On February 3, Albemarle County School Board member Ken Boyd announced his plans to challenge incumbent Charles Martin for the Rivanna District seat on the Board of County Supervisors.
Urged by his constituents to run for a seat among the Supes, Boyd says he feels he could be of greater use to the County in a larger role. He has lived in the County since 1981, and for the past 12 years has owned and operated a financial services and investment advisory firm. He takes a decidedly pro-business stance, he says.
He recently discussed his vision for the County with C-VILLE. An edited transcript of that interview follows.
Kathryn E. Goodson: What are the main platforms of your campaign?
Ken Boyd: First and foremost, it’s time for a change, for new blood in that seat. The Rivanna District’s been represented by the same person for 12 years now. We need new ideas, new concepts. I haven’t already become part of the system. And I bring School Board experience with me—60 to 70 percent of our local tax dollars go to education as it is.
We need better coordination between the School Board and the Supervisors so we can work more closely on current issues. If we don’t, we’ll never minimize the amount of redistricting in the future.
I want to open Albemarle County back up to business. As it stands now, the County has the reputation of not being friendly to business—in some places, there’s far too much over-regulation and over-taxation. I fear some major businesses are stepping away from here due to that reputation. This attitude has to change, or the County won’t have the jobs for our young people and in turn, we won’t have the tax base that revenue brings in. We cannot survive on property taxes alone. We don’t have to sacrifice the environment to be pro-business in the County.
We must be proactive rather than reactive about our water needs. We must consider the long-term needs of the Buck Mountain Reservoir. Why not have some fresh eyes on the problem, rather than sit back and wait for another crisis?
Name some of the biggest accomplishments achieved during your four-year term on the County School Board.
For one thing, we’ve raised entry-level teacher salaries to $31,500 from $26,532. That’s a 19 percent increase over three years, accomplished during very trying financial times. With the higher starting salary, we can not only attract more qualified teachers, but keep them, too. I’m also very proud that we opened the door of communication between the County school system and the City school system to discuss collaborative measures for improvement. I think there’s room for that kind of improvement in communication between the City Council and the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. There appears to be some sort of turf protection going on there.
Do you think running as a pro-business Republican will help or hinder your campaign?
I did not want to run as an Independent, and I didn’t want to hide my roots. I am proud to be a Republican, but I do not want to be stereotyped because I’m in one political party or another. I truly feel that the issues I intend to work for appeal to everyone—on a local level.
On the other side of that equation, I think I’d have a good rapport with our State and Federal legislators. The State legislators are going to re-evaluate the whole taxation structure of the State. And I would really like to have a hand in that, to evaluate what’s best for local control over spending and not have to go to Richmond or Washington, D.C., for that. We are capable of controlling our own destiny.—Kathryn E. Goodson
We need more dough, d’oh!
$94 million proposed budget comes up short
Many of us here in Charlottesville are feeling the pinch of higher rents and climbing property taxes. The least City Council could do is send each of us a thank-you note for all our pain.
After all, property taxes are about the only things keeping the City financially solvent. Last year, real estate revenue accounted for 73 percent of all revenue growth. For FY 2004, City Council has promised to reduce the property tax to $1.09 per $100 of assessed value from $1.11, just as the City is feeling the brunt of an economic recession and facing massive expenditures for capital products.
City Manager Gary O’Connell presented the bleak forecast to City Council during its regular meeting on Monday, March 3. City Council will review and revise O’Connell’s $94 million budget and pass a final version in April. The City seeks public comment at regular Council meetings or through online postings to its website, www.charlottesville.org.
Charlottesville is finally feeling the national recession through declining revenues from sales, meals and lodging taxes. Real estate and personal property values are growing, says O’Connell, but not as fast as they were a couple years ago. Meanwhile, the City will lose more than $1.4 million in State budget cuts to the Juvenile Detention Home, the Regional Jail, City schools and social services.
According to the FY 2004 budget, the City is undertaking $5.2 million in new obligations while expecting only $3.6 million in new revenue increases. To make up the $1.6 million deficit, every City department was ordered to cut its budget by 5 percent for a saving of $800,000. Some of the cost-saving measures include: eliminating four positions that are either vacant or whose occupants are retiring; reviewing the City’s cellular phone contract; reducing overtime; eliminating return postage on parking tickets; allowing advertising on City buses; and reducing travel expenses.
