Monday, June 9: "Bang for our stormwater bucks"- an investigation into how stormwater-improvement work will go in Waynesboro with a cut in the budget for the work in this year's city budget.
“Voices in the blogosphere had been murmuring in the tatter of keyboards that the conservative bloc had endeavored to subvert open meetings law along with city regulations in reforming the Finance Committee a week ago with only Williams and Lucente as members,” The News Virginianeditorialized tonight.
I might be jumping to a conclusion here, but I’m thinking they might have been talking about little ol’ me.
If they were, they overstated what this voice in the blogosphere had to say on the matter by half. Read more »
If you get a chance to catch the replay of the city-council meeting on Channel 14, please do take a look. Around the 20-minute mark, you’ll see a debate over the makeup of the Finance Committee between Vice Mayor Frank Lucente and former vice mayor Nancy Dowdy that ends when Williams suggests a compromise appointing Lorie Smith as the committee’s third member and then getting the entire council involved by shifting the work of the committee to the full council work session.
Given what preceded it, I’m left wondering if Williams cleared what he offered up with Lucente, and I’m guessing that he didn’t.
The battle for next year’s Democratic Party nomination is ever-so-quietly heating up.
House Democratic Caucus chair Brian Moran seems to have been focusing his attention on cornering the Mark Warner market at the outset of the ‘09 nomination race. Moran has some of the big guns from the Warner run at the head of Virginia government lined up on his side - with Warner confidant Mame Reiley running his fundraising operation and Warner ‘01 campaign manager Steve Jarding and Warner State Board of Elections appointee Jean Jensen among his consultants.
Moran’s opponent for that nomination, former thisclose attorney-general candidate Creigh Deeds, meanwhile, is fighting back with a couple of key endorsements from Moran’s NoVa backyard. Read more »
The disease that weakens not only the backbone, but preys upon the very resolve of men and women who once had both.
It’s a tragedy unfolding everyday in America, but unlike most disorders, it doesn’t infect the poor and disenfranchised, but it’s rampant among the rich and powerful. (However, there is residual affect among those not contaminated.)
It’s called Democratmalacia, and it has reached epidemic proportions in the hot zone. (Also known as Washington, D.C.) Read more »
Gallup has the Barack Obama-John McCain race tightening, while Rasmussen has Obama opening up a slightly larger lead.
The daily tracking poll at Gallup has Obama up by a 46 percent-to-44 percent margin over McCain, who gained a point in the three-day rolling poll over where he was yesterday.
Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll has Obama up by a 49 percent-to-43 percent margin with leaners included. The lead for Obama in the Rasmussen rendering was 49-44 yesterday.
Media General apparently isn’t making enough money at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville to justify spending the “several million dollars of repairs, refurbishing and rewiring” needed to continue long-term operations at its printing plant on West Rio Road.
These can’t be good days at the Richmond-based Media General, the parent company of the Progress and the Waynesboro-based News Virginian, which has been under internal pressure to cut costs after a dissident shareholder group bought up a significant amount of Media General stock and forced its way into the family-owned company’s board of directors earlier this year. Read more »
Is Frank Lucente hedging on his pledge to back the voters’ wishes regarding a West End fire station? An indication that he might be comes from WHSV-TV3 reporter Keith Jones in his report on last night’s discussion of pre-emptive devices that could be used to improve response times for fire crews by getting them through busy intersections with traffic signals up to a minute quicker in some instances. Read more »
AFP editor Chris Graham joins Fox Sports Radio-WREL1450’s “Online with Jim Bresnahan” to talk about the latest involving former Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick, the upcoming college-football season and more.
Fifth District Democratic nominee Tom Perriello is talking about economic revival in Southside and Central Virginia.
Perriello launched his REVIVAL plan for the economies of the Fifth yesterday at an event in Martinsville, which has the highest unemployment rate in Virginia, at 10.5 percent in May, and that was before a major employer laid off half its workforce last week. Read more »
I have never visited Virginia, even though I know their slogan is “Virginia is for Lovers.” I might convince my wife to take a vacation there with me now; I don’t know about the “Lover” part of it, but at least I’ll be in the company of “thinkers and doers.”
Apparently, Virginia, at least Fairfax County, anyway, has a board of supervisors that may not only be “Lovers,” but are also a pretty smart bunch and actually represent their constituents. Read more »
Lynn Roth, CJP executive director, announced that Sue Williams will succeed Pat Hostetter Martin, who is retiring after giving 10 years of leadership to the program. The Summer Peacebuilding Institute draws upwards to 200 persons from more than 50 countries to campus every year during May and June for intensive courses taught by CJP faculty and guest instructors in areas of peacebuilding, trauma healing and restorative justice. More than 2,200 participants have attended SPI since the program began in 1996. Read more »
Six historic overlooks in the Shenandoah National Park are on the hook for modifications to make the compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Architectural Barriers Act - but first the National Park Service wants to know what you think about the whole deal. Read more »
“I don’t know,” the Gen-Y acquaintance mused. “I’m thinking about grad school, but it’s more work than I thought to prepare for the GREs. Then if I do all that and don’t get into the program I want, it’s a waste of time. Plus, did you know it could cost more than $40,000 to get a masters degree? I don’t want that kind of debt, especially since I’ll never make it up in a starting salary.”
