Charlottesville public works officials to be interim NDS director

A Charlottesville official who has been overseeing major capital projects for the city has been named as the next interim director of the Department of Neighborhood Development Services.

Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders announced on September 8 that Mike Goddard will move to the position from his current role as Deputy Director of Public Works.

“Mike is formerly the manager of the Capital Development Division and he’s been with the city for the past 11 years,” Sanders said. “We are interested in seeing what his unique homegrown experience can bring to this particular area of responsibility here in city government.”

The position has been vacant since Kellie Brown left city government at the end of June. Deputy City Manager James Freas has been fulfilling statutory duties required of the NDS director since then. Freas came to the city government as NDS director in August 2021 and was promoted to Deputy City Manager in March 2024.

Goddard appears in several previous stories from this newsletter:

• Charlottesville seeks firms to bid on Buford Middle School expansion, February 8, 2023
• Charlottesville City Council gets progress report on school construction, January 27, 2025
• Council agrees to exercise eminent domain to purchase land for streetscape projects, May 9, 2025
• Charlottesville Planning Commission seeks some changes to city’s five year CIP, December 19, 2025
• Charlottesville City Council favors Early Learning Center option that would build new gym, June 20, 2026

NDS is currently overseeing several major policy projects according to the city’s Connect Charlottesville website. There is the ongoing clean-up of a new zoning code adopted by Council in December 2023 as well as a review of the city’s environmental regulations to see if they can be adjusted to allow for more residential density.

There is also a technical committee made up of staff and developers tasked with finding ways to encourage development at the higher end of the ranges allowed in the city’s building regulations.

“The Missing Middle Housing Working Group is a cross departmental effort established to identify technical, procedural, and operational barriers that are limiting production of Missing Middle housing envisioned in the Comprehensive Plan and Development Code,” reads that page on the Connect Charlottesville website.

There are at least four references to “missing middle” in the Affordable Housing Plan, a policy adopted by City Council in March 2021 that called for at least $10 million in spending over ten years on housing initiatives. Council got an update at a work session on September 8 and I’ll have that story at some point in the near future.

Before you go: The goal of Town Crier Productions is to increase awareness about what is happening at the local, regional, state, and federal government levels. Please share the work with others if you want people to know things. Paid subscribers cover the cost of conducting research for this article which was originally published in the September 10, 2026 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement.  You can either subscribe through Substack or make a charitable contribution.