Doubling the trash-sticker fee will generate another $800,000.
The City will also add five new police officers, costing $220,000, by increasing the vehicle decal fee by $5 per auto. The City also plans to raise more than $1 million for capital infrastructure improvements by increasing the meals tax to 4 cents from 3 cents per dollar.
This million bucks is a mere drop in the bucket compared to what it will take to fix up our crumbling City, according to O’Connell. He says Charlottesville needs about $130 million for capital improvements, mostly to repair buildings like Charlottesville High School and to re-brick the Downtown Mall.
Council agreed that it cannot keep relying on property taxes to pay its bills, but had no suggestions for other ways to raise money.––John Borgmeyer
Piece of Cake
Hackensaw Boys cut a record with John McCray
The gray, barn-like Monticello Dairy Building on Grady Avenue is home to an array of local businesses––a battery store, a Mexican restaurant, a catering business, a paintball battlefield and a multi-million dollar recording studio.
“We thought about calling the record Cat Piss Alley,” says Mark Hahn, a restaurant owner and caterer who also manages local scruff-meisters The Hackensaw Boys. The group is recording their new album in the Crystalphonic recording studio, deep inside Monticello Dairy. John McCray, frontman for the nationally recognized rock band Cake, is producing the record.
Hahn carries the band’s lunch through the Dairy’s rear service entrance, where you can hear the pop of paint guns and see pink-and-orange carnage seeping underneath a metal door into the gritty cement tunnel, which is indeed home to several thin, timid felines.
The so-called Cat Piss Alley ends with a heavy wooden door that opens into the hallway of Crystalphonic studio, where amplifiers and digital recording devices sit stacked beside a rack of metal cans that is the Hackensaws’ percussion section.
The layers of irony here are the stuff of Tom Wolfe––back-porch string music recorded in a high-end professional studio designed to draw big names to a town suffering from an uninspired local music scene. The incongruities seem to be working out well for the Hackensaws, however.
The band caught a lucky break last winter, when McCray asked local singer-songwriter Shannon Worrell (who is married to C-VILLE co-owner Bill Chapman) to open for Cake at the Norva, a venue in Virginia Beach. Worrell, recently retired from the music biz, declined. She recommended the Hacks instead.
Apparently, the Boys won over both the Norva crowd and Cake––last summer, McCray invited them to join the Sunshine Tour. The Hacks performed between sets by hip-hoppers De La Soul, rockers Modest Mouse and artsy heroes The Flaming Lips. After the tour, Modest Mouse invited the Hacks to join them for a series of West Coast gigs.
Now McCray, who produced all four Cake albums, is tailoring the Hackensaw sound to reach the pop music masses. McCray says his role in the studio is like a newspaper editor, telling the band what’s working and what’s not in an effort to create what McCray calls a “pleasing geometry” in each song.
The new album represents a roll of the dice for Hahn and the Hackensaws, since recording with McCray at Crystalphonic ain’t free.
“We feel like there’s a lot riding on this,” says guitarist David Sickmen. “It’s like the difference between thinking about your career and actually doing it.”
Also, the Hacknesaw record could be a boon for Crystalphonic, which opened last summer. Four partners, Berklee College of Music grad Kevin McNoldy, Amy and David Spence, and recording engineer Matt Jagger, founded the studio on the idea that because Charlottesville is home to both beautiful scenery and the Dave Matthews Band, a professional-quality facility will attract enough big names that the studio can subsidize special deals for local up-and-comers.
“We went nuts. We got the best equipment we could, across the board,” says Jagger. “We can record the guy down the street or Elton John.”
Both the Hackensaws and Crystalphonic are hoping that a quality product, be it a record or a recording studio, will translate into fame and fortune. But in the music business, a few ties to rock celebrity won’t hurt.
“I’ll try to introduce a few people to this music,” says McCray. “If it’s a good record, it will stick. If it’s not, nothing I can do will help it.”––John Borgmeyer