By the end of answering my question about his post gap-year plans, this young man described several options he was pondering for his future. But woven into threads of indecision and idealism, I recognized limiting beliefs punctuating his words. It’s “too hard.” It’ll take “too long.” It costs “too much.” I also recognized he hadn’t yet discovered who he was doing the work for. Read more »
Waynesboro City Council is adding a third member to its Finance Committee, while effectively making the committee’s work the work of the entire council. Read more »
The Last Virginian Standing in the Democratic Party VP race is the one that I found most logical from the get-go.
Barack Obama could use a Southern governor to balance his ticket. And remember, Kaine was on the Obama train early on, early enough, as Obama noted in a visit to Northern Virginia a few weeks ago, to have gotten Obama’s attention.
Legislation from Chris Saxman that would dedicate future revenues and royalties from offshore drilling to Virginia’s Transportation Trust Fund appears to be in line for passage by the House of Delegates this week. Read more »
A Zogby Interactive poll of 46,274 likely voters has Democrat Barack Obama ahead of Republican John McCain by six percentage points, with Libertarian candidate Bob Barr playing the role of spoiler.
Barr, a former Republican congressman, picked up 6 percent support in the Zogby poll, an online survey conducted from June 11-30. Read more »
Jim Webb said today that he will not be a candidate to run on the Democratic Party national ticket with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
“Last week I communicated to Sen. Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for vice president,” said Sen. Webb, D-Va., in a statement released to the media this afternoon. Read more »
A two-run single in the bottom of the ninth by Harrisonburg first baseman Michael Precise led to the second Valley League All-Star Game tie in three years. Read more »
Waynesboro was looking at spending $1.2 million this year to get its long-awaited and long-debated stormwater-improvement project up and running, but that was before the new vice mayor, Frank Lucente, switched positions on the source of funding for the improvements late last year, from a utility-fee-based system to one where monies for the improvements were to be drawn from the general fund. Read more »
A question has arisen regarding the makeup of the Finance Committee appointed by Mayor Tim Williams last week at city council’s reorganization meeting.
The question - doesn’t the committee appointed by Williams, consisting of Williams and Vice Mayor Frank Lucente, need to have one more member from the council to comply with the city code?
The answer - a qualified yes. I say qualified because the rules governing the makeup of the committee are delineated in the city code, not in the city charter, meaning we could still end up with the two-man committee that Williams envisioned. Read more »
Former Republican Party presidential-nomination candidate Steve Forbes joins us today on a conference call arranged by the John McCain presidential campaign to discuss Democratic Party presidential nominee Barack Obama’s economic plan.
AFP editor Chris Graham joins in later with analysis of the economic plans of Obama and McCain.
The explatory gubernatorial bid of Northern Virginia Democratic legislator Brian Moran is doing quite well, thank you, on the money front.
Virginians for Brian Moran director Mame Reiley announced today that the committee will report $1.38 million in receipts in the first reporting period in 2008. Read more »
As you might know, I had the opportunity to cover President Bush’s visit to Monticello last week. And as you might know, the visit was marred by a string of interruptions from protestors who disrupted what was supposed to be a ceremony celebrating America’s newest citizens on our nation’s 232nd birthday. Read more »
Movie critics took to “Wall-E” like kids take to chocolate cake for breakfast, so dare I pour a little sand in the machinery? I dare.
Sure, it’s cute. And Pixar has pushed all the right adorable-little-robot buttons to make sure the Awwwww Factor draws in an adult audience as well as youngsters. What could be cuter, say, than R2D2 (rigged out with a set of huge, expressive eyes, of course) abandoned on a dirty, desolate earth and told to clean up the mess we lazy humans left? Read more »
Earth Talk
From the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine
Dear EarthTalk: What green-friendly lawn and garden pesticides are available today? I’m particularly interested in options that won’t harm my cats.
- Nancy Blanchard, via e-mail
Pesticides have greatly boosted agricultural yields over the last half century, so it is no wonder, given the commercial availability of many of these synthetic chemicals, that American homeowners apply 100 million pounds of the stuff each year to make their own gardens grow bigger and faster, too. Read more »
Waynesboro Rotarian Tracy Aitcheson was installed as district governor for District 7570 in a ceremony held last week at the Waynesboro Country Club.
Aitcheson is a 19-year member of the Waynesboro Rotary Club. Aitcheson, 71, is a University of Richmond grad and former dentist who raises purebred Angus cattle on his farm in Waynesboro.
Aitcheson served as president of the Waynesboro Rotary Club in 1993-1994.
Fear and Loathing in Waynesboro column by Chris Graham
AFP editor Chris Graham joins 
Item by Chris Graham
