Monthly Archive for March, 2007

Page 5 of 6

City, County Staff Present Budget Proposals

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 4, 2007 in Taxes. 5 Comments

Charlottesville and Albemarle County have both assembled proposed budgets for review by their respective elected officials, and both are premised on unchanged tax rates. Charlottesville property assessments went up 14% and Albemarle assessments went 15%, so unchanged tax rates would mean commensurate increases in revenue. The proposed city budget contains a 13.64% spending increase ($136.5M total) and the proposed county budget proposes a 5.6% increase.

City Manager Gary O’Connell proposes using the increased revenue to fund more affordable housing, new emergency services capacity, improving city signage and bringing schools into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, among other things.

County Executive Robert Tucker proposes a 5.7% increase in school funding, a 25% increase for fire and rescue, and a 6.9% increase for police, plus increased revenue sharing funding, money for RSWA environmental compliance, and several other things.

The proposed Charlottesville budget and the proposed Albemarle budget are both available online. Now it’s up to the Board of Supervisors and City Council to decide if they want to follow through with the recommendations of their respective staffs.

McIntire Business Park Sold

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 4, 2007 in Business. 1 Comment

McIntire Business Park has been sold, Brian McNeill reports in today’s Daily Progress, and new owner Keith Woodard has a lot of changes in mind. The ten-acre complex has been owned by the company that built it for half a century, and it’s started to change in the past decade. It’s functioned basically as light industrial throughout my memory, changing to include things like Circa, Cville Coffee and Blue Ridge Yoga as downtown rents have gone up. It’s often difficult to find parking for Cville Coffee, presumably because the business park just wasn’t designed to be a destination. Interestingly, there are a half dozen apartments on site, and Woodard is interested in adding even more. Woodard says he doesn’t want to make any radical changes, he just wants to make it better.

County Eyes NGIC Expansion Plans

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 4, 2007 in Development. 56 Comments

The National Ground Intelligence Center is planning on expanding substantially, and Albemarle County is trying to figure out how to handle it, Jeremy Borden writes in today’s Progress. The Army intelligence organization (made famous for their faulty Iraq intelligence) currently employees 1,200 people at their facility on 29 North, but they intend to expand to 2,000 employees come 2011. It’s a part of a push on the part of the federal government to decentralize federal services so that an attack on Washington D.C. would not leave the nation defenseless.

All of those 820 jobs will be filled by people moving here from D.C. and around the nation, and many of those people will bring families, all of which requires more schools, homes, emergency services, roads, etc., etc. The county is trying to figure out how to handle the growth, which would be sudden and difficult to control. The feds have no obligation to coordinate with the county at all — or even tell Albemarle what they’re up to — which makes the task all the more challenging. All of this will translate to higher tax bills for all of us in Albemarle, because more money will be required in order to fund the expansions necessary to accommodate the thousands of new residents that will arrive nearly simultaneously.

African-American Cemeteries in Albemarle

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 3, 2007 in General News. 1 Comment

Lynn Rainville is getting some national attention for her new website about area cemeteries, thanks to an Associated Press story that hit the wires this morning. Her website, African-American Cemeteries in Albemarle and Amherst County, has detailed records about all 29 historically black cemeteries in the two counties. For example, the record for Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Ivy lists 21 markers and 17 individuals, features photos of every marker and text transcripts of the fading words carved into the stone.

Lynn also runs a new blog, LoCoHistory, dedicated to the history of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Questioning Red Light Cameras

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 2, 2007 in Law and Justice. 11 Comments

In this week’s Hook Dave McNair writes about the General Assembly allowing localities to install traffic cameras, presenting convincing evidence that they’re just trouble. VDOT’s own study concluded that red light cameras increase injury rates at intersections, and they found that simply lengthening yellow light times resulted in staggering drops in accident rates. McNair quotes county spokeswoman Lee Catlin supporting red light cameras, meaning that they may be coming to an intersection near you.

Nobody answering The Hook‘s question of the week supports red light cameras. I feel better — I was starting to wonder if I was the only Democrat in the state who thinks red light cameras are a terrible idea.

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