Author: graelynbrashear

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The Miller Center asks the question: Do debates matter?

Kennedy Nixon debate, 1960
The Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960. Photo courtesy of National Park Service.

Whether they watched them unfold or not, many Americans point to big moments in the history of presidential debates in this country: Nixon’s no-makeup mistake; Lloyd Bentsen’s “you’re no Jack Kennedy” quip.

But do those moments—or even the debates as a whole—really matter? It’s a question reporters and pundits revisit every election cycle. Because despite the attention and the millions of eyeballs these events get, despite the number of news stories that pile up about them, polls persistently show debates don’t seem move the needle of public opinion that much.

We may be looking at a historic exception, according to UVA’s Miller Center, a nonpartisan institute studying policy and politics.

“According to pre- and post-debate polls taken since the first televised debate in 1960, only two have generated statistically relevant bumps in polling numbers,” reads an essay on the Miller Center’s website. “In 1980, Ronald Reagan gained seven points while President Jimmy Carter lost four.  The second?  Obama versus Romney on October 3, where Pew and Gallup polls showed a Romney bounce of twelve and five points, respectively.”

The report goes on to note that many experts don’t put much stock in those polls, in part because voters aren’t always good at expressing their own subtly changed opinions.

Six big names in media and politics will sit down at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday night for a panel discussion organized with the help of the Miller Center. At the table will be Martha Raddatz, who moderated Thursday night’s VP debate, as well as 2012 presidential dropout Newt Gingrich, former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative chatterbox George Will, presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, and Al Gore’s 2000 campaign manager Donna Brazile.

While you wait for that, check out the Miller Center’s debate page, which has a lot of fascinating background, from archives of past presidential debates dating back to the ’60s to detailed analyses of polling data. Anybody can be a pundit!

 

 

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Young architects take on income gap with Green Dot job hub project

Green Dot map
A map from the Orange Dot Report, a study of income inequality in Charlottesville that inspired a job hub project spearheaded by this year's class of Emerging Leaders in Architecture. Photo courtesy of ELA.

An architect’s challenge usually hinges on the limits of space and scale, but a team of young Virginia professionals has spent the last nine months tackling a very different task: closing Charlottesville’s income gap.

The Emerging Leaders in Architecture program, run by the Virginia chapter of the American Institute of Architects, gives young people in the field the chance to tackle real-world projects. The 2012 group includes 15 participants from schools and firms across the Commonwealth, and has centered its efforts here. In January, they got their challenge: Take the Orange Dot Report, a study of income disparity in Charlottesville that revealed nearly 30 percent of city families are struggling to live independently, and find a solution.

So what’s it like to get more than a dozen architects to solve a social problem?

“Messy and stuttering,” laughed VMDO architect and ELA team member Frances Lengowski. Addressing issues on an urban scale and working outside the box of a single building and site is a challenge—but one the team rose to, she said. Eventually, a dual strategy emerged. They would draw up a plan for a job hub where those seeking work could learn new skills and launch businesses, and brand the idea to raise awareness.
They settled on the IX building, thanks to the interest of part-owner Fabian Kuttner, and started to plan how an empty basement warehouse could become a commercial kitchen where fledgling canning and catering companies could get started. “It’s rough, but it’s wide open,” said Jennifer Rhoades, an ELA member based in Richmond. It’s an exciting space, “because it’s just a shell.”

And it still is. The ELA team’s plans are in final stages, and they’re studying similar projects around the country—employee-owned businesses in Cleveland, a community kitchen in Washington, D.C. After they present their work at a November conference in Richmond, their involvement will officially be over.

But they’ll leave behind much more than drawings and models. Their efforts have kick-started what many hope will be a powerful force for prosperity in the city: Green Dot Charlottesville, a co-op company that will take the job hub idea and run with it.

“The architects sparked a discussion and a realization that this needs to be done,” said Toan Nguyen, an entrepreneur who, along with Kuttner, City Councilor Kathy Galvin, and others, joined the ELA team at the table early on and helped them understand how to address income inequality. Now, they’re spearheading the effort to grow Green Dot into a joint-owned company that can attract investors and serve as a liaison between small, minority-owned businesses and big contractors like UVA.

The anchor is the plan for a home at the IX building, and the practical tools the architects created, from brochure graphics to business cards. “We have momentum here,” Nguyen said. “We have to keep pushing it.”

