Cville Tomorrow News

Biscuit Run reform: Deeds would loosen secrecy... some

1/26/2012 * The Hook [full story]

In Virginia, tax returns are so sacred that a section of code forbids state officials from revealing individual info– even if those individuals have reaped millions of dollars for their land from state taxpayers.

Such was the case of Biscuit Run, where developers attempted to parlay a dubious $88-million appraisal– practically double the land's $46.2-million boom-time purchase price– into a bail-out for the underwater development by re-purposing the land as a state park and taking $11.7 million in tax credits atop the $9.8 million sales price, all aided by a Virginia law that shrouds the details from public scrutiny.

It was only a leaked appraisal that allowed the public to see how Biscuit Run's former owner, Forest Lodge LLC, was attempting to recoup its losses at taxpayer expense. And with Virginia's land conservation easement program, which has been called the most generous in the country, handing out over $100 million a year to landowners, the potential for abuse is significant.

County skeptical about Charlottesville reverting to town status

1/26/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

County supervisors say a possible reversion to town status by the city would be too long a process to ease the budget woes in the city schools.

“Because reversion is a lengthy and expensive process, it would not be a serious solution to short-term budget issues that the city and county both face,” Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Ann H. Mallek said Wednesday.

City Councilor Kathy Galvin mentioned a possible reversion in an email to City Manager Maurice Jones and fellow councilors obtained by The Daily Progress Tuesday. Galvin suggested looking at reversion if Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, is successful in his pursuit of a budget amendment that would relieve city schools of $2.5 million in annual state funding.

Galvin floats idea of reversion discussion

1/25/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

A Charlottesville councilor raised the possibility of the city reverting to town status in an email to her colleagues this week, suggesting the topic be investigated if Del. Rob Bell successfully pushes a budget amendment through the General Assembly that would further stress the already troubled budget for city schools.

Councilor Kathy Galvin brought up the issue in a Monday email to City Manager Maurice Jones and her fellow councilors.

“I’d like to offer one other consideration. If the current $4 million deficit balloons out to $6.5 million if the Bell bill passes, we will be looking at crippling cuts to our school division at a time when it has begun to reverse a decades old trend of declining enrollment,” Galvin wrote in the email, adding that many families are attracted to city schools due to their small size and close proximity to neighborhoods. “… All that said, if the Bell bill were to pass, I think the reversion question has got to be put back on the table (which I’m sure isn’t a pleasant prospect for the county.)”

The great hotel race: 137-room Hilton project planned for Rio Road

1/24/2012 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

A Staunton, Virginia-based hotel developer is under contract to purchase the former Phillips Building Supply from Martha Jefferson Hospital. By next year, the site—located near the intersection of U.S. 29 and Rio Road—could host a four-story, 137-room Hilton Hotel franchise. Coupled with other recent plans for hotels, Albemarle County could see more than 500 units hit the hotel market in the next two years.

According to plans filed with Albemarle County’s Department of Community Development, Heritage Hospitality Management, Inc., has proposed a “a four-story, ‘L’-shaped Homewood Suites hotel structure...facing Rio Road.” The side facing U.S. 29 is designed to appear “broken down in massing to create an impression of a series of residential buildings in a row.”

Raymond Phillips, who operated Phillips Building Supply on the site, gave the 4.4 acre plot to Martha Jefferson Hospital in July 2010 as a gift. The site is assessed at $3.5 million, and was previously offered as part of a 7.5-acre bundle along with the buildings at 705 W. Rio Rd.

The end of the fight: City Council approves cost sharing agreement, water supply plan

1/24/2012 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

Anyone anxiously waiting for one last epic showdown between pro-dredging advocates and new dam supporters got their wish last Monday when, with a 3-2 vote, City Council ultimately approved the 50-year community water supply plan, which included a much-debated cost sharing agreement.

The vote was predictable. Everyone knew going in where members of the Council stood, but the ferocity of the last debate was notable, as Councilors Dede Smith and Dave Norris, supported by more than a dozen members of the public, made their last push to change the vote.

