Tag: Charlottesville Planning Commission

Categories
News

In brief: Zoning talks, melting monuments

The Future Land Use Map will be a guiding document for the city as it figures out which neighborhoods are fit for denser housing. Photo: City of Charlottesville

Map moves ahead  

The process of rewriting Charlottesville’s Comprehensive plan—and, subsequently, reevaluating the zoning for the entire city—took a major step forward last week, when the Planning Commission unanimously recommended that City Council approve the most recent draft of the Future Land Use Map. 

The Future Land Use Map shows which areas of the city could be sites for denser housing. The map has been under discussion throughout the summer, drawing thousands of comments from residents who have ideas about how Charlottesville should grow. 

The Planning Commission’s recommended map would allow for increased housing density in many neighborhoods. In the new map, much of the city is designated General Residential (bright yellow, right). General Residential areas allow four units per lot, on the condition that the fourth unit is affordable.

In some other corridors, plots that are currently zoned R-1—allowing for only one unit—will be designated Medium Intensity Residential (mustard yellow, right). On Medium Intensity Residential lots, builders will be able to construct buildings of up to 12 units, as well as detached accessory dwelling units and townhouses. If your street is colorful, it doesn’t mean the city is going to come seize your house and tear it down to build an apartment. The map is a loose guide to what could be allowed in the future. 

In earlier drafts, some residential areas had Mixed-Use Nodes, which would have allowed for small chunks of commerce amidst the houses and apartments. Many of those nodes have been removed. Additionally, sensitive community designations have been added, meaning in some areas developers will have to build a higher percentage of affordable units.

City Council will decide whether or not to move forward with the map at its November 15 meeting. Watch this space for additional coverage of the Comprehensive Plan process throughout the fall.

Art from war  

Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue was removed from Market Street Park on July 10. Photo: Eze Amos

Confederate statues, once removed from their pedestals, present a tricky problem. Where do you put the unsightly hunks of bronze? Do you leave them in storage forever? Do you donate them to a person or organization that wants them and might allow them to live another life as a rallying point for hate? 

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center has an innovative answer to these problems. It’s submitted a bid to take ownership of the recently removed Robert E. Lee statue. Then, it’ll melt the monument down. 

The project, Swords into Plowshares, will call upon an artist-in-residence to repurpose the bronze material to create a new public art installation. 

Dr. Andrea Douglas, executive director of JSAAHC, said in a press release that she views SIP as “Charlottes-ville’s opportunity to lead by creating a road map that can be followed by other communities that wish to impact history.”  

The project will invite input from the descendants of enslaved persons who were disenfranchised by Virginia’s constitution, which entrenched Jim Crow rule. It will seek to represent the community’s desire for ”value-driven, socially-just objects in our public spaces,” Douglas says. 

Swords into Plowshares has already raised over $500,000, and is supported by many local and national organizations, including Descendants of Enslaved Communities of the University of Virginia and the Equal Justice Initiative. 

The city has received numerous offers from organizations that wish to claim the Lee and Jackson statues, which were taken down on July 10. City Council has until January 13 to make a decision. 

In brief

Couric’s confessional  

Katie Couric.
Photo: Yahoo news

UVA’s prized alum Katie Couric found herself in hot water recently, when it was revealed that her new autobiography includes first-person accounts of multiple less-than-flattering moments. Couric confessed that she withheld inflammatory remarks from a 2016 interview she conducted with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concerning Black athletes’ decision to kneel during the National Anthem. 

It was previously published that the justice called the gesture “dumb and disrespectful,” but Couric said this week that Ginsburg also said the athletes showed “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.” Couric admitted she intended to protect RBG, because the sitting Supreme Court justice was “elderly and probably didn’t fully understand the question.”

Back to the well(ness)

UVA’s new student health center on Brandon Avenue has received more than just a face lift: In fact, the building itself is said to have healing powers. According to Jamie Leonard, director of the Office of Health Promotion, the building was designed to “help physiologically change somebody” as they enter it. Natural wood, hues of blue, and plenty of sunlight offers “a significant mood-booster,” according to a UVA Today article about the space. The four-story building includes a revamped Department of Kinesiology and a pharmacy as well as a wellness suite, reflection rooms, and designated quiet spaces for introverted students. The space even features a state-of-the-art testing kitchen, where students can go to learn how to make healthy meals. Are you feeling better yet? 

