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On today’s show:
City Manager Chip Boyles and city staff discuss infrastructure implementation in a growing city
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality releases the solid waste report for 2020
An update on openings of Charlottesville’s polls and spray grounds
Area transportation official makes move to Northern Virginia permanent
The top official in the Virginia Department of Transportation’s Culpeper District has been hired as the District Engineer for the agency’s Northern Virginia District. John Lynch has held that role in the Culpeper District since 2013 and helped oversee construction of several major improvement projects including the Route 29 Solutions projects. Those included the construction of a grade-separated interchange at Rio Road and U.S. 29 and the Berkmar Drive extension. Melissa Shropshire is the acting district engineer.
The amount of solid waste sent to landfills and other processing facilities in Virginia slightly decreased in 2020, according to a report from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. A total of just over 22 million tons of waste was received, including 5.67 million tons sent from other states. The 2020 figure was 0.11 percent lower than 2019. (read the full report)
The report states that nearly three-quarters of the solid waste were landfilled, nearly 12 percent of materials were incinerated, and the rest was disposed of by other means. Another statistic is that 1.63 million tons of waste was diverted from landfills through recycling, mulching, or composting. The report is made up of 201 individual submissions.
The report also lists capacity remaining in existing landfills. The Amherst County Landfill has 44.5 years left and the Louisa County Sanitary Landfill has another nine.
The Morse Brothers Farm in Nelson County is one of 22 properties in the Commonwealth that has been awarded a land conservation grant. Last week, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) announced more than $4.8 million from the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation for projects that will conserve up to 6,100 acres in the state. The award for the Morse Brothers Farm will place 106 acres of land under a conservation easement owned by third-generation African-American farmers, according to a press release from DCR. The project was made possible by the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.
This week, the University of Virginia resumed in-person college tours for the first time in 15 months. These groups used to have up to 100 participants at a time, but it’s been reduced to 10 at a time for now. The tours take place at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. For more, read Jane Kelly’s article on UVA Today.
The Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department continues to ramp up operations slowly as the pandemic continues to recede. Deputy Director Vic Garber provided some updates last week to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee.
“Onesty Family Aquatic and Fitness Center remains closed and will remain closed unless there is an eruption of about 55 to 60 lifeguards,” Garber said. “Due to insufficient staff we are closed for the season.”
As of last week, there were 53 guards employed by the city. In order for the pool at the indoor Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center to open in August, he said he needs at least 17 more or hours at other facilities will need to be reduced. Garber said the contractors fixing air quality issues at Smith Aquatic Center will wrap up their work at the end of the month and the city will be performing tests throughout July.
Garber said one reason it’s been hard to get lifeguards is that many have moved on to other places.
“We’ve been closed for so long,” Garber said. “ACAC and the YMCA probably have collected quite a few of the guards and everyone across the board… I don’t want to say our competitors but within reason, everyone has gone to at least $15 an hour.”
Garber has paid $15 an hour for a couple of years, and the amount will increase by two percent to $15.30 an hour on July 1. Garber said during the pandemic, city lifeguards were terminated.
“And once you do that it’s hard to get people back,” Garber said.
The spray grounds at Tonsler, Belmont, and Greenleaf parks are open but the one at Forest Hills Park has been delayed and will open sometime this month.
Garber said planning is underway to build a fieldhouse at Tonsler Park for indoor sports, a walking path, and space for camps. This was called for in a 2013 master plan for the park. There’s $1.8 million in the budget for this purpose and a request for proposals for a design will be published soon.
Meanwhile, beaches at Albemarle’s lake parks will open tomorrow at 11 a.m. and will be open Thursdays through Sundays through August 22. Their lifeguards are also being $15 an hour, according to Emily Kilroy, Albemarle’s director of communications and public engagement.
You’re reading Charlottesville Community Engagement. Time now for another subscriber-supported public service announcement. The Center for Civic Innovation is seeking applicants for its Civic Innovation Fellowship, a leadership development program that aims to build up an organization with a focus on: growth mindset, design process, business education, technology and data literacy skills, government and community relations, and other topics to build problem solving skills." Applications are due on Sunday, June 20. (apply)
It has now been four months since Chip Boyles took over as Charlottesville’s City Manager, a position he will hold for at least a year before a public search is conducted for a permanent replacement for Dr. Tarron Richardson, who held the position for not quite a year and a half. The Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association invited Boyles to attend their June meeting to answer questions and talk about the Cville Plans Together initiative.
Boyles has been bringing people into his management team after the last slate of deputy city managers all left. The city is currently advertising for a Deputy City Manager who will serve as the Chief Operating Officer. This position will oversee Finance, Budgeting, Human Resources, Economic Development, Information Technology, and Strategic Planning. The position closes on July 2. Ten days later, Sam Sanders will start work as the Deputy City Manager for Operations. Ashley Marshall has been Deputy City Manager for Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity since March 10.
