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Charlottesville Community EngagementInformation and context about how and why things get built in Central Virginia, a service of Town Crier Productions Author: Town Crier Productions
Regular updates of what's happening in local and regional government in and around Charlottesville, Virginia from an award-winning journalist with nearly thirty years of experience. communityengagement.substack.com Language: en Genres: Government, News Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Podcast for November 29, 2025: First bills filed for Virginia General Assembly
Saturday, 29 November, 2025
This time the podcast is the same file as the radio show that airs on WTJU, complete with public service announcements and continuity befitting a program that goes out over broadcast signal at a specific time. For the sake of the holiday, I have made this the November 29, 2025 edition. This is the 333rd day of the year, a fact that may or may not have any significance but sounds like a good thing to say. I’m Sean Tubbs, the publisher of Town Crier Productions and the writer behind Information Charlottesville at infocville.com. Most Saturday mornings I present you with several recent stories in audio form, and this week is not one of the exceptions. Though, this edition begins a process of looking back at this year.In this edition:* Legislators have filed the first bills for General Assembly 2026 (learn more)* A new era for public transportation could be underway with the formation of the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority (learn more)* The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority finds out how much a pump station failure cost to repair (learn more)* Charlottesville rooting out invasive species on city parkland (learn more)Archive stories:* This being Thanksgiving week, there aren’t as many fresh stories, so this is a good time to begin the process of looking back. One of the first important stories of 2026 will be when assessments begin to come out. Here’s how that sounded in January 2025 when they went up 5.1 percent.* Meanwhile, property assessments in Charlottesville went up 7.74 percent for 2025. In January, Albemarle Supervisors filled a key vacancy. Here’s that story.* Charlottesville had a surplus for FY2024 in excess of $22.4 million and some of that funding would eventually go to pay for things such as an office building intended to be converted to a low-barrier shelter for the homeless. Let’s go back to January to hear more about that surplus.* There are a lot of quirks to the area and one of them is the 45 acres or so of land in Albemarle County in the Woolen Mills that can only be accessed via the City of Charlottesville. One more story from January.Meta-information for November 29, 2025I did not work on Thanksgiving and I so wanted that streak to continue into the following day. I had a better time than I thought I would, and made a choice to stay in one place rather than be itinerant. I drove back at sunrise and traveled on U.S. 250 approaching Charlottesville from the west. The roads were empty as the sunlight slowly drifted over the horizon. I thought about the many times I’ve driven that road and how many stories I have written about places that have been built over the last twenty years. When I first moved to this community, I worked on Ednam Drive near the Boar’s Head. I would travel there from northern Albemarle by the airport. The house I lived in was torn down to make way for the North Pointe development. Nothing up there looks the same anymore. I wrote stories about the roundabout at U.S. 250 and Route 151. I was part of a collaboration with the Daily Progress where four of us were assigned a stretch of the roadway as it goes from Nelson to Zion Crossroads. All of these forgotten stories flashed through my mind including different places I’ve been to as a catering server or a friend. There was no traffic but me so I was able to drive slow and go at my own pace. The fight over the Restore-n-Station. The storage unit at the corner with Old Trail. The people who died at the Harris Teeter. The landscaper who had to fight the county to use property just outside the growth area as a business. The construction of another roundabout now underway. That place where my friends used to live off of Gillums Ridge Road. That woman’s house in Ivy who hired me to do transcription for a documentary she was making. The fact that I’ve never been to Duner’s and probably never will. The recovery hospital UVA built that I wrote about at a time when I had no idea what happened in places like that. Now I am older and have spent a lot of time with my parents in similar spots. And then an explosion of thoughts as I drove past the Boar’s Head where I spent a year and a half in my first real production job. My entire life changed working at that spot. It was too dark to see the renovations at Birdwood. I thought about stopping at the Bellair Market but it may not have been open. I remembered being a volunteer for the Charlottesville Track Club picking up supplies left in Ednam Forest for an organized marathon training.But once I got east of the bypass, suddenly so much change. I remembered the medical building torn down to build another medical building. New buildings on one side of the road constructed close to traffic with a new sidewalk. And then the cinderblock stairwell towers that will make up the Blume, followed quickly by a great expansion of the University of Virginia. The Karsh Institute of Democracy is coming along and the new student housing buildings are coming out of the ground. The Virginia Guesthouse will open up for the first guests next year and UVA awaits funding for the arts center approved earlier this year. Thanksgiving was two days ago, but I want to thank you all again for reading this newsletter and especially thank those who are paying me to keep writing stories. I’m grateful to be able to do this work. I could reminisce all day but I have new stories to write. For this edition, I did begin the process of looking back at 2025. In December I will produce a series of editions from stories from this year. I do this as a way of seeing what loose ends I have to tie up and what I have to look forward to in the next year. Thanks for reading Charlottesville Community Engagement ! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe
