December 13, 2024: Charlottesville Planning Commission gets a preview of the city planning department’s work plan for 2025
Plus: Governor Youngkin is making a budget proposal to block jail funding for localities with policies that prevent cooperation with ICE
Tomorrow, December 14, is National Wreaths Across America Day, a day in which decorative garlands are laid at the graves of those who have served in the military. Tomorrow, the Reverend Clarence Purdue Sr. of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 17 of Lovingston will conduct ceremonies at Trinity Episocopal Church and Adial Baptist Church. That’s according to a resolution adopted by the Nelson County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. These are the sorts of things that are learned in the research behind Charlottesville Community Engagement. I’m Sean Tubbs, and there’s still so much to learn.
In today’s installment:
Governor Youngkin warns localities across Virginia to end policies that prevent jail officials from communicating with federal immigration officials
Another look at procurement news in Charlottesville with a corrected RFP for a firm to conduct an audit of Jaunt
The Charlottesville Planning Commission gets a look at the work plan for the city’s Neighborhood Development Services Department
First-shout: First shout-out: Five Things ReLeaf Cville Has Done This Year
In today’s first subscriber-supported shout-out: ReLeaf Cville seeks to help restore the amount of the city that’s covered by trees. This summer they accomplished five things they want people to know about:
Worked in partnership with the Rivanna Conservation Alliance on the third cycle of the Green Team, which teaches young people about the value of trees and the importance of their role in area water quality
Clean Virginia awarded the group $15,000 to enhance education programs to expand the Cville Green Team
That Cville Green Team planted 24 trees in the Woolen Mills earlier this month as part of a goal to plant 135 in the neighborhood
The Virginia Department of Forestry awarded the group $21,410 through the Virginia Trees for Clean Water Program to plant trees in the Woolen Mills neighborhood
ReLeaf was featured on VPM in late June to discuss their work to date (read the report)
ReLeaf is also seeking a new executive director. Contact me for a copy of the job posting!
Visit their website to find out how you can help!
Governor Youngkin announces the Commonwealth will block jail funding for localities that have “sanctuary” policies
Governor Glenn Youngkin announced on Thursday that localities could lose funding if they adopt policies to make it more difficult for federal officials to report immigrants convicted of crimes.
“Virginia is not a sanctuary state, and we must be clear that we will not allow localities to become ‘sanctuary cities,’” Younkin said during a budget announcement on Thursday.
Youngkin’s proposal would require local law enforcement, sheriffs, and director of incarceration facilities to provide notice to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within 48 hours of a pending release of an illegal immigrant serving time for a crime.
Such a policy is already in place in Albemarle, Charlottesville, and Nelson County. In January 2018, the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail upheld a policy of notifying federal authorities within 48 hours. The vote was 7-3 and Courteney Stuart had the story for what was then called the Charlottesville Newsplex. ICE even sent out a press release.
Further details on Youngkin’s proposed policy are within a three-page memo included in the information release that specifies what local funding will be withheld. The director of the Department of Criminal Justice Services would be required to withhold what are known as “599” funds to localities to pay for local and regional jails. Learn more about 599 funds here.
The memo lists several localities that have policies to block cooperation with ICE including Arlington County, Fairfax County, the City of Richmond, and the City of Alexandria.
Charlottesville once again issues RFP for Jaunt audit
Yesterday’s newsletter reported that the City of Charlottesville had canceled a request for proposals to audit Jaunt, a public service corporation that provides transit services in rural and urban areas.
Soon after publication, the city’s procurement division sent out a new RFP with correct language to reflect federal grant requirements.
The city contracts with Jaunt to provide paratransit service to complement fixed-routes provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act. This audit is a routine provision of Federal Transit Administration.
“As a recipient of FTA Section 5307 grant funding, CAT is required by 49 U.S.C. Chapter 53 to conduct a compliance audit of any subrecipient of Section 5307 funds,” reads the background of the new RFP. “Additionally, CAT is charged with monitoring the subrecipient and ensuring that all regulatory and service requirements are fulfilled.”
