Monday this and that

American Idol, Fun stuff, Hampton Roads, Local, Politics, Sports, Virginia 2 Minutes

Been one of those days 😦 Time for a few links.

Seems the General Assembly managed to pass a budget yesterday.  The vote was, amazingly enough, unanimous. I’m not so sure what to think of that. I’d like to think it means that the negotiators actually compromised to do the best they could by the citizens of Virginia.  The cynic in me says “No way!” 😆 I’m glad to see ODU get some additional funding – a little more than $5 million – as well as EVMS, which received $3 million. Good also to see the additional money for education. Let’s hope the governor doesn’t tinker with it too much.

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Christina Nuckols points out what’s next for the GA: it’s all about them. She’s referring to, of course, redistricting. While it will dominate the conversation for a while, I just can’t waste much energy on it. The legislators are, once again, choosing their constituents, instead of us choosing them. Kinda hard to get excited about that.

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Glad to see Candy Hatcher writing a column again.

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Pretty big headline in Sunday’s Hampton Roads section about the mayor and his assistants. Seems the real issue is the compensation: according to the article, his secretary makes $66,272 and the salary range being advertised for his administrative assistant is $65,443 to $113,028.

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STOP is closing down its Head Start program. Fortunately for the 1,500 children involved, another organization has stepped in. I attended Head Start as a youngster. In those days, there was no public kindergarten and Head Start was a program held in the summer for a few weeks before we started first grade. Now the program covers at-risk children ages 3-5.

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I finally got caught up on American Idol over the weekend. Now is when the show gets interesting: we’re down to the top 24 contestants. The most talented musician in the bunch, in my opinion, is Casey Abrams. Do you know how hard it is to play the bass and sing? Of course, I could do without the antics of the judges, but that’s the price I pay to watch.

EDIT – forgot to mention the big story of the day: Clinton Portis was released by the Redskins. Ok, so maybe that wasn’t such a big story after all. I think we all saw that coming.

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7 thoughts on “Monday this and that”

  1. In regards to Fraim, I can’t believe some people (the Tea Party on FB was all up in arms about it) think Fraim doesn’t deserve an assistant and/or someone else in the city should do job share and take on their responsibilities.

    Must have been a slow news day at the Pilot. Anyone who has ever been to City Hall knows that if Fraim didn’t have at least one assistant, it would be mighty lonely on his side of the 10th floor. The price tag is a little high, but given the impact of any mistakes you might make, it seems somewhat fair to me. High risk means high reward.

      1. In theory, yes. The question is how many people actually realize that?

        As Mayor, Fraim gets blamed for everything, for right or for wrong. If she’s representing him at meetings, shes got to be taking a ton of heat for everything stupid that Norfolk does. If she forgets to return a call or the mayor forgets or something along those lines, she gets the blame.

        You couldn’t pay me enough for that kind of responsibility. I wouldn’t want to be the one representing the mayor in front of a bunch of residents angry about light rail.

        1. I think more people realize it than you think. Witness all the calls for the city manager’s head over the last few years. You don’t hear calls for the mayor to be gone. I disagree that he’s being blamed for everything; instead, that “honor” has fallen on the City Manager.

          1. That’s true, a lot of people in Norfolk are more involved than I gave them credit for it that statement.

            I guess since I blame the mayor for an awful lot, I feel like a lot of other people do to.

  2. The budget is better than anyone would have expected at the start of session, largely due to new revenue estimates being up.

    Re: Portis. In another stunning development the Redskins also released Charley Taylor, Sam Huff and Larry Brown.

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