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Providing Community News for Caroline County since 1919

Thursday, June 5, 2014 75 CENTS

INSIDETHIS WEEK

Police Beat—page 2

Senior Health and Fitness Day -----page 3

Cavaliers end season with loss to Hanover-----6

LCES ukulele club ends first year on a high note----page 8

Shon Daniels:Helping firefighters help others

see CARMEL CHURCH page 2

LOCAL PUBLIC SERVANT SPOTLIGHT

see SPOTLIGHT page 2

see RESPONSE page 3

By Sarah VogelsongCP Reporter

Carmel Church has been identi-fied as the best site for a dual bus and rail transit facility that would form the hub of the proposed Caroline County Transit Corridor stretching between Richmond and Washington, D.C.

The recommendation was the result of an alternatives analy-sis that Caroline County and the Fredericksburg Area Metro-

politan Planning Organization, in cooperation with the Federal Transit Administration and the Vir-ginia Department of Rail and Pub-lic Transportation, commissioned from the Fredericksburg-based consulting firm Kimley-Horn and Associates. The three-year study also examined three other possible sites for a transit hub—Ladysmith, Bowling Green, and a site near the Stonewall Jackson Shrine off of Route 606—but determined that

Carmel Church was the most ef-fective location.

“It has great rail access, it has very good access to I-95, and it also is in an area where the county has planned growth in the future,” David Whyte, a Kimley-Horn em-ployee, told the Board of Supervi-sors May 27.

As congestion along the I-95 corridor has grown, the need to improve transit options for resi-dents and workers in Caroline County has increased. A “Purpose and Need Statement” released by Kimley-Horn in 2011 notes that more than 60 percent of Caroline County residents must commute outside the county for work.

“I-95 has simply become unre-liable in terms of the travel time on it because of the congestion, and meanwhile we have an increasing number of freight trains as well as passenger trains traveling on the rail corridor, so that corridor is increasingly busy as well,” said Whyte.

Besides identifying Carmel Church as the preferred hub of the corridor, the alternatives analysis looked in detail at three transpor-tation options. The first proposed a commuter bus service system with buses traveling north and south along I-95. The second proposed an intercity passenger rail service,

Carmel Church hub for transit corridorResults of three-year study presented by Kimley-HornThe Virginia Employment

Commission last week released its jobs report for April, which shows that Caroline County’s un-employment rate has declined to 5.3 percent.

The report also listed the number of county residents em-ployed as 14,264—an all-time record high level.

The number of unemployed dropped from 1,021 in January to 794 in April. The number of employed county citizens rose by 505 from December 2013 to April of this year.

Unemployment reported else-where in the region: Fredericks-burg, 4.9 percent (nearly half of last year’s percentage under new VEC guidelines); King George, 5.5 percent; Spotsylvania, 4.3 per-cent; and Stafford, 4.4 percent.

Virginia’s unemployment rate is 4.7 percent while the national rate is 5.9 percent. The City of Martinsville continues to experi-ence the highest unemployment in the Commonwealth at 11.2 percent. Arlington County now shares its place as the communi-ty with the lowest unemployment rate with the City of Falls Church at 3.2 percent.

Caroline County’s increase in employment does not count re-cent announcements that include new hiring at McKesson, Value City, and Taco Bell.

Unemployment down to 5.3 percent

The only way to mark your 100th birthday is to celebrate it with everyone you can!

From its humble beginning in a building in Woodford built by its faithful members, St. Mary of the Annunciation Catholic Church, located now in Ladysmith, wel-comes all to a faith-, food-, and fun-filled and festive day of cel-ebration on the church grounds at 10306 Ladysmith Road on June 7 from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to mark the church’s 100th anniversary.

To start the day, the church will hold a special liturgy service to give thanks for the many bless-ings the parish has enjoyed in its 100 years in Caroline County.

Food will be served cour-tesy of the Caroline County High School culinary arts students, which will include some authentic items from the church’s Slovak heritage.

Music and dance performanc-es, reflecting the varied cultures of the present community, will continue through the afternoon. In addition, games for children (and adults) will be held on the church property. A display of ar-tifacts from the 100-year history will be set up to show what has changed in the past century.

The church invites community members to mark their calendars for this momentous and fun oc-casion and take the opportunity to see old friends and make new ones. Invite friends—this won’t happen again for 100 years.

St. Mary’s turns 100 on Saturday

And a ferret shall lead themA ferret was the belle of the ball at the Humane Society of Caroline County’s Paws Gone Coun-

try, a fundraising event to support the group’s pet adoption program. This ferret was found wandering the woods of Spotsylvania County recently and was placed up for adoption by the Humane Society. The critter sparked the curiosity of many a canine at Mr. B’s Bluegrass Park on Saturday.

