Welcome to the April 6, 2024 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. I’m Sean Tubbs of Town Crier Productions, a company that seeks to increase awareness of what’s happening at meetings of local government in the greater Charlottesville area. If you click through to the podcast, you will hear a series of stories that have appeared in the newsletter and podcast this past little while.

• Members of the public speak at hearing on Charlottesville’s next draft budget, which was originally built on three tax rate increases (read the story)
• Council approves about $1.3 million in funds from the current budget for affordable housing projects (read the story) 
• Council also reallocates another $90K in federal funds to BEACON kitchen (read the story) 
• On Monday, Council’s newest member called for a steep increase in the personal property tax to discourage automobile usage (read the story)
• On Thursday, Council agreed in principle to support a budget based on a 20 cent increase in the personal property tax rate (read the story)

Good morning and welcome to Charlottesville Community Engagement for March 16, 2024. I’m Sean Tubbs, a local journalist who created a company called Town Crier Productions four years ago to increase coverage of municipal governments in the area around Charlottesville. This week on radio version for WTJU, we solely look at public transportation in the community and efforts to increase service while also choosing vehicles that will help Charlottesville meet goals to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

To learn more and to read the script, visit the Substack newsletter and podcast home page.

On the program today:

• The Regional Transit Partnership directs staff to prepare the by-laws for a potential transit authority 
• Charlottesville City Council agrees to a pilot project where Charlottesville Area Transit buys two battery-electric vehicles now and agrees to have staff research the potential purchase of two hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2027
• The interim CEO of Jaunt responds to comments made by a representative of the transit union 
• The Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission’s Board of Directors approves continued work to create the transit authority

This is the archive edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement for Saturday, March 9, 2024. I’m Sean Tubbs, a local journalist who writes about infrastructure, budgets, and all sorts of decisions about what gets built. What you’re going to hear is a digest of stories that have been used this week in the podcast version of a newsletter I send out, with much of the sound coming from local government meetings. The idea is to capture this moment in our community’s history in as much detail as possible.

On today’s program:

• The University of Virginia surpasses its $5 billion fundraising campaign and gets two major donations from the Harrison Foundation (read the story)
• An update on UVA’s efforts to build between 1,000 and 1,500 affordable housing units across the community (read the story on C-Ville Weekly)
• The Buildings and Grounds Committee of the UVA Board of Visitors takes action on several items including approving the location for a new parking garage to serve North Grounds (read the story)
• Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders recommends a fiscal year 2025 budget based on raising the real property tax, the meals tax, and the lodging tax to cover the cost of paying unionized and non-unionized city employees more money and benefits (read the story)
• Three new members have been appointed to the city’s Housing Advisory Committee (read the story)
• Charlottesville City Council reallocates $215,000 in federal funds that will enable allow the the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank to offer more produce (read the story)

(Air date: March 2, 2024)

Hello and welcome again to another radio version of Charlottesville Community Engagement, customized for WTJU. I’m Sean Tubbs, the president of Town Crier Productions, a company I set up in 2020 to create stories about what’s happening in the localities surrounding the University of Virginia. Since July 2020, I’ve produced these in newsletter and podcast form, but 

I’m glad now to bring some of these stories to you over the airwaves.

In this edition: 

• The City of Charlottesville has been served with a lawsuit seeking the overturning of the new zoning code and will respond in court on March 15  (needs pick-up)
• Representatives from 4H, Habitat for Humanity, and the Legal Aid Justice Center all seek additional funding in Albemarle FY25 budget
• Just before the Albemarle budget was presented, county officials sent out a report listing what got accomplished in 2023 
• The $38 million Belmont Bridge will be completed under an emergency contract to help address public safety
• A group of UVA students seek reform for the way Charlottesville uses one pot of federal money

On February 24, 2024, the very first installment of a new customized version of Charlottesville Community Engagement created for WTJU. I’m Sean Tubbs, a community journalist who started this website in 2005 as an experiment in community journalism! That adventure continues with an omnibus version of the regular podcast.

Back in the summer of 2020, I started a newsletter and podcast about what’s called “the built environment.” What is that? Here’s a definition from the United States Environmental Protection Agency:

“The built environment touches all aspects of our lives, encompassing the buildings we live in, the distribution systems that provide us with water and electricity, and the roads, bridges, and transportation systems we use to get from place to place.” 

Charlottesville Community Engagement tries to cover as much of that as possible in the area around the University of Virginia and what’s known as the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. Listen to enough of these and you’ll get to know more about how decisions are made and how you might get involved. 

On this program:

• A 59-year-old Charlottesville man was killed crossing U.S. 29 Tuesday evening, very near the location of a planned pedestrian bridge and in an area where more housing units are soon expected
• Two engineers with the Virginia Department of Transportation discuss the upcoming construction of several projects at Hydraulic and U.S. 29  including that bridge
• Elected officials in Nelson County and Greene County learn about a transportation safety study that the regional planning district is producing to help get more funding for construction of such projects
• Albemarle County is moving ahead with changes the Square in Crozet 
• County Executive Jeffrey Richardson unveils a $629 million budget for fiscal year 2025

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Before you go: The Charlottesville Podcasting Network is a product of Town Crier Productions, a company formed in 2020 as part of my return to journalism. The material in this program is assembled from editions of Charlottesville Community Engagement that seeks to report as much as possible about how things get built.

To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.