“I did not come here today to actually argue the plan. I am wearing a different hat,” Smith told Council. “I am here to defend the city’s interests and our financial position in this plan. This is my social justice hat.”

JMRL urges push for state funding

1/24/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Director John Halliday urged the library trustees to appeal to Virginia Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, and Del. Steve Landes, R-Augusta, for support of two bills before the legislature that would funnel more state money to libraries.

Halliday made the recommendation at the JMRL Board of Trustees regular meeting Monday. Halliday said that even trustees from counties outside Landes’ and Hanger’s constituencies should approach the legislators.

“I think, in your role as a trustee, I think you can call and encourage them to restore full state aid,” he told the board.

The bills, if passed, will begin a three-year restoration to previous levels of state funding to local libraries. In a pamphlet distributed to the board, the JMRL showed that in 2001, the system had received $843,000 in state aid and was able to add 52,000 new books.

Kluge, bank in court fighting over another property

1/24/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

A federal bankruptcy court judge will decide whether an aging manor home, owned by Patricia Kluge and William Moses and listed as an asset to be sold in their bankruptcy filing, should instead be conveyed to Farm Credit Bank.

The home was conveyed by Kluge to a trust set up for her son, John Kluge Jr., prior to foreclosure by Farm Credit on the Kluge Vineyard and Winery. The bank sold the winery and vineyard properties last year in a complicated auction scheme that Donald Trump bought for about $6 million.

It could not act on the Ellerslie house because it was owned by the trust.

Farm Credit is arguing that it effectively has a lien on the property because it filed a lis pendens, or notice of intent to file a lawsuit, prior to the Ellerslie being transferred to the trust.

Plan would allow for complete sale of Landmark Hotel

1/24/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

A Milwaukee businessman has agreed to purchase for $2.8 million the skeletal Landmark Hotel, which has loomed unfinished over downtown Charlottesville since November 2008, if a federal bankruptcy court approves a plan submitted to the court by attorneys for current Landmark owner Halsey Minor.

The plan was submitted to the court on Jan. 13 and is scheduled for a March 19 hearing.

If approved, Virginia Hotel Fund LLC, lead by Timothy J. Dixon, who has experience developing hotels including the Iron Horse Hotel in Milwaukee, would buy the structure from Minor Family Hotels and take over its development.

Is area housing market bottoming out?

1/23/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

Overall home sales, median sales prices and the average number of homes in the local market inventory all declined in 2011, according to a year-end real estate report from the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors.

In 2011, there were 2,300 homes sold in the region, down 1.5 percent from 2010, but up slightly from 2009 levels, according to the report. The median sales price was $245,000, down 3.9 percent from last year.

Foreclosures were up 10.4 percent, 328 last year compared with 297 in 2010, and short sales were also up from 76 in 2010 to 112 in 2011.

“Fortunately, in the interest of pricing stabilization, short sale transactions only represented 3.3 percent of the market, while traditional sales or those transactions not involving a foreclosure or a short sale, accounted for 80.9 percent of [the market],” the report states.

Contentious Albemarle board has a tax decision to make

1/22/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

Albemarle’s county executive, Tom Foley, has told the Board of Supervisors he was basing his budget request for next fiscal year, which is still in the works, on an equalized tax rate of 76.5 cents per $100 of assessed real estate value.

Schools Superintendent Pam Moran based her budget request for next fiscal year on the same figure.

For now, the tax rate sits at 74.2 cents per $100. The equalized tax rate is the rate that would have property owners paying basically the same amount of taxes as the previous year, the side-effect of falling property values. That equalized rate is also in the county’s five-year financial plan.

County spokeswoman Lee Catlin said that the 76.5 cent rate is a “working” figure that will be finalized in the next couple of weeks as the county finishes this year’s assessments.