The project has become much more to the ELA team than diagrams. For Lengowski, the moment that made it real was when a news story on Green Dot prompted a call from a woman looking for a job for her nephew. That’s when it sunk in that the problem they were tackling didn’t just exist on paper.

“It really brought home to me the hope that’s needed to take a step forward,” she said.

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Former UVA researcher’s suit claims retaliation over fraud accusations

Gavel
File photo.

A researcher fired from UVA’s psychiatry department is suing for reinstatement under a whistleblower protection known as the False Claims Act, saying he was forced out after drawing attention to fraud related to misappropriation of federal grant funds.

UVA has declined to comment on the suit, and an attorney for the plaintiff, Dr. Weihua Huang, has said only that he’s looking forward to the trial. But a 45-page memorandum issued by the court in early September lays out the details.

Huang came to UVA as a non-tenure-track researcher in 2005 when his longtime mentor, Dr. Ming Li, was recruited to the Department of Psychiatry by department chair Dr. Bankole Johnson. In June 2009, Huang landed a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study nicotine addiction. Li had been against Huang leading the study, but he ultimately stood down and agreed to be a co-investigator, leaving Huang as principal investigator, but dependent on Li for lab space and equipment.

By that time, Li and Huang’s working relationship had begun to deteriorate. Accusations of insubordination arose when Huang used a UVA purchasing card to buy a work laptop without permission. Around the same time, Huang started inquiring about University grant management policy, apparently concerned that he’d never received required monthly expense reports.

When he got hold of the reports, says the memorandum, Huang found Li had redrawn what are known as the “levels of effort” for the grant, redirecting how the funds were paid out and naming another researcher, Nicole Gautier, as part the project despite the fact that she wasn’t working on it.

“According to Dr. Huang, the alterations allowed Dr. Li to devote his and Ms. Gautier’s time to other research projects, yet draw money from the ANKK1 grant to pay unrelated salaries and expenses,” the memorandum reads.

Huang reported what he said were unauthorized and illegal modifications to his grant to Johnson in October 2009, and attempted to take back control of the funds. But a month later, he was issued a notice of non-renewal from Johnson—essentially, a pink slip. Negotiations ensued as the researchers apparently tried to work out a way for Huang to stay at UVA through the end of his grant funding period, but he was gone by the end of 2010, several months before his funding would have allowed.

When Huang initially brought suit in 2011, he named UVA as a defendant. Judge Norman K. Moon dismissed that claim, but ruled Huang could sue Li and Johnson on the basis that his disclosure about the misallocation of NIH funds should have been protected under the False Claims Act.

Whether there’s a connection between that disclosure and his firing is now up to a jury, said attorney Rebecca Royals, a Richmond employment law expert. Royals said that according to legal precedent, whether or not any fraud actually occurred may be beside the point.

“Even if it’s not ultimately determined that there was a violation, that doesn’t mean that an employer could not have retaliated,” Royals said.

Moon’s memorandum shows that some of Huang’s peers already concluded there was reason to question the firing. Before he left the University, Huang brought his situation before the Faculty Senate. Ultimately, a peer review panel found that UVA hadn’t adequately justified Huang’s termination. “In our view, the possibility that Dr. Huang’s non-renewal was at least in part an act of retaliation cannot be ruled out definitively,” the panel’s report read.

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Should Virginia wineries get agricultural tax breaks if they’re not growing grapes?

Trump Winery’s billionaire owner has hinted the estate could one day be home to a resort or golf course as well as a vineyard. As wineries become more commercialized, there’s a greater chance of clashes over rural land use. Photo: Lindsey Henry

Governor Bob McDonnell’s declaration of 2012 as the year of “Virginia wine’s emergence on the international stage” was meant to mark an anniversary: It’s been 250 years since a Commonwealth wine first won accolades in Europe. But there’s no question viticulture matters here at home. Virginia’s 200-plus wineries now contribute an estimated $747 million to the state’s economy and support 4,800 jobs. But as the industry grows, so do the number of vineyards claiming agricultural tax credits, and a blurry line between winemaking and tourism could mean more fights over land use in rural Virginia.