Categories
News

Money talks

Data courtesy of Rory Stolzenberg.

Two distinct factions have emerged in the heated discussion around Charlottesville’s zoning laws. Some city residents say the latest proposed land use map goes too far, and that the construction of apartment buildings and shops would have deleterious effects on what are currently single-family neighborhoods. Others say the map doesn’t do enough to open up exclusive neighborhoods for new development. 

New data compiled by Planning Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg offers a clear illustration of who’s advocating for what at this point in the process. 

Letters asking the Planning Commission not to allow more dense housing in single-family neighborhoods almost all came from the owners of Charlottesville’s most expensive homes. Meanwhile, a campaign asking the map to allow for “a range of housing types accessible across income levels” came from homeowners who own homes of more representative value, including a large proportion of renters. 

The latest draft of the land use map was released on August 30, ahead of a Planning Commission meeting on August 31. Between September 5 and September 14, Stolzenberg’s data shows that the Planning Commission received 150 emails from people who wanted the land use planning process to slow down, because they oppose what they see as “blanket up-zoning.” 

More than 100 of those people submitted a form letter. “I support the stated objective of providing affordable housing,” the form letter reads, “but do not believe that the extensive changes these documents would make to our neighborhoods would have a significant impact on affordability.” 

The emailers say that allowing for increased housing density in certain areas “would destroy much in our city that makes it a unique and special place to live,” and are concerned that the adoption of the plan would lead to “wholesale changes to the content and character of neighborhoods throughout the city.”

Using Charlottesville’s public Geographic Information System, which catalogs the names of property owners in the city and lists the assessed value of every property, Stolzenberg was able to match each emailer with the value of the home they own. 

The median value of a home in Charlottesville is $330,000. The median value of the homes owned by anti-upzoning email writers is $730,000. 

The vast majority of these anti-upzoning emails—80 percent—came from people who own homes in the top 20 percent of value in the city—homes valued above half a million dollars.

And 20 percent of the anti-upzoning emails came from people who own homes valued at $1.1 million or more. 

Fifty-seven percent of Charlottesville residents are renters, but the 150 anti-upzoning emailers included 144 homeowners. Sixty-nine of those 150 emailers live in the tony Barracks/Rugby neighborhood, and another 20 live in North Downtown. 

On the other side, Stolzenberg also received 151 emails between September 5 and September 10 advocating for even greater density than the most recent version of the land use map would allow. 

More than 100 of those emailers submitted a form letter written by a group called Livable Cville. The Livable Cville writers ask that the planning commission allow 3.5-story buildings, four-unit dwellings, townhouses, and rowhouses through almost all of the city. “This will help ensure it is spatially and financially feasible for affordable multi-family homes to be built,” the letter reads. 

The city should also “allow small commercial uses, such as corner stores, throughout the city,” the letter argues. “If we want walkable, bikeable, vibrant, human-scale neighborhoods, that will require retail services in every neighborhood.”

Stolzenberg used the same method to create a general profile for the Livable Cville emailers. Just 88 were confirmed homeowners; Stolzenberg says that “most of the others are likely renters—many explicitly said so, while the others don’t appear in city property records.”

The large proportion of renters who wrote to support the Livable Cville email already means the campaign is more economically representative of the city than the group who sent anti-upzoning emails. 

Among the homeowners who participated in the Livable Cville campaign, the median home value is $370,000—not too far from the median home value in the city. Half of the homeowners who wrote to support increased density own homes in the bottom 40 percent of value in the city. 

The stark differences between the economic status of the two cohorts is “startling,” Stolzenberg wrote to his fellow planning commissioners on September 12. “It is our job as policymakers to make policy on behalf of all citizens, and therefore it is important to know who we are hearing from, and how they represent or do not represent the citizenry at large…That is what I’ve endeavored to provide with this analysis.”

Correction 9/29: An earlier version of this story misstated the percentage of renters in Charlottesville, and misspelled Rory Stolzenberg’s name.

Categories
News

To build or not to build

The proposed Stribling Avenue development project has gone back to the developer for additional review. Supplied photo.

After a public hearing last week, the Charlottesville Planning Commission sent a proposal for 170 new housing units back to the developer for updates. 

