Budget boon: Part-time councilors want full-time staffers

One sign of a healthy economy is when local government adds new positions, and Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones has several in his proposed $179 million budget for fiscal year 2019, including 2.5 full-time positions to help city councilors with policy and communications. That $225,000 allocation adds a new research and policy employee and gives […]

Tarps off: Statue lawsuit looks headed to trial

In the latest court hearing on the lawsuit stemming from City Council’s vote a year ago to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee, the tarps covering Lee and his Confederate general buddy, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, weren’t the main reason for the court date. But the judge’s ruling that the shrouds must come down […]

DOA: Gun safety bills die in subcommittee

Andy Goddard has been going to the General Assembly since 2008, the year after his son was shot four times in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. In his 11th year monitoring the legislature and how it deals with mass murders and guns, not much has changed. “It’s the same old thing,” says Goddard, who’s the […]

Steven Meeks has left the building

The controversial president of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society abruptly resigned February 11 after cleaning out his office in the city-owned McIntire Building. In a “hastily written note,” says Will Lyster, a historical society director, Steven G. Meeks resigned from the organization he’s headed for about a decade. The board asked Lyster to step in […]

High school beat: Newspaper editors share the real stories

What’s it like to be a teenager in 2018? We figured nobody’s better plugged in than newspaper editors, so we checked in with the editors at Charlottesville High and Western Albemarle, as well as a CHS junior. Here’s what we learned about the differences between city and county schools—and what they have in common. Olivia […]

Traumatized teens deal with aftermath of horrific events

Young people in Parkland, Florida, are dealing with an unspeakable act that killed 17 people and destroyed countless lives and feelings of safety in their daily routines, much like what students in Charlottesville had to cope with at the beginning of the school year after the August 12 white supremacist invasion left three dead and […]

Danger zone: Mom on a mission after soccer practice sends son to E.R.

Patrick Clancy, his brother Ryan and nine other teens went to an 8am soccer practice at Monticello High School on an artificial turf field July 21, the second day of a National Weather Service heat advisory. The two-hour practice ended around 10am, when the heat advisory officially kicked in. By 11:30am, Patrick was in the […]

West2nd smackdown: Council rejects permit despite meeting city requirements

When Mayor Nikuyah Walker chaired her first City Council meeting February 5, citizens got to see how previously out-of-control meetings would be run under a new regime—and learned that  the heckling continues both for councilors and for the West2nd developer seeking a special use permit that was rejected for reasons that had little to do […]