CP photo by Daniel Sherrier

Fire chief assesses emergency response systems in balloon crash

By Daniel SherrierEditor

Precision Sports Surfaces, a specialty contractor headquartered in Charlottesville, has been select-ed to renovate the Caroline High School track.

The Caroline County School Board approved the bid at a spe-cial called meeting May 28.

Geoffrey Honan, supervisor of construction and maintenance for the school division, said a techni-cal review committee had met that afternoon to look over the bids received and form a recommenda-tion.

The project was originally es-timated to cost $600,000. That estimate was lowered to $400,000 after discovering that they didn’t need to replace the base beneath the track.

Precision’s bid was $285,778. This includes all necessary drain-age work.

“This is the entire track pack-age that we looked at,” Honan said.

The lower price tag created an opportunity. Honan requested a contingency fund of $50,000 to pursue painting the track Caroline High blue.

Of the roughly $115,000 in savings from the low bid, up to $50,000 would go toward painting the track blue, and about $65,000 would remain as savings, “so that we can get the color that they real-ly want it at the high school. They always wanted it to be the blue to match the school colors,” Dr. Greg Killough, superintendent, said.

Coating the entire track surface blue is estimated to cost between $30,000 and $50,000.

Nancy Carson, the board’s Mattaponi District representative, asked about the longevity of the blue coloring.

“It should be essentially the same (as the black paint’s),” Hon-an said. “It does fade a little over time. The black fades, too. … It kind of grays out. So it’s all affect-ed by the UV light from the sun.”

Honan indicated that Precision Sports Surfaces installed the cur-rent CHS track 15 years ago and is experienced in completing track work.

“They do the majority of the work in this area. They’re a spe-cialty contractor, and that’s what they specialize in,” he said.

The board voted 5-0 to ap-prove the $285,778 bid and allow a contingency fund of $50,000 for painting the track blue.

Madison District representative Shawn Kelley was absent.

Work on the track is expected to begin within the next two weeks and should be substantially com-pleted by Aug. 1. The track will be closed to the public during con-struction.

Contractor hired for CHS track renovations

By Sarah VogelsongCP Reporter

Even those people who dedi-cate their lives to helping others sometimes need a little help of their own. And Shon Daniels is eager to step up to the plate.

A volunteer firefighter and EMT with the Ladysmith Volun-teer Fire Company, Daniels, 21, is just as committed to helping other firefighters as he is to helping oth-er members of the community.

“I like helping people when they’re down, and I like helping firefighters when they’re down so that they can help even more people,” he said.

Raised in Caroline County, Daniels graduated from Caroline High School and still has family in the Carmel Church area.

It was the lights and sirens

that first attracted his attention, he said, “but it’s the brotherhood and teamwork and the integrity and giving that the firefighters stand for that got me here.”

After volunteering with the Ladysmith Fire Company begin-ning in the 11th grade, Daniels was hooked, and when he went on to Bridgewater College for a degree in athletic training and cer-tification as an athletic trainer, he continued to volunteer, transition-ing into the Bridgewater Volunteer Fire Company.

After his graduation this past summer, Daniels brought his ath-letic training skills back home, where he hopes to eventually find a job rehabilitating firefighters.

“I want to use my knowledge to give back to people coming up in the fire service,” he said.

Ideally, that will mean starting a career path at a station and even-tually moving up in the ranks to become a health and safety officer, a position that focuses on fitness and rehabilitation.

“The better in shape you are and the better your body is equipped to handle the stresses that are placed on it by the job, the more efficient and safe you are at accomplishing the tasks needed,” said Daniels.

At the Ladysmith station,

By Sarah Vogelsong CP Reporter

Emergency management pro-cedures put in place before the fa-tal hot-air balloon crash of May 9 helped county responders handle the situation as it unfolded while also highlighting weaknesses in the county’s emergency response systems, Fire and EMS Chief Ja-son Loftus told the Board of Su-pervisors at their last meeting.

Both the Caroline County Emergency Operations Plan and the proffers that the county has proposed be put in place for Meadow Event Park, the loca-tion of the Mid-Atlantic Balloon Festival, proved invaluable for re-

sponders, said Loftus.The local government is not

granted a significant level of su-pervision over events at Meadow

Major Scott Moser and Capt. Angel Lambert of the Sheriff’s Office pull the balloon wreckage out of the Mattaponi River on May 27.