This time around there is a big focus on municipal budgeting because the purpose of Town Crier Productions is to focus on the details of revenues and expenditures with a hope toward greater community understanding. At least, that’s the way this version of Sean Tubbs is programmed.

In this edition:

• Charlottesville City Council has adopted a budget for the next fiscal year that increased the real property tax rate by a penny, one fewer cent than had been proposed (full story here!)
• Albemarle Supervisors have a few remaining decisions to make for the county’s FY2027 budget (read the story)
• Albemarle and Charlottesville commemorate Dark Sky Week (read the story)
• A preview of the Week Ahead

Most people read the material while others look forward to every installment of the podcast edition which offers a chance to hear what people sound like. I’m Sean Tubbs and here are five stories you may have missed:

• Charlottesville City Council briefed on low-barrier shelter might work groups that provide the programming (read the story)
• City Council agrees to hire consultant to develop public arts commission for Charlottesville (read the story)
• One of Albemarle County’s community advisory committees weighs in on what they’d like to discuss at this year’s meetings (read the story)
• Albemarle County Executive Jeffrey Richardson shares data points on Albemarle services with Supervisors (read the story)
• The director of the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority gives an update on Long Bridge and expansion of service to Christiansburg (read the story)

Here are links to stories as they appear on Information Charlottesville.

In this edition:

• No major comments at Charlottesville City Council’s first public hearing on two-cent tax rate increase for FY2027 budget (read the story)
• Albemarle County Supervisors make adjustments to their proposed budget for FY27 and opt to advertise an increase in the personal property tax rate to dedicate additional revenue to an affordable housing fund (read the story)

This is a cross-post. For more information on the original, head over to Substack.

In this edition:

• Greene Supervisors appoint former member to fill vacancy (learn more)
• Albemarle Planning Commission wants to see another design for Windy Knoll (read the story)
• Albemarle Supervisors take action on Boulders Road project (need to produce)
• Charlottesville PC looks ahead to next set of zoning changes (need to produce)
• No tax rate increases included in proposed $724M Albemarle budget for FY2027 (read the story)

In this edition:

• Charlottesville Planning Commission seeks some changes to city’s five year CIP (read the story)
• Charlottesville ends use of Flock system (read the story)
• Charlottesville transitions parking garages to AI-powered access management (read the story)
• The Albemarle Planning Commission takes a look at a new tool to be used to measure how the county’s growth area land is being used (read the story)

Not quite in this edition but recently written all the same:

• Board of Visitors names Darden Dean as next UVA president
• Charlottesville City Council makes appointments (link to Substack)
• Rezoning sought for between 22 and 110 more units in Hollymead in Albemarle

Charlottesville Community Enagement is an extension of what this website was intended to do. It is a product of Town Crier Productions and I’m cross-posting it here as a way of trying to rethink what this website could do.

But, today I’m cross-posting an edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement.

Four stories in this edition:

• Former Congressman Tom Perriello enters the race for the Democratic nomination to represent Virginia’s Fifth District in the U.S. House of Representatives (read the story)
• Two special elections scheduled in Virginia on January 6 (read the story)
• Virginia transportation panel briefed on $20 million for Boulders Road project (read the story)
• Albemarle Schools seek funding for fourth high school while Supervisors want more data on need (read the story)

My other platforms at the moment are Charlottesville Community Engagement and Information Charlottesville. The former is a newsletter sent out through Substack. The second is a website I created as an archive for whatever I wrote during a period when I wasn’t a working journalist.

This website was created as a way for me to experiment with podcasting. At the time I was a freelance radio producer and saw the new distribution technology as a way for me to potentially make additional money.

Now I make my living because there are a lot of people who want me to keep writing. There are ways that brings in revenue. The profession I am in has always been supported through multiple sources of revenue.

I took another job at another organization in April 2007 because I had responsibilities. I was no longer in charge and could not devote much attention to this website anymore. I handed it over to a couple of other caretakers, and one of them retired a few years ago.

Since then, I’ve posted a few things, but not on a regular basis. This is definitely a website on hiatus, much like Fifth District Community Engagement and Charlottesville Quarantine Report. The latter was something that sprang forth from me in the early days of the COVID19 pandemic.

I do not know what the future of this website will be, but I do know I will be revisiting the work of 20 years ago as I experimented with using audio to tell longer stories in different configurations then I could get on the radio. For most of my time at Charlottesville Tomorrow, I did not do much with audio except for posting entire files of the meetings I covered.

And that’s what the audio is for this post. This is from a meeting in April 2010 of those members of Charlottesville City Council who were on the elected body back in the 1970’s when the decision was made to convert East Main Street into a pedestrian mall. You can read the story over at Charlottesville Tomorrow. This audio is available there as well.

