Charlottesville–Right Now with Coy Barefoot

As evidenced by the controversy now ranging between Bill O’Reilly of FOX News and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC, Roger Ailes is the rare example of a newsman who makes headlines even while he and his minions cover the politics, entertainment and personalities of our time. Ailes has been instrumental in every notable advance in TV and broadcast news and many of the political and media milestones of the past generation. Kerwin Swint has a new book about Ailes called Dark Genius: The Influential Career of Legendary Political Operative and FOX News Founder Roger Ailes. Swint is an associate professor of political science at Kennesaw State University.

 

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Covering the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for CBS News, U.Va graduate Kimberly Dozier earned a reputation for being on top of the story. But on Memorial Day 2006, Kimberly Dozier became the story as a car bomb took the lives of her crew, a U.S. Army captain an Iraqi interpreter, and left her in a pool of blood on the street fighting for her life. Her new book is Breathing the Fire, and it reconstructs her path from the bombing to recovery. She joined Coy Barefoot on the June 27th edition of WINA’s Charlottesville–Right Now with Coy Barefoot.

 

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Investigative journalist David Kirby is the author of Evidence of Harm, a 2005 book that explores the possible relationships between autism and mercury contained in thimerosal, a preservative uses in some vaccines. In this interview from June 27, 2008, Kirby claims that the Centers for Disease Control used faulty data on one key study of vaccines. Read his article on the Huffington Post for more.

 

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On the June 24, 2008 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot speaks with David Hamilton of Bundoran Farm, a “preservation development” near North Garden. Throughout the course of the show, Hamilton explained to Coy what that means.

”We’ve preserved upwards of 90% of the productive agricultural and forestal land,” Hamilton said. “It’s very important to have a method of developing property which doesn’t destroy that which is important to the community, meaning productive farmland.” The site plan involves building the houses in such a way that allows the farm to continue operations.

Hamilton also weighs in on the topics of land use taxation, how high fuel prices are affecting Albemarle’s farmers, and whether the Albemarle County Fair will be affected by the new development.

 

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On the June 19, 2008 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot speaks with Pat Enright, CEO of local developer Dominion Development Resources, LLC (DDR). Enright discussed two major projects his firm has been involved in recently, the Northtown Center development on behalf of developer Wendell Wood, and the proposed dredging of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

• Northtown Center approved - Phase I of the Northtown shopping center will contain a bank and other retail. Enright described his job as“really trying to align what the client needs, with what they’re allowed to do, with what the residents are going to be impacted by.”
• Dredging - DDR has proposed that an active quarry 3,000 feet from the reservoir be used as the disposal site for dirt removed from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Enright admits that his company has a financial stake in that piece of land, but argues that this shouldn’t prevent citizens and government from looking at the merits of the proposal. Enright estimates the approximate cost of removing the 2 million cubic yards of dirt currently in the reservoir to be between $24-29 million dollars.

(links are to stories on Charlottesville Tomorrow)

 

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On the June 19 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Jay James, filling in for Coy Barefoot, speaks with Brian Wheeler, the Executive Director of Charlottesville Tomorrow. The topics include:

• The great water debate- Brian explains the basics of the controversy over the water supply plan. Betty Mooney from Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan called in to express her concerns about the current course of action and the fact that, in her opinion, the dredging option has not been fully explored.
• The Downtown Mall renovation- The city is moving forward on a $7.5 million renovation of the bricks on the Charlottesville Downtown Mall. The newest iteration of the plan would start the process in January, and finish by the end of April. The proposed fountains and Sister City Plaza have been removed from the plan.
• Deferred maintenance- “Howard” called in to say that he sees a pattern of deferred maintenance in local government, both with the water infrastructure and with the Downtown Mall bricks. Brian responded that there are definitely examples of lack of maintenance, but that doesn’t mean that local government isn’t now trying to look ahead.

 

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On the June 12th edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot talks with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling (R) about the upcoming special session on transportation. Bolling summed up the prospects for the special session.

“There’s just no consensus… my fear is we’re going to go there on the 23rd, it’s going to be very short, its going to be very non-productive,” Bolling said., “I just don’t see a consensus building right now, and again it’s always possible that it could happen here in the next few days, but right now it seems highly unlikely.”

