April 9, 2025: City Council to proceed with adoption of FY2026 on April 14, receive briefing on strategic plan progress
Plus: The University of Virginia will hold an open house this Saturday for the future of a Fifeville mansion
This particular day is one in which you might decide to party like it is 1999, though you are on your own to define exactly what that might mean. April 9 is of course the 99th day of this year. Perhaps on this day 1,832 years ago supporters of Septimius Severus were celebrating his ascension to Roman Emperor. Nothing in the rest of this edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement harkens back that far in history. I’m Sean Tubbs and I’m fascinated by all of the tapestries weaved together through all of these stories.
In today’s installment:
Charlottesville City Council holds first reading on FY2026 budget though a wrap-up work session will be held on April 10
Charlottesville Deputy City Manager gives a briefing on the next steps for Council’s strategic plan
The University of Virginia will host an open house for Oak Lawn in Fifeville this Saturday
A former City Councilor pleads with Council to fund improvements to make the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial more accessible
First shout-out: Camp Albemarle
Today’s first subscriber-supported public service announcement goes out to Camp Albemarle, which has for over sixty years been a “wholesome rural, rustic and restful site for youth activities, church groups, civic events and occasional private programs.”
Located on 14 acres on the banks of the Moorman’s River near Free Union, Camp Albemarle continues as a legacy of being a Civilian Conservation Corps project that sought to promote the importance of rural activities. Are you looking to escape and reconnect with nature? Consider holding an event where the natural beauty of the grounds will provide a venue to suit your needs. Visit their website to view the gallery and learn more!
Charlottesville on track to adopt FY2026 budget on April 14
In Virginia, localities are subordinate to the state government. Virginia code lays out specific requirements for what cities and counties must do with regard to how public money is spent.
For instance, §58.1-3321 sets out rules for if a locality’s property reassessment results in more money coming in than the previous year. For details quickly, here’s a story I’ve previously written about how localities must provide a public notice for something called the “lowered tax rate.”
Charlottesville City Council was originally scheduled to hold a public hearing on the tax rates for the current fiscal year on March 17. However, the Charlottesville Daily Progress placed the public notice in a section of their newspaper that did not comply with state code.
A second advertisement was made for an April 7 meeting on the property tax rates. However, Charlottesville Resident Jim Moore filed for an injunction on April 4 arguing that this notice was not publicly posted in a prominent location inside City Hall.
While the city responded in Charlottesville Circuit Court seeking denial of the injunction, a decision was made to postpone the property tax rate public hearing until April 21. However, the second public hearing for the budget itself was still held this past Monday.
Before that, Moore took the opportunity during the public comment period to address Council to express confusion.
“Your agenda says this is about a real property tax rate,” Moore said. “Your Daily Progress notice says this hearing would have been about a real property tax increase. Your proposed budget says that the budget does not require a tax increase.”
City Councilor Michael Payne asked for a clarification.
“The budget does not include tax increases?” Payne asked.
“There is no change to the tax rate but there is a change to the reassessments,” said City Manager Sam Sanders.
The real estate tax rate proposed for 2025 is the same as 2024 at $0.98 per $100 of assessed value. This gets confusing because the tax rate applies to the calendar year, not the fiscal year.
Here’s what the budget says on page 65.
“The FY26 projection for this revenue is roughly $117 million, which represents an increase of $8.6 million, or eight percent, over the adopted FY2025 budget,” reads the budget.
The increase is due to an overall reassessment increase of 7.74 percent for 2025, as reported in January.
When the next public notice in the Charlottesville Daily Progress is printed to advertise the 2025 tax rates, state code requires it to list these four items:
“Total assessed value of real property, excluding additional assessments due to new construction of improvements to property, exceeds last year’s total assessed value of real property by 7.36 percent.”
“The tax rate which would levy the same amount of real estate tax as last year, when multiplied by the new total assessed value of real estate with the exclusions mentioned above, would be $0.9128 per $100 of assessed value. This rate will be known as the ‘lowered tax rate.’”
“The City of Charlottesville proposes to adopt a real estate tax rate of $0.98 per $100 of assessed value. The difference between the lowered tax rate and the proposed rate would be $0.0672 per $100 or 7.359 percent. This difference will be known as the “effective tax rate increase.”
“Based on the proposed real property tax rate and changes in other revenues, the total budget of the City of Charlottesville will exceed last year’s by 4.97 percent.”
Virginia code does not require the above information to be posted in the budget document itself. Council was also not given these specifics on Monday night.
For another example of what other communities do, look at a release sent out this afternoon by the City of Lynchburg that follows the same format.
The first public hearing on the budget was held on March 20 as part of the Community Budget Forum. A second public hearing was held Monday as introduced by budget director Krisy Hammill.
