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Category: Local
Albert Pollard officially announces run for 99th HOD seat
Check it out at VB Dems: Pollard Makes It Official!
Hilarity among the Republican candidates for 99th HOD
One of the persons rumored to be running for the Republican nomination for the 99th HOD seat is Austin L. Roberts, III, who is currently the President & CEO of the Bank of Lancaster. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will face presumptive Democratic nominee Albert Pollard who held the seat from 2000 through 2006.
The funny thing is that Austin L. Roberts, III contributed $500 to Albert Pollard in 2001 when Pollard was running against Roberts’s fellow Republican R. Allen Webb!
I guess Mr. Roberts was for Albert Pollard before he was against him?
This could be fun…
I kid, of course, from http://www.co.caroline.va.us/boardappts.html:
The Caroline County Board of Supervisors is looking for individuals who would like to serve on various citizen boards, commissions and committees. The boards, commissions and committees provide valuable input into policy decisions made by the Board of Supervisors.
The various boards, commissions and committees are as follows:
Bay Consortium Private Industry Council
Board of Assessors
Board of Equalization
Board of Zoning Appeals
Building Code Board of Appeals
Cable Television Advisory Board
Community Policy & Management Team
Germanna Community College Board
Industrial Development Authority
Planning Commission
Quin Rivers Agency
Rappahannock Alcohol Safety Action Program
Rappahannock Area Agency on Aging
Rappahannock Area Community Services Board
Rappahannock Area Office on Youth
Rappahannock Regional Disability Services Board
Recreation Advisory Committee
Road Viewers Committee
Social Services Board
Workforce Investment Council
For an application go to http://www.co.caroline.va.us/boardappts.html.
February 19th officially set as the date for the 99th HOD special election
FIXED: Thanks to the guys at VB Dems for keeping me straight.
Benefit Fund Established for Beverly Gage
From http://www.visitcaroline.com/bgage.html:
A fund has been established at EVB Bank in Bowling Green for Beverly Gage to assist with her medical care and treatment costs.
Beverly is a resident of Caroline County and has served the community for more than 15 years as a volunteer with the Bowling Green Rescue Squad. Due to worsening health after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May, she is no longer able to work. Since being diagnosed the disease has been a constant battle for her and her family. Beverly is on her second round of chemotherapy and surgery is not an option.
Contributions can be made to:
Benefit for Beverly Gage
P.O. Box 353
BowlinG Green, Virginia 22427.Beverly’s family is also looking for mementos and stories or pictures related to her EMS times. Such information can be forwarded to her daughter
99th HOD coverage
From The Free Lance-Star: GOP sets process for candidate in 99th:
Gov. Tim Kaine has not yet set a date for the special election in the 99th House of Delegates District, but Republicans have planned their nomination process.
District chairwoman Carol Dawson said the district’s Republicans will choose a nominee on Jan. 12, in a convention.
[…]
Dawson said the Republican convention will likely be held at the high school in Montross, and that between now and Jan. 12 each locality’s Republican committee will have to hold meetings to select delegates.
The district includes all of the Northern Neck and parts of Caroline County.
Wittman held the seat since 2005, when former Del. Albert Pollard Jr. retired.
Pollard narrowly lost a bid for the 28th District state Senate seat in November, and says he is running for his old House seat.
Pollard said the Democratic Party’s bylaws don’t allow them to plan their nomination method until Kaine officially calls the election.
Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey said that while staffers are working on that, it hasn’t been done yet.
Choosing a date for the 99th District election is a bit tricky. State law prohibits holding an election in the 60 days before a primary, and both parties are having presidential primaries on Feb. 12.
That makes the earliest possible date for a 99th District election Feb. 19.
That leaves the 99th District without a delegate for the bulk of the legislative session, which begins in January. Kaine said it’s unlikely there would be special legislation to try to move up the date, and that if a delegate is elected Feb. 19 he or she would still have time to be sworn in and participate in the last few weeks of the session, including debate and votes on the state budget.
Pollard is the only Democratic candidate so far. On the Republican side, White Stone attorney Lee Anne Washington is seeking the nomination.
She is a member of the White Stone Town Council and the citizen member of the Northern Neck Chesapeake Bay Authority.
A few names of other possible Republican candidates have been floated–former King George County Supervisor Bob Barlow is one, although other sources say he may not run.
