Cville Byline...and more!

February 11, 2022

Cville Byline is a bonus feature for DTM paid subscribers (thank you!) that features the best journalism from the area’s best journalists - all in one place. This week, however, it’s available to everyone.

• Newly hired Daily Progress editorial page editor Jim Spencer has gotten to work changing the takes we get from the daily: “It seemed almost like karma. On the day the Daily Progress editorial page pushed for unvaccinated people to get their COVID-19 shots to help the area’s exhausted health care workers, readers learned that an Albemarle County parent had complained to the Virginia Attorney General about the way schools treat unvaccinated students.” Read more…

• Nice reporting here from Tamica Jean-Charles. Since the early 2000s, local historians have strongly suspected that the people enslaved by the Gilmer family, the owners of the plantation that is now Pen Park, were buried in unmarked graves adjacent to the white family’s marked cemetery beside one of the tee boxes on the golf course. However, a planner for Charlottesville’s historic preservation program now says he was unaware of their existence until 2019. Read more…

• Brielle Entzminger reports on the possibility of school resource officers (SROs) returning to city schools. Charlottesville School Board chair Lisa Larson-Torres says the district’s new safety program, which replaced its SRO program, has been “going great," and she does not want the board to be forced to end it. She believes every school division should be able to choose its own safety model.“There have been fewer fights at Charlottesville High School than during most years prior to the new model,” says Larson-Torres. Read more…

• Katherine Knott reports on hospital staff battling COVID surge: “While we are declining, we are still seeing a very high number of cases,” said Dr. Costi Sifri, UVa Health’s director of hospital epidemiology, at the medical center’s weekly briefing. “Even if the cases continue to drop, we’ll still have people in the hospital and will continue to deal with this for weeks to come. At some point [case numbers] will come down to a lower level, but until then we are in a period of high case counts and it behooves us to take precautions.” Read More…

• Max Marcilla reports on why fewer than a quarter of Virginians in both the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups have gotten a COVID booster shot. Read more…

More news…

» City Councilor Micheal Payne provides a pretty good breakdown of the city’s grim budget situation: “We face critical budget decisions that will impact Charlottesville for a decade plus. One such decision was about whether we should raise real estate taxes, and if so by how much I want to call attention to three slides.” - City Councilor Michael Payne.

".....The first shows that everything currently in our budget is wildly unaffordable. Our current budget would double our debt service payments and create a $24 million dollar deficit. To afford this would require a 10 cent real estate tax increase and *still* practically leave little to no room for new investments for a decade. So the conversation shifted to raising taxes to cover this deficit, which leads to the second slide.

It shows that assessments increased wildly this year — 11% on average (over 20% in some neighborhoods such as Tenth & Page). Without tax increases, the average real estate tax bill will go up by ~$400. With a 10 cent real estate tax increase, the average bill will go up by ~$800

Which leads to the third slide. To prevent displacement caused by rising assessments, we have a tax relief program But because there’s a limit on the assessed value of a home that can qualify & assessments rose, 11% of households that used to qualify were kicked out this year...

In my opinion, the current state of our budget is reckless and irresponsible. It is not realistic.

Even with a 10 cent real estate tax increase — without a plan to prevent displacement — we largely freeze our ability to make new investments for a decade..." Read more…

» The Charlottesville Office of Economic Development's Vacancy Study always provides a nice snapshot of changes on the DTM, and the January study lists seven qualifying vacant storefronts, meaning retail locations vacant for more than two months, including the "Dewberry" hotel location at 201 East Water Street, and four non-qualifying, non-retail vacancies. Currently, the Spring Street Studio, Fellini's, Bashir’s Taverna, Lift Mattress, and Bank of America building spaces are all vacant. In addition, the Silverchair, Conscious Capitalist Foundation, Manchester Capital, and the C-Ville Weekly space, are all listed as vacant.

Was surprised to see C-Ville Weekly on this DTM vacancy list. According to publisher Anna Harrison, they moved to remote publishing during COVID and it's gone so well that many staffers are continuing to work remotely, so they are looking to sublet half the space or move to a smaller space.

The former JAVA JAVA space is going to become Botanical Fare, a new restaurant serving plant-based food. The Bebedera is moving into the old Downtown Grill space. And Farmacy and Ooey Gooey Crispy restaurant are in the CODE building.

» This satirical map of Charlottesville posted on Reddit ended up generating a revealing discussion on race and class in Charlottesville. Read More…