Anatomy of a hack: Examining Root The Box’s attack on UVA’s website
Last week’s high-profile defacing of UVA’s website may not have led to a serious security breach, despite threats of e-mail infiltration and stolen data by two hackers calling themselves “Root the Box” who took to Twitter to boast and threaten during a 24-hour battle with University Information Technology Services. But it definitely got peoples’ attention—in [...]
Judge says state devalued Biscuit Run property
An Albemarle judge has handed a big win to developers in the battle over Biscuit Run, ruling last week that the state under-appraised the 1,200-acre parcel south of Charlottesville by $45 million in a deal that traded tax credits for development rights. “This is a huge victory,” said Craig Bell, attorney for Forest Lodge, LLC, [...]
Brain in a Jar: Author of book on family’s experience with Alzheimer’s comes to Charlottesville
Virginia is deep in writer Nancy Bercaw’s blood. Her mother and father both grew up on family farms in central Virginia, her mother in Culpeper, her father near Palmyra. Like all his brothers, her dad, Beauregard Lee Bercaw, attended UVA. While he was in medical school there, his father began deteriorating. The disease he had [...]
Alleged Elks Lodge shooter indicted, cop cleared of criminal wrongdoing
A grand jury has indicted the man police say shot another Elks Lodge reveller on March 16 before being shot twice by a city cop. According to court records, Franklin Donnett Brown, 56, of Albemarle, was indicted on one count of malicious wounding for shooting Leon Travis Brock, 22, of Culpeper County, and one count of using a [...]
Big bang theory: Residents say blasting for critical airport project is damaging properties
“That’s a beautiful view,” Melanie Crawford said, staring out the windshield of a white pickup truck that had just come to a stop in the red dirt at the end of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport runway. She wasn’t looking at the Blue Ridge in the distance, but at the earth-moving activity in front of her. Crawford, [...]
UVA rebuilds its communications department, hands Sullivan the reins
As the first anniversary of the attempted ouster of UVA President Teresa Sullivan approaches, a major restructuring of the upper levels of the University’s administration is underway, as still-new Chief Operating Officer Patrick Hogan reshuffles his business and fundraising chiefs. But an even bigger management shift has gotten less attention. Sullivan has reorganized, renamed, and [...]
UVA Nursing’s $5 million gift and the future of higher-ed funding
UVA School of Nursing Dean Dorrie Fontaine had been on the job six weeks when she was told she was losing $1 million from her budget. It was 2008. State funding had been declining for years, and the financial crisis was delivering heavy blows to UVA’s endowment. The school’s only option was to take an [...]
Precedent is against petitioners who want to dump Dumler
The petition to remove Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler from office went before a judge for the first time last week, but the effort to force out the Scottsville representative faces an uphill battle. The petition effort, spearheaded by Scottsville resident Earl Smith, invoked a little-known statute of the Virginia code that allows residents to [...]
Woolen Hills? City Walk development bringing big changes
It’s a few minutes before the lunch rush at Beer Run, and from a table near the front of their restaurant, stepbrothers and co-owners Josh Hunt and John Woodriff can see a line of white contractor’s pickups parked along Carlton Avenue, and behind it, a mountain of red dirt rearing up where just weeks ago [...]
To the races: Dems file for contested Charlottesville City Council primary
With last Thursday’s filing deadline behind us, the slate of candidates for the June 11 Democratic primary race for Charlottesville City Council is set. Only one incumbent is running in a five-way campaign for two open seats—Dave Norris will not run again—so Council is guaranteed to see some new blood next year, and changes to [...]
Petition to remove Dumler from office gets April 2 hearing
The petition to remove Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler from office will be scrutinized in court next Tuesday, despite the fact that the Office of the Registrar has yet to verify the more than 580 signatures gathered by opponents of the embattled official, who plead guilty to misdemeanor sexual battery earlier this year after being [...]
Cab wars: Why new taxi technology is making some drivers mad
When Downtown Mall landlord Mark Brown bought Yellow Cab and Anytime Taxi last year, he created Charlottesville’s largest round-the-clock cab company, and started making big changes right away: a fleet of sleek new hybrid cars, an app that lets customers book rides via Web and smartphone, and credit card swipe machines that make it easy [...]
Family continues to fight for cemetery in the path of the Western Bypass
When Erica Caple James visited Charlottesville three years ago, the MIT anthropology professor was here to talk about the cultural impacts of the loss of the bodies of the victims of Haiti’s 1991 coup d’état. Two weeks ago, she was back, again to speak on behalf of the dead. But this time it was much more [...]