Southern Development is asking the city to rezone 12 acres of land in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood to allow the construction of a new complex of townhomes and apartments. Fifteen percent of those units would have to be designated affordable housing.

“The Planning Commission told us very clearly [they] wanted to see something more dense and less suburban,” said Charlie Armstrong, vice president at Southern Development. 

The development’s fate could depend on whether or not the city and the developers can scrounge up enough cash to fund sidewalk upgrades and other safety improvements around the area. 

Last year, the Fry’s Spring Neighborhood Association expressed support for the development on the condition that such updates went through. Armstrong then negotiated an agreement with the Office of Economic Development, promising that Southern Development would give a $2 million loan to the city to build those improvements. The city would then pay Southern Development back over a period of years out of the increased property taxes that it’s set to receive. 

At the meeting, the city and the developer clashed over the specifics of the deal: Southern Development estimates the infrastructure upgrades will cost around $1.6 million. City Engineer Jack Dawson said he’d only seen the proposal two days before the meeting, but that it could cost as much as $2.9 million in his estimation. “It isn’t just a sidewalk. It’s essentially a streetscape, because when you touch a road you need to bring it up to code,” he said.

Armstrong expressed frustration at the discrepancy between the estimates. “That’s not a number that I’ve ever seen published, or have ever heard,” Armstrong said, even though the company has “been talking with the city, and been in this review process with the city, for months and years.”

The city doesn’t have much to spare by way of capital improvement funding: Last week, council opted to transfer funding allocated for the West Main Streetscape to the $75 million reconfiguration of Buford Middle School. Budget staff said that could require as much as a 15-cent tax increase next year.

“Right now, every penny we are going to have in capital funds is going to get allocated for school reconfiguration,” said City Councilor Lloyd Snook. 

The co-president of the FSNA appreciated the work that went into the agreement, but said it was not yet enough to satisfy his concerns. 

“There is a potential to find a solution here, but there is a big but,” said Jason Halbert. “It’s about safety on that street and the JPA intersection.”

Halbert said the agreement had not been fully reviewed by the appropriate staff. He asked for the project to be delayed while the details of the agreement are worked out. 

Planning Commissioner Hosea Mitchell said he liked the project overall but agreed it might not be ready.

“I think it could use a little more baking,” Mitchell said. “There would be value in sitting with the engineers and the economic development people and working out the details and logistics.”

Another commissioner suggested the city has to do a better job of communicating internally on matters like this, especially given that the current draft of the city’s new comprehensive plan encourages the creation of more dense housing across the city.

“It’s endlessly frustrating to me, the degree of dysfunction within the city,” said Commissioner Rory Stolzenburg, “that the economic development office is negotiating this agreement and isn’t even telling [the city engineer] about it until literally two days ago.”

Southern Development requested an infinite deferral to see if the details can be worked out. 

County approves 254 units near Forest Lakes

Also last week, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approved a development that will see 254 apartments—190 of which will be set aside as affordable housing—constructed just off Route 29. The project was approved in a 5-1 vote. The county’s comprehensive plan had highlighted the area as a good spot for potential growth. 

“I personally live in an area where many apartment units have gone up,” said Ned Gallaway, chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. “And they fill quickly. The question is whether the infrastructure is there to support the density.” 

Throughout the approval process, the community association of the nearby Forest Lakes neighborhood argued against the project, saying it was out of scale with their existing neighborhoods. 

“We talk a lot about how we are an inclusive and welcoming place to live. This is an opportunity to create a place for people to live that have not been able to live in our community,” said Supervisor Diantha McKeel. 

In her support for the project, McKeel noted that VDOT has invested nearly $230 million in road improvements in Albemarle within recent years, and is currently studying how to further expand transit to the area. 

Categories
News

Housing divided: Critics say new budget puts parking over people

“By failing to fund affordable housing in your city, you are quite literally causing and creating homelessness,” said Alliance for Interfaith Ministries director Kimberly Fontaine at the Planning Commission’s public hearing for the city’s Capital Improvement Plan last week. 

The Capital Improvement Plan covers non-recurring projects that last for five or more years and cost upwards of $50,000 each. Every year, the city manager’s office drafts a five-year plan, and the planning commission then puts forward non-binding recommendations. This year’s plan includes almost $5 million for a new parking lot on Market Street and another $5 million for the Belmont Bridge, along with smaller projects like replacement traffic lights, new police radios, and air quality adjustments at the Smith Aquatic Center.