To qualify for a “Class B” Virginia farm winery or cidery designation, owners have to ensure that 75 percent of the fruit they use comes from Commonwealth vineyards —not necessarily their own. And in 2007, the legislature expanded the farm wineries’ privilege and banned local governments from regulating winery activities whose “purpose is to promote, market, sell, or educate guests about the wine produced.” As a result, some Virginia wineries that operate primarily as event venues are bypassing local zoning rules, and taking advantage of perks and a 40 percent land use tax credit meant to encourage agriculture, despite the fact that they’re doing very little growing.

Since the state passed the 2007 law, there have been a number of battles over wineries’ land use. Fauquier County winemakers are suing over an ordinance that restricts their business hours and the kind of events they can host. Albemarle aligned its rules with the state’s more permissive language in 2010, but last year, the county saw a bitter fight between Keswick Vineyards and neighboring residents over how to regulate event noise.

Mitzi Batterson is president of the Virginia Wineries Association, and owns and operates James River Cellars in Henrico County with her husband, James. Their 5,000-case-per-year winery is in an area that was already zoned commercial, so they haven’t had to worry about jumping through zoning hoops, but she said aggressive efforts by local governments to restrict the way wineries operate feels like an attack on everybody in the business.

“We’re still regulated,” she said. “I just don’t know any other industry where people are knocking on their doors, saying ‘You can only have these hours.’”

Virginia wineries have diverse business models, Batterson said, but the thing everybody has in common is big start-up costs. Every little bit of support helps. “That’s the idea, to minimize the amount of regulation so you can get up and running,” she said.

The Keswick battle aside, there have been few flaps over wineries’ land use in Albemarle. Credit that to the terroir. The Monticello American Viticulture Area, which includes nearly the entire county, has one of the highest concentrations of vineyards in the state for a reason: This is a great place to grow wine grapes. There are fewer wineries-in-name-only, and that seems to have inspired a more peaceful coexistence.

Former Augusta Medical Center ER doctor Rich Evans and his wife Lynn Davis, an anatomy Ph.D. and dean of the Echols Scholar Program at UVA, planted their first vines in Nelson County in 2000. For several years, they sold their grapes to other wineries, but in 2005, they put the Flying Fox Vineyard label on their first bottles. Now they run a small tasting room off Route 151 in Nelson County.

“We were losing money growing grapes,” Evans said. “We lose a little less money growing wine.”

The pair are purists, and at about 2,000 cases a year, they’re small-time. They’re in the industry for the joy of the craft, and they don’t host events. As Evans puts it: “No weddings, just wine.” But he readily acknowledges that not everybody has that luxury.

“This is not a business that we can live on,” he said. Even more than other agricultural operations, Virginia wineries are at the mercy of mother nature, and Evans said he doesn’t think it’s possible to turn a profit while relying on only one’s own acreage.

If you want to make wine and make money, “not growing grapes is probably a better business decision than growing grapes,” he said.

And the wine industry here continues to grow and commercialize. Consider the case of Trump Winery, nee Kluge Estate. The entire property, including the massive manor house, is now in the hands of the billionaire, and there’s talk of a resort and a world-class golf course to complement the vineyard. And while big operations like Trump’s require lots of startup cash, wealthy winery owners can also take advantage of millions of dollars worth of tax credits.

Will locals put up with the Trumpification of Virginia wine in Jefferson’s backyard? Evans says there’s a lot to be said for the economic boost that comes from long lines of cars winding their way down Route 151 in Nelson. And he doesn’t see a need to draw lines between wineries based on their business model. It comes down to the pour.

“The only distinction I’d make is if you like the wine, or you don’t,” he said.

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County, plant experts roll out new native species database

Viburnum blossoms
A new searchable database compiled by local plant experts offers insights into growing native plants, like this viburnum, in Virginia’s Piedmont. File photo.

Those seeking guidance in the garden have a new resource at their fingertips: the Piedmont Virginia Native Plants Database, a searchable list of 341 native grasses, trees, and wildflowers, all found in the region before the arrival of European settlers, and all accompanied by information about where they can be put to best use.

Want to find out what plants will grow in that swampy, shady corner of your yard? The database can narrow it down, and go further. Want your plant to have flowers that don’t clash with your existing lilac? Check. Need it to be unappealing to the hungry groundhog that lives under the shed? Can do. Builders and landscape architects can search by use, too, to help pinpoint plants suitable for everything from green roofs to detention basins.

