This being a leap year, July 18 is the 200th day of the year. Will knowing that piece of information have any effect on how this day flows for you? Is there any significance to this being the 707th edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement? If so, can it be found by listening to endless covers of the song Seven and Seven Is? I’m Sean Tubbs, and while that’s unlikely I’m going to keep trying.
In today’s installment:
Charlottesville City Council is briefed on work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions including a new dashboard to keep track of progress
The Albemarle County Economic Development Authority endorses a request to increase the pay scale for federal employees in the Charlottesville Metropolitan area
Albemarle County has issued a request for proposals for a firm to change the traffic layout of The Square in Crozet and provide other improvements
First shout-out: The Strong 7’s live on WTJU this Friday
In today’s first Patreon-fueled shout-out: WTJU provides great music for the community every hour of the week, including live performance broadcasts by area artists. Every Friday night, the station hosts an in-person live music series called "Offbeat Roadhouse," featuring mostly acoustic artists -- folk, blues, jazz, americana, and beyond.
This Friday night at 8 p.m., The Strong 7s will pull into Offbeat Roadhouse at 8 p.m. for a concert which will also be broadcast on WTJU. This Western Swing band is riding into town as the penultimate stop on a short EP release tour. These songs have been said to make listeners dance, make them cry, kiss, drink and hopefully, come out to all the shows.
I should note that Offbeat Roadhouse is sponsored by Ting. Stick around to the end of the newsletter for more on Ting.
Charlottesville launches climate action dashboard during annual report
The City of Charlottesville has launched a website that allows members of the public to find out what they can do to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as to take a look at a bigger picture.
“This dashboard is an engagement tool that will both increase awareness of and transparency of our work,” said Emily Irvine, the city’s climate program manager. “It will make the climate action plan more accessible and it will be a place where we can tell stories and share resources and showcase and highlight the work of our community partners.”
Irvine spoke as part of a work session on July 15 on an update of the city’s work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That work has been underway for many years and is led by Kristel Riddervold is the director of the Office of Sustainability. She began her remarks by thanking the Council for their investment in the work.
“You adopted Charlottesville’s first community climate action plan in 2023 as an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan,” Riddervold said. “We now have a dedicated three-person climate team in our Office of Sustainability.”
In FY24, Council also allocated $1 million to a climate fund that Riddervold said has been used as a match for state and federal grants.
“I feel a sense of momentum and a real sense of urgency like never before and that urgency is making itself very tangible today given our extreme heat conditions and drought warnings,” Riddervold said. “Climate change and the impact that it is having is an enormous global problem that demands action at every scale.”
The city’s continued investment in climate action comes at a time when Governor Glenn Youngkin has used the executive branch to end two programs approved by the Democratic-led General Assembly. They are Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and a mandate banning the sale of vehicles powered by fossil fuels after 2035.
Nevertheless, the report to Council went through a series of initiatives designed to help the city meet its goals.
“Charlottesville has community-wide emissions reduction goals of 45 percent by 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2050 and we have a strategic-level climate action plan to help guide us toward those goals,” Irvine said.
That target of 45 percent is measured against the emissions levels from 2011. Irvine said that levels from 2022 are 42 percent lower. In raw numbers, that’s a reduction from 450,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents to just over 250,000 metric tons.
“When I say CO2 equivalent, what I mean is that this inventory includes carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, or N20 emissions,” Irvine said. “And when I talk about community wide emissions, I’m talking about all of the emissions from our community exclusive of our municipal emissions.”
There’s a separate accounting for those emissions, which are defined as those controllable by the City of Charlottesville itself.
“Our municipal emissions were a little over 12,000 metric tons in 2022 and they’re down 36 percent from that 2011 baseline,” Irvine said.
Community-wide, heating and cooling buildings accounts for two-thirds of emissions and transportation makes up about a quarter. Irvine said she expects trends to continue because of progress made by the Virginia Clean Economy Act passed in 2020 which is intended to force Dominion and other utilities companies to invest in emissions-free power generation.