“We've also talked about some amendments and changes along the way through our work sessions,” Hammill said. “We'll have a work session this Thursday night to work on finalizing some of those.”
Sanders said Council will still move forward with the budget process and the hearing on the tax rate can take place after adoption.
“We're still moving forward through the budget process and we are making sure that we adhere to our obligation to provide proper public notice for the public hearing related to the tax levy,” Sanders said. “So that is what we're resetting. We're resetting the order in which that happens.”
In Virginia, a separate public hearing must be held for the budget and the tax rates. The second public hearing proceeded and the only speaker was Jim Moore who said many in the city are becoming cost burdened by increasing tax bills.
“Your notice that you put in the ad specifically says there will be an effective tax rate increase of 7.359 percent,” Moore said.
He said one property he owns now has a real estate tax bill for 2025 that is $1,104 higher than in 2021.
“I encourage you to consider whether your tax trajectories are sustainable without unduly straining residents,” Moore said.
The second public hearing on the budget also served as the first of two readings to adopt the budget. The second reading will be on April 14. There will also need to be two readings of the tax rates.
Deputy City Manager Ratliff provides update on Charlottesville’s strategic plan
Perhaps one reason many Americans find local government hard to follow is a preponderance of plans. There are Comprehensive Plans, transportation plans, water and infrastructure plans, and all sorts of other documents that direct the future of a place.
The day to day work of government in Charlottesville is guided by a strategic plan. Council adopted a framework in September 2023 that was organized into nine areas plus an overarching committee to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
“This is a three year document of which we are nearly two years through,” said Deputy City Manager for Administration Eden Ratliff. “So we have one more year to go.”
Council adopted the framework for the strategic plan just one month after City Manager Sam Sanders took over from interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers. Rogers was an employee of the Robert Bobb Group who the city turned to staff the position after a string of resignations. Sanders as well as Ashley Marshall were hired by former City Manager Chip Boyles who left in the fall of 2022.
Sanders has since filled his administration with additional two deputies including Ratliff who was hired early in 2024. Sanders also promoted Neighborhood Development Services Director James Freas to Deputy City Manager for Operations.
In the coming months, Council will begin the process of creating a new strategic plan that will kick off with a retreat sometime in early Fiscal Year 2026. But first, Ratliff went through a series of accomplishments.
“One of the things that we have completed or substantially complete is the reimagination of locally administered program with the Virginia Department of Transportation,” Ratliff said.
For many years, the City of Charlottesville struggled to move funded projects from planning to design to construction. Here are several stories that document the past few years.
City officially cancels West Main Streetscape project, June 10, 2022
Charlottesville infrastructure updates: Sanders seeks more time to help city build back capacity, December 6, 2022
Charlottesville’s new transportation planner briefs Council on future process, March 21, 2023
Charlottesville transportation planners seeking to rebuild public trust, May 16, 2024
Transportation planning manager updates Charlottesville City Council on existing projects, May 17, 2024
Commonwealth Transportation Board supports cancellation of two Charlottesville projects, formally cancels Emmet Street Phase Two, December 7, 2024
Ratliff said the city will release a strategic plan tracker this fall. He said this will allow people to find the answers to questions such as how many affordable units have been built. For now, here’s a link to the 12 page report.
The city has hired the Raftelis Group to assist with tracking the current strategic plan and creating the next one.
Second-shout out: Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards
The next shout-out is one I’m very interested in. There is now a big school behind my house and I’d like to plant some trees to screen my property. I really have no idea how to do such a thing, but you can bet where I’ll be the morning of April 12, 2025!
That’s when the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards will be holding their annual tree sale at the Virginia Department of Forestry at 900 Natural Resources Drive in Charlottesville. The group has their own tree nursery, entirely run by volunteers. They plant saplings obtained from multiple sources and nurture them until they are large enough to be planted out. They concentrate on native trees, some of which are hard to find from commercial sources.
Open house scheduled Saturday for UVA’s plans for Oak Lawn
The biggest driver of how land is used in Charlottesville continues to be the University of Virginia. There are over a billion dollars in construction projects underway across various sections of Grounds according to the Major Capital Plan.
One of the items in that planning document is a planning study for the future of the Oak Lawn estate in the Fifeville neighborhood. The University of Virginia directly purchased the 5.2 acre property in October 2023 for $3.5 million.
Usually property is purchased first by the University of Virginia Foundation which keeps it on property tax rolls during the planning process. That system was called for by a 1986 agreement between Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA. (read the Three Party Agreement)
To do the planning work, UVA and the UVA Health System hired the firm Mitchell / Matthews Architects & Planners. That firm has been involved in several nearby projects such as the development of the Standard on West Main Street in the 2010’s.
The work is now in the second phase, according to a report from the Fifeville Neighborhood Association. That report also publicized an open house scheduled for this Saturday from noon to 2 p.m.
