A graphic protest took place Monday at a Charlottesville fast food restaurant.

A member of the animal rights group PETA dressed as Ronald McDonald. He hung up-side down at the McDonald’s restaurant with his throat cut by a giant chicken under a banner reading McDonald’s cuts live animals’ throats.

McDonald’s says it slaughters all of its chickens in as humane a manner as possible.

PETA says it is protesting against the suffering McDonald’s inflicts on the birds.

PETA Protester Ashley Byrne says, “PETA’s chicken is getting her revenge today against Ronald McDonald for representing a company that tortures chickens in ways that would warrant felony cruelty charges if dogs or cats were the victims.”

PETA representatives called police when a man protested their protest by eating a chicken sandwich he just bought from McDonald’s. He left before police arrived.

Protest at VA Fast Food Restaurant on WHSV

Not much to say about this, except that people in this area have a great sense of humour about PETA. Anything they do is just a big joke, and locals always seem to invent fun ways to get back at them. I’m only sorry I missed this, I would’ve joined that guy in having a chicken sandwich.

I don’t doubt that residents of other areas have the same knack for making PETA protests look about as credible as a college frat party, but I hear about it the most whenever they come around here.

As any vehicle owner knows, an integral part of owning a vehicle is getting hit with a steady stream of fees and taxes just for the privilege of having personal transportation. And, fortunately, most of these expenses make at least some sense. But, here in Harrisonburg, VA, there’s one mandatory fee that really bothers me: city tax stickers.

First, a bit of introduction to Virginia taxes, for those who don’t live here. In Virginia, the tax code allows cities, counties, and some towns to collect a personal property tax on motor vehicles, trailers, boats, and other assorted vehicles. And, since it’s an easy revenue stream, the vast majority of counties and independant cities in the state collect this tax (whether or not it’s fair is debatable, but Virginia is one of the cheapest states to own a vehicle in without figuring this tax into the equation). So, since this is handled separately from any other vehicle-related fees, localities need an easy way to see which vehicles have been paid for. The traditional method of doing this is with city stickers.

Now, logically, one would assume that when the tax is paid, the taxpayer receives a sticker to replace their old one. And, indeed, this is how most localities that use city stickers implement them. However, Harrisonburg does things differently, running the city stickers almost like their own vehicle registration system. Paying the personal property tax is typically done in November or December, but the city stickers aren’t replaced until March. And, the part that really irritates me is that in addition to the personal property tax, the city charges almost thirty dollars just for the sticker! That’s almost as much as license plates/registration in this state. The only reason for the sticker is to avoid getting pulled over/ticketted for not having one within the city. That’s it! It’s completely arbitrary, and the fee keeps going up (used to be $15, and it may have even been less before that). Considering how many people live in this city, I find it impossible to believe that the stickers themselves and the administration overhead to sell them costs anywhere close to that.

Unfortunately, without state-level legislation to ban this ridiculous practice, it’s unlikely to change. It’s a per-vehicle fee that’s completely arbitrary, and nearly impossible to avoid if you have a vehicle registered in this city, so they have no real incentive to stop doing it. Virginia’s DMV already has provisions in place to link local personal property tax databases to the state registration system, so a person can’t renew their license plates without paying personal property tax, and they no longer have to sell/distribute and enforce the stickers. Many areas have taken advantage of this, but unless Virginia makes this the standard practice state-wide (which I would readily support), I guarantee that Harrisonburg will one of the last cities to switch to it, if they ever do.

Ever since I started this blog, posts related to local news stories and events have always been prominently featured here. Since I currently live in Harrisonburg, VA, my local-interest posts have focused on the Shenandoah Valley.

However, a large portion of you don’t live here, and while I try to make my posts as universally interesting as possible, there’s a limit to how much one can really care about news that doesn’t happen where they live. Since I have a lot of friends (and at least a few readers) in/near Pittsburgh, PA, and I spend a lot of time there (a long weekend at least once a month), it’s the next logical choice to look for material.