There are a number of good reasons to encourage people to grow native plants, said Albemarle County Natural Heritage Committee chair and Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District Director Lonnie Murray, who helped develop the database with Albemarle County Water Resources Specialist Repp Glaettli and a volunteer team of local plant experts. For one, he said, they’ve had millennia to adapt to Virginia’s soil, climate, and pests. As a result, he said, “site-appropriate use of native plants can really help reduce our use of water and pesticides, and reduce sedimentation.”

A landscape rich in natives is, by default, a diverse one, Murray said, and that comes with benefits, too.

“Anyone that works with water quality issues knows the gold standard of knowing whether water is safe to drink or swim in is biodiversity,” he said. “If nothing can live in it, you don’t want to swim in it.” The same principle can apply to land, he said, and efforts to clean up brownfields and contaminated areas through habitat restoration show it can work in reverse: Increase biodiversity and you can encourage the health of an ecosystem.

Getting developers, landscape architects, and other stakeholders onboard isn’t always easy, though. Albemarle Director of Community Development Mark Graham pointed out that developers often have to prove the viability of plantings in order to get money back from municipalities in the form of performance bonds.

“There are questions as far as plant availability, too,” he said—desirable natives aren’t always easy to find at your local nursery.

As a result, developers and planners alike have historically favored fast-growing, easy-to-find plants, including some invasive species now targeted for eradication.

In fact, both the county and the City of Charlottesville’s recommended plant lists name invasives like autumn olive and privet
—species the city is currently trying to remove as part of the costly Meadow Creek restoration project.

The new plant database is part of a trend to update those lists and encourage more use of native plants. Chris Gensic of the Charlottesville Parks & Recreation Department said revised recommendations are in the works for the city, and according to Graham, the new searchable list dovetails nicely with the county Comprehensive Plan’s emphasis on native plants as natural resources.

It may not have a huge impact on the landscape right away, Graham said, but he and others think the database will prove an important tool—for governments looking to shape policy, developers trying to restore disturbed areas, nurseries seeking the right plants to stock, and homeowners in search of suggestions for their own gardens.

“I think it’s one of things, like the ball rolling downhill, that’s going to start picking up speed,” he said.

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Speeding change: A driver’s take on updating city bus routes

Juwhan Lee of CAT
Juwhan Lee, operations manager for Charlottesville Area Transit, comes to the job with plenty of practical knowledge—an asset in a time of change for the agency. Photo by John Robinson.

GPS data, customer complaints, drivers’ opinions: A lot gets weighed when plotting and tweaking new city bus routes. But Juwhan Lee of Charlottesville Area Transit said there’s one step in the process that you can’t leave out.

“The best way, really, is just to take out a stopwatch and run the route,” he said.

And it’s usually Lee behind the wheel. The 35-year-old operations manager for CAT has been driving buses since his college days at UVA, and his practical knowledge has helped him and Lance Stewart, CAT’s acting manager, navigate in a time of change.

When former CAT manager Bill Watterson left the city in February, it left the agency without a chief—and without a staffer trained in transportation planning. Stewart, facilities manager for Charlottesville and its schools, stepped in. He oversees about 65 drivers and a complex budget at a time when funding is tight, ridership is growing, and the results of a long-planned study could soon spur significant changes to the city’s transit system.

In May, Charlottesville City Council entered a $116,000 contract with consultant firm Nelson Nygaard to examine the possibility of a transit overhaul. But in the meantime, Stewart and Lee are attempting triage on what they say are a couple of troubled routes plagued by delays. Last week, they held a public information session at City Space where residents were asked to weigh in on several possible adjustments.

They got an earful from residents concerned about service changes, but Lee cheerfully said that comes with the territory.

“Transit is sort of the redheaded stepchild that nobody wants to pay attention to,” he said. When things are running smoothly, people take it for granted, “but as soon as one thing goes wrong, it’s a big deal. That’s sort of the nature of the business.”

Lee came to Charlottesville in 1996 to attend UVA, and was soon driving buses for University Transit Service. He majored in history (“It’s done me wonders,” he joked), but he stayed on with UTS and climbed the ranks, ultimately becoming operations manager and helping redesign the University bus system. He came to CAT less than a year ago, and Stewart said Lee’s understanding of the day-to-day logistics of running a transit system has been indispensable.

