Jessica Maslaney remembers trying to navigate the complex maze of child care options before her first child was born. “It’s a confusing process where everything matters, from cost to educational environment to teacher qualifications, and you’re just scrambling to figure it all out.” After toting her baby son to work with her at the Piedmont […]
Jessica Maslaney remembers trying to navigate the complex maze of child care options before her first child was born. “It’s a confusing process where everything matters, from cost to educational environment to teacher qualifications, and you’re just scrambling to figure it all out.” After toting her baby son to work with her at the Piedmont […]
Douglas Turner Day IV, former Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society executive director and noted Piedmont blues-style musician, died January 26 from pancreatic cancer. He was 63. An avid social media-ist, he wrote on Facebook January 22, “Well, it’s official. Hospice later this week. I’ll be posting a fundraiser for my album.” Day graduated from UVA, and […]
It’s long been clear that the folks of the small, predominately black Union Hill community in bucolic Buckingham County don’t want the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and its compressor station on their soil. And now two well-known voices who condemn environmental racism are joining the fight against it. Former vice president Al Gore and Reverend William […]
As he prepares to step down, the founder of the Southern Environmental Law Center looks back on three decades of defending the region’s natural treasures Ambitious and naive. That’s how Rick Middleton describes himself 33 years ago, when he founded the Southern Environmental Law Center, a small nonprofit that would protect the air, the […]
Although revenue is up in Albemarle, and county exec Jeff Richardson presented a sunny forecast to the Board of Supervisors February 15, his $457-million fiscal year 2020 budget is based on upping the current property tax rate by 1.5 cents. He calls the budget, which increases spending 5.7 percent, “an ambitious vision statement that is […]
Last fall, after Burley Middle School unveiled a monument wall listing the names of students who attended the segregated school from 1951 to 1967, local activist Jimmy Hollins began circulating a petition to officially designate it a historic landmark. Burley is one of three operating Virginia schools that had once been all-black, as it was […]
New kids on the bench The General Assembly appointed four new judges for the 16th Circuit, which includes Charlottesville and Albemarle, and two are for new positions to handle swelling caseloads. Juvenile and domestic relations court Judge Claude Worrell, 55, will move up to circuit court. Before his appointment in 2013, Worrell was a deputy […]
A resolution to ban Confederate imagery on clothing in Albemarle schools was back on the agenda at the February 14 Albemarle County School Board meeting. The last time the issue came up, in August, six people were arrested. School board members were split on the issue, and again postponed a decision, to the dismay of both […]
Phoebe Stevens is a pacifist. She says that’s why she wrapped her arms around Jason Kessler at his August 13, 2017, press conference as a crowd of angry protesters closed in on him. But after she knocked him down in the chaos, he accused her of assault and battery—a charge she was convicted of in […]
Things were looking good for opponents of Virginia’s automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court costs. A federal judge had opined the state law is likely unconstitutional, a Republican state senator carried a bill that repealed the law, and it passed the Senate 36-4. Then it got to a House subcommittee, where four […]