Virginia left the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative at the end of 2023. Under RGGI, Dominion and others had to pay to exceed emissions caps with the proceeds going back to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Dominion was able to pass on the cost to ratepayers, something Youngkin described as a hidden tax.
A lawsuit claiming the exit was unlawful is still pending in Floyd County Circuit Court. (read that story)
Irvine said transportation emissions are down to in part because of consumer choice.
“In Charlottesville, one in six vehicles registered in the city in 2022 were electric,” Irvine said.
Much of the work the three-person team does is to try to find ways to further decrease emissions. That includes working with the Local Energy Alliance Program to make existing homes more energy efficient and ongoing work to decarbonize the city’s utility department.
“The gas service new connection fee that will go into effect in January is an early result of this study and we certainly count that as a climate win,” Irvine said.
Irvine said there were 123 applications for solar installations at Charlottesville in 2023 as well as 16 permits for installing chargers for electric vehicles at people’s homes. She said the new townhouses built by the Piedmont Housing Alliance at Kindlewood are built to federal high-performance standards.
On transportation, Irvine said another climate win was the city’s first concrete-protected bike lane on the Belmont Bridge and also added that the city’s contract with Veo for scooters and e-bikes are getting people out of their cars.
“Almost 450,000 miles were ridden on scooters and e-bikes last year helping to avoid nearly 60,000 car trips,” Irvine said.
Many of these bits of information are on the new climate action dashboard. Several new initiatives are expected to launch in the coming fiscal year.
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Albemarle EDA supports request for higher federal pay
The Albemarle County Economic Development Authority will send a letter to the Federal Salary Council seeking to have the Charlottesville region added to a list of localities across the country where government employees get a pay adjustment due to the cost of living.
“All general schedule employees working for the federal government are part of a national pay scale but recognizing that the United States has many different labor markets that vary by locations, there’s an overlay on the federal pay scale where employees working in more competitive labor markets receive an additional pay increment so that the federal government can be an attractive employer in that pay market,” said Emily Kilroy, the county interim director of economic development.
Kilroy said both Richmond and the Washington metropolitan areas do qualify and the letter argues that Charlottesville is less than a hundred miles away from northern Virginia where many defense and intelligence positions are stationed. She said the issue is one that the leaders of the Rivanna Station military base want to resolve.
The issue also may help Albemarle as it seeks to build support for a defense and intelligence campus to be built around the Rivanna Station on land purchased by the county last year.
“With the county’s acquisition of property around Rivanna Station, locality pay needs to get right-sized not just for current federal employees who work in the MSA but also its an eye to the future and the attractability of the location if and when additional [Department of Defense] type functions would expand,” said Deputy County Executive Trevor Henry.
The EDA agreed unanimously to send the letter.
The EDA also approved a performance agreement with the Siller Pollinator Company for a state grant to allow them to purchase a trailer to process honey collected across the community. The appointed body had been briefed on this in closed session at their April meeting. Both Albemarle and Fluvanna will pay $6,500 each toward a local grant giving the business a total of $39,000.
“I really like this kind of grant where we can reasonably predict that the relatively modest amount of money will give an opportunity for a small business person to really dispositively uplevel their business,” said EDA member Jeffrey Morrill. “We can clearly see that the benefit that this local business is going to enjoy.”
The Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors is expected to approve their performance agreement at their next meeting.
Albemarle County issues RFP for work at The Square in Crozet
One of the regular segments in the newsletter is a look at procurement efforts in Albemarle and Charlottesville. Bids go out when funding is in place for a project. This time around begins with a long-awaited infrastructure project in Crozet.
Many years ago, Albemarle County experimented with something called the Neighborhood Improvement Funding Initiative. The community advisory committees were asked to suggest small-scale projects and one of them was to make improvements to The Square in downtown Crozet.
“The project is generally described as construction of VDOT Road Improvements along The Square and Oak Street,” reads a section of the invitation of bids that was released on Monday. (learn more) (review the invitation for bids) (review the drawings)
According to one of the descriptions from when NIFI was being talked about, those improvements would make Oak Street one way through the Square.