A big benefit is his ability to relate to the drivers, who the two men said are CAT’s best source of information on what’s working and what isn’t.

“A lot of what we’re looking at stems from the drivers’ reports,” Lee said. “If we’re having issues on routes, that’s really what kicks it off.” Next comes a serious sit-down with Google maps to examine alternative itineraries, then numerous test runs. Lee has logged a lot of hours and miles in recent weeks taking empty buses through their paces, his phone stopwatch counting off the minutes as he makes dummy stops to get the timing just right.

Now he and Stewart are weighing public input and remaining philosophical about the process, even as they await a mid-October public presentation by Nelson Nygaard that could change the conversation completely.

“It’s a balancing act,” Lee said. But he’s careful to remind people that when it comes to making a city’s bus fleet run on time, “there’s no quick fix.”

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City Council’s Moto Saloon vote overturns compromise

Matteus Frankovich of Black Market Moto Saloon
Matteus Frankovich, owner of Black Market Moto Saloon, listens as the Charlottesville City Council discusses denying him a special use permit to allow live music at his bar and restaurant at the corner of Market Street and Meade Avenue.

When the Charlottesville City Council denied a live music permit for Matteus Frankovich’s Black Market Moto Saloon property near the Woollen Mills neighborhood on Monday, the move came as something of a surprise to those who had worked to reach a compromise between the bar owner and local residents.

The 4-1 vote—Dave Norris was the lone holdout—went against the recommendations of a nearly unanimous Planning Commission, which had worked extensively with Frankovich to hammer out a proposal that limited the impact of hosting live music events at his bar and restaurant on the corner of Market Street and Meade Avenue. The contentious battle over music at the Moto Saloon had dragged on for months, pitting many nearby residents—who have long fought for a zoning change to quiet their neighborhood—against Frankovich and his patrons.

“We make a recommendation, and it’s always Council’s decision, but I have to say, I thought we worked very hard to craft a compromise,” said Planning Commission member Dan Rosensweig. “We put up the most stringent set of restrictions that we ever have, I think.”

It’s understandable that Council and the Commission could reach different conclusions on the same permit application, said Rosensweig. The Commission works in a sort of “zoning vacuum,” he said, and is completely guided by what’s on the books. The Council can and does weigh other factors.

“They’re not nearly as restricted in terms of rationale for making decisions,” he said.

And some on the dais Monday appeared to weigh other factors. City Councilor Kathy Galvin said the truest test of whether live music was acceptable for the bar happened months ago, when the Moto Saloon was hosting live shows in violation of its certificate of occupancy. The outpouring of frustration from the community at the time was evidence, she said, “that this property use is not harmonious with the existing patterns of use in the neighborhood.”

Fellow councilors Kirstin Szakos and Dede Smith and Mayor Satyendra Huja largely agreed with Galvin, though Szakos emphasized that the decision wasn’t about whether the Moto Saloon itself was a proper place for live music, but rather whether its permanent location could ever be expected to appropriately be home to a music hall.

“It’s almost irrelevant who’s operating it,” Szakos said.

After the vote, Frankovich said he was frustrated at the Councilors’ application of what he felt was a vague Comprehensive Plan that didn’t really represent what’s possible for the neighborhood his restaurant is in.

“A lot of the semantics around the future of Charlottesville—I think that’s still very abstract, and I’m kind of paying the price for an undeveloped vision here.” He had received a lot of support from nearby businesses and dozens of local residents, not to mention hundreds of other city residents who stood behind him. “Basically as a business owner, I’m just trying to cater to the desires of my clientele,” he said.

Frankovich said he appreciated the work that went into hammering out a compromise, even if the end result wasn’t what he’d wanted. “I respect the planning commission’s willingness to get in there in the midst of a back and forth scenario and find some solutions that work for everyone,” he said. “It’s just unfortunate that the city is not in a place to support that right now.”

And somewhat unusual, Rosensweig said. In most cases, the City Council upholds Planning Commission recommendations. Such a strong overturn is fairly rare.

“It doesn’t happen that much, especially not for a pretty decisive vote,” he said. Though it has happened once already with the currently seated Council he said—a few months back they reversed what he said was a fairly non-controversial zoning decision in the Rose Hill neighborhood, so “it will be interesting to see if this is part of a trend.”