What’s absent from the budget, however, drew the most comments at the hearing. As testimony after testimony piled up, the meeting became an emotional referendum on Charlottesville’s housing emergency. The proposed CIP spreads out appropriations for the Charlottesville Regional Housing Authority over a longer period of time than initially proposed, effectively resulting in a 50 percent cut to the CRHA budget for the next two fiscal years. 

Council chambers were standing-room only, even though the CIP won’t go into effect until April. Many people in the audience held printed signs reading “Fully Fund Affordable Housing.”

“It takes at least two and a half full-time minimum wage jobs to afford a market rate two-bedroom rental home here in Charlottesville,” said Sunshine Mathon, CEO of the Piedmont Housing Alliance. “We have an opportunity to realign our priorities, redressing the historical outcomes our systems were designed to—and did—produce.”

Elena Cleveland owns a house built by Habitat for Humanity. She said her mortgage is half of what she used to pay in rent. “With the rent being so high, we didn’t have money for anything else,” Cleveland said.

“We’ve been talking about this for a long, long time,” said public housing resident and activist Joy Johnson. “We live in the city, we’re taxpayers. You have a responsibility to make sure that folks who are not homeowners still have affordable housing to live in.”

Former mayor Dave Norris reminded the commission that city investment in housing earns generous matches from philanthropic groups and state programs. “That $3 million that was allocated this year leveraged in turn about eight dollars for every one dollar put in by the city,” Norris said.

Housing wasn’t the only point of contention—other residents voiced their concerns about the potential environmental impacts of the new plan. The proposed CIP includes funding for an $8.5 million parking garage on Market Street, but does not include any new money for sidewalks or bicycle infrastructure. 

“If you keep burning more and more fossil fuels, you will accelerate the destruction of this planet, said resident Josh Clark. “Which is a different kind of housing crisis, if you think about it.”

“As we turn our sights to hitting our city’s emissions targets, the city has few levers to pull,” said resident Andrew Jones. “Encouraging zero-carbon, low-cost transportation through cycling and pedestrian infrastructure is one of the few obvious paths forward to hitting these targets.”

For some, those concerns were secondary to housing. “If people can’t afford to live here, it doesn’t matter how many bike lanes we put in,” said resident Don Gathers. 

After more than 90 minutes of public comment, Commissioner Lyle Solla-Yates put forward a motion: “I’d like to move that the CIP needs additional work.” 

The planning commission addressed housing first. “Why are we making this so much harder than it needs to be? We’re fully funding it,” said Commissioner Taneia Dowell. 

The commission passed an amendment recommending that the city front-load their six-year, $15 million commitment to the Charlottesville Regional Housing Authority, increasing the budget from $1.5 million to $3 million for fiscal years 2021 and 2022 and effectively reversing this CIP’s proposed cut. The commission also asked the city to increase funding for the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Fund over the next five years. 

Freeing up funds for housing meant cutting other projects. The commission identified the Market Street parking garage construction as fat that could be trimmed. Building a new parking garage is “morally wrong, at any dollar amount,” said Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg. 

“I do think there’s something that can be done there, other than just an ugly old parking garage,” said Commissioner Lisa Green. “There’s so many options out there.”

The commission recommended that the project remain unfunded until the city has had an opportunity to produce alternate options.

From there, finding projects to defund became more difficult. At one point, Solla-Yates suggested postponing a request for a new ambulance. “It wasn’t in the projection, it’s not an emergency,” he said. His motion died without being seconded. 

“A friendly reminder to my fellow planning commissioners,” Solla-Yates said. “If we don’t decrease anything, we don’t get to increase anything.”

Towards the end of the discussion, Mayor Nikuyah Walker said that simply setting aside more funding for public housing wouldn’t solve the problem. The city wouldn’t know how to spend the money even if it became available.

“Where’s all this affordable housing we’ve been funding for years?” Walker said. “We are talking about meeting the needs of thousands of families. We haven’t been able to produce a quality program that can do that.” 

Walker said she doesn’t want to “keep tossing money into a lot of different things without measuring the effectiveness.”