Republican candidates will have to file with Dawson by Jan. 1 and pay a $250 filing fee.
Some POS shot an eagle in Caroline County.
From The Free Lance-Star: Bald eagles injured in Caroline, Stafford:
Two bald eagles landed in a heap of trouble over the weekend.
One was injured Friday in a fight with another eagle in Stafford County.
But of more concern to wildlife authorities, a second bird was found shot in Caroline County on Saturday.
Both birds were captured by state conservation police officers (formerly game wardens) and taken to the Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro where they are recovering.
[Insert joke about Rob Wittman here.]
Tom Lernihan and a buddy were hunting quail with their dogs in Tignor on the eastern end of Caroline when one of the dogs discovered the downed eagle.
“We got so close to the bird, we knew that something was not right,” Lernihan said yesterday. “It had its wings spread, like it had just killed something. We knew it was hurt” when it didn’t fly away.
They went to a house on the property and called the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Meanwhile, the bird hopped into a small pond and fluttered over to a partially submerged stump.
Lernihan said the downed bird’s mate circled above as the drama unfolded.
The eagle, up close, he said, “was amazing to see. It was beautiful. Stunning. I hope it makes it.”
Struck with pellets
Conservation Police Officer Joe Dedrick managed to capture the bird–a large female–with a fish net when it came back to shore. He took it to a local wildlife rehabilitator, who drove the eagle about 100 miles west to the wildlife center.
Dedrick said he is investigating the shooting.
“The bird was shot with a shotgun,” Ed Clark, president of the wildlife center, said yesterday. Whoever shot it was using No. 6 shot, typically used for game such as squirrels and rabbits.
“Apparently it was shot from some distance based on the wide spread of shot in the bird,” Clark said.
X-rays showed about a dozen lead pellets lodged in its body. One cracked a bone that is expected to heal, he said.
Another lodged in the bird’s eye, damaging its retina. An eagle with an injured eye cannot be released.
“The bird is going to recover, and never be free, which is a tragedy,” Clark said. The wildlife center will try to find a permanent home for it at a site licensed to keep eagles.
This is the second gun-shot bald eagle cared for by the center this year. The first was found in June, wounded in Page County, near Luray.
Though bald eagles came off the endangered species list in June, it is illegal to shoot them under other state and federal statutes.
“There’s really not a rational explanation,” for the Caroline shooting, Clark said.
“Anybody who cannot tell a bald eagle from another bird has no business being in the woods with a gun. Somebody just took a shot at this bird for the heck of it.”
[…]
The Bald and Golden Eagle Recovery Act of 1940 provides for a maximum $5,000 fine, a year in prison, or both, for killing an eagle. The fine covers a $2,500 payment for information leading to a conviction.
The law allows limited taking of eagles for scientific, exhibition or religious purposes, or for the protection of wildlife.
Anyone with information on the eagle shot in Caroline County may contact the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ Report a Wildlife Violation section at: 800/237-5712, or by e-mail, wildcrime@dgif.virginia.gov
Someone give me a knife…
So I can commit hara-kiri.
From The Free Lance-Star: Less is more for Caroline station:
The cost estimate on a new volunteer fire station in Caroline County has more than doubled over the past five years, prompting supervisors to request a scaled-down option.
The project is now expected to cost $3.25 million, up from the $1.5 million estimate in 2003, Assistant County Administrator Alan Partin said.
According to a report from Public Works Director Allen Ramsay, the original estimate for a new 10,685-square-foot Sparta station did not include purchasing property, site development and community space within the building.
Estimates in the report put a $700,000 price tag on 2 acres and almost $2 million for the station itself. Designs will cost $200,000 and a construction contingency of $265,300 is included in the proposed budget.
$350,000 an acre?! Where the heck is this? The middle of Washington, D.C.?
Does anyone know where the heck this station is supposed to be located?
If you do, email me at CorranH96@gmail.com Thanks.
Ramsay presented the report to supervisors last Tuesday. He did not return calls later seeking comment.
Supervisors were taken aback by the higher estimate.
“How do we plan to fund buildings such as this?” Ladysmith Supervisor Wayne Acors asked fellow board members.
