Charlottesville City Council gets progress report on school construction

We’re in the lull between preliminary budget discussions and the release of Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders’ recommended budget in early March. That is to say, not much of a lull at all. The next step is a work session on January 30, 2025 and you can read a preview here.

Charlottesville City Council met with the School Board on December 19 and wanted to get more information on previously funded projects in the capital improvement program. At their meeting on January 16, Mike Goddard of the city’s facilities development department had an update. He first explained how city schools put together their request. (review the presentation)

“Essentially we take need-assessments and it goes through a very linear process,” Goddard said. “We also include information from our facility condition assessments, which we do on a five year cycle, in addition to several other types of condition assessment.”

The biggest project underway is the $91 million renovation of Buford Middle School which will allow for 6th graders to attend the same school as 7th graders and 8th graders.

“This project is going well,” Goddard said. “No major complaints. We’re on time, we’re on budget. We have no reason for major concern. It’s going to be tight budget wise, but they always are. Good projects are always tight.”

A previous Council had struggled to identify funding to pay for that project, which only moved forward after Council canceled a transportation project on West Main Street.

Goddard said work recently wrapped up on modernization of Johnson Elementary School which is the most recent recipient of an annual priority fund of $1.25 million a year.

“Essentially what we did here was replace all of the school furniture,” Goddard said. “That is a lifestyle upgrade for the school itself. And we also took what was just a black roof for the gym at Johnson and turned it into a usable teaching space with a little green roof element that the students are meant to take care of.”

Another recent project was the replacement of electrical switching equipment at Charlottesville High School at a cost of $1.5 million. What had been in place was from 1974 and was known to be a fire hazard. The roof at CHS has also been replaced at a cost of $6 million.

“I will tell you that this roof is solar ready,” Goddard said. “So it has all of the necessary accommodations for a solar project, which we are on right now.”

Goddard also gave a preview of upcoming projects which include priority improvements at Trailblazer Elementary School (formerly Venable), lighting of the track at CHS, and replacements at Summit Elementary School (formerly Clark). A big-ticket item in the future will be the renovation of Walker Upper Elementary School into an early learning center. The cost estimate is between $25 million and $30 million and work is expected to begin in FY2027.

“That’s the Pre-K center that follows on the Buford project,” Goddard said. “So as soon as we kind of roll off that one, we roll right into the Walker.”

Goddard said many of the schematic drawings for Walker were done at the same time as the Buford renovation.

Goddard was followed by Kristel Riddervold, the city’s environmental coordinator. She said both city government and Charlottesville City Schools are committed to greenhouse gas reduction goals.

“Charlottesville has formal climate goals adopted in 2019,” Riddervold said. “Forty-five percent reduction by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. And the good news, which we reported with you earlier this year, is that as of our 2022 emissions inventory, we’re tracking towards that 2030 goal with a reduction of about 42% from the baseline.”

To bring the number down further, the city is working on a series of school-related projects.

For instance, Riddervold said the city seeks to electrify the school bus fleet and a pilot with four vehicles is in the works.

“We’re currently receiving technical support through the National Renewable Energy Lab to do a school bus electrification transition planning work,” Riddervold said

The National Renewable Energy Lab is part of the United States Department of Energy. The future of that support could be in question given executive actions taken so far by President Donald Trump. What’s also potentially at stake are Internal Revenue Service guidelines related to tax benefits.

Riddervold said a project to put solar on top of the city-owned Charlottesville Area Technical Education Center (CATEC) will soon go out to bid with construction anticipated this summer. Solar plans do not stop there.

“There are new roofs for a series of elementary schools, but we don’t currently have funding designated or identified to support the solar installs there,” Riddervold said. “And then besides the on-site clean energy generation, we have the opportunity to enter into solar power purchase agreements.”

There’s more work to be done on those agreements which could provide funding in the absence of federal funds. The cost to install solar on six schools, including CHS, is $10 million.

“We would be working with a developer and the best analogy is to consider it a lease,” Riddervold said. “So it’s essentially a developer who designs, installs, owns and operates the system on a city or school or on a roof. And there is a negotiated rate for the energy that is being produced by that system.”

Those agreements are not yet ready for review by Council. That’s in part because of the way projects are funded.

“One of the things that we benefit from as a AAA bond rated city, as a municipality, is that we fund all of our CIP with the exception of a few housing projects with tax exempt bonds,” said Krisy Hammill, the city’s budget director. “It gives us a lower cost of borrowing, but with that comes with strings.”

Hammill said the new presidential administration may also have very different thoughts on the continued existence of such programs.

Before you go: This article was originally sent out as part of the Charlottesville Community Engagement newsletter in the January 23, 2025 edition. Both are functions of Town Crier Productions. You can support the work by purchasing a paid subscription or contributing monthly through Patreon. You can also send in a check or send an email, but drop me a line first.