Submissions are now due on January 3, 2025.
In other procurement news:
Recycle Management LLC of Rockingham, Virginia has been awarded a contract to recycle scrap metal from Charlottesville offices. Another bidder was the firm Gerdau. (learn more)
Charlottesville has once again put out the bid for a shared use path on Rugby Avenue for a project funded through the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternative Program. The “project consists of the installation of a paved cycling trail connecting Westwood Road with McIntire Park along Rugby Avenue, passing under the Highway 250 bypass bridge.” Bids are due on January 10, 2025. (learn more)
Second-shout out: Charlottesville Jazz Society Annual Report
As 2024 nears a conclusion, the Charlottesville Jazz Society is looking back at a year in which the audience for the artform kept growing with more people joining the twice-monthly newsletter that lets people know what’s happening around the area.
The CJS has been active since 1987 and here are some highlights from this year:
CJS continued a long partnership with WTJU as well as closer ties with the Front Porch, Bunker Bistro, Belmont Arts Collaborative, Unity of Charlottesville and Vault Virginia.
CJS continued to host a Local Jazz Spotlight Series at Miller’s on the last Sunday of each month with including artists Royce Campbell, Drex Weaver, Jeff Massanarri and the Sweet Potatoes.
They continued a concert series this year with killer shows including harmonica master Howard Levy and C’ville native Emily Kuhn’s excellent group from Chicago. They featured world music and jazz fusion from Lynn Riley’s band and Sharon Katz from South Africa and even hosted a free jazz appreciation month party featuring the Brazilian jazz sounds of Também.
The Hotel Heroes program continues to receive support to help pay for lodging for out-of-town performers, and the English Inn is thanked for providing discounted rooms.
CJS could not exist without your generosity. Here is a link to some photos from a few. Photo credits to Bob Patterson.
New NDS director previews departmental work plan for Charlottesville PC
At the beginning of the final meeting of the Charlottesville Planning Commission for 2024, the new director of the Neighborhood Development Services stood before the appointed body to get feedback on what her department will be doing in 2025. But first, Kellie Brown went over some highlights for the year.
“We have and we continue to support a significant, significant amount of development review and building review,” Brown said. “Over 1,000 permits reviewed in this past year. 1,700 permits issued and a significant number of inspections. Over 6,000.”
Brown recently joined NDS after being a planner in Arlington County for 16 years, as I reported in September.
There are 28 employees in NDS with four current vacancies. The department is divided into a planning section and a section that provides support to zoning administration, building inspection, and historic preservation.
“I supervise the work of our larger planning team which is made up of our current planning services led by Matt Alfele as our development services planning manager,” Brown said. “Also our transportation planning group and then our support services.”
The city is currently hiring for a long range planning manager, a position that pays between $83,678.40 and $107,203.20 a year.
The new zoning ordinance went into effect on February 19 and since then the NDS department has processed applications under the new rules as well as several under the old rules that made it under the deadline. That includes ten major development plans, two of which have been approved.
The Comprehensive Plan that helped guide the creation of the Development Code is now more than three years old having been adopted originally in November 2021. Soon it will be time to get to work on an update.
“It might be hard to believe that we have just adopted our comp plan not too long ago, but we will be required to conduct a review,” Brown said. “How should we be setting ourselves up to complete that by 2026? What are the key areas that we really want to be focused on there?”
Before that, though, the city will create a new transportation plan to guide activity across multiple city departments.
“This is an item that has emerged really recognizing that the city has a number of priorities across several different plan documents,” Brown said. “ They don't always speak to each other consistently and they don't always come across in a way that everyone can kind of understand where we're headed.”
Before that plan is finished, the city still needs to move forward with policies to make streets safer through traffic calming, lowering speed limits, and building more infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.
The city also plans to crack down on short-term rentals that are not compliant.