HUD report criticizes foundering, divided housing authority
The Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority (CRHA) got a thrashing last week with the release of a highly critical report on its operations by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and since then, parties on all sides of the debate over how to fix public housing in the city have been leveraging [...]
A shooting, a guilty plea, your tax bills, and basketball: News briefs
Check c-ville.com daily and pick up a copy of the paper Tuesday to for the latest Charlottesville and Albemarle news briefs and stories. Here’s a quick look at some of what we’ve had an eye on for the past week. Police-involved shooting leaves two wounded, cop on leave Two men were wounded early Saturday morning [...]
Local nonprofit New Forest Earth brings sustainable goods to market in C’ville
Andon Zebal’s eureka moment came when he was confronted with several hundred gallons of honey in Mexico’s Yucatan. The founder of a still-young Charlottesville nonprofit called New Forest Earth was on a post-college solo trek through Central America, trying to figure out how he could create an organization that could help stop the destruction of irreplaceable [...]
City homelessness survey highlights a common cause
Over the course of two days in late January, teams of volunteers filed into shelters in communities around the country to conduct a massive point-in-time survey on homelessness, including here in Charlottesville. The results of the survey of about 130 locals have just been released. The data doesn’t offer a complete picture of the homeless [...]
Tom Tom 2.0: Why UVA is investing in Charlottesville’s take on SXSW
Short, sweet, and smart. That’s what Paul Beyer wants the second annual Tom Tom Founders Festival to be, and the erstwhile City Council candidate has a powerful partner backing his vision. The University of Virginia is providing brainpower, funding, and even an appearance by its own president to help fuel this year’s pared-down version of the [...]
What will it take for Dominion to bury power lines?
Before the end of the winter storm that dumped more than a foot of snow in central Virginia and put the Commonwealth into a state of emergency last week, 233,000 Dominion Power customers around the state were without electricity in freezing temperatures, including tens of thousands in Charlottesville and Albemarle. At 10am Wednesday—the morning after [...]
UVA-linked public school yoga program comes under fire
A yoga program in a California public school district that’s linked to UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC) is the subject of a religious freedom lawsuit filed last week in San Diego County, and the plaintiffs’ expert witness is using language from UVA professors to help her make her case. The CSC, a collaboration among several [...]
Grading education: How good are Charlottesville and Albemarle schools?
Virginia schools are about to get their grades. The state legislature passed a new measure at the end of its 2013 session last month instituting an A-through-F assessment system for public schools. Supporters of the new guidelines—particularly Governor Bob McDonnell, who was largely responsible for pushing it through both houses—say it will bring clarity and [...]
Under fire: Democrats distance themselves from Dumler as Supe digs in
Albemarle County Supervisor Chris Dumler heads to jail Friday, the first stint in the weekends-only 30-day sentence he accepted when he pleaded guilty to sexual battery in late January. In the weeks since the plea deal, the calls for his resignation have grown louder, and now, in the wake of a string of interviews in [...]
Waste not: Passive house movement gaining traction in local market
When Bill Jobes learned about the ultra-high-efficiency building concept known as passive house, “it was love at first sight.” Jobes, CEO of Jobes Builders, has worked in home construction in the Charlottesville area since 1977, when he started apprenticing with Shelter Associates. He’s always been inspired by efficient home design, he said, and not just [...]
Dumler issues statement of apology, says he won’t resign
Despite escalating pressure to resign from office—including from all five of his fellow Albemarle County supervisors—embattled Scottsville representative Chris Dumler released a statement today apologizing for his actions and saying he does not intend to step down following his guilty plea on a sexual battery charge stemming from an arrest for forcible sodomy late last [...]
City’s marijuana possession ordinance stalls, but debate isn’t over
When the Charlottesville City Council let die a proposed ordinance that would have officially eliminated jail time for first-time simple possession of marijuana in the city last week, it signaled the end of a recent push by would-be reformers to write into law the city’s relatively lenient pot policy. But legal observers say it’s likely [...]
Kerry in Cabell: Secretary of State’s first speech delivered at UVA
The choice of the University of Virginia as the venue for John Kerry’s first major policy speech as Secretary of State surely had something to do with the lingering presence of Thomas Jefferson on Grounds. UVA’s founder was, after all, the first person to hold the title Kerry recently acquired, and his name was invoked [...]
Who will try Jim Baldi on embezzlement charges?
Last week, two and a half years after fleeing indictments, former Charlottesville restaurateur and accused embezzler Jim Baldi made his first appearance in local court, but the nature of the charges against him make it difficult to predict what the path forward looks like for the area’s most notorious bookkeeper. Altogether, Baldi, who managed the [...]