The Planning Commission eventually passed a motion with nine amendments, each suggesting revisions to the CIP. Its resolutions are not binding. City Council will vote on a finalized plan in April.

Updated 12/18 to clarify the location of the garage.

Categories
News

In brief: form-based code delayed, UVA soccer wins, A12 appeals denied, and more

UVA President Jim Ryan has decided to reinstate the 21-gun salute during the university’s Veterans Day ceremony next year.

Rain check

Planning Commission delays form-based code proposal

After much debate, the City Planning Commission has decided to table its plans to introduce an alternative kind of zoning, called form-based code, to the city’s Strategic Investment Area south of downtown.

Unlike conventional zoning, form-based code focuses on the physical form and scale of buildings in relationship to one another, rather than on building use. It can be used to encourage mixed-use and pedestrian-friendly development as well as streamline the development approval process.

The commissioners present at last Tuesday’s meeting were all in favor of implementing a form-based code but did not think the proposal was ready for approval.

“We want to have a code we’re comfortable with,” said Commissioner Lisa Green.

Dozens of Charlottesville residents came to the meeting, and 16 spoke out against the proposal. Many were concerned that the code did not place enough priority on affordable housing and could allow developers to use loopholes.

Under the proposed code, for example, developers would be allowed to build one to four additional stories if they provide a certain number of affordable housing units. However, affordable units would only be required to be a percentage of the units in the additional stories, not of the entire building.

Several residents recognized that outgoing Councilor Kathy Galvin, who has pushed for the code, wanted the proposal to go before City Council before its final meeting, but urged the commission to delay the proposal until it adequately addresses the city’s affordable housing needs.

“Kathy, I’m sorry that you’re leaving in December, but this plan can wait,” said Joy Johnson, chair of the Public Housing Association of Residents.

The commissioners will vote again on the form-based code sometime early next year.

The proposed code would allow for buildings up to nine stories within the IX Art Park property, but would specify that they surround an area of open space.

 

Such great heights

A plan by Jeff Levien, owner of Heirloom Development (and the man behind 600 West Main), to erect a 101-foot building just off the Downtown Mall came another step closer to reality last week, when the Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of a special-use permit for 218 W. Market St. 

Levien is seeking to construct a mixed-use building with commercial space and rental apartments on the site that’s currently home to the Artful Lodger, The Livery Stable, and other small businesses. The permit would increase the allowable height and density for the project from 70 feet and 24 units to 101 feet and 134 units.

If approved by City Council, the new building will become one of the tallest in Charlottesville. 

Quote of the week

“Take it down and put it in a hall of shame.’” —Rose Ann Abrahamson, descendant of Sacagawea, on the proper course of action for the West Main Street statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea

In brief

Unappealing

Virginia’s Court of Appeals denied the appeals of two men convicted in the violent beating of Deandre Harris inside the Market Street Parking Garage during the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Jacob Goodwin and Alex Ramos were caught on video beating Harris, and the judge cited that footage in upholding Goodwin’s conviction for malicious wounding. Goodwin will continue his sentence of eight years behind bars, while Ramos is serving six.

November madness

UVA soccer teams continue their electrifying seasons. The men’s team raised the program’s 16th ACC tournament trophy last week and earned the top seed in the NCAA tournament. The top-seeded women’s team thumped Radford 3-0 in its opening tournament match. 

Jumped the gun

UVA President Jim Ryan removed the 21-gun salute from the university’s Veterans Day program this year, but he’s rethought that decision, and says that next year’s ceremony will include the salute. “Sometimes you make mistakes,” Ryan said in a Facebook post. He had hoped to avoid class disruption and minimize the amount of guns being fired on college campuses, but others disagreed with his course of action. “My sincere apologies to any who may have doubted our commitment to honoring our veterans,” Ryan wrote. 

 

Updated 11/21: An earlier version of this story contained an item that mistakenly attributed to city manager Tarron Richardson a claim that the camera found in Court Square Park last week belonged to the city. In fact, Dr. Richardson was talking about a camera on 8th Street and Hardy Drive. 

Categories
News

Staying social: Public officials take different strategies to social media

An argument on Nextdoor led some residents to ask Commissioner Rory Stolzenberg to recuse himself from voting on a rezoning plan. (Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith)

When Rory Stolzenberg accepted an appointment to the Charlottesville Planning Commission last October, he hoped to play a role in how the city government shapes its citizens’ way of life. What he didn’t expect is just how much weight his words would now carry online.