I didn’t really have any local readers in Harrisonburg until very recently (thanks Harrisonburg Blogs), and in light of some responses I’ve received to local posts, I’m a little curious as to where my readers are. So, I made a poll, asking which location(s) you’re interested in seeing local-interest posts from. I appreciate any and all votes, even if they’re for “Neither”, and you don’t even have to login to vote.

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Whatever the outcome of this poll, I’m not going to stop writing about Harrisonburg news (unless I move), or stop writing about Pittsburgh news (unless interesting things stop happening there), this is for my own curiousity. If anything, this will help me decide what sort of priority to put on each city’s news sources when looking for material. And, local news posts are never going to make up the majority of my posts here, that’s just boring, and doesn’t really suit the original purpose of this blog.

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Once again, Harrisonburg utterly fails at city planning. This is getting really old.

In an effort to turn every square foot of undeveloped land into high-density townhouses/apartments, the city let a developer pretty much go nuts with a section of land that isn’t very easy to get to. The area grew up, lots of people moved in, and…oh look, a road that most residents didn’t know we had now has too much traffic on it. Funny how that works, considering that the exact same thing happened with the Harrisonburg Crossing shopping center (”uh, why do we have constant gridlock on the only road that leads to our new shopping center?”).

So, they want to extend the road (which is currently a dead-end) and connect it to a major road a block away. Fine, whatever, this happens all the time. Except, instead of determining in advance where the road should go and routing it properly, they waited until the last minute, and decided that the only way it could connect is by running it right through someone’s house. Oh, and it’s among the oldest houses in the area.

You’d think that historical preservation would be a high priority for region obsessed with the “War of Northern Aggression”, but in this case, the city appears to not care. Nice.

The claim that “improved fire department access” is a reason for doing this is particularly amusing. There’s a small fire department on the road they want to extend, and they presumably want to make it easier for them to get to apartments along the road they want to connect to. Except, they don’t really have that much trouble with that now. It only adds an extra half-block to take the current route instead of the proposed route, and while there is a bad intersection involved, it’s only bad because of traffic on those roads. The visibility is pretty awesome, and if you’re in a big loud truck with spinny red lights, it’s a breeze to get through. Add a well-adjusted traffic light with an Opticom sensor to it, and you’ll not only make it a safer intersection for everyone, but you create a prioritized route for fire trucks. I fail to see how making a new intersection, which is guaranteed to have poor visibility due to the surrounding area, is a superior idea in that regard.

I used to really like Harrisonburg, but it continually does everything wrong when it comes to running a city. They let developers run wild in the name of growth, without any consideration for what will happen, and it’s getting worse every year. I don’t even want to think about the gigantic new downtown apartment complex with no parking areas is going to do to that part of town. Combined with everything else, I’ve pretty much stopped caring about Harrisonburg as a city, and I don’t plan to make this my home any longer than I have to.

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Continuing the trend of local news that ticks me off or disappoints me, my favourite music store is closing its doors at the end of this month. Plan 9 is a regional chain that, despite how rarely I actually shop for CDs, was always enjoyable to visit. They have a suprisingly good selection of mainstream stuff, in addition to being the central resource for local bands, and with the unmatched variety of the used section, I could always spend hours there looking for treasures.

The chain isn’t completely going out of business, thankfully, but all of the locations except Richmond and Charlottesville are closing down.

Really makes me wonder if something else will open up, or if Harrisonburg will continue the trend of cramming in more generic nationwide chains at the expense of local flavour (and then whining when they can’t keep businesses in their precious downtown). This city is already as soul-less as a midwestern strip mall, it really doesn’t need to get any worse. I honestly have a hard time telling the difference between Harrisonburg and Pittsburgh’s fringe suburbs anymore, it’s just so bland around here.

In my last post about VDOT, I railed the agency for cutting back pretty much all rural services and rest areas because of a budget screw-up that left them billions of dollars short of what they needed/expected. I wasn’t able to actually find any information on why they screwed up their budget, but admittedly, I didn’t look very hard.

