Author: jayson-whitehead

Last summer, the Albemarle County School Board contracted with the Commonwealth Educational Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University to conduct a “Resource Utilization Study” to make sure that the school division practices an efficient use of its resources.

“In hindsight, it was brilliant,” says at-large School Board member Brian Wheeler of that decision. Five months later, the Institute returned with its recommendations and county school Superintendent Pam Moran acted on them almost immediately.

"In hindsight, it was brilliant," says county School Board member Brian Wheeler of the decision to commission an efficiency study for county schools.

“It helped us so much in going through the budget process,” says Wheeler. Among the recommendations was a cut in the school’s central office expenditures for staffing that amounted to $400,000. (The School Board ended up with a $151 million budget for the 2008-2009 year, a 2.8 percent increase over the previous year.)

According to Wheeler, the immediate savings produced by the study will likely be overshadowed by its long-term benefits. For instance, the Institute recommended a more efficient routing of school buses and found that the school’s existing buildings have a capacity for up to 1,600 more students.

“A year from now, we will have a number that is lower than it is today,” he says of the budget.

The perceived success of the county schools with the study, which cost $100,000, has spurred the city schools to undertake a similar strategy. Earlier this month, they signed up with the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget for a top-to-bottom evaluation of how they use their resources, which will cost them less than it did the county. Charlottesville schools will likely only have to pay around $30,000. Under their arrangement, the state will pay three-fourths of the cost—as long as 50 percent of the state’s recommendations are implemented. The county schools had no such prescription with their study.

The trend is catching on at the larger locality level as well. On May 7, a beleaguered Board of Supervisors—in the face of lower than expected revenues and harsh citizen criticism—directed county staff to prepare a scope of work (due in early July) for a similar outside study of its $334 million budget.

“We’re always looking for ways to cut waste,” explains Supervisor Lindsay Dorrier. “Everything has to be conserved because these are tough times.” He likens the eventual study to “preventative maintenance for an automobile.” Four county departments are already undergoing an internal assessment under the Baldridge National Quality Program, another means of assessing efficiency.

With the rest of the area pursuing such studies, the city seems close behind. At its next meeting, City Council will decide whether to commission an efficiency study. “It’s good to see whether we are using resources fairly or not,” says Councilor Satyendra Huja. “Are we getting our money’s worth?”

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As the temperatures rise, so do our utilities. City Council decided June 16 (after C-VILLE went to press) whether to raise water rates by 5 percent while county residents’ rates will for sure go up almost 13 percent. Effective July 1, gas rates will also climb $2 and the county was just notified of Dominion Virginia Power’s application to revise its “fuel factor,” taking prices up for their services by 18 percent.

“It’s inevitable but unfortunate,” says City Councilor Holly Edwards. “I’m concerned that people are struggling to pay bills.”

“It’s not too much, but it’s something,” says Ellen Steele, who coordinates the county Department of Social Services’ utility assistance programs.

“The reason I worry about it is because I’m on a fixed income,” says Curtis Overby. The 48-year-old Belmont native lives on a disability check from the government and has been to the hospital three times in the past week for hernia-related issues he has battled for years—a big bandage stretching down his belly as proof.

After rent and bills, Overby estimates he is left with $15 or $20 for the month (food stamps allow him to purchase food). His landlord pays for water, but a rise in rates might cause trouble. “That means my landlord is paying more,” he says. “It could raise my rent.”

While the possibility looms, there is actually a source of temporary relief for someone in his position. Beginning June 16, both the city and county social services started offering cooling assistance under a state-funded, low-income energy program that also provides help with fuel costs in the wintertime. Unlike the winter assistance, the summer program only applies to a household with a “vulnerable” person.

To fall under that distinction, you must be over 60 or under 6, or, like Overby, receive certain types of disability. Even if disability is received, the recipient must fall under certain income guidelines. As set by the state, a household of two must make less than $1,517 a month, and a household of one must make less than $1,127 a month. Overby makes less than $600, which would free him up for a potential $150 this summer—for the period of June 16 through August 15—for help with purchasing equipment like fans or as help with an electricity bill.

“It’s not too much, but it’s something,” says Ellen Steele, who supervises the program for the county’s Department of Social Services. Last year, the county served around 300 households each through the cooling program while the city served 459. As there is a greater need for assistance when it is cold, the cooling funds are actually limited and could run out before mid-August.

“We’ve got money to spend,” says Rebecca Rush, outreach coordinator for the Community Energy Conservation Program (CECP). With state and federal funding, CECP offers a more permanent approach to cutting the costs of utilities for those who live within 130-150 percent of the federal poverty income guidelines, which is about $21,000 annually for a family of four.

“Our goal and our focus is to make sure the home is insulated properly,” says Rush. According to her, CECP actions like weather stripping will reduce cooling and heating bills by 25-30 percent. Applicants will likely experience a two- to six-month wait.

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“Just because it sounds and feels good doesn’t mean it’s effective,” says Ross Carew. He is assistant director of Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR), a corrections and rehabilitation program for the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, which has commissioned a UVA study of a recently added re-entry program.

Begun in 2005 for men (and in 2007 for women), New Horizons is an intensive eight-week course that aims to prepare inmates for their life outside. Skills like CPR are taught alongside financial planning.

“We’re conducting an evaluation of what we’re doing right now,” says UVA professor and clinical psychologist Ann Loper, who has dedicated her career to studying the effects of prison on inmates. “What kind of things are we doing that are helpful, and what kind of people does it help?”

Loper and her students also taught a parenting skills class for the New Horizons students who just graduated. Now, she is preoccupied with collecting the initial information on departing inmates. While Loper currently has 50 people in the nascent study, she is hoping to follow at least 200, but says the jail poses unique challenges. Because it is regional, there is a transitory population. Some people may only be there for a few days, some a few months, others years.