Boyles said one of the biggest issues in Charlottesville is housing and Virginia’s separation of cities and counties into distinct entities provides a challenge.
“To try to tackle some of the issues that we have for housing when you cannot expand your boundaries and you are very close to being built out, it makes it even more challenging,” Boyles said. “If you’re Houston, Texas, you just go annex more land, build more houses. Charlotte, North Carolina, you just annex more land and build to your needs. Virginia? Not so lucky.”
Boyles last worked as director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, and under his tenure began working on regional housing and regional transit issues. The Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership will release its regional affordable housing plan in the near future.
“Even though Charlottesville is the hub for our community and our region, how we can work with our surrounding localities to help shoulder some of this need we have, even if it’s to help with people moving in,” Boyles said. “So many people are wanting to move to our region. Working our neighbors to do that.”
One of the topics that came up at the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association’s City Council forum in March was the subject of how projects get into the Capital Improvement Program (CIP), a multiyear budget of all the various infrastructure projects. Many in the neighborhood want sidewalk and other improvements on Stribling Avenue to mitigate the impacts of more housing. Jason Halbert is the co-president of the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association.
“It seems to be a black box mystery for everyone,” Halbert said. “I know you’re dealing with a lot and you’re juggling chainsaws it seems like. Are you going to task this to your incoming deputy city manager to try to tackle with your public works director any indications of where this is heading in terms of the city residents understanding, regardless of how the staff turns over at the city, where we are with a plan on the CIP?”
Boyles said this will be one of the first things that Deputy City Manager Sanders works on after joining the city government. He said multiple departments need to learn how to work together to implement projects for the good of city residents.
“The one thing I do have to kind of question and one of the things I’m going to mention first to look at, is I don’t see how we can ask the neighborhoods to come up with the cost estimating for what it is you’re asking for,” Boyles said. “I know that I would have no idea how much it would cost to run X linear feet of sidewalk.”
Boyles also suggested more neighborhoods could their own develop small area plans. The Fifeville neighborhood did so with the Cherry Avenue Small Area Plan for which the city hired the TJPDC to complete. That could better inform a new CIP process.
“Council has in the past also participated in what is called participatory budgeting,” Boyles said. “It never got off of the ground because of some changing of staffing but I think that’s another thing that we can look at where there’s the possibility of X amount of dollars being assigned to a neighborhood.”
Southern Development has submitted an application at 240 Stribling, and last year, the Planning Commission asked for additional residential density and the developer complied and is offering 170 units as well as some funding for the infrastructure improvements. Halbert said one concern is the non-urban quality of the roadway.
“An annexed county road originally that dead-ends into a gravel road and goes back into the county,” Halbert said.
Halbert said the neighborhood association will support the project, but only if there’s a guarantee the infrastructure will be in place when and if the development comes in.
“Without infrastructure improvements, the street cannot take that development,” Halbert said. “From our standpoint, to head off the typical NIMBY or reactionary reactions of saying ‘don’t put it here in my backyard’ I think the neighborhood, a bunch of us have tried to work with the city and the developer to try to achieve the goals of affordable housing, of more permanent affordable housing, and greater density in the city while improving the infrastructure everyone wants.”
Boyles said he needed to do more research of this proposal but described this as a classic chicken and egg scenario. He did say he would like the city and other localities across the Commonwealth to be able to charge developers impact fees to pay for infrastructure. That’s currently not allowed by Virginia law.
Boyles did warn that money for capital improvements will be tight in the coming years.
“There are some major expenditures that have to occur,” Boyles said. “I’m sure you’ve all seen the discussions with the schools and the work that needs to be done there, that has me very concerned with how that’s going to impact some of our bread and butter roads, mostly roads and sidewalks.”
The conversation then turned to the Cville Plans Together initiative, which just had a comment period close with thousands of comments. The next step is for the Planning Commission to hold a work session with the consultants on June 29. A group of 11 neighborhood associations sent a letter to the city requesting a further six month delay, but the director of the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development Services said there is plenty of time before the new Comprehensive Plan and its Future Land Use Map.
“The process is not over yet,” Ikefuna said. “It still has to go through the Planning Commission with the City Council for a joint public hearing. After that, it goes back to the City Council for final consideration. And then once its adopted, we still have another phase in the process which is the zoning rewrite. We have to rewrite the zoning ordinance which will implement the Comprehensive Plan.”
A new timeline will be developed in the coming weeks.
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June 16, 2021: City Manager Boyles talks infrastructure development with Fry's Spring residents; Update on Charlottesville parks