Do you still have some Holiday shopping to do? Today’s Patreon-fueled shout out is for you to check out a curated gift guide from local Charlottesville Black-owned businesses. There’s all kinds of possibilities, such as crafts and gifts from The Hive as well as skin care products from North Shea. Find out more in the link in the newsletter.
In today’s show:
Virginia’s Electors confirm the Commonwealth’s vote for President-elect Joe Biden election
Charlottesville Planning Commission gets an update on the Cville Plans Together folks
Charlottesville is developing a Climate Action Plan
A very brief update on Smart Scale
On the day after the first COVID vaccines were administered in the United States of America, the Virginia Department of Health reports another 3,160 new cases. The seven day average for positive cases is now at 3,654. The seven-day average for positive PCR tests is at 11.2 percent statewide.
In the Blue Ridge Health District, there are another 40 cases reported today and the seven-day average is 73 new cases a day. There has been another COVID-related fatality in Nelson County, bringing the total to 85.
The University of Virginia will make a final decision by January 15 on whether to return to school for in-person instruction, but are operating under the assumption classes will begin on February 1. UVA Today reports that top officials sent an email to students, staff and faculty notifying them of requirements.
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Virginia’s 13 electors cast their vote for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris yesterday in a hearing held on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates. Ellen J. Scott of Manasass was one of them and made these remarks before the official vote.
“The afternoon of April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House, marked the end of the most divisive era in our nation’s history and the healing began in Virginia,” Scott said. “Though not perfect, and fraught with broken promises, there emerged a people determined to hold America to its espoused and its Constitutional declaration that all men are created equal.”
Scott also mentioned the election of the grandson of enslaved people, Doug Wilder, as Virginia’s governor in 1990, as well as Virginia’s vote for Barack Obama in 2008.
“Now, Virginia has helped to elect Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris,” Scott said. “Harris, the first woman and the first Black president of the United States. As we exercise our role as electors, let us never forget that we are heeding the words of Lincoln to bind up our nation’s wounds.”
The final nationwide electoral count was 302 votes for Biden and Harris and to 232 for the incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
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It has been almost a year since the consultant Rhodeside & Harwell was hired to complete Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan and create an affordable housing plan. The city’s Planning Commission got an update last week on where the housing plan stands from the project manager of the Cville Plans Together initiative.
“We’re revising the plan now and we’ll have a revision in the coming month or so and the plan right now is to have a conversation with Council in January and then hopefully work towards some sort of endorsement by Council of the plan,” said Jennifer Koch of Rhodeside & Harwell.
The next step is for Council to be presented with the draft plan early next year. Their endorsement will allow the consultant team to move ahead with revising the Comprehensive Plan to include specific language that will lead the city to implement its principles. For instance, if there is to be more residential density, the plan needs to say so. That in turn will inform the new zoning code that the Cville Plans Together initiative is also intended to deliver.
Review and revision of the Comprehensive Plan has been underway since early 2017. In February 2019, Council opted to hire a consultant to finish the work begun by the Planning Commission. Koch said the Cville Plans Together work did not start from scratch.
“We are working from draft chapters,” Koch said. “We’re not starting from zero here so the thought is that we don’t want to go back. We want to move forward from where you all left off.”
One of the topics discussed by the Commission was the status of a future Land Use Map.
“The Comprehensive Plan Land Use chapter contains the Future Land Use Map which incorporates some of the land use goals that are in the plan but also is a long-term strategy for land use in the city,” Koch said. “It often is sort of the basis for some zoning adjustments but the future land use map is also often a longer term vision for land use that zoning may be.”
Commissioner Gary Heaton, who was appointed in October 2018, said the University of Virginia’s role needed to be taken into account.
“Where the city ends and the University of Virginia begins, our land use map should reflect how we envision the future of the city as it pertains to the effect of the University on the city,” Heaton said. He added that he has been a planning commissioner in other university towns including Blacksburg.
“These are places that also have been heavily affected by the University,” Heaton said. “If the city could someone get out in front of there could be ways to address affordable housing.”
On March 10, the University of Virginia announced it would build up to 1,500 affordable units on land it or its real estate foundation owns. The topic came up at a meeting of the Regional Housing Partnership last week. Colette Sheehy is the Senior Vice President for Operations at UVA.
“We have now restarted that initiative, more probably coming in January, but we are trying to get back on track,” Sheehy said.