Still, he said, everyone on the Commission respects Council’s right to make the final decision. “We understand our role is just as a recommending body,” he said.

 

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County considers scaling back cell tower regulations to improve coverage

Cell tower
A wooden monopole wireless tower in Crozet. This type of tower has been dubbed an "Albemarle pole" regionally, because regulations have made them common here. Photo by Albemarle County.

Among the things Albemarle County likes to claim it’s known for, its cell tower ordinance is probably the most unlikely point of pride. The county’s long-standing regulations are credited with forcing wireless structures to keep a low profile, and they’ve been duplicated by other jurisdictions. But with greater demand for strong signals even in rural corners of the county, there’s increasing pressure from industry and county staff to adjust the rules to ease infrastructure expansion. Changes are in the works.

The county drew up its wireless regulations in 2000, and passed its current ordinance in 2004. The policy took an unusual step: Where other municipalities approved towers on a case-by-case basis, Albemarle’s rules were designed to incentivize shorter, unobtrusive poles in order to limit visual impact.

Wireless towers fall into one of three categories in Albemarle. Tier I facilities are generally antennas attached to existing structures, like water towers. Tier II towers are wooden monopoles with flush-mounted antennas that reach no more than 10′ higher than the nearest tallest tree. Anything else, from slightly taller monopoles to 200′ lattice towers, falls into Tier III.

To encourage the use of existing structures and smaller poles, the ordinance allowed staff to rubber stamp Tier I uses, and the Planning Commission to approve Tier II applications. Tier III projects need a special use permit, which costs thousands and requires approval by the Board of Supervisors.

And it worked. The tree-top-height wood towers are now regionally known as “Albemarle County poles,” said County Supervisor Duane Snow, because they became so ubiquitous here.

Bill Fritz, chief of special projects for Albemarle County Community Development, said the county’s approach has been incorporated into a model ordinance now used in other Virginia communities. “We used to be able to say ours was unique, but other jurisdictions have adopted significant portions of what we have,” he said.

But many think it’s time for an update to the rules.

“The reality is, since the policy was adopted in 2000, things have evolved,” said Valerie Long, a Williams Mullen attorney who represents AT&T. “Twelve years have gone by. Opinions and attitudes have changed.”

When the county first started considering its wireless policy, people were willing to put up with mediocre service. That’s not the case any more, Long said. Not only do cell users expect good coverage, more people are using their phones for more uses, and that means more infrastructure.

But the race to keep up with consumer demand coupled with Albemarle’s tight rules and a shifting legal landscape has led to some unintended consequences, she said.

The creation of the Southern Albemarle Rural Historic District in 2007 meant a vast swath of the county became an “avoidance area” with a more strict development review process, and any Tier II tower proposed there was automatically treated as a Tier III application. And in January, a Virginia Supreme Court decision stripped planning commissions of their ability to approve Tier II towers altogether.

As a result, many applications that otherwise would have sailed through approval have been landing in front of the Board of Supervisors, bumped up for greater scrutiny not because of any controversial features, but because underlying rules have shifted. Nearly all such towers are ultimately approved, said Fritz. The process is just longer and more expensive for everyone.

“It required an additional review by the Board of Supervisors, and there’s more staff time involved, and thus more cost involved,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Board hired a consultant to look into updating the ordinance, and county staff sat down with industry representatives in June to hash out possible changes. The resulting staff recommendations suggested loosening many regulations, including allowing poles to reach 60′ regardless of nearby tree height, scrapping limitations on the number of antenna arrays allowed on a single tower, and allowing county staff to approve all Tier II towers. The aim was to streamline the review process for applications that would be expected to get approved anyway, said Fritz.

“That’s one of the things we looked at—whether or not we could have the same level of review,” he said. “The answer was yes.”

But some supervisors balked at what they saw as too much backtracking.

Board Chair Ann Mallek said the ordinance has served the county well, and she doesn’t want to see major changes without serious consideration and public input. “I think that the benefit of our ordinance on the county as a whole is huge when it comes to the viewshed and the scenery that bring so many people here, including millions of tourists every year,” she said. “If we take a big galloping step, there are going to be consequences, and we’re going to have to live with them.”

