Charlottesville Breaking News
9 days: Dumler goes in for chunk of jail time
Chris Dumler leaves court April 2 after a petition had been filed to remove him from office.photo by lisa provenceIf you're a county supervisor trying to put a dent in a 30-day jail sentence, Friday, April 12, might seem like a good time to knock off nine days because the Board of Supervisors won't meet again until May 1. Supervisor Chris Dumler will be serving time from April 12 until April 21, according to Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.
The initial crowd of journalists and protesters has died down since Dumler first began serving weekends March 8 for his sexual battery conviction. But spending 15 weekends in jail must get old, and given that he gets the first weekend off every month to serve in his JAG reserve unit, that puts him into July before he has a weekend to chill and not do time.
"He's still a member of the Army Reserve legal command," says Reserve spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Matt Lawrence. And when a reservist is convicted of a crime that occurs while not on duty, he or she is subject to an administrative process, which has a wide range of options, from doing nothing to discharge, explains Lawrence. "There is an administrative process that's open," he says.
Dumler did not respond to Hook requests for comment.
After Dumler's first weekend in jail, Lieutenant Colonel Martin Kumer at the jail asked a judge to change his starting time on Fridays from 6:30pm to 4:30pm– and not tell the public about it, citing "information we have received from the Albemarle County Police Department that Mr. Dumler's house was recently shot a...
Benchmark: Claude Worrell confirmed as juvenile court judge
Claude Worrell gets the open Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court seat on the 16th circuit.photo by lisa provenceFor 20 years, Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Claude Worrell has prosecuted some of Charlottesville's most notorious cases. His days arguing in front of the bench soon will be over, and Worrell will be sitting on the bench in the 16th Circuit Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.
The General Assembly confirmed Worrell the evening of April 3. "I was helping conduct a mock trial at UVA," says Worrell. Delegate Rob Bell took a photo of the screen noting his 86-0 confirmation and sent it, he adds.
"I think he will be an excellent judge," says Bell.
"I'm very pleased to be chosen, and I'm going to do whatever I can to make the functions of juvenile court as efficient as I can for everyone," says Worrell in one of his last interviews, as he likely won't be talking to reporters after he dons the black robe July 1.
Worrell succeeds Dwight Johnson, who once sentenced a couple to eight years for serving alcohol at an underage party.
His current boss, Dave Chapman, is already freaking out about the imminent departure of his top deputy and his 20 years of e...
Social capitalist: Fairchild's unlikely B-school path
photo by susan wormingtonGreg Fairchild has to cancel a phone interview. He's in Macedonia and has been invited to the president's house to listen to jazz after they discovered a mutual interest in Chet Baker earlier that day at lunch.
This sort of thing seems to happen to Fairchild a lot.
Darden professor Fairchild has accumulated a stack of accolades. Last year, CNN/Fortune named him one of the top 10 business school professors– in the world. He's the only academic on Virginia Business Magazine's top 25 Virginians to watch in 2011. And let's not forget his three-year, $850,000 MacArthur genius award.
"I haven't lobbied for any of these," demurs Fairchild. "I'm just flattered. I teach at a business school and am interested in people who don't have a lot of money and businesses that aren't very big."
He acknowledges that's a field that defies the stereotype of B-schools instructing MBAs on how to take a Silicon Valley start-up and grow it to an IPO, or take a large corporation and out-compete another large corporation.
Fairchild isn't from an inner city or low-income background, he says. But he was always interested in the question of business development, going back to his days as a Darden MBA student in the early '90s, when he went to Moscow and wrote a case study on the opening of Pizza Hut, at that time a very risky venture. Fairchild discovered he liked risky ventures, particularly ones that could improve people's lives.
While...
Good neighbors? Controversy brews over apartments at Meadowbrook
Meadowbrook Shopping Center LLC hopes to put a 75-unit apartment building in the undeveloped grassy area behind the current shops.Courteney StuartThe phrase "mixed-use" may be all the rage when talking about city and county developments, but some neighbors of the Meadowbrook Shopping Centre aren't thrilled with proposed plans to make Charlottesville's oldest shopping center mixed- use by adding as many as 128 apartments.
"Any situation with increased density would be a mismatch for this location," says Roger Chevalier, who was alarmed by a letter from the city, dated March 28, notifying residents of a nearby neighborhood of the shopping center's submission of a preliminary site plan and request for a special use permit that would increase the allowed dwellings per acre from 21 to 54 on a nearly two-and-a-half acre site at the southeast corner of Barracks Road and Emmet Street.
"We would welcome more choices for our family to enjoy," says Chevalier, who lives within walking distance. "Shops and restaurants have made good 'neighbors,'" he writes in an email. "They have set hours. They are quiet at night. They have limited hours on weekends and holidays. Housing units," he notes, "do not have these pluses."
Chevalier isn't the only one concerned.
"It's just a lot of residential units they're proposing, so there would be a lot of cars coming in and out on regular basis," says Rugby Road resident Kaye Teasley, who describes driving down Barracks toward Emmet Street, particularly at rush hours, as "horrible," even without a new apartment building drawing more drivers.
This is not the fir...
Can Anyone Stop Ken Cuccinelli? Here's how Virginia's pro-life, pro-gun attorney general could take over the Governor's Mansion.
At his swearing-in ceremony, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli begins his hard-right odyssey meeting and greeting supporters at the state Capitol.Scott Elmquist
Ken Cuccinelli, holding a "don't tread on me" flag on inauguration night, was "tea party before the tea party was tea party," says longtime political analyst Bob Holsworth.Scott Elmquist
The attorney general helps cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Colonial Shooting Academy in the West End in April, 2012.Scott Elmquist
Calmer days at the state Capitol, during Cuccinelli's swearing-in as attorney general. The arrests of 30 women's rights protestors on the same Capitol steps two years later could potentially derail his gubernatorial bid.Scott Elmquist
Cuccinelli addresses Mitt Romney supporters during a campaign stop at Meadow Event Park in Doswell the week before the presidential election.Scott Elmquistby Peter Galuszka
It is a wintry afternoon on Saturday, Jan. 11, 2014. Strutting against a cobalt blue sky, a fife and drum corps dressed in resplendent red and blue colonial garb plays martial airs in front of the steps of Virginia's stately Capitol. The governor is about to take his oath of office administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia:I, Kenneth Thomas Cuccinelli II, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia and I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties incumbent upon me as Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the best of my ability. So help me God.
It's a surreal, if not bizarre, moment. Cuccinelli, a hard right-wing maverick, has managed to get to this position in a once-solidly conservative state where gradual changes are making it more centrist, if not progressive.
Didn't Virginians vote twice for Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, and choose Democrats for two of their last four governors? Didn't voters blunt the tea party movement that reared its rattlesnake head three years before? Aren't huge demographic shifts led by an influx of more diverse newcomers resetting Virginia's politics from red to purple to blue?
During these inauguration festivities, social conservatives and libertarians may be cheering, but others find it absolutely apocalyptic. Gay rights acti...
Latest from @readthehook