Deputy Crashes County Car

A deputy crashed a police cruiser while chasing a car last week. Am I the only person that found the local reporting to be less than thorough on the matter?

What was the suspect's original infraction to warrant a chase scenario?

The Deputy was not charged in the accident. Obviously the suspect (who was easily found and arrested the next day) made it through the same stretch of road without crashing. Why couldn't the deputy? If the suspect had crashed I'd be willing to bet that he would've been charged with failure to maintain proper control.

Of course our local media (I know... stop laughing) will let this fall through the cracks. I can almost forgive The News & Record since they helped get Sheriff Noblin elected and I wouldn't expect them to print anything critical of his department, but the Gazette-Virginian will do no better. And WHLF's 'news' is a joke. Since Kenneth Cranford passed away they haven't aired an original news item.

Halifax County School Board's Financial Crisis

The school system is saying they'll be short over $3m and are threatening to cut sports programs to help balance the budget.

1. Cutting out all sports programs won't be enough to balance the budget.
2. Threatening to slash sports programs was a ploy to excite the natives so they will rise up in protest, thereby helping the board extract more money from the Board of Supervisors.
3. Easiest way to fix the budget: a) kill the two bus system b) kill the dual enrollment and academy programs.

Boom! Budget balanced, problem solved.

Of course the dual enrollment and academy system will continue to suck cash from the system because it's King Stapleton's pet. Whatever he wants, he gets.

Has the board ever stood up to him and said, "NO?"

Yes Doctor Frankenstein, I'm ALIVE!

I apologize for my recent absence. Work and family life got in the way of my blogging for a while this summer.

As a token of my gratitude for the many emails I received while I was on hiatus, anonymous comments are once again allowed. Enjoy!

$400k More of Our Tax Money to the IDA

When will the madness that is the Halifax County IDA end?

Our knowledgeable Supervisors have decided to 'loan' the IDA $400,000. Keep in mind that 'loan' is a loose term with these people and we should go ahead and expect that repayment will never happen, or if it does happen the terms will be very different from what is printed in today's Gazette-Virginian. After all, all they have to do is have another vote later to change the deal.

The most interesting part is that the parties involved tried to receive some Federal money, but they didn't meet the requirements:

IDA Interim Executive Director Patsy Vaughan said the Riverstone tenants – Virginia Tech and Tetra Tech – were unable to meet certifications needed to borrow the federal funds.

Virginia Tech can't meet the requirements to borrow Federal money? HELLO???? Is anyone even listening or reading what Ms. Vaughan said???? Virginia Tech, a state supported school, can't borrow Federal money, yet we're willing to hand over $400k to them. Does that strike anyone else as odd?

I think we need to send our Supervisor's to Joe Gasperini's basic finance class at the high school.

Are You Ready for Your Water Bill Increase?

Just when everyone's budgets are already spread thin, our public servants are itching to hit us with another increase. If you read the article in Friday's Gazette (beware, you'll have to scroll down to find it*), you'll see how they're rationalizing it. What bothers me the most about it is that they have over $100,000 owed to them by people who's service hasn't been cut off! I don't know about you guys, but the last time I was late (by just a few days) they didn't have a problem shutting my water off. I would think that the 'sewage only' customers would be even more inclined to pay on time. If you have raw sewage backing up into your home, it's time to pay the darn bill.

But wait! What they don't tell you is that there is no way for them to shut off the sewer service. Once a home is connected to the sewer, it's always on. That's why they aren't disconnecting those people! There is no real incentive for those patrons to ever pay their bill if there is no chance of having the service disconnected.

Ahhh... the smell of free sewage service in the morning. There's nothing else like it.

*Note to the Gazette-Virginian: Please, please, please either make your articles have static URL's, or at least change the archive pages so that readers can click a link to auto scroll to the article they're interested in.

New Rules for the Comments

Congratulations. You've worn down my patience and comments can no longer be completely anonymous. You must now have either a Google ID or an OpenID account to post a comment.

I apologize to those who were posting and maintaining the proper level of civility. I really wanted to leave the comments open to anonymous posters because I thought it would be the best way to incite real, honest exchanges. Silly me, huh?

New New New New Cell Phone Policy in HCPS

So, the school board approved a new cell phone policy. You can check it out on the Gazette-Virginian website (don't expect the link to work past Friday morning).

Question:

What good is a new policy when the old policy wasn't being enforced, or at least it wasn't being enforced consistently?

Best quote of the entire article:

Board member Stuart Comer asked about text messaging, to which Randolph replied he is unaware of a significant amount of text messaging during the instructional day.

Is that man delusional or does he expect us to believe this crap?