On Friday, the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the UVA Board of Visitors approved the schematic design for the new School of Data Science on Ivy Road, just to the west of the former site of the Cavalier Inn. It will be the first academic building constructed in the area of the Ivy Road Master Plan.
“The four-story facility will include four ‘smart’ classrooms, faculty offices, and a variety of meeting and research areas that will provide essential learning, research, and administrative spaces to support the SDS,” reads the packet for the meeting. “The programs will interface with industry and other external partners in a “corporate commons” providing opportunities for the exchange of ideas.”
The current land use map adopted by Council in 2013 depicts the area as “mixed use.” Disagreements about the future land use map are one reason the Comprehensive Plan process stalled and the consultant was hired.
A longer version of this story as well as a podcast version will be published later today for paid subscribers, and released to the general public in a few days time.
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In October, Charlottesville City Council announced the city would follow Albemarle in writing an action plan to help meet the locality’s climate protection goal. Specifically, the target is to reduce carbon emissions 45 percent by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2050. The Albemarle Board of Supervisors adopted such a plan on October 8. Last night, the city held the first of two workshops to kick off the creation of the plan.
Susan Elliott is Charlottesville’s Climate Protection Manager. She said that in 2017, Council signed off on a statement objecting to President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
“This is not the first commitment the city of Charlottesville made,” Elliott said. “The first one was actually the U.S. Mayor’s Agreement on climate back in 2006 which is what spurred the city to create the climate protection program in 2007.”
In 2019, Council agreed to a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2030, and to be carbon neutral by 2050. There is also a corresponding plan to adapt to changing weather patterns with higher temperatures.
“We also heard from the community that they don’t want us to waste time by reinventing the wheel,” Elliott said. “They want us to build on what we’ve done. They want us to build on what their peers have done. They want us to work regionally so that we are building on existing systems for funding, for development, and for cooperation.”
Emissions can be traced to residential, commercial and transportation sources. The plan will identify steps to address each. You can watch the recorded webinars on the city’s website.
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We’re about a month away from when the Virginia Department of Transportation releasing the scores for the latest round of Smart Scale. Smart Scale is a process where localities submit projects that are then ranked according to a series of metrics. Submissions were due in August. Chad Tucker is with the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment and he briefed the Commonwealth Transportation Board last week.
“It’s been a long six months but we’re almost there, thankfully,” Tucker said. “There are 405 total applications that were submitted by applicants.
Fifteen projects were submitted by either Albemarle, Charlottesville or the TJPDC.
They are:
US 29 and Fontaine Ave Interchange Improvement
Rt. 29 Shared Use Path - Carrsbrook to Seminole Lane - $6 million
Rt. 29/Fray’s Mill/Burnley Station Intersection Improvements- $9.6 million
West Main Streetscape Phase 3 – 8th St NW to Roosevelt Brown Ave - $7.9 million
Preston Ave & Grady Ave Intersection Improvement - $6.1 million
Access Management on US 250 East from VA 20 (Stoney Point Rd) east to Hanson Rd - $11 million
Rio Rd/John Warner Parkway improvements
The Commonwealth Transportation Board will meet again at 9 a.m. on Friday. (agenda)
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Tonight, the Albemarle Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on a proposal to redevelop the Red Carpet Inn on U.S. 29 as a mixed-use development with commercial space and in between 80 and 140 units. In the meantime, the existing rooms in the hotel would be used as transitional housing operated by the Thomas Jefferson Coalition for the Homeless (TJACH). For this to work, the project needs a rezoning of a 3.75 acre property.
In other meetings:
Charlottesville’s Parking Advisory Panel meets at 3:30 p.m. (meeting info)
Albemarle Economic Development Authority meets at 4 p.m. (meeting info)
Charlottesville’s Sister Cities Commission meets at 4:30 p.m. Last week, City Council agreed to pursue a friendship with Huehuetenango, a city in western Guatemala (meeting info)
Charlottesville’s Board of Architectural Review meets at 5:30 p.m. and will take up an application for an already-approved four-story building at the site of the University Tire on West Main Street. They’ll also have a preliminary discussion on the future parking garage at the corner of Market Street and 9th street. (meeting info)
December 15, 2020: Charlottesville Planning Commission updated on affordable housing strategy; Elector Scott reflects on historic vote