Cville Tomorrow News

Wheels keep on turning

03/29/11 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

Want to make things easier for local bike commuters? You might have to get behind the Meadow Creek Parkway. At least on paper, the controversial, 40-plus-year Charlottesville-Albemarle connector is a biker’s dream: designated bike paths, pedestrian trails and lush, green scenery. For Caroline Laco, who commutes from her home behind Fashion Square Mall to Harris Street near Circa three to four times a week, the Meadow Creek Parkway would cut her 45-minute bike ride in half.

“I’m totally psyched that they have that,” she says. Yet, Laco’s celebration will have to wait. Although already planned, the Meadow Creek Parkway, like other area bike improvements and transportation projects, is a long-term plan that still requires governmental permits, environmental impact reports, and litigation resolution.“I’m totally psyched that they have that,” she says.

Scents and sensibility

03/29/11 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

Since 2003, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority (RWSA) has spent an estimated $1.8 million to moderate the smell of the Rivanna Pump Station and the Moore’s Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Add that to the $480,000 in annual expenses for “operation and maintenance costs associated with odor control,” and one might expect residents of the nearby Woolen Mills neighborhood to smell a few improvements in their part of town.

Not so. “Just the other week, our neighborhood reeked of cabbage and baby diapers,” Victoria Dunham, president of the Woolen Mills Neighborhood Association, told the RWSA Board of Directors last week.

Martha Jefferson addresses merger concerns

03/29/11 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

In late September, Martha Jefferson Hospital (MJH) announced a merger with Sentara—a large, not-for-profit health care system based in Norfolk, Virginia. Sentara, which generated $1.7 billion in revenue in 2009, operates eight hospitals throughout the state and serves more than 2 million patients.

Last week, during MJH’s mandatory community discussion of the merger, MJH President Jim Haden stressed that Sentara’s hospitals are “community” hospitals, just like MJH. Along with the MJH Board of Directors, Haden told a small audience part of his job “is to look into the future and try to decide how we maintain ourselves as a superb community hospital.” That process led MJH to partner with Sentara.

For Albemarle, fewer services vs. higher taxes

03/28/11 * Daily Progress [full story]

The economy has strained Albemarle County’s coffers.

And with money expected to trickle in during coming years, officials are redefining the role of local government and may be forced to choose between providing fewer offerings and raising taxes.

“Right now, we’re not going to be able to build any libraries, any fire stations, any court facilities, any more recreation fields and even schools, given where we are in the current environment,” County Executive Tom Foley said. “And if we’re going to get back to building those things and need some revenue to do it, we probably ought to be engaging with the public about what’s important to get done.”

 

Indoor Biotech has ambitious plans for Coca-Cola building

03/28/11 * Daily Progress [full story]

What once bottled refreshment will soon bottle medicine.

Indoor Biotechnologies, specializing in allergies and asthma research, announced on Monday its plans to create a research center in the nearly 38,000-square-foot former Coca-Cola bottling plant on Preston Avenue.

Officials from the Charlottesville-based company hope to create the CityCampus Biotechnology Center that would include a biotech business incubator to help researchers become entrepreneurs.

Martin D. Chapman, president of Indoor Biotechnologies, told an audience of local officials and industry executives that the campus could attract as many 200 jobs.

Historic jail to open doors to public

03/26/11 * Daily Progress [full story]

The public finally will be able this spring to take a peek inside the old county jail on Fourth Street Northeast.

Steven G. Meeks, president of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, will give a short talk at noon Thursday at CitySpace, then lead a tour of the jail, known as Historic Albemarle County Jail No. 5. Tours also will be offered at 10 a.m. Saturday and April 9 and at 5:30 p.m. April 7.

“This is sort of the first opportunity we’ve had in many years to be able to open the doors to the public,” Meeks said.

The latter tours will be the historical society’s first walking tours of the season. They’ll be altered from their normal route to end with a tour of the jail.

Martha Jefferson holds public forum on merger

03/25/11 * Daily Progress [full story]

Martha Jefferson Hospital is one step closer to its merger with Sentara Healthcare.

On Friday, executives with the two entities answered a handful of questions from the public on their proposed alliance.

“When people ask me why we’re merging with Sentara Healthcare I tell them it’s because it will make Martha Jefferson a better hospital,” said Jim Haden, hospital president and CEO.

The merger is expected to be completed by early summer, hospital officials said Friday. The public meeting was part of a regulatory process the hospitals must complete before they merge.

Signs of spring? New execs offer slight optimism in budgets

03/24/11 * The Hook [full story]

For the past couple of years, Charlottesville and Albemarle have faced grim downturns in revenue compared to the high-flying days of the real estate boom and ensuing high tax revenues that filled municipal coffers. This year's draft budgets from the new leaders, Tom Foley in Albemarle County and Maurice Jones in Charlottesville, hint that things could be starting to turn around. A little anyway.

Albemarle was particularly hard hit during the Great Recession. Last year, the fiscal year 2010/2011 budget had then-county manager Bob Tucker chopping $40 million--- 12 percent--- from what had been in the budget the previous year.

County's Dorrier won't seek re-election

03/23/11 * Daily Progress [full story]

Lindsay G. Dorrier Jr. will not seek re-election to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, the longtime supervisor said Wednesday.

Dorrier, whose term ends this year, said that after 30 years of public service, he’s ready to do something different. He plans to dedicate more time to his family and business endeavors, including his law practice and new insurance business.

Dorrier is a Democrat and self-proclaimed fiscal conservative, and he frequently sides with Republican supervisors. He’s currently serving his fourth term as the board’s Scottsville District representative.

Fear global, act local

03/22/11 * C-Ville Weekly [full story]

In January, when Fifth District Republican Congressman Robert Hurt opened his new Charlottesville office, Jefferson Area Tea Party (JATP) Chair Carole Thorpe told C-VILLE that the group planned to turn from the federal government to local issues. Representatives of the local tea party, part of the national swell of groups calling for reduced government oversight, would attend local government meetings and offer their perspectives, said Thorpe.

During the last month, Dr. Charles Battig made a few such appearances at a meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. Battig, a JATP member and president of the Piedmont Chapter of the Virginia Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment, asked county supervisors to withdraw from ICLEI—the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, now simply called “Local Governments for Sustainability.”