Look Back 2024 Part Three: A very incomplete account of Albemarle County government

The Year in Albemarle County

Town Crier Productions is in no position to expand rapidly but let’s assume for a moment that funding was no object. If I were to hire a reporter, this person would be assigned to cover Albemarle County.

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to put out updates about things going on in Albemarle?” someone asked in the comments of my weekly Reddit thread.

“I try what I can and only prioritize Charlottesville because it’s slightly easier to attempt to cover holistically,” I wrote in response. “Whatever I do write can be seen in a few tabs over at Information Charlottesville.”

In keeping with that comment, let’s take an incomplete look at what’s happened in Albemarle this year.

Albemarle’s FY25 budget and general government

After two years of double digit percentage increases in real property assessments, the 2024 figures came in at just over 4 percent. In late February, County Executive Jeffrey Richardson presented Supervisors with a FY25 budget of just over $629 million with no new tax rate increases. In comparison, the FY23 budget was $494,096,472 and the FY24 budget was $554,790,036.

During a series of work sessions, the six Supervisors directed staff to put in a one percent increase in the lodging tax from eight percent to nine percent to match the City of Charlottesville. They also agreed to raise the personal property tax to $3.92 per $100 to return the rate to what it had been. On May 1, Supervisors adopted a $642.2 million operating and capital budget.

One of the drivers in Albemarle’s budget will continue to be the increase in full-time firefighters and emergency medics to provide coverage in an era when volunteer forces have declined for various reasons. They heard from Fire and Rescue Chief Dan Eggleston in January that calls for service have increased 20 percent in the development area since 2019.

That’s the same year standards of cover were adopted to set response time objectives. In the development area, first responders have a goal of being on site within eight minutes 90 percent of the time. The rural area goal is 21 minutes, also 90 percent of the time.

New spending in Albemarle’s budget included the hiring of 16 firefighters and medics to staff the North Garden fire station and to expand the Human Services Alternatives Response Team.

During the budget process, staff responds to questions in writing. For instance, one Supervisor wanted to know how the University of Virginia contributes directly to local tax revenues.

“There are three different University of Virginia-related entities in which the County has a relationship that are based on either existing agreements or state law,” states the response. Go take a look at the story from March 25, 2024 for details.

Ranked choice voting

In 2024, Charlottesville adopted the use of ranked-choice voting to decide nominees for party primaries for local office. A campaign by former Delegate Sally Hudson encouraged Albemarle County to follow suit, but the two Republican members of the Albemarle Electoral Board discouraged the idea in August.

“The consensus opinion from the Electoral Board and as you’ve heard from others is that, and as you know, many of you have run unopposed,” said Clara Belle Wheeler said. “You don’t need ranked choice voting for your magisterial district. Albemarle County routinely has no more than two at the most, three candidates and you can declare a clear winner with three candidates in a race.”

Supervisors pushed back against Wheeler’s comments but have so far not yet adopted the method for local elections.

2024 in Albemarle land use

At the beginning of the year, two top officials at the University of Virginia took over as chair and vice chair of the Albemarle Planning Commission. Fred Missel is the director of development at the University of Virginia Foundation and presides over the meetings. Luis Carrazana is an associate architect at the University of Virginia.

One trend in Albemarle County land use is the desire by developers to reduce the amount of commercial space in favor of building more homes. For instance, developer Kyle Redinger sought to increase the number of units at the Albemarle Business Campus from a maximum of 128 to a maximum of 368 units. That application is still under review.

A running story throughout the year was continued work on the update of Albemarle’s Comprehensive Plan, a process called AC44. The process began one way and then finished another. On January 17, Supervisors reviewed the draft plan’s draft goals and objectives for five of eight chapters as part of the end of phase 2 of a four phase plan. Supervisors had another work session on the rural area in March.

A stated reason for keeping Albemarle’s growth management policy in place is to preserve land for farming. As of this writing, I have not written up a pair of AC44 conversations about rural land use but I did write a story earlier this year that reported the latest federal agricultural census recorded a five percent decline in the number of farms between 2017 to 2022.

“The agriculture census definition of a farm is any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the census year,” reads the introduction to the census which is produced by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

One more fact worth bringing up in this year-in-review: The average farm in Albemarle is losing money with an average net cash income per farm of a negative $16,033.

There was a pause in the AC44 after the second phase ended. In July, the Planning Commission learned that staff wanted to reframe the way the document was being set up. More on AC44 the next time I report on it for the regular newsletter.

Supervisors were briefed in April on an alternate method of procuring transportation projects, something that would be further developed over the year as Albemarle seeks to build the long-awaited Eastern Avenue connection.

In mid-August, Supervisors learned more about how the county might be able to use Virginia’s Public Private Transportation Act of 1995 to enter into an arrangement where private interests can take on some of the risk of building the Eastern Avenue connector.