“We will be focusing on home stays,” Brown said. “So improving enforcement by investing in software that will really help us with tracking. But also that can be a data point to conduct a zoning study to help refine our existing regulations to make enforcement easier.”
When the Development Code was adopted, former NDS Director and now Deputy City Manager James Freas said small area plans would follow for those sections designed in the Future Land Use Map as “Sensitive Communities” with the first being for 10th and Page.
“Our initial step there will be starting to pull together an understanding of the existing conditions in that neighborhood, and really seeking to identify what are the key issues that can be addressed, that should be addressed, that a small area plan can help resolve, and working with the community as well, collaborating with them to identify those key planning issues,” Brown said.
Three of the seven Planning Commissioners reside in the 10th and Page neighborhood.
There will also be refinements to the Development Code itself including the production of educational materials to explain how it works both for homeowners as well as investors. She said the city will also be developing a task force to study the possibility of what she referred to as “stabilizing” neglected and deteriorated properties. Here’s how that reads in the presentation:
“Assemble a task force to identify and develop customized plans to address limited number of most neglected/deteriorating properties and return them to stabilized housing opportunities,” reads the presentation.
But a lot of work will also go into tweaking the code itself.
“Things like providing better language to allow attached dwellings across zoning side lot lines,” Brown said. “Right now there's [a] four foot setback still that makes an attached dwelling unit impossible to build across two development lots.”
There are also policy questions which could be revisited in the next fiscal year such as whether to proceed with limited commercial uses in residential neighborhoods or whether the heights of buildings in residential districts need to be adjusted. A more pressing need is to provide more clarity on what the appropriate height and massing should be on the Downtown Mall.
Developer Jeffrey Levien has proposed a 184 foot tall structure at the site of the current Violet Crown and the Board of Architectural Review will resume their conversation on a pre-application on December 17.
Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg suggested NDS provide a service like Albemarle County does with its development dashboard that tracks progress toward housing production.
“They split it up into their comp plan areas and we could split it up into our planning neighborhoods and they split it up into like, you know, single family, detached, attached, multifamily,” Stolzenberg said. “Just something that simple would be great to see as a product from the city and then, you know, five years later of producing that we could much more easily start to see trends externally.”
Brown will present to the work plan to City Council in January.
Reading material for #780:
Board of Visitors approves increased tuition and other rates for 2025-26 school year, Brandon Kile, December 11, 2024
Veo scooters and e-bikes are here to stay in Charlottesville, Maggie Glass, WVIR 29News, December 11, 2024
Five for ’25: What to expect on transportation in the new year, Steve Davis, Transportation 4 America, December 11, 2024
The end of #780 just means the table is set for the next one
In producing this particular installment, I have hit pause on a segment I have been doing for this newsletter all year. I’m referring to “Price Drops” which was a look at properties thatt had their asking price assembled. This was created at a time when I had hoped to do something close to a daily newsletter, and thought I would always need content.
I still always need content, but doing this particular segment was labor-intensive and I had six weeks worth of emails from realtor.com to sift through so I thought I would just hit reset and consider doing that in the future. I mean, I have an entire week of 2024-in-review stuff to write!
As this newsletter has matured, it has become much more than just about keeping track of real estate. I’ve expanded my information gathering operations to monitor a lot of things and sometimes to make sure that I can move forward, I have to put some things on pause.
So, maybe Price Drops will come back. Maybe not. I just feel good moving on for a bit so I can free up some space in my inbox. The world moves on quickly, and I can’t get to everything.
Do I have exciting news to share at the end of this newsletter? I do, but it’s not ready yet. I can say that I’m excited about all of the people who have signed up for a paid subscription through Substack! I’ve thanked everyone through November 30 and will hopefully thank everyone from December. There are only two weeks left to take advantage of a deal where Ting will match your initial payment!
If you sign up for service and you are within Ting’s service area, enter the promo code COMMUNITY you’re going to get:
Free installation
A second month for free
A $75 gift card to the Downtown Mall
