Albemarle County Supervisors review planning department’s work plan

For over 40 years, Albemarle’s Community Development Department has been at the forefront of a policy intended to focus growth within designated areas of the county. In the past year, the department has overseen the update of the Comprehensive Plan and got a new leader in the form of Bart Svoboda.

At a long work session on August 5 about what the department will be doing in the next year, County Executive Jeffrey Richardson estimated that about 80 percent of time at Board meetings is spent considering an item that stems from the Community Development Department.

“This is the only department in county government where we look at the work plan in front of the Board,” Richardson said. “We don’t do that with any other department and this has been the case certainly since I’ve been here, and I’m in my ninth year.”

In 2025, a total of 118 items from the department went before the Board. So far this year there have been 56. Richardson also said there has been an increase in activity this year for submitted plans, permits to review, and inspections to perform.

Richardson said the purpose of the work session was to manage expectations about the department can do.

“As this board has heard me say a number of times since I’ve been the manager, we can’t do everything,” Richardson said. “And we will not be able to do everything that the board comes up with or the community comes up with as the next new idea.”

Current projects underway in the Community Development Department include zoning modernization, a review of the Housing Albemarle policy, creation of a multimodal transportation plan, and Activity Center planning.

The Community Development Department also supports other county priorities including a major emphasis on economic development.

“Supporting Rivanna Futures, supporting other economic development initiatives,” said Bart Svoboda. “We have Eastern Avenue, Three Notch Trail, our VDOT transportation studies, the six-year road plan, Smart Scale, all those things are encompassed in some of that regular work that we do.”

Svoboda said in the next six months, the department will be preparing changes to the county’s zoning in response to legislation adopted by the General Assembly. There are also initiatives pursued by various community groups such as a desire to expand the county’s biosolids ordinance and to pursue a local ordinance on intense animal feed operations.

I recently wrote about the latter for C-Ville Weekly and the first idea would be to review what other localities in Virginia are doing.

“We would use or would like to use a consultant for that,” Svoboda said. “We are scoping what that means, what that cost is, to see based on the budget allocation that we have and the resources that we are already given, if there’s available funds.”

Two items that are not in the plan for the next year are mapping of private cemeteries and an ordinance to require property owners to remove snow from public sidewalks.

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