The project has a budget of $2.01 million according to the spring 2024 report from Albemarle’s Department of Facilities and Environmental Services. Bids close on August 9. (take a look)
Albemarle County is also seeking to prequalify firms to bid on the new elementary school for the southern feeder pattern. (learn more)
“The project is generally described as the construction of a new, three-story elementary School totaling approximately 72,500 square feet and associated sitework,” reads that request. “The HVAC system design generally consist of Geothermal wells with water-to-water thermal transfer, fan-coil units, and heat pumps. The school is designed to be solar ready and will include a full capacity, standby, electrical power generator.”
Bids are due on August 13.
The bid period closed on July 17 for a firm to manage the elections and administration for two collective bargaining units for Albemarle County Public Schools. In all, 2,600 employees are eligible to decide if they want to be in a union split between two different units. (learn more)
Harrisonburg Construction of Charlottesville was awarded a contract to replace the cooling tower at Jackson-Via Elementary School on June 4. (learn more)
Insulation Specialties of Hopewell, Virginia was awarded a contract for “on-call construction contract for asbestos abatement services on an as needed basis” in Charlottesville. They were the lowest of four bidders. (learn more)
A bid to provide curbside recycling services for residential households in Charlottesville closed on July 15. (learn more)
There’s a need for a new emergency generator at Smith Aquatic Center and bids for a firm to do the replacement are due on August 21. (learn more)
Any firm wanting to provide “temporary day porter services” in Charlottesville has until tomorrow to submit their bid. Take a look at the image below for some of the duties. (learn more)
Firms have until July 23 to respond to a request to install interpretative signage at Biscuit Run Park. (learn more)
Reading material:
The Bridge That Was: University Removes 1970s Footbridge, Matt Kelly, UVA Today, July 16, 2024
Virginia judge dismisses ACLU lawsuit over school policies for trans, Whittney Evans, VPM, July 16, 2024
Dominion Energy explores SMR development at North Anna Power Station, Nuclear Engineering International, July 17, 2024
The fight to bring down Charlottesville's Confederate monuments is over. The fight for who gets credit begins, Emily Hemphill, Charlottesville Daily Progress (paywall), July 18, 2024
#707 is over and out
The introduction today refers to a song that was first recorded by the band Love back in 1966 called Seven and Seven Is, a short track that is one of my favorites. I looked up the lyrics for the first time this morning, and the onomatopoeia that serves as the chorus is not what I expected.
The line is: Oop-ip-ip oop-ip-ip yeah
Many of the introductions are my attempts at playing around with language. Keep in mind this newsletter is also a script for a radio show / podcast. Producing the audio before I post the newsletter allows an extra review of the copy before I post.
Four years have passed since I started this experiment, and I know I can’t please everyone with my style. I will defend my style as well as my humanity in these times when so much seems to be deteriorating.
I urge everyone, though, to look up things you might not actually know. Have the courage to make mistakes and own up to them when you make them. I try to do that, and can say that starting this newsletter was not one and hope my continued commitment is not one either.
I’m finally up to thanking July’s paid subscribers, so if you’ve signed up recently you should hopefully get one soon. I’m grateful for an expanding audience, and now, a strange public service of YouTube links:
Seven and Seven Is – Love
Seven and Seven Is – Alice Cooper
Seven and Seven Is – Robert Plant (live in 2007)
Seven and Seven Is – The Bangs (early version of the Bangles)
Seven and Seven Is – Rush
I’ll only do one #707 and somehow this seems necessary to do.
I mentioned Ting up top, too. You know the deal by now. Paid subscriptions are matched by Ting.
In return, I tell you that Ting can help you with your high speed Internet needs. If service is available in your area and you sign up for service, enter the promo code COMMUNITY and you will get:
Free installation
A second month for free
A $75 gift card to the Downtown Mall
July 18, 2024: Charlottesville City Council briefed on progress toward climate action goals