November 7, 2024: Amazon files for federal and state permits for second of two data campuses in Louisa County
Plus: Albemarle County wins an award for the Human Services Alternative Response Team
What is there to know about November 7? We live in a time when you can just go and look in any direction to find out anything you want about pretty much anything. Wikipedia has many examples of things that have happened on this day which might provide stories to understand the now. What can we learn from the banishment of Athanasius, the 20th pope of Alexandria, on this day in 335 AD for blocking the shipment of food?
Charlottesville Community Engagement will not pick up on that particular thread of history, but slowly but surely a tapestry is being woven. I’m Sean Tubbs, hoping you’re making your own as well!
In today’s installment:
Albemarle’s alternative public safety response team has won an award from the Virginia Association of Counties
Piedmont Virginia Community College and the University of Virginia Equity Center have published the latest version of a study of poverty in the area
The number of bankruptcies in the United States has increased within the last year
Amazon has filed for a permit for the second of two data center campuses proposed for Louisa County
First-shout: Rivanna River Restoration Project underway at Riverview Park
In today’s first Patreon-fueled public service announcement: The Rivanna Conservation Alliance is leading a public-private partnership to help restore the health of the Rivanna River at Charlottesville’s Riverview Park.
This comprehensive initiative aims to restore critical sections of riverbank, enhance water quality and native habitat, repair a severely eroding stormwater outfall, and provide more opportunities for the community to safely access the river in one of the Charlottesville area’s most cherished natural recreational areas. The work is being done in conjunction with the City of Charlottesville and local design firms Ecosystem Services and Wolf Josey Landscape Architects.
To follow the progress of the project, visit the RCA’s website at rivannariver.org.
Albemarle wins state award for Human Services Alternative Response Team
For just over a year, Albemarle County has been running a public safety response program called the Human Services Alternative Response Team which is intended for public service calls where someone is in a behavioral health emergency.
“This program has vastly exceeded our expectations both in terms of the number of folks who have been served but also the impact the program has had on other parts of the continuum of care for folks experiencing behavioral health concerns,” said Kaki Dimock, Albemarle’s Director of Human Services.
The HART program began on August 1, 2023 and around 550 individuals have been assisted with around nine in ten experiencing a behavioral crisis and the rest with a substance abuse issue. Most of the calls have follow-ups with the individual.
“This team has done extraordinary work with folks in the community, likely impacting long-term system outcomes but certainly impacting well-being pretty dramatically,” Dimock said.
Earlier this month, the Virginia Association of Counties (VACo) presented Albemarle with an achievement award for the service. There were 145 entries for 2024 and Bennett said there were 45 winners from 32 counties. Albemarle has won eight other awards since the program began in the early 2000’s.
VACo has existed since 1934 and serves as an advocate for the needs of local government in the Commonwealth.
Albemarle County Executive Jeffrey Richardson said the HART team is part of how the locality seeks to address issues in the community.
“We continue to deal with complex issues in the field every day and this Board is good about challenging us in an appropriate way to address issues to achieve different outcomes,” Richardson said.
The Virginia Albemarle contributed additional funding to the program to add three more staff members in the current fiscal year.
PVCC and Equity Center have published latest snapshot of family economics in region
One in four households in the greater Charlottesville area are struggling financially and are not close to being self-sufficient. That’s one of the takeaways from the latest report on the topic from Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Equity Center at the University of Virginia.
“While families facing economic insecurity live throughout our region, the likelihood that a family is struggling varies by race and by place,” reads the executive summary for the sixth version of the Orange Dot Report. “The struggle is not equally shared.”
The report covers the same footprint of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission as well as Buckingham County. There are further demographic breakdowns such as an account that 47 percent of Black families and 35 percent of Hispanic families are not able to cover their cost of living, whereas that figure for white families is 18 percent.
Geographically, 27 percent of Charlottesville families are struggling as are 18 percent of Albemarle families.
“Our community has seen progress since this work began in 2011, but there are
still too many struggling families,” the introduction continues. “For a region as prosperous as ours, we have the means to build programs and enact policy that helps more families become self-sufficient.”
After the first report was published 13 years ago, an entity called Network2Work was created to help people find better jobs and careers and to find ways to make sure that people had access to transportation, child care, and to help overcome other potential barriers to getting to work.
Albemarle Supervisor Ann Mallek brought up the report at the November 6, 2024 Board meeting.
“A fabulous report on where they’ve been in the last ten years as well,” Mallek said.
The Network2Work@PVCC website claims that nearly 70 percent of people who enroll in the program find a job and that their average annual wage increase is 107 percent with an average wage gain of over $17,000. For more information, visit the website.
Bankruptcy on the rise in the United States of America
The Administrative Office of the United States Courts keeps track of many things including the number of people and businesses that file for bankruptcy. According to data released this morning, filings for both increased 16.2 percent in the federal fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2024.
There were 504,112 total bankruptcies filed in FY2024 compared to 433,658 in 2023. Both are still below 2020 when 612,561 homes and people sought a court’s protection from debt.