The 27-year-old software developer has an active presence on social media—most notably on Twitter and the neighborhood-based platform Nextdoor—and drew the ire of some local residents after engaging in arguments online.

In a June 11 letter to the Planning Commission, a group of 28 Belmont residents asked that Stolzenberg recuse himself from an upcoming vote, citing his comments on social media about the issue, a proposed rezoning plan for affordable housing units at Hinton Avenue United Methodist Church. Stolzenberg’s comments were “denigrating and filled with sarcasm to neighbors,” the residents complained.

Although the letter (which also requested that Commissioner Gary Heaton recuse himself because he’s a Methodist minister) wasn’t addressed at the meeting, where the Hinton Church proposal was approved in a unanimous vote, it raises the question of where public officials  should draw the line in their online comments.

As a general rule, Stolzenberg says he doesn’t comment on pending applications, but will enter online discussions about them when he believes others are missing or ignoring critical facts. He says he tries to be factual and base his opinions on evidence. “Certainly, there’s times, especially on [Nextdoor], where the quality of the conversation overall has kind of regressed,” he says. “Often there are insults being lobbed at me, or renters.”

In the sometimes-heated thread on Nextdoor about Hinton Avenue, Stolzenberg responded to the rezoning concerns with a photo of a well-kept multi-family home on Belmont Avenue and wrote “SICK FOURPLEX absolutely DESTROYS neighborhood character! Who will save us from this CREEPING THREAT?!”

In the ensuing exchange, Kimber Hawkey, one of the letter’s co-signers and a Belmont resident, accused the commissioner of having “blatantly called out and challenged residents who would dare to speak out against this project.”

Hawkey declined to comment for this story, saying “the documents speak for themselves.”

Kevin Driscoll, an assistant professor in media studies at UVA with a background in political communication, says too little is known about the effects of social media on local politics. But his hope is that local officials use social media to gauge public opinion in a productive way.

“I think there’s a need for public officials to step out and define what leadership looks like in a social media environment,” Driscoll says. “The trick for folks going forward—especially at a local level—is to create the feeling of localness within these massive platforms.”

Stolzenberg is by no means the only public official in Charlottesville to communicate on social media. His fellow Planning Commission member Lyle Solla-Yates is also vocal on Twitter, and all five members of City Council have active profiles on various social media platforms. Mayor Nikuyah Walker, in particular, uses Facebook to communicate with constituents, highlight projects, and vent frustrations. Many of the posts on her personal page center around race, including a photo she shared Thursday that said, “Black women are stereotyped as angry but have you ever told an old white man he couldn’t have something[?]”

Walker drew criticism last July after protesting a candidate for interim city manager on Facebook Live. Her comments played into Sidney C. Zemp’s decision to turn down the offer, citing in a letter that he “would be unable to serve the public needs, instead being mired in petty fights and paralysis.” Walker declined to comment for this story.

According to City Attorney John C. Blair, there’s no state or city policy that restricts how local elected representatives use their social media accounts. The only thing they’re not allowed to do is block users. A case involving a Loudoun County official reached a federal appeals court in January, stipulating that even temporarily blocking an account is a violation of that person’s First Amendment rights.

“If a city council member had a question, they would contact our office and we’d talk about how the law stands [on social media] at that time,” Blair says.

Councilor Wes Bellamy, who came under fire in 2016 for offensive tweets from his early 20s that resurfaced courtesy of Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, says he thinks it’s important to post his opinions online to keep people informed, but he doesn’t have to engage with everyone who disagrees with him.

Developing thick skin helps, and “understanding that just because somebody has an opinion doesn’t mean that I have to respond to it or validate something that I know is just completely ridiculous,” Bellamy says.

The reality of local politics in the 21st century is that a significant base of constituents relies on social media for its news and political commentary. So whether or not public officials engaging in arguments is helpful in the long run, most tend to agree it’s important to use social media to inform citizens and initiate important dialogues.

“I think there is a role for public debate on social media, like for important issues that we’re discussing … so that people can see them,” Stolzenberg says. “If we have more discussions about topics publicly, it gives a window into important considerations that we’re discussing on either side.”