Hall, sold: Richmond magnate buys Keswick resort and club

1/19/2012 * The Hook [full story]

The owner of Keswick Hall will move on down the rails, as parent company Orient-Express Hotels Ltd. is selling to Richmond-based businessman and philanthropist William H. "Bill" Goodwin Jr., who already owns his hometown's luxurious Jefferson Hotel, Nashville's Hermitage, and such South Carolina luxury outposts as Sea Pines Resort in Hilton Head and The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island.

The announcement of the sale, which is slated to close later this month, came in an email message to club members on Thursday, January 5. The identity of the buyer came from reliable sources.

Former mayor Norris hopes new initiative will steer UVa resources toward city problems

Daily Progress * 1/19/2012 [full story]

Former Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris is launching a new nonprofit initiative this year that seeks to “harness the intellectual resources” of the University of Virginia and put them to use to help solve local problems.

In an interview with The Daily Progress, Norris described his vision for what he is calling The Charlottesville Institute for University-Community Engagement.

“There’s a lot of really smart people studying and teaching at UVa. And even though Charlottesville’s a great place to live, we have a lot of needs,” Norris said, recounting how he describes his new job to his 13-year-old daughter. “What I will be doing with the Charlottesville Institute is to ask these really smart people at UVa to help us solve problems in the Charlottesville area and make it an even better place to live for everyone.”

After years -- and hours -- of debate, City Council backs new dam

1/19/2012 * Daily Progress [full story]

Almost a decade after one of Central Virginia’s most serious droughts prompted calls to action for long-term water security, a project to ensure that the region has enough water for the next 50 years is on the verge of getting underway.

On Tuesday night, the Charlottesville City Council approved three items of business that will allow construction of a new dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir to begin within months.

The council approved a cost-allocation agreement with the Albemarle County Service Authority, agreed to a taller height for the new earthen dam and authorized the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority to proceed with what will be a major construction project on city-owned property. RWSA officials expect construction to begin in early March.

The documents still need approval from the ACSA and RWSA boards, which meet later this month, but the city was the main battleground in a debate dating back to 2006, when the broad terms of the plan first materialized.

Politicizing the bypass

Daily Progress Editorial * 1/18/2012 [full story]

Mr. Boyd and friends complain that the Rooker-Mallek move to obtain seats on the MPO was a politicized attempt to reverse last year’s bypass decision.

But, then, last year’s bypass decision was itself a politicized maneuver that reversed a board position of some 10 years’ standing. The board took its vote just before midnight after much of the public had left for home, and it had to approve a suspension of its own rules of procedure in order to cast that vote.

As for complaints that Mr. Snow should be voted in as chairman because it is “his turn,” we find it interesting that two years ago Mr. Boyd was willing to upend that unwritten rule so that he could become chairman. By some lights, it was Ms. Mallek’s turn. But Mr. Boyd said he would take the chairmanship if he could round up enough support (“Change of procedure could see Boyd chair Board of Supervisors,” Dec. 26, 2009). In the end, the supervisors elected Ms. Mallek. But it is clear that for some county leaders, fidelity to the rule is dependent on political advantage rather than on precedent.

Yes, this month’s voting on a board chairman and MPO representation may have been politicized. But it’s not the first time, nor are the posturing and political maneuvering all on one side. Today’s critics should acknowledge that. Anything less is disingenuous.

Cleaning up the Clean Water Act: Residents, city work towards Meadow Creek restoration

1/17/2012 * C-VILLE Weekly [full story]

On January 12, against the backdrop of the Rivanna River and a perfectly clear sky, Ari Rubenstein, organizer of Environment Virginia, told a small audience that included City Councilor Dede Smith and Albemarle Supervisor Ann Mallek that it was time to restore the Clean Water Act.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the act. However, the Clean Water Act is not what it used to be. Due to several Supreme Court cases questioning whether smaller waterways such as headwaters and seasonal streams were protected, loopholes have emerged over the years. These loopholes have left 57 percent of Virginia’s streams, and the drinking water of 2.3 million residents, unprotected.

“To be able to truly celebrate 40 years of clean water,” said Rubenstein, “we need to protect our rivers and the Chesapeake Bay by restoring the Clean Water Act.”