Duane Snow agreed that preserving some limits was important. But he said he’s received scores of e-mails from his rural constituents pleading for better cell coverage in southern Albemarle, and he favors adjusting tower approval rules to speed the expansion process.

“I think it’s important to keep in mind that we’re not talking about the mega towers that are a real eyesore,” he said. “We’re doing things tastefully, but we’re making it so it’s a little smoother, without a lot of coming to the Board.”

Fritz said it will be a while before the county adjusts its ordinance, and in the meantime, staff wants to hear from residents.

“It is obvious to anyone who’d done any work in this industry that the usage of wireless technology has significantly changed,” he said. “Does that change translate into a change in what people are willing to accept as impacts? I don’t know. The question hasn’t been asked. We’ll find out.”

 

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Romney and Ryan to campaign in Fishersville Thursday

According to several media outlets, including CNN, Republican nominee Mitt Romney and running mate Paul Ryan plan to campaign in Virginia this Thursday, October 4, a day after the first presidential debate. With country music artist Trace Adkins joining the candidates onstage, the hopefuls will host a Victory Rally at Augusta Expoland in Fishersville, about 30 miles west of Charlottesville.

Doors open at 4pm, and the event is expected to begin at 6pm. A press release advises attendees to prepare for “airport-like security,” and should bring as few personal items to the venue as possible.

To publicize the event, the Romney campaign bypassed local media and took to the sky, as Charlottesville residents reported seeing a small yellow airplane towing a banner announcing his upcoming arrival.

The Republican candidates have made numerous stops in Virginia, and Romney chose Norfolk as the location to announce Ryan as his running mate in August. All the attention is likely because the Virginia’s nine electoral votes are in hot demand, with both camps counting on the Commonwealth for victory.

Several national polls show Romney is trailing Obama in Virginia, with Fox News giving the president the largest lead at seven points.

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Trump snaps up Kluge mansion, now owns entire estate

Trump and Kluge
Eric Trump stands with Patricia Kluge at a celebration marking the opening of Trump Winery on her own auctioned-off and rebranded estate in 2011. Kluge worked as vice president of operations at the vineyard for the last year, but her contract wasn’t renewed. Photo by Nick Strocchia.

Watch, circle, and wait for a bargain. Looks like that was the Trump family’s strategy when it came to acquiring the Kluge estate.

Donald Trump and his son Eric have slowly nibbled away at the massive property of friend Patricia Kluge, the third wife of late billionaire John Kluge, who spent much of her massive divorce settlement on establishing a small empire in Albemarle County—a giant neo-Georgian mansion, vast land holdings, and a 1,000-acre vineyard and winery.

The Trumps now own it all. Yesterday, news broke that the father and son closed on the bank-owned manor house for $6.5 million—a tiny fraction of its original $100 million asking price.

Their bid history shows they’ve had their eye on the whole property for some time. The Washington Post reported that when the Trumps purchased the 900-acre vineyard for $6.2 million last year, they also intended to buy the house, but deemed Bank of America’s $16 million price tag too high.

Kluge established the vineyard in 1999, and built Kluge Estate into the largest winery in the state. But when the investment went sour, she and third husband Bill Moses ultimately defaulted on bank loans, and facing foreclosure, they declared personal bankruptcy in 2011. The Trumps bought the vineyard a few months later, and snapped up an adjacent 200 acres for half a million. They effectively owned the mansion’s front yard at that point, according to a wonderfully headlined July Wall Street Journal story.

They kept Kluge on as president of operations at the winery, but didn’t renew her contract this year—a move all parties said was mutually agreed upon.

“It’s what we always agreed we would do,” the younger Trump told C-VILLE in June. “A year ago, we said, you’re going to help us transition [the estate] from a bank-owned asset to an asset that’s up and running under our organization. She was able to do so really effectively.”

Trump and his father are considering a number of options for the property, according to the Post article:

Among the options the Trumps are considering: developing the land around the estate into a PGA Tour-worthy golf course, turning the house into an inn, or flipping the house and selling it along with 400 or 500 acres while keeping an operational vineyard. Eric Trump said several top golf course architects already have looked over the property, although he refused to say which ones. Arnold Palmer once designed a nine-hole golf course on the grounds.

And what does Kluge have to say about it? She told the Post reporter she and Moses are “thrilled.”