As a result, she describes the study as an “evaluation,” one that will track three different groups of prisoners: those who have had the re-entry program; those whose sentence is too short for New Horizons; and a third class who refused any services at all. Loper will conduct regular followups over the next year, beginning July 1.

Psychology Professor Ann Loper consults with Patricia L. Smith, executive director of OAR. The two are collaborating on a study of former Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail inmates.

“We’ll call them up,” she says, “and ask if there’s anything you learned that has helped you.” By doing so, Loper and her team will be able to tailor the program to inmates and evaluate how well the program is working.

At this point, New Horizons is largely taught by volunteers—so far, neither the jail nor OAR have sought state or local funding. Even though the idea of equipping outgoing prisoners with life skills seems logical, the jail’s program is actually a little controversial.

“Lots of prisons act as warehouses,” says Carew, a 10-year veteran of OAR. He says that the pre- and post-release programs are a progressive alternative to what most of the states’ correctional facilities offer.

“It’s more about how somebody is going to be three years from now than whether they’ve peed in a cup,” he says, adding that they are lucky to be in Charlottesville where so many services (like Region Ten) are available. “We want you to walk out a better person.”

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As growth extends throughout the city and county, the roads around and through Charlottesville have become ever more crowded. To alleviate some of the congestion, area officials have moved forward with two controversial projects, the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) and Eastern Connector. Both would pass through a city park—McIntire and Pen parks, respectively.

City Council held a June 4 work session on the intersection for the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP). After failing to approve the roundabout design ratified by the Interchange steering committee, Council chose a smaller diamond intersection and directed the engineering team to refine that option. The work session came two days after a 3-2 Council vote to grant an easement for city-owned land in the county for parkway construction. Almost five acres will be permanently used for the road, while another 3.7 acres will be temporarily held during the project’s construction.

A steering committee has picked an alignment through Pen Park for the proposed four-lane Eastern Connector.

The narrow vote has led Stratton Salidis, longstanding opponent of the Parkway, to question its validity under the state constitution. He believes that the vote required a “supermajority,” three-fourths of Council, for approval.

In 2004, the state attorney general ruled that a “supermajority” was not necessary to put a nine-acre stretch of McIntire Park in temporary easement. The most recent vote, however, concerned a permanent easement and involves a different parcel, so the requirement of a higher consensus could apply.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Connector Steering Committee recently decided to move forward with a plan for a four-lane connection between Rio Road and Route 20, but over the objections of Committee member and former city councilor Kevin Lynch.

“I don’t want to see four lanes used as a reason to not build the Eastern Connector,” he says. From his vantage, the decision ignores a political reality that will mean the road’s defeat. Instead, Lynch has proposed a two-lane alternative that would still cut through Pen Park but along an access road that already exists.

Various residents of the area, most notably Sarah Hendley, have already mounted opposition to the connector because it goes through Pen Park. Lynch believes that the access road route would minimize the impact.

“It’s the least bad alternative,” he says. “That’s what we’re down to.” The city and county will not be presented with the steering committee’s recommendations until this fall at the earliest.

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On June 2, North Carolina resident Janet Leitch stood before Charlottesville’s City Council to speak about the historic seven-acre estate on East Market Street in the Woolen Mills neighborhood where she grew up.

“I was going to write a letter but then just decided to come up,” she says. During the public comment period, Leitch implored the city to protect the land her grandfather, James Branham, had farmed for nearly three decades of the last century.

Janet Leitch remembers when 1512 E. Market St. was a farm tended by her grandfather, with corn, wheat, cattle and a smokehouse. Now, the inadvertant loss of some of the land’s historic preservation could expedite an entire Woolen Mills historic district.

“He worked it all the time, you never saw a weed,” Leitch says. There was a front garden with every kind of vegetable, she says, while in the back field behind their house her grandfather grew corn, wheat, and melons. Horses and cows roamed some of the land, as did the hogs that were killed and cured in a smokehouse that was her grandfather’s prized possession.

Now the smokehouse is gone, as is some of the backfield where a mini-storage facility was erected in 2001 by current owner Preston Coiner.

For years, Leitch assumed her family’s estate was protected from development. In 1993, Charlottesville’s City Council designated it an individually protected property (IPP), preventing any construction or alteration of structures on that parcel (or any future subdivisions thereof) without a hearing before the Board of Architectural Review.

However, the land was also sold and first subdivided in 1989 by then owner Blake Hurt. In 1996, the acreage was sold to Coiner, who subdivided the parcel and redrew its boundary lines on various occasions. Then, when part of the property was subdivided in 2001, a city staffer forgot to add the new parcels to the protected properties list. Two years later, when the city undertook a broad rezoning of Charlottesville, no one caught the mistake. Somehow, only the parcel the actual house sat on was protected. The field to the west was not.

More than five years later, two Woolen Mills residents—Bill Emory and Victoria Dunham—discovered the error and have spent the last year and a half trying to get the IPP status restored. A hearing before the Board of Zoning Appeals turned into a lawsuit against the city that was recently dropped.

The latest attempt to restore the entire acreage’s IPP status came before City Council on June 2 in the form of a resolution. Council opted not to restore the IPP status and instead to expedite a survey already underway for the Woolen Mills neighborhood for state and national register recognition. Council recommended that local historic status also be sought for the area, which would bring it under BAR review.

“We believe this is a more appropriate remedy,” says Jim Tolbert, director of the city’s Neighborhood Development Services.

“Will that be adequate to protect this property?” asks Dunham, ever skeptical of the city. “We’ll see.”

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