“This project has been a very important piece of our transportation plans for the development of the Crozet area since we began planning for the growth of that area so as early as 2004 it was in the initial Crozet Master Plan and also the extension of Eastern Avenue,” said Lance Stewart, who was director of Facilities and Environmental Services in Albemarle County at the time.

The cost estimate for the project spiked to $39,475,000 as anticipated construction estimates have increased post-pandemic.

This is a story I confess I am out of date on. The Planning Commission had a public hearing on December 17 for a rezoning related to this called Oak Bluff. I’ll report on that as soon as I can.

Meanwhile development projects continued to make their way through the land use application process. In July, the Planning Commission recommended a rezoning at 1193 Seminole Trail for a project that would consist of 10,000 square feet of commercial space and 165 units. (read the story)

The density proposed is in excess of the upper ranges of the Comprehensive Plan adopted in 2015, and at an October 2022 work session, members of the Planning Commission said this location was exactly where density should be.

“We definitely felt that the density was appropriate and that we could potentially go even higher,” said At-Large Planning Commissioner Luis Carrazana.

Valerie Long with Williams Mullen represented Up Campus Properties and she explained the reasons for the less intense project.

“The challenge as you may well imagine or know is the extreme cost for structured parking,” Long said. “The cost of parking continues to go up even since we submitted the application. The construction costs increased. Interest rates rose substantially.”

The Year in Albemarle Economic Development

What does “economic development” mean? There’s no tidy definition according to a quick look at Wikipedia, but localities, regions, states, and nations have different strategies about how to grow business in their jurisdiction.

In our area there are sometimes competing and overlapping plans and at the local level, the first question to ask is whether a community has an economic development plan. In 2018, Albemarle Supervisors adopted Project Enable as the county’s first ever coordinated effort to attract business. The plan builds off a 2012 study that identified four target industries:

• Bioscience and Medical Devices

• Business & Financial Services

• Information Technology and Defense & Security

• Agribusiness and Food Processing

In March, the Albemarle Economic Development Authority agreed to provide $300,000 for a match for a Virginia grant to CvilleBioHub for something called the Cville Biotech Accelerator.

“This initiative aims to provide comprehensive guidance and support to approximately 15 to 20 early-stage life science companies during the three-year timeline, facilitating their journey toward success in facilitating growth and retention in the region and in Virginia,” read a staff report for their March meeting.

One of the first initiatives of Project Enable was to conduct a planning exercise for the section of Albemarle County that’s landlocked inside of the City of Charlottesville. The Broadway Blueprint sought to capitalize on the area around the redeveloped Woolen Mill property along the Rivanna River. In June, Supervisors indicated they would prefer to keep the area reserved for light industrial uses rather than encourage the development of mixed-use communities.

In May, an assistant to County Executive Jeffrey Richardson was named as the interim economic development director after a person hired last December resigned for personal reasons. Emily Kilroy would later be named to the position on a permanent basis.

In August, Supervisors ratified a public-private partnership with Home Depot to encourage that company to move faster with construction of a new store at the site of the former Sears at Fashion Square Mall. This demonstrates the county’s growing use of economic development strategies to move land use goals forward.

“Redevelopment of this parcel will correct what has been a stark decline in property values for this area,” Kilroy said. “I share this context because we have an opportunity to support the Home Depot as a first catalyst project for the redevelopment of what could be a majority of this quadrant.”

Albemarle County also petitioned the federal government to be added to the list of communities where federal employees are paid higher salaries due to the high cost of living.

“With the county’s acquisition of property around Rivanna Station, locality pay needs to get right-sized not just for current federal employees who work in the metropolitan statistical area but also its an eye to the future and the attractability of the location if and when additional [Department of Defense] type functions would expand,” said Deputy County Executive Trevor Henry to the Economic Development Authority in July.

That’s another story to follow-up on in 2025.

Other Albemarle tidbits:

• Work to upgrade a portion of the former J.C. Penney store at Fashion Square Mall for the Albemarle County Police Department was completed in late 2023. (read the story)
• In June, Albemarle Supervisors passed a resolution of support for developer Richard Hewitt from whom the county leases space at the former J.C. Penney at Fashion Square Mall for Fire Rescue and Police operations and logistics. For the public safety operations center, Hewitt leases the space to the county at $12.90 a square foot with an annual rent of $429,117.21. (read the resolution)
• This year, Albemarle used a fast-tracked process to rezone county-owned land around the Rivanna Station for a future defense and industrial campus.
• In August, Supervisors approved a rezoning for 200 units south of the Fontaine Research Park on 69 acres of undeveloped land. There’s no roadway between the two locations, but the project will feature a pedestrian connection. (read the story)
• In December, the county finally opened up Biscuit Run Park. In March, the hope had been to have the space open in the fall. In April, Governor Youngkin signed legislation releasing a state-owned easement required for work to continue.

Before you go: This article was originally posted to the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter on January 1, 2025. It’s the second in a series of articles about what happened in the 12 months that were 2024. The cost is covered by paid subscribers and other contributions, including advertisers and sponsors. If you’re interested in helping support the work, drop me a line!