Mayor Virginia Daugherty's State of the City Report

Presented at the February 7, 2000 City Council Meeting

Good evening, Madame Vice-Mayor, Members of City Council, and citizens of Charlottesville. As we get into our budget season and start our new Comprehensive Plan process, I want to talk with you about where this wonderful City of ours has come from, where it stands today and the challenges ahead. It is a pleasure to work with our competent City staff led by Mr. O’Connell. Our well run government is recognized nationally by publications as Money Magazine.

In recent years our city has faced the same urban problems that other towns and cities are facing. Changes in our demographics were starting to wear away at our job base, our housing stock and our schools. Juvenile crime and teen pregnancy were on the rise.

The City Council chose to take a deliberate approach to these problems. We reviewed trends in depth to assess our future. We also carried on discussions with citizens, lawyers, and the Board of Supervisors about the possibility of reversion to town status or other types of consolidation. We began to see the need to set a new direction and provide the leadership to go in that direction. Our new agenda had three goals: economic development, more middle-income housing, and better education.

Let’s look at number 1. Council decided to engage in an aggressive effort in economic development and at the same time carefully budget to live within our means. And a strong national economy and our efforts have worked.

Charlottesville had about 50 million dollars in new development in 1999, and real estate values continue to soar, up over 10%. We continue to keep our AAA bond rating, the only city of our size in the country to do so.

Many City businesses are looking to expand, while new companies aim to make Charlottesville their home. We are 3rd in the state in growth in the high-tech sector.

Our resurgent economy is having a ripple effect throughout our community: the unemployment rate stands at a record low 1.4%, and 86% of the people who have enrolled in our welfare reform program have found jobs. The city has demonstrated a commitment to job training as well, with programs such as the Workforce Training Initiative. We teamed with the University of Virginia, Piedmont Virginia Community College and the Weed and Seed Network to provide high technology training to residents in the West Main area.`

The City Council has encouraged investment on the Downtown Mall, and it is THE place to be, with a new Virginia National Bank, the renovated Wachovia Bank, Inova, National Optronics and constantly growing technology companies, such as SNL, which we honored tonight.

But as we weigh our economic successes, we must also weigh our challenges. What are we going to do about those who still cannot support their families? Can we build West Main, part of the central City, into a really viable commercial district? And can we grow economically and still preserve the historic fabric we love so much?

Let’s look at these three economic challenges.

The many in our city who live in poverty – about 20% - must be given better opportunities, for jobs that pay well and have benefits. But good jobs—at least non-University jobs-- will come from an active private sector, so we must continue to work to attract well-paying jobs, often found in high-tech firms. Especially, we must replace the hundreds of jobs that will be lost from Downtown when NGIC moves. In addition, we must devote increasing resources to day care and other services for our low-income workers.

Can West Main become a lively commerce center? Yes, but not without commitment. That’s why we voted to allow two new hotels. That’s why we work daily with the Train Station development, and that’s why the community drafted the Transition Zone ordinance, with the leadership of David Toscano and Maurice Cox.

And can we balance economic development with the preservation of our history? Yes, if we follow through on our initiatives. We have approved a new historic district—Wertland Street. In addition, we are pushing a Court Square Preservation Initiative, an Historic Resources Task Force, and a Lewis & Clark Center. We are starting corridor studies for all our commercial corridors to plan not only what type of business activity they should have but also how they should look. We also face the challenge of determining the future of the older buildings recently purchased in the Downtown Historic District.

Now let’s turn from economic development to our second major thrust, our new Housing Strategy, which aims to provide a balance of housing types in the City. We realized we must stop the trend of More Rental Housing-Less Home Ownership AND the loss of middle income families from our neighborhoods, resulting in changes in our schools over time. Home ownership has dropped from 48% to 38% in Charlottesville in the last 20 years.

With Piedmont Housing Alliance we have rebuilt Starr Hill and Hinton Avenue houses for home ownership. With private housing developers, we have plans for building homes in the former Treatment Plant property by Penn Park, the Stribling property, Cherry Hill, and the old CSX property. Tonight we look at a law allowing a tax abatement to inspire home owners to renovate or make additions to their homes. These home ownership goals, by the way, do not reduce our longtime and continuing commitment to properly care for our low income housing, including our Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, now headed by Councilor Caravati.