You might be able to afford it if you stopped paying $1,100,000 for a visitor’s center, $3,200,000 for a community recreation center, and $3,700,000 for office space for twenty full-time personnel (but the sheriff’s office and fire/rescue get nothing).
How much did that half-page ad for a private business cost that the county paid for?
Whoops, almost forgot about the over $40,000,000 to pump water from the Rappahannock River to Ladysmith. “Smart growth”, eh?
“Yee-haw! There’s gold in them there pipes!”
Acors suggested the county consider a bond referendum to pay for similar projects in the future, noting it wouldn’t be “the first or last” of its kind.
Port Royal Supervisor Calvin Taylor, who will not return to the board next year, suggested that Ramsay “address site work differently to save money.”
“When you start throwing out numbers, once that number goes out, it goes up or doesn’t change,” Taylor said.
The existing station on Sparta Road serves the southeastern part of the county. The report said the 2003 estimate for the new building was based on the cost of a station in Spotsylvania County.
Spotsylvania recently finished a 26,000-square-foot station with six bays. The county spent $4 million on the building and an additional $2.6 million for equipment, furniture and site work.
Plans for the Sparta building include three bays, a community room, a fitness room, two offices, a kitchen and bunk rooms.
“The Sparta fire station needs to be replaced,” Ramsay wrote in the report. “The space provided in the station for professional and volunteer staff is required to meet the needs of the community it will serve.”
Why should that concern the Board of Supervisors? “No return on fire/rescue”, eh?
Ramsay’s report says the Sparta station will serve as a prototype for future stations in Caroline.
There is no future in Caroline County…
Supervisors agreed to spend about $200,000 on architectural designs for the station. They asked that one design have basic features and another include extras, such as community space.
Rulings delayed in Caroline slaying case
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch: Rulings delayed in Caroline slaying case:
A judge postponed ruling yesterday on whether to move the retrial of a Caroline County woman convicted of killing her law-enforcement husband.
Caroline Circuit Judge Horace A. Revercomb III also delayed ruling on whether jurors could hear about a life-insurance policy that was to benefit Donna L. Blanton. The prosecution argued during Blanton’s first trial that she was in financial straits.
Blanton, 42, is scheduled to be tried again starting Nov. 29 in the October 2003 killing of her husband, Virginia State Police 1st Sgt. Taylor V. Blanton.
She was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison during her first trial in 2005. But the Virginia Court of Appeals this year found that gender wrongly played a role in how Caroline Commonwealth’s Attorney Harvey Latney Jr. selected which potential jurors he did not want to hear the case.
During a pretrial hearing yesterday, Revercomb said he will first try to seat a jury, rather than ruling beforehand on the defense request to move the trial out of Caroline.
Blanton’s attorney, Mark Murphy, told the judge a defense-hired investigator conducted an informal survey of 100 county residents and found that 44 percent of them did not believe Blanton could get a fair trial in the county. He also said 90 percent of those surveyed knew Blanton had been convicted of murder and that those people also knew the retrial was granted because of a legal technicality related to the jury.
Bull. Are you saying that all 100 people that you surveyed knew who Donna Blanton was and there was a trial? I find that hard to believe when only around 25% of people in the county bother to come out to vote (6,811 or so voters in the last election, 15,345 or so registered voters, 27,000 or so people in county).
And 90% bothered to follow the trial from arraignment, trial, to appeal? Again, bull.
I’m sure I could “conduct an informal survey of 100 county residents” and get results that 90% of “county residents” have never heard of Donna Blanton!
“The prejudice against Ms. Blanton is widespread in the citizenry,” he said.
The truth is prejudice?
Murphy also said widespread media coverage, some of which he said included inaccuracies, could hinder his client’s chances of getting a fair trial in Caroline.
Eh? What inaccuracies? Please provide a list.
Latney countered that the survey was unscientific.
Alright, I agree with Latney for once…
Court officials have summoned more than 175 potential jurors for Blanton’s new trial, far more than for her first trial.
Blanton, who did not testify during her trial, told police an unidentified man broke into the couple’s home before dawn on Oct. 16, 2003, shot her 46-year-old husband in the couple’s bed while their children were at home and then fled.
She told investigators she fired at the fleeing killer, but police found no sign of a break-in or footprints on the dew-covered grass, and she quickly became a suspect.
Nice one Kiran. Stick it to Murphy!