RIP Uncle Pete

I'm trying to imagine the world without Pete Decker in it. Sorry, can't do it.

This Norfolk lawyer - who seemed to be on a first-name basis with the world - literally raised untold millions for charity. His smile, his generous spirit, his infectuous laugh and, of course, his singing will be missed by everyone who knew him and millions who never had the privilege.

Long-distance lady

What is it about Sandra Smith-Jones?

After she was shamed into resigning from the Virginia Beach School Board - because she'd accepted a job 7,000 miles away, in Saudi Arabia - she finds herself now on the governor's Council on the Status of Women. A state advisory board. Emphasis on "advisory."

According to news reports, that 19-member volunteer group meets about five times a year to deal with matters important to women.

Right.

If they did anything of actual importance, do you think the governor would plop a woman on there who lives half a world away?

The only redeeming aspect of this appointment is that it comes with no pay. No expense account .

It's a resume enhancer, though. And a blunder by Bob McDonnell. 

What's in a name?

Town Center STATION?

Looks like the bring-light-rail-to-Virginia-Beach-at-any-cost crowd got the naming rights to the little strip mall next to Town Center.

That was close...

Well what do you know.

It looks like the mayor of Virginia Beach has been counting noses. When he couldn't get to six on City Council, he hastily pulled the plug on that $109 million boondoggle of a convention center hotel project.

"The deal that is in front of us now just does not have the support of council," said Sessoms.

Hallelujah.

Not to worry. This feckless project will be back. With a few insignificant tweaks and a marginally smaller public investment, no doubt.

In the meantime, the mayor has proposed that next week's public hearing on the hotel project be scrapped.

Bad idea.

Politicians need to hear from the outraged public. Especially those who are seething with anger after reading the Dec. 31 Wall Street Journal piece "Have We Got a Convention Center to Sell You!"

Sounding the alarm in the Journal is Steven Malanga, who skillfully rips apart the feeble arguments being made by disciples of development across the country. The weird part is that the tales of convention center waste - from Chicago to Atlanta to Virginia Beach - follow eerily similar patterns: As the convention industry crumbles, bureaucratic buffoons insist on throwing more and more public money at bad investments. 

Who loses? Not the developers, of course. The taxpayers.

 If you only have time to read one article today, make it this.

Hurricane hype

Uh-oh.

Looks like a couple of prominent hurricane predictors are getting out of the cyclone crystal ball business.

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that William Gray and Phil Klotzbach are calling it quits after a couple of decades of scaring the bejabbers out of coastal dwellers.

Apparently trying to guess how many named storms will whirl through the Atlantic every year is Category 5  fools' errand.

Gee, who would have guessed?

Old news

Well, whaddya know, Slate Magazine, that mildly entertaining online publication I once read faithfully but rarely bother with anymore, has just learned that Virginia law does not allow public schools to open until after Labor Day.

Stop the presses!

Furthermore, Slate reporter, Dahlia Lithwick, has just discovered that the legislation was crafted at the behest of the commonwealth's theme park owners, who rely on teenage workers during tourist season.

Ah, memo to Ms. Lithwick: This law was passed about 25 years ago and was immediately dubbed the "King's Dominion Relief Act." It's a perennial talker here in Virginia when educators clash with tourism types over exactly when school should start.

And yes, it is true that the theme parks pour money into Richmond to ensure that their platoons of young workers can stay on the job until the tourists leave in September. Can you blame them?

What Lithwick and others - who sneer that Virginia is a state more concerned with rollerocasters than the Three R's - never mention is that just like other, more enlightened places, the Old Dominion mandates that public schools be open for a minimum number of teaching days a year.

That number is 180, but most divisions build a couple of extra days into the calendar as protection against school-closing blizzards or hurricanes.

Remind me again, why are 180 teaching days that begin before Labor Day any more beneficial than 180 that begin after?

The timing of Lithwick's online article is curious. She appears to be attempting to link Virginia's backward school schedule to Newt Gingrich's recent blurtage about school kids taking jobs in their schools, perhaps as janitors.

Nice try, Slate. But one has nothing to do with the other.

Legal beagles frolic with furballs

After a week of unrelenting rants - with one more to come on Sunday - it's nice to find some news that's, well, heartwarming.

And here it is: According to The Washington Post, law students at George Mason University are destressing before exams by playing with puppies.

Seems canine therapy isn't just for nursing homes anymore. Law students have discovered that inhaling breathing puppy breath is mood adjuster. Shoot, it may even boost grades.

It's tempting to make some kind of lawyer/pitbull joke here, but I won't.

For those who have never seen a law student and puppy combo before, here's a link.

Good money after bad?

Beach blanket buses

Where did you spend the Fourth of July in 1999?

If you were in Virginia Beach you're a survivor of what we was unquestionably The Worst Holiday Weekend.

Ever.

That was the year the masterminds of the Municipal Center became frightened by unexpectedly huge crowds that arrived in town for Memorial Day. So what did the city honchos do? They closed a two-mile stretch at the Oceanfront to traffic for the Fourth.

That meant locals had to pass through police checkpoints to get to the supermarket while tourists were herded over to Camp Pendleton where they were forced to abandon their cars. The visitors were then frog-marched onto shuttle buses with all their beach gear and later deposited on an approved piece of sand.

It was a holiday in Hades. Never to be repeated.

Until now, that is. According to a story in The Washington Post, concern about Chincoteague beach erosion has caused the feds to consider an ill-conceived plan to shut down parking lots and beaches in that tiny town and herd visitors onto buses.

To a resort destination dependent on tourism, this will be a costly decision.

The Post reports that, "Town residents point to a local survey that found that 82 percent of respondents said they would not come to Chincoteague if they had to load their beach stuff onto a shuttle."

I dunno about that. 

Frankly, I'd like to meet the 18 percent of sun worshippers who would be willing to load their blankets, chairs, coolers and Coppertone onto a bus. 

Fix it, Phil

Well, it's official.

Richard Bentley's brief tenure at the helm of Norfolk Public Schools is at a close, after just 16 months in the superintendent's office.

Cheating scandals preceded his arrival and accreditation problems mounted once he was on the job.

Bentley's replacement has to be found. And soon.

Problem is, where will the city find a smart person willing to step into that mess? Especially now that it's apparent city officials have finally lost their patience with chronically under-performing schools.

Time for some out-of-the-box thinking. The last thing the division needs is one more uninspired PhD trying to escape some other school system. 

What Norfolk schools need is - are you ready? - Phil Shucet.

Think about it. The guy The Daily Press once dubbed "Mr. Fix-It" has a track record of jumping into stagnant ponds and quickly turning them into pristine bodies of water.

In 2002, Shucet was hired to fix a slew of problems at VDOT. When he left a few years later, James A. Bacon wrote: "There's no way the state of Virginia could pay Philip Shucet enough to reward him for what he accomplished as commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation. In three-and-a-half-years there, he reduced VDOT staff by more than 1,100 positions and payroll by more than $67.5 million. And he did so without the slashing and burning so often associated with cost cutters."

In 2010 Shucet waded into that mismanaged cesspool known as HRT. He immediately ended the HRT habit of making promises it couldn't keep and unexplained budget overruns - all while opening the doors and windows of that agency to public scrutiny. Now the Tide is up and running, the bus system is being streamlined and Shucet is due to leave the temporary job at the end of January.

What's that you say? Shucet has no experience running a school division? Hmmm. I've checked and can't find that he had any experience running a mass transit agency before he went to HRT, either.

It's unlikely Shucet would want to be the city's next school chief. Norfolk shouldn't be too proud to beg.