Charlottesville City Council to provide direction to city planners on what to work on next

Elected officials will also review $193 million in grant programs

The Charlottesville City Council will meet twice this week on both Monday and Thursday. Thursday is the public hearing for the proposed budget for FY25 that’s built on tax rate increases. Monday is a regular meeting with three public hearings on the proposed increases in the meals tax rate, the lodging tax rate, and real property tax rate. They’re connected, but separate. (meeting info)

Monday’s meeting starts at 4 p.m. in City Council Chambers with a work session with two topics. The first will take a look at all of the various grants that are used to fund city operations. Until 2022, there was no centralized place for this work until the Office of Community Solutions was created.

“The Grants Inventory Report allowed the Office of Community Solutions to get a better understanding of each of the grants as well as allow the City to become compliant and better in alignment with the best practices of grants management,” reads the staff report.

The report is to be updated twice a year. The first one found a total of 95 grants making up $193 million in funds, though the report has the caveat that much of that has already been spent. The document also reports that many city departments have misunderstood grants over the past several years.

“This lack of understanding has led grant projects to remain open and require additional reporting and document retention as they were not closed at the completion of the project,” the report continues. 

Other issues identified in the report include staff turnover leading to a lack of institutional memory about previously received grants, a lack of collaboration between departments, and a lack of transparency. Read the document for more information.

One of my perennial questions has been whether the city will continue to update a 2022 audit of the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund. That appears to have been answered on page 12 with a table listing total allocations and grant awards from FY2008 to FY2023. 

“The CAHF program has lacked monitoring and compliance for the last several years,” reads the report. “Some programs have not spent their allocations during the appropriate period of performance, thus leaving a balance of funds to be reappropriated.”

Much of the $193 million reported in this inaugural grant inventory is in the form of state funding through the Virginia Department of Transportation. This is the first time I have considered those as grants. One omission noted in the report is the lack of grants utilized by Charlottesville Area Transit. 

In the second work session, the Director of Neighborhood Development Services will check in with Council about additional work needed after the adoption and implementation of the new Development Code. Council will have to decide between eight different projects that are detailed in the report. 

One possibility would be a small area plan for 10th & Page, Preston Avenue, and Rose Hill corridor. 

“We will collaborate with the community to develop the planning process and to create a plan that is responsive to the issues identified,” the report reads. “Implementation will be considered from the very beginning with a focus on what can be accomplished in a five-year period.”

Another would be a rewrite of environmental regulations including the potential elimination of special rules for dealing with critical slopes. Another would be to implement the Starr Hill Vision Plan, a document put together by the New Hill Development Corporation with $500,000 in funding from the city. Other ideas include an on-street parking policy, a pre-approval program for certain building types, and an update to entrance corridor regulations. 

Before you go: The time to write and research of this article is covered by paid subscribers to Charlottesville Community Engagement. In fact, this particular installment comes from the March 18, 2024 Week Ahead. To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.