To start today’s show, a shout-out to a Go Fund Me campaign for my friend Charlene Munford . She is seeking funds to bring her cleaning business to the next level. I hired Charlene for a big job earlier this year, and I’m very satisfied with the work. Take a look at the Go Fund Me page today to learn more.
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This morning, the Virginia Department of Health reported another 1,332 cases of COVID 19 in the state, and the seven-day average for positive tests rose to 5 percent, up from 4.9 percent on Wednesday. The seven-day daily average for new cases is now at 1,023.
For the second day in a row, the Blue Ridge Health District reports 39 new cases, bringing the seven-day average for new cases to 28. Albemarle added 18 cases, Charlottesville reports seven new cases, and Greene County has eight new cases. The positivity percentage in the district is 2.3 percent.
The University of Virginia added 15 new cases to its COVID-19 tracker yesterday, all students. The number of active cases is listed at 74, with 54 of them students. Six percent of quarantine rooms are now in use, as are five percent of isolation rooms.
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The Albemarle Board of Supervisors has signaled they will defer a planned increase of the county’s property tax rate that had been anticipated for next fiscal year. Supervisors met with the Albemarle School Board in a joint virtual meeting to get an initial look at the budgetary picture.
When the two bodies last met in November 2019, the world was a different place. Jeffrey Richardson is the Albemarle County Executive.
“Today is the 225th day of our global pandemic and the associated national, state, and local level of emergencies. and national,” Richardson said.
To give a sense of how fast the situation changed, the original title of the budget for the current fiscal year was Expanding Opportunity. The document had to be revised quickly to anticipate the economic shutdown that happened. That included a new name - Respond, Recover, Recalibrate. How well has the county done?
“Looking at it today through a leadership lens of what we have learned, and what I would tell these two board today is that it is not back to business as usual,” Richardson said. “We have not recovered. We have not been able to recalibrate and part of that is due to the structural damage to our economy.”
The discussion marked the first public presentation by Nelsie Birch, Albemarle’s new chief financial officer. She said Albemarle did not adopt a five-year capital improvement program this year because of the financial uncertainty.
“There was a recommended budget that had to be dramatically shifted and changed and much of that was holding back on the operations side, and also pausing capital projects,” Birch said, adding that both boards have the opportunity to move some of those projects this year. These included the new $21.2 million high school center and a $20.4 million expansion of Crozet Elementary.
Another decision in the near future will be how much of a increase of a salary increase teachers and school staff may receive next year. A planned increase did not move forward due to the pandemic-related budget changes. The School Board does not have taxing authority, so the Board of Supervisors has to consider that in its budget deliberations. The usual market studies used to help determine compensation are not ready yet.
Birch said the pandemic gives Supervisor and the school board a chance to do things differently.
“The bit of good news we have is that we don’t have to present a budget today, so as we continue to move forward and information comes available to us that helps to inform the decisions we need to make in 2022, that will help guide us to the new reality,” Birch said, adding both boards have time to make careful decisions.
For more on this subject, read Katherine Knott and Allison Wrabel’s story in the Daily Progress.
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The Albemarle Board of Supervisors has voted to make sure the Planning Commission reviews a controversial rezoning application before it comes back to them. Breezy Hill is a proposed 160-unit development near Glenmore that was recommended for denial by the Planning Commission in July. Developer Southern Development deferred a public hearing and vote by Supervisors in September and made some alterations of the project. It had been scheduled to come back to the Board in November.
“I believe that this particular application carries such significance that it would be appropriate for it to go back through the Planning Commission before it came to the Board,” said Supervisor Donna Price, the Scottsville Magisterial District representative.
Price acknowledged the delay will add costs to the project but she wanted the Board’s land use advisors to weigh in. Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District agreed.
“I just think it’s helpful to the applicant that they take the time to explain whatever the substantial changes are which they are proposing so that they have a better chance of getting approval because racing in with the same old stuff isn’t going to get them anywhere,” Mallek said.
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The pandemic we’re in now is a historical echo of the so-called Spanish Flu outbreak of a hundred years ago. This week, the Albemarle County Historical Society invited the author of a 2017 article in the Albemarle County History magazine called "The Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 in Albemarle County and Charlottesville.” Before recent emergency, there had been no scholarly research into what happened back then.
“There was nothing written about what happened locally and there’s never been a book about what happened in Virginia,” said Addeane Caelleigh, a retired UVA School of Medicine curriculum developer, and former editor of Academic Medicine, the Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Caelleigh said much of her research was based on reviewing hospital logs, something that may not be possible to future scholars due to privacy restrictions in place now. We’re still in the middle of this pandemic, but reviewing the one from a hundred years ago is useful.
“The pandemic came in three waves and the first one was a relatively mild form, lasted about three days, it was quite debilitated, it was quite contagious but it did pass,” Calleigh said. “But right behind it came the virulent form and that’s what we think of with the high death count and case counts.”
Caelleigh said 700,000 Americans died in the influenza pandemic. She estimated that meant around 400 deaths occurred in the Albemarle Charlottesville area. The entire audio of the event is available on the Town Crier Productions SoundCloud page.
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Today in meetings, the Places29-Rio Advisory Committee will convene at 6 p.m. They’ll get a briefing on the Albemarle Climate Action Plan. They’ll also get an update on the Rio29 form-based code, which seeks to incentivize multistory buildings in the area around the intersection of Rio and 29. Recall that the other day, the Albemarle Architectural Review Board saw details for a new look for the Rio Hill Shopping Center. NBC29 has a story on that meeting. (meeting info)
The Regional Transit Partnership meets at 4 p.m. for a full meeting with updates on planning grants for area transit agencies, impacts of the pandemic on service, and a discussion of long term goals. Earlier this month, Charlottesville Area Transit director Garland Williams gave an update on some of that information to City Council.
At 3 p.m. the director of the planned McIntire Botanical Garden will give an online talk on the status of the project at the Center.
“The input phase of the garden design process is not complete and through reaching out to other organizations, we are hoping to gather more feedback to ensure the built garden will represent the hopes and dreams of the entire community,” reads the blurb for the free event. (info)
At noon, the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership continues a speaker series on navigating affordable housing in the area. Today’s talk is on Successful Regional Housing Strategies & Policies and the guests are Executive Director of Partnership for Affordable Housing Elizabeth Hancock Greenfield and Director of Community Planning and Services Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Paul DesJardin. (register)
Thursday, October 22, 2020: Albemarle's top official says "It is not back to business as usual"