The report from the Fifeville Neighborhood Association states that UVA will be seeking a rezoning for the property because the Residential-C zoning would not support the primary use of childcare that UVA is anticipating for the site.
Work has also been completed on another report that will inform the future of the site by looking at the past. The firms of John G. Waite Associates, Architects as well as Liz Sargent Historic Landscape Architecture have completed a Historic Structure Report and Cultural Landscape Report.
“Ultimately, the adaptive use of Oak Lawn by UVA/UVA Health could be a new model for the integration of a significant historic building and landscape that is associated with the early nineteenth-century development of Charlottesville into the fabric of the expanding University of Virginia in the twenty-first century,” reads page 12 of the report.
Recommendations from this report begin on page 408.
Former City Council appeals to Council to move forward with improvements to support Dogwood Memorial
A former member of Charlottesville City Council who now runs a nonprofit advocacy group for disabled individuals appeared before the elected body on April 7 to ask Council to invest in infrastructures to make a war memorial in the center of the city more accessible.
Tom Vandever served on Council for two terms in the 80’s and 90’s and is the executive director of the Independence Resource Center
“We are particularly concerned about problems with appropriate access for the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial Plaza and access to the eastern portions of McIntire Park,” Vandever said.
The Dogwood Memorial Vietnam was installed in 1966 at the southern edge of McIntire Park. The memorial is considered to be the first in the United States and for many years could be accessed via a parking lot for the former golf course and wading pool.
The City of Charlottesville took many years to support construction of what is now known as the John Warner Parkway but was known for many years as the Meadowcreek Parkway. City Council adopted a master plan for the eastern side of McIntire Park in September 2012 that eliminated the wading pool and the golf course in anticipation of a skate park and a future botanical garden. (read my story from back then)
The creation of that master plan came after Council had decided to proceed with the parkway which would travel along the eastern edge. The roadway was finally completed in 2015 and official parking for the memorial was to be located at the Charlottesville Area Rescue Squad Parking lot or on the western site of the park. An asphalt pathway currently exists.
Vandever told Council that is not enough for people who are mobility challenged, including many veterans and those who want to travel to to the memorial to pay their respects.
“Since 2015 completion of the John Warner Parkway, these citizens have been the victims of city decisions that minimize the importance of full access and instead say basically, it's not up to standards, but it's good enough for you,” Vandever said.
Vandever said at one point there was to have been a pedestrian bridge connecting the high ground where the memorial stands with the other side of the parkway. That was eliminated from the final design in favor of the asphalt pathway which requires people to cross the parkway and its access roads.
In May 2019, City Council appointed a task force to study solutions and Vandever was a member. The group met five times and presented a report to Council in November 2019 when Tarron Richardson was City Manager. Here’s a link to the group’s final report.
“Since then, the Dogwood Memorial has repeatedly urged and its foundation has repeatedly urged the city to include this project in our [Capital Improvement Program] budget and to make a sincere effort to provide true and easy access,” Vandever said.
Afton Schneider, the city’s director of communications and public engagement said Council is set to approve $100,000 toward a project in the capital improvement program.
“The City is preparing a [public private partnership] to find a builder and determine scope and budget at which time they will be able to consider any additional funds to be given,” Schneider said.
Schneider added that the Council approved a resolution on December 5, 2022 reaffirming support for the project. She added Albemarle County will also be part of the discussion.
Reading material:
Plan presented to remove traffic lane on Fifth Street Southwest, Mark Gad, CBS19 News, April 8, 2025
Compassionate Care Clinic to offer services to Greene County pets, CBS19 News, April 9, 2025
Coalition seeks zoning change in Louisa County to allow churches to be used for overnight stays in winter, Sean Tubbs, C-Ville Weekly
The perimeter of #845 is complete
Four stories about Charlottesville a day after three stories about Albemarle. The first one is likely confusing as there are terms of art in play. When in doubt, consult the state code. I’m often in doubt, so state code is consulted a lot.
I had thought about not working today as I began my day speaking with young journalists from a different country. In a different world, I would have loved to have traveled the world to experience all of the various differences. But my world is staying in the same place and being as prolific as possible in my quest to explain how things work.
Or don’t work. I have dreams every night where I write stories, dream stories I’m always disappointed do not materialize into a finished product. But I’ve learned to just lean into the spirit of these dreams and enjoy the madness.
In my work, I’m constantly trying to sift through information to determine how it all fits together. If I get something wrong, I will correct it. I chose this work because I want to understand things, and I want other people to understand them, too. I do not want to sensationalize or hype anything, except perhaps things such as we finally got more information about King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s forthcoming album. You know? The one with the orchestra?
So of course I’m going to end with the first single which has been out since late October. The opening line sends chills down my spine as I work now to hit send so I can get to tomorrow’s set of stories.