The day that my rant was published, I came across this local news article, where a local state senator (who I loathe) called out VDOT for wastefully spending money on YouTube videos. I’m not usually one to side with Republicans, especially racist blowhards like Obenshain, but I have to say that this is a ridiculous investment for any government agency. I mean, it’s the Department of Transportation, why the heck do they need to make promotional videos? Half of them aren’t even useful, it’s just worthless fluff from an agency that really doesn’t need PR campaigns unless they royally screw something up.

Naturally, I had to check out VDOT’s YouTube Channel, and it’s rather entertaining just to see the lame tripe our tax dollars are supporting. I think this one is my favourite, just from the sillyness. Do they have salaried full-time employees sitting around with nothing better to do?

I think the best part is that, a few hours after the aforementioned news article ran, they disabled comments on this video.

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Thanks to a state budget screw-up, Virginia is planning to close a ton of rest areas on its interstate highways to save money, including all but two along Interstate 81, the northern and southern welcome centers. Which means that there’ll be over 320 miles of I-81 with no guaranteed areas to stop for snacks, drinks, bathrooms, or just to get out and stretch.

Of course, there are gas stations and such along the way, but there are parts of the state that are so desolate that there’s pretty much nothing. And, with the exception of the semi-major cities along the way (Winchester, Harrisonburg, Roanoke, and Bristol), everything along I-81 closes around 10pm, leaving late-night travellers with, well, nothing. If people stop along the road or on exit ramps, or at closed gas stations, any cops who come by tell them to leave, not to mention the safety concerns of being in the middle of nowhere with no one around.

This isn’t the only brain-dead idea VDOT is implementing to save money. They’re also planning to cut back on snow removal, particularly in rural areas. Considering how bad Virginia sucks at snow removal compared to other nearby states (like Maryland or Pennsylvania; even West Virginia does a better job on major roads), I really don’t want to see it get worse.

All of this is the result of a $2.6 billion projected shortfall over the next six years. How the heck can any government agency not see that big of a deficit coming with at least a little advance notice? To give an idea of the scale of this shortfall, the above-mentioned rest area closings (25 total state-wide) would save $12 million per year, or $72 million over the six-year projected deficit. That makes up about 2.7% of their savings goal.

I haven’t been able to find information on how this happened (maybe they were counting on revenues from those wonderful “remedial fees“?), but I’m not looking forward to seeing Virginia’s roads falling into this sort of disrepair. I’m sure the roads in NoVA won’t suffer, there’s too much traffic to cut back on much there, but that means that all of us rural residents will get “deprioritized” even more.

This is mostly for those who aren’t local; a couple pictures of the snowstorm we had recently, which I forgot to post earlier.

Also, I’ll be out of town this weekend and part of next week. I’ll try to queue up some posts so I don’t skip any, but don’t kill me if I miss a day

I always thought that Virginia would be one of the last states in the US to get a state-wide ban on smoking in restaurants/public places. This is one of the most tobacco-friendly states (that produces a huge amount of it), where several big tobacco companies are based, and it’s always been behind the times on tobacco laws. We had the nation’s lowest cigarette tax until just a few years ago.

But, a few days ago, it passed. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier.

It always surprises me to see where some of the opposition to these bans comes from; in addition to the smokers themselves, many rather liberal-minded non-smokers I’ve talked to also feel that restaurants should be free to allow smoking in their establishments if they want to. I see the logic; there are a ton of things people are allowed to do in restaurants (or anywhere else), in the name of personal freedom, so why should smoking cigarettes be any different?

The reason it should be different is that, in an open room, smoke permeates the entire room, and a smoker’s right to smoke in such an environment interferes with my right to breathe. The people I hear supporting smoker’s rights are typically the same people who insist that the rights of one group must not trample the rights of another group. So, could someone explain to me why the right of someone to fill a public room with dangerous, sickening fumes on a whim should trample my right to breathe clean air and not have to dig for an inhaler?

