Brian Wheeler has put together a clever graph of Albemarle growth rates, looking at building permits for single-family homes. He’s found that 51% of new permits in the past two years have been for rural areas. Among non-rural areas, Crozet leads at 20%, followed by the Glenmore area at 10%. The whole of the northern growth areas combined yields just 10%, presumably because the construction there is sufficiently urban that single-family homes aren’t being built much.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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This would be more interesting if single family building permits had a correlation to increasing student population, which it does not. I have seen this data used to show why schools need to be built. The lack of growth of Albemarle student population is the “dirty little secret” of the school board.
While this data does relate to building trends its use in terms of schools has, up to now, been limited. There are tens of thousands of homes that can be built today by-right. The majority are in the rural area. Hopefully they will be in the growth areas.
If the School Board in Albemarle has any secrets I am all ears! In fact, we have discussed at length, and with the Board of Supervisors, about the enrollment projections. Our budget and staffing is driven by actual enrollment data.
You will be interested to know that our February 2005 enrollment projections predicted growth of only 20 TOTAL students over the next 5 years. I posted that projection on my constituent website here: http://www.wheeleronboard.com/docs/capacity-vs-enrollment-200502.pdf
However, this year’s enrollment data indicates that at September 6, 2005 we were +60 students over projection. So in other words, at least for this one school year, we grew by 3 times the rate we had expected for the next 5 years together. We keep a close eye on this throughout the year. Also, another issue that is hard to predict, even when we are not growing rapidly, is where people will choose to live. While total enrollment may be relatively flat year to year, families can switch school districts and make an impact on capacity at a particular school. Brian Wheeler
Brian after years of reading about school budget I have never seen what you just written mentioned anywhere else. Are you saying that when one puts together the last five years with the next five years Albemarle will have a yearly growth rate of about 1/10th of a percent?
If you look at the document I linked, you will see in the lower right hand corner the number 20. That represents the enrollment increase projected to occur between 2004-05 and 2009-10 school years. That data is from February 2005 and was presented to the School Board. Now look at the column for 2005 which totals 12,373. That was our projection for the current 2005-06 school year enrollment. We came in 60 students over that amount at 12,433 as of September 6, 2005. So my point is, we projected we were going to grow 20 students over 5 years and have already grown by 60 in the first year of that projection.
When we start preparing the 2006-07 budget, we will use as our guide the September 30, 2005 enrollment number. I don’t have that snapshot handy, but it will be close to 12,433. That gets us through the budget process. However, if we get many fewer students than we expect in the division or a at a school once the school year starts, we don’t just spend the money budgeted. It only gets allocated for staffing based on the ACTUAL enrollment in the given school year. I hope that explanation helps. Brian Wheeler