Governor Tim Kaine (D) has presented a plan that would increase fees for vehicle registration and increase taxes on car purchases, as well as levy a one cent sales tax increase on residents in Northern Virginia.

Bolling made it clear that he is opposed to such tax increases, stating his view that “there’s never really a good time to raise taxes, but frankly this is a horrible time to raise taxes because of the state of the economy.”

He also painted the Democrats in the General Assembly as out of touch with Virginia voters, arguing that there’s agreement between Republican lawmakers and voters.

“The problem in Richmond is not a lack of money, the problem in Richmond is a lack of fiscal discipline. We’ve got enough money through existing revenue sources to solve our transportation problems if we just use that money for transportation, as opposed to spending it on all of these new and expanded government programs, and the people of Virginia are a step ahead of the members of the General Assembly.”

Bolling outlined his proposals for solving the transportation problem without raising taxes. He said that reserving just 1% of the existing state sales tax for the transportation trust fund would result in approximately $950 million a year for transportation. As an alternative, he mentioned the possibility of requiring 10% of future revenue growth to go towards transportation expenses; he said that if the state had adopted this policy 10 years ago, it would have generated $800 million over the past decade. Bolling also laid out his plan for budget surpluses, arguing that “those budget surpluses are by definition one-time money, I think they should be used to fund one-time things like capital projects, building roads and bridges.”

 

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On the June 10 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot hosts a call-in discussion of the housing market with local Realtor Jim Duncan, who blogs at http://www.realcentralva.com/. The topics include:

• Duncan’s analysis of the current housing market in Central Virginia.
• Tips on how to price your house to sell in the current market.
• Public transportation- The impact of the lack of public transportation on potential buyers in the area.
• The desirability of urban living and its effect on housing prices

 

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On the June 10 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot speaks with Brian Wheeler, the Executive Director of Charlottesville Tomorrow. The topics include:

• Meadowcreek Parkway- City Council has identified their preferred interchange design for the intersection of the proposed parkway and the Route 250 Bypass; Brian and Coy discuss the government strategy of treating each portion of the parkway as a separate project, potentially in order to avoid review of the project as a whole.
• Rivanna Station Military Base- The military is proposing the construction of a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) facility that will accompany the expansion of the National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC). The Joint Use Intelligence Analysis Facility (JUIAF) would involve the expanded NGIC, the DIA facility, and civilian support offices built by local developer Wendell Wood.
• Light Rail transportation to Washington DC- The State of Virginia is looking into competing proposals for rail transportation from Charlottesville to Washington DC. According to Kevin Page, Chief of Rail Transportation for Virginia’s Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT), said that the largest obstacle at the moment is the lack of funding.
• County Board of Supervisors to vote on dredging and conservation- The Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution to explore dredging and increase water conservation efforts that will bring the Board’s intent in line with the City Council’s.
• Albemarle County Board of Supervisors considering change to minutes- County staff currently publish verbatim minutes of the Board of Supervisors meetings, but the Board is set to discuss the possibility of publishing “action minutes”, a greatly condensed version, in order to save money.

 

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On the June 9 edition of WINA’s “Charlottesville–Right Now!” Coy Barefoot spoke with Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris on a variety of topics including:

• The 50 Year Community Water Supply Plan- Mayor Norris pointed out that one of the missions of the planners was supposed to be the restoration of natural stream flow to the Moormans River, and that “if you take that goal out of the equation, and say we’re not going to restore natural stream flows to the Moormans river, then it opens a whole other set of possibilities, in which dredging makes a whole lot more sense.”

• Affordable housing developments- Norris addressed concerns about the lack of affordable housing in Charlottesville, saying “every developer I’ve met with in Charlottesville gets it…the Chamber of Commerce here, for four or five years in a row has said the lack of affordable housing is the number one public policy priority in this community, so it’s not just the social justice people that are saying this is a need, the business community gets it, the employers get it, the developers get it.”
• Woolen Mills trail proposal- Norris and Barefoot also discussed a new trail in the beginning stages of development that would allow residents to “hop on your bike or walk or run up to Monticello from Downtown Charlottesville.”

 

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