I’m uploading it here because it’s a Saturday and those are usually the days I organize things because I try not to have a deadline. I’m cleaning up files and this was one I came across that I downloaded at some point intending to cut it up into soundbites.

Maybe I’ll do that one day, but organization involves archiving and connecting the present with the past in hopes of having both stick around into the future.

There are a lot of experiments still posted in those early days, but there was never really much regular content except for Rick Moore’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call and other radio shows.

When I went to work for Charlottesville Tomorrow, my ability to experiment was restricted but I began to write articles that were just text and images. The audio fell behind. Someone else became a caretaker of this site, which I could not keep up anymore.

Four years ago, I became an independent journalist again and I produce a regular newsletter and podcast called Charlottesville Community Engagement. Earlier this year, I began a new partnership with WTJU where they would air a version of the podcast on Saturday mornings.

I’ve not been posting those to this website because I ‘m not sure if there’s audience. I usually just cross-post the WTJU version to the CCE feed.

But this edition is a little different because it inadvertently became a capturing of two different meetings at which Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan was discussed. The four-phase review process began in the fall of 2021 and county staff took a pause at the end of the second phase.

This edition of the WTJU podcast contains sonic summaries of the July 9, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle Planning Commission and the July 17, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. If you want to know more about the process, my reporting is one of the only non-government accounts. One of the Supervisors even noted that there were no members of the media present. Since the pandemic, I record from home.

In any case, here are some selected articles I’ve written in the past three years on what the county calls AC44.

• Albemarle Supervisors learn more about upcoming Comprehensive Plan process, October 7, 2021
• Albemarle County Comprehensive Plan review underway, February 7, 2022
• Albemarle Planning Commission reviews seven options for growth management, August 3, 2022
• Phase 2 of Albemarle Comprehensive Plan review underway, January 24, 2023
• Albemarle releases new AC44 documents on growth area expansion criteria, June 7, 2023
• To expand growth areas or not to expand? Albemarle CAC members weigh in, July 25, 2023
• Albemarle Planning Commission weighs in on criteria to expand development area, September 1, 2023
• Should uses in Albemarle’s Crossroads Communities be expanded?, September 9, 2023
• Checking in with AC44 as update’s third phase looms, November 17, 2023
• Albemarle Planning Commission urge a balance of aspiration and realism in county’s housing goals, November 26, 2023
• Speakers weigh in on Crossroads Communities in AC44, January 13, 2024
• Planning Commissioners briefed on “refinement” of AC44 process, July 17, 2024
• Public engagement to happen before Albemarle staff release AC44 draft, August 2, 2024

This website is nearly 19 years old, and doesn’t really have any original content of its own. But without the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, there is no way I would have ever been able to be where I am today—in an era of never-ending experimentation!

For most of its time, Charlottesville Community Engagement has been a newsletter and podcast. The recent creation of a radio version that airs on WTJU Radio on Saturdays at 6 a.m. has disrupted much of the workflow. This week, the WTJU Rock Marathon pre-empted my show. That gave me some extra time on Saturday to produce this edition.

Here’s what you will hear:

• Charlottesville City Council adopts a budget that reflects a move toward unionization of the city’s workforce, higher salaries for city employees, and lower education funding from the state due to increasing property values (read the story)
• There’s a problem with excessive dog waste being left at the city’s newest park (read the story)
• Charlottesville’s parks and recreation officials want your input on the next master plan to guide the future of public spaces in the city (read the story)
• The city has a plan to fix drainage issues in Oakwood Cemetery and will further discuss the issue on April 24 (read the story)
• Albemarle and Charlottesville both need more lifeguards for the summer season (read the story)
• Charlottesville’s Planning Commission gets an update on the new Development Code (read the story) 
• Albemarle Supervisors have comments on recent deployment of the HART team and a bomb threat at Planet Fitness (read the story )
• The Albemarle Department of Social Services helps a lot of people each year and Supervisors get a briefing (read the story) 
• Albemarle Supervisors weigh in on expanded uses in the rural area as part of the Comprehensive Plan process (read the story)

• 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)

This website is one of those places! I created this in 2005 as an experiment and that’s still what I aim to do every day I’m at work. This is another example of Town Crier Productions.

In this edition:

• Albemarle Deputy Fire Chief for Emergency Management details efforts to fight brush fires this week that burned hundred of acres  (read the story)
• Charlottesville City School names a new principal for Charlottesville High School  (read the story)
• Details on Charlottesville’s FY25 budget from across a series of work sessions this month (read one story) (read the other)
• Charlottesville’s Finance Director updates Council on how $19.6 million in ARPA funds have been used (read the story)
• Social and health metrics program garners Charlottesville a National League of Cities Award (read the story)

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