Now, I do agree with the anti-ban group on one point; ideally, the restaurant owners should be the ones to decide. And, some have, there are a handful of restaurants in the town I live in that are already smoke-free. But, the vast majority allow smoking because they feel they have to, or it’s the way things have always been, or any number of other idiotic reasons, and without legislation to enforce this, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. In the meantime, those of us who want to see all you smokers set yourselves on fire have to do constant research to figure out where we can and can’t go to eat in peace, while smokers can go to any restaurant they want. Yes, that’s right, if you’re a smoker, you can still go to a non-smoking restaurant, just don’t smoke in the damn building! See how easy that is? Personally, I don’t see why smokers don’t do that anyway, I can’t imagine food tastes very good mixed with smoke, but that’s beside the point.

And for all the restaurant owners who are worried that this will affect their business? Chill. Seriously. Plenty of states have passed far more restrictive smoking bans than Virginia’s new one (it’s still rather lax, for my tastes, but at least I’ll be able to go to late-night places for a change), and the world didn’t end. In fact, some of you will probably get better business from people like me. You’ll probably get some whiners at first, but they’ll get used to it; they can either go outside like they’d have to do at any other sane business (hotels, hospitals, grocery stores, movie theaters…), or you can stick ‘em in a glass jar like they do at airports. You have more to worry about if you try to circumvent the new law, because I’m sure I’m not the only one who’ll have the health department in their speed-dial once this goes into effect.

…

[takes a deep breath]

I realize that what I wrote is going to upset some people. And, well, I don’t care. I’m not typically a very divisive or hate-filled person, but every time I go out for a nice meal and gag on a whiff of burning tobacco, I have seething urge to find the culprit and make them eat the damn cigarette. It’s the same instinct that makes me want to destroy every cellphone that lights up or makes noise in the theater, or think up new recipes for dead child every time I hear a screaming baby in a public venue. We all have anger-buttons, those are mine. Cigarettes, cellphones, and yowling babies.

And, before the accusations start coming in:
-No, I’m not addicted to anything myself (except caffeine, which is surprisingly annoying to be addicted to for someone who doesn’t start their day with it), so I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t care, either; there’s an entire industry dedicated to breaking the habit, give it a try sometime.
-Yes, I have friends who smoke, though very few of them smoke cigarettes. The ones who do know better than to light up in any enclosed space with a non-smoker, especially me.

So, despite the fact that the new law is somewhat half-assed, congratulations to Virginia for passing it. You’ve finally sorta-caught up to every state north of us.

A new committee says they’re recommending ABC Cabs be allowed to continue operating in Harrisonburg.

Harrisonburg’s City Council recently approved a new committee to look at the renewal process for companies’ certificates to operate in the city.

Last year ABC Cabs co-owner Musa Syed was found guilty of misusing state inspection stickers. A few weeks later, its city certificate was up for renewal, but the city council delayed approval.

The council will have final say on whether to approved ABC Cabs’ certificate. A public hearing is scheduled for next Tuesday.

ABC Cabs to Receive Endorsement on WHSV.com

Great, just what this town needs, the sleazy, nasty cab company re-opening and taking business from the legitimate ones. We already have two successful cab companies, a cheap one (Yellow) and a nicer one (Royal), and both of them run legitimate operations with good workers. ABC, on the other hand, cuts every possible corner they can to save money, their drivers are downright scary, and they still barely break even. Half their cars are falling apart (literally), they make every effort to circumvent the licensing process that they can get away with, and they’ll hire anyone who walks in the door as a driver without so much as a driving record check. As a testament to their sketchy business model, their cabs are marked using vinyl stick-on letters from Wal-Mart that usually aren’t even lined up.

This town simply doesn’t have enough business to support three cab companies, and I would love to see this one shut down for good.

Update (Feb 10, 2009): ABC’s taxi license for the city has been renewed by unanimous vote. Yippie.