“Business filings rose 33.5 percent, from 17,051 to 22,762 in the year ending September 30, 2024,” reads an information release sent out today. “Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 15.5 percent to 481,350, compared with 416,607 in the previous year.”
Each of these filings listed in the announcement are in one of four categories.
According to U.S. Courts, Chapter 7 allows for a debtor’s property to be sold to be liquidated to pay back creditors
Chapter 11 allows for a reorganization of a corporation or partnership to allow a business to stay alive so creditors can be paid back over time
Chapter 12 is for family farms or a “family fisherman” as defined in the Bankruptcy Code
Chapter 13 is to allow for the adjustment of debts by an individual with regular income
According to the release, total filings have decreased over the last 14 years from a high of 1.6 million in September 2010.
Second shout-out: ACHS taking orders for book profiling local artist Frances Brand
Frances Brand lived from 1901 to 1990 and in her later life she undertook a series of portraits of individuals from Charlottesville and Albemarle County that would become her Gallery of Firsts.
Brand was a U.S. Army major, a civil rights activist, a world traveler, a devoted churchgoer, and an accomplished artist, among other things. Some remember her as a colorful eccentric who loved to dress in purple, while others knew her as a committed and lifelong social activist.
Behind each of Brand’s portraits of these 20th-century pioneers is a special story. To collect some of them, the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society has created a book that features 51 portraits from the full collection of currently known Firsts portraits and share some of the compelling stories about those depicted.
ACHS is taking pre-sale orders now for shipping in November. To place your order, visit the ACHS store.
Amazon files for water permits for second data campus in Louisa County
In August 2023, Amazon Web Services announced they would invest $11 billion in Louisa County to construct two data center campuses to take advantage of a technology overlay district the Board of Supervisors adopted earlier that year.
Now the company has submitted a joint application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for the second facility that will be known as the Northeast Creek Technology Campus.
“The Campus would include 10 buildings, three substations, logistic and administrative buildings, stormwater structures, and associated infrastructures,” reads a public notice for the application published on November 4.
This campus will be on 374 acres off of U.S. Route 33 and east of Desper Creek. The project as proposed would disturb waterways under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps. Here are the exact details for those interested:
“As proposed, the project will permanently impact 0.41 acre of palustrine forested (PFO) wetlands, 0.17 acre of palustrine scrub-shrub (PSS) wetlands, 0.26 acre of palustrine emergent (PEM) wetlands, 0.19 acre of palustrine open water (POW), 1,130 linear feet (0.21 acre) of perennial streams, 806 linear feet (0.10 acre) of intermittent streams, and 48 linear feet (0.01 acre) of ephemeral streams,” reads the project description as stated in the public notice.
To mitigate the impacts, Amazon will purchase 1.68 wetland credits from the New Kent Environmental Bank as well as 2,489 stream credits from the Ashland Mill Mitigation Bank.
The evaluation of the project involves public input and the contact information is in the public notice.
A joint application for the first campus was filed last year. That one will be called the Lake Anna Tech Campus.
Reading material while you are on #757
New schools, more bus drivers and improved reading scores are among Chuck Pace’s priorities for his next year on Albemarle County School Board, Tamica Jean-Charles, Charlottesville Tomorrow, November 6, 2024
Virginia leaders react to Trump win as Harris keeps the commonwealth blue, Markus Schmidt and Caroline Rene Woods, Virginia Mercury, November 6, 2024
Data centers keep growing in Virginia — and so does energy demand, Katherine Hafner, WHRO, November 7, 2024
What Happens Next? The administrative state under a second Trump term, Don Moynihan, Can We Still Govern? (Substack), November 7, 2024
#757 is a plane flying through the air seeking the passage of under construction
Four stories. Shorter ones, maybe? A newsletter is like a box of chocolate, or whatever the catchphrase of that film I’ve not actually seen since it came out. When was that? 30 years ago?
Thirty years ago this month I was presiding over the very last days of the Tech Independent, a college newspaper that failed on my watch due to reasons that are definitely worth recalling but not at this time. We tried to do something ambitious, and had no idea how to make enough revenue to pay to cover the cost of print.
And now it’s the end of November 2024 and I’m about to hit send on something digital that will go to a list of 3,300 people or so, a number that grows slowly. By the end of the paper’s existence, we were able to transfer the files digitally to the press in Christiansburg, but I still remember the absolute thrill of working all night long on a paper copy so it could be photographed for print.
Things change quickly. What will things be like in 30 years? How can we try to equip the people who will be running things then to do their job? How can we make our civilization last as long as we can? These are the background questions for this work, and not that different from whatever I was helping edit back then.
In any case, I’m grateful for paid subscriptions and every single one makes me work that much harder. We’re at the end of one chapter and another is set to begin.
I’m grateful for Ting for their generous sponsorship where paid Substack subscriptions are matched. That’s been a tremendous help!
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
