plan as “a philosophy…that if we leave people alone to go at their own pace, they’ll do the right thing.”
The people, in turn, gave Boyd his biggest surprise of the year. Fearful a 5,750-square-foot gas station on Route 250 would devastate their town’s character, Crozet residents turned out in droves to address supervisors, and conducted their own groundwater studies to prove the proposed Re-Store ‘N Station would suck up more than the allotted 1,624 gallons per day. The station was approved at a reduced size of roughly 3,000 square feet, proving that not even Ken Boyd can plan everything.
For more on this story, click here and here.
18. Jim Baldi takes the money and runs
The man behind Bel Rio has been missing for about six months. Accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Jim Baldi has left town without a trace but with plenty of cash, presumably. His former business partner, Gareth Weldon, sued him for $300,000 for fraud, and Albemarle County Police charged him with two counts of embezzlement. Through his Virginia Payroll & Tax business, Baldi managed many local restaurants’ payroll and accounting, but failed, it seems, to keep his own house in order. The IRS filed more than one lien against Bel Rio for sales and withholding taxes totaling more than $18,000.
For more on this story, click here and here.
19. Bike activists rally, but city is slow to change gears
Advocates for a more bicycle friendly Charlottesville made 2010 the year of action. After the death of UVA graduate student Matthew King in a bike accident on West Main Street, alternative transportation activists began working to push the City of Charlottesville to change its design and planning procedures and welcome bicycles as a valid mode of transportation.
But only the activists seem to have taken a let’s-get-it-done attitude. Bike Charlottesville sponsored a Bike Ballot in the summer, inviting residents to choose the most important projects needed to make Charlottesville a bike friendly city, and the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation sponsored Bike Week, an entire seven days dedicated to riding safely. Only in November did the city adopt the “Complete Streets Resolution” to change the planning and design of new construction to accommodate all modes of transportation. Yet West Main and Fourth streets—the very corner where King died, and where an Albemarle County police car hit a man in a wheelchair in 2007—is still entirely unchanged.
For more on this story, click here and here.
20. WTJU sings a new tune, scares off new manager
To borrow from Morrissey, Burr Beard never wanted to hang the DJs. But when UVA hired Beard in April to replace longtime WTJU manager Chuck Taylor, there was panic on the airwaves of 91.1FM.
Upon his arrival, Beard championed repetition as “radio’s strong point” and announced plans for a new WTJU format—a move that one DJ said could “nullify everything we know is good about WTJU.” Station volunteers quit, and the free-form radio community was galvanized.
Tensions settled when Beard asked to collaborate with DJs. But, citing “family concerns,” the new manager left WTJU after less than six months on the job. However, the hubbub seems to have paid off in changes to the station that improve it: WTJU now has a better website—where more listeners can tune in online and hear all the Smiths b-sides they desire without fear of repetition. And just to prove we like our Thelonious Monk bootlegs as much as The Queen is Dead, listeners gave upwards of $42,000 during an October jazz fundraiser—a number they beat with December’s classical fund drive.
For more on this story, click here and here.
21. VQR office implodes following staff suicide
The July 30 suicide of Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) managing editor Kevin Morrissey quickly brought allegations of workplace bullying against editor Ted Genoways, and raised questions about the responsiveness of UVA’s human resources system. It cast doubts upon VQR’s funding formula, and interrupted plans to secure the journal’s jeopardized future. And while the small, ambitious VQR staff earned a reputation for publishing vital stories, it ultimately couldn’t get its own straight—in the media, or in the office.
At a scant 2,400 subscriptions, the little journal’s reputation ascended after it nabbed a National Magazine Award in a sea of supersized competitors. Ironically, 2010 brought VQR its greatest national notice for the same tragic events that threatened its existence.
For more on this story, click here and here.
22. City and county enter a world of $#!%
After the City of Charlottesville junked the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s (RSWA) transfer stations in favor of sending residential rubbish to Peter Van der Linde’s single-stream sorting facility, some thought City Council might decide to trash the RSWA altogether. Ultimately, council decided to recommit funds to the McIntire Recycling Center, which is operated by the RSWA and had faced a threat of closure. But Charlottesville withdrew funds from the county’s Ivy Materials Utilization Center, which went underutilized by city residents. Next year? Look for McIntire by the curbside, if business doesn’t pick up.
For more on this story, click here and here.
23. The triad’s power changes hands
The heads of the area’s three most powerful organizations hung up their boxing gloves, making space for (almost) new blood and prepping the area for a shift in governing styles. Both County Executive Bob Tucker and former UVA President John Casteen left their positions after 20 years, while Charlottesville City Manager Gary O’Connell resigned after 15 years on the job.
With the current heightened tension between city and county (Meadow Creek Parkway, water supply plan, take your pick), one is left to wonder whether new head honchos—newly appointed Maurice Jones, Tom Foley and Teresa Sullivan, city, county and UVA, respectively—will learn from recent skirmishes and get along more amicably.
For more on this story, click here, here and here.
24. Philanthropist John Kluge dies at age 95
A millionaire at the age of 37, Metromedia founder John Kluge amassed a fortune once considered America’s greatest. By the time of his September 8 death at his Albemarle County residence, at the age of 95, Kluge had directed roughly $63 million in the form of donations and his 7,400-acre Morven Farm to UVA.
Kluge cemented his media king rep roughly 25 years ago, when he sold Metromedia’s TV stations to News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch for a reported $2 billion. But the business titan was also a reputed art collector, storied gambler and capable dancer—although he found himself quite entranced by the bellydancing moves of future wife Patricia (see No. 15), whom he married in 1981 and divorced 10 years later. Remarried to Maria Tussi Kluge, John Kluge described himself as being uncomfortable “when I haven’t got something at risk.”
For more on this story, click here and here.
25. Miniature goats, coming to a backyard near you
They are finally here. After a plea by the Charlottesville Goat Justice League in early September, City Council unanimously passed an ordinance to allow miniature goats to graze within city limits. A few rules apply, however: No more than three goats can live on the same property, and they have to weigh less than 100 pounds each. All must be dehorned and males must be neutered.
Once again, Council came through to satisfy all of Charlottesville’s bleating hearts.
For more on this story, click here.
