With one week before primary, Charlottesville to temporarily relocate Buford precinct

On April 2, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors passed an emergency ordinance to relocate a polling place for the Branchlands precinct.

The Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors withdrew permission for their offices on Hillsdale Drive to be used and provided notification for Albemarle to go through the public process. That included a public hearing on May 7 that formally updated county code to reflect an official voting place.

With one week to go before the June 17 primary, the City of Charlottesville has announced one of its polling places will be moved for in-person voting.

“Due to construction at Buford Middle School, the usual facilities will be inaccessible, and the polling place must temporarily relocate to Tonsler Recreation Center at 500 Cherry Avenue for the June Democratic Primary election on June 17, 2025,” reads an information release sent out at 10:32 a.m. today.

Taylor Yowell, the city’s director of elections, said her office was notified yesterday that the space would not be available.

“My office yesterday made a submission to the Department of Elections an alternative polling place for approval, because there is not enough time to bring this before City Council with the election next Tuesday,” Yowell said in an email. “As soon as we received approval, we have begun the notifying process in §24.2-310 (D).”

That section of the code refers to an emergency that renders a polling place unusable and requires all candidates to be notified of the change.

“For the purposes of this subsection, an ‘emergency’ means a rare and unforeseen combination of circumstances, or the resulting state, that calls for immediate action,” reads the state code.

Construction at Buford Middle School has been underway for two years. Yowell said she had no indication Buford would not be available because several elections have been held during that time.

“From what I was told when we were notified yesterday is that they have now entered ‘phase 2’ of the Buford project as of last week,” Yowell said. “This is the existing portion of the building and all power has now been shut off and the bus circle has been torn out.”

Charlottesville City Schools posted an update of the school modernization project to their website on June 3. A request for clarification has been sent to Charlottesville City Schools to know more about when they knew the polling place would not be available. I’ll update this story accordingly.

The Tonsler Recreation Center was a polling place for many years until March 2023 when Council adopted new boundaries.

Before you go to a different screen: This story went out in the June 10, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. The idea was to post it here immediately but there was a lag. One day there will be a system in place to automate such things. Until then, we truck along. To add fuel, consult this website!