Linked to our housing strategy is our greatly expanded neighborhood enhancement program, important to homeowners. We have a new department of Neighborhood and Development Services, and the new Comprehensive Plan process will be centered around neighborhoods and their concerns. Please get involved in the Plan for Charlottesville’s Future which we kick off Saturday.

But the Housing Strategy has just started. We have not yet built an adequate supply of middle income houses, and we will not unless we pursue our goal to build and renovate with dogged determination. This Strategy is not a short term fix; it must be long term city policy.

And finally let’s weigh in on education--a major priority of this Council, the road to a secure future for our youth, and the major attractor of families. We have raised teacher salaries and will work with the School Board this year to substantially increase beginning teachers’ salaries. Our schools continue to produce outstanding students; 32 students at CHS were named AP Scholars by the College Board in recognition of their exceptional achievement. Our arts programs continue to thrive and have helped to attract about 100 out of jurisdiction students who have enrolled in our schools.

But the school challenge is getting harder, not easier. More of our students come to school not ready to learn, and they are not succeeding. It is going to take even more concentration to change this trend; our School Board has recently held a dialogue about the schools and school facilities. Their conclusions show a need for large renovations and a much expanded pre-school program to improve our children’s readiness for school. We also must expand the Healthy Families program and teen pregnancy prevention.

Besides our big three, economics, housing and education, there are three other vital issues I will review briefly: Transportation, City-County-University Cooperation and Equal Opportunity.

1. Transportation

Our regional transportation Planning Organization is the MPO, now chaired by Meredith Richards. Long hours have gone into developing the CATS plan (Charlottesville-Albemarle Transportation Study), which includes road plans and alternative transportation. The City’s focus on alternative modes includes our new bike lanes, extra money for sidewalks and expanded bus service, which brought us the award given to CTS tonight. A big moment this year was our approval of the Rieley-designed, 2-lane Meadowcreek Parkway, which keeps over 90% of the parkland for a newly designed park, including a lake.

And what’s the challenge here? First, County Chair Charles Martin and I have called a joint meeting to assess the CATS plan. We will update our transportation goals in our new Comprehensive Plan. But the most important challenge is getting people to actually use alternate modes. City Hall has developed an incentive plan to encourage our employees to do so, resulting in 470 trips a month.

2. City-County-University Cooperation

The litigation over reversion has made close relations with the County difficult, yet over the last year our firefighters and their firefighters have hammered out an agreement on our fire services and our Police Department has set up a regional computer network with the County and University Police Departments to fight crime. In addition, we set up the Juvenile Detention Authority for the construction and management of a local Detention Center so our youth will not be carted away to Staunton. Current city-county ventures include a Committee on Planning which will study increasing cooperative planning, which is at a peak of interest now. For our youth, the City and the County are also jointly renovating the skateboard park on McIntire Road.

I am optimistic that the City and County will sign the fire services agreement in March, which I see as a new era in City-County relations and creates a momentum to work together in the future. Thanks to community leaders like the League of Women Voters and the 5C’s for encouraging cooperation.

The challenge here is clear: can we and the County talk and work together in order to save money, plan for smarter growth, and plan for our children’s needs?

We must continue to press for more involvement by the City in the University’s long term planning and for UVA to actively work to preserve nearby neighborhoods.

3. Equal opportunity

This Council is proud of its commitment to bringing about a greater diversity within City government. This past year has seen more qualified minorities move into senior management positions than ever before due to the emphasis on equal opportunity in the recruitment process by the City Manager. Council supported the University’s admissions policies, and strengthened the minority presence on the School Board.

But challenges remain: one of the major ones in equal opportunity for the City government is to diversify the middle management leadership of the city, a long term commitment this Council has and will continue to be committed to achieving

Two proposals on the table are appropriately discussed here; one is a proposal for Jefferson School, an important landmark in the African-American community. If it is not appropriate for the current use, one idea is to create a Multi-Cultural Center there, a place where citizens could support and celebrate the arts in creative ways; I am highly supportive of this idea; we need such a place to bring us together.

Another Equal Opportunity proposal I support is a budget proposal for a Charlottesville Public Schools Scholarship, to guarantee our children the resources to enter and succeed in two or four year college or technical training school, to give them the dream of getting a higher education.

How did we achieve our successes and become one of the Best Places to Live in America? We did it because this is a city of doers. As I got to know Charlottesville many years ago, I began to see that Charlottesville was a city of activists. We like to sit in Higher Grounds or Chap’s or Mudhouse and talk, but we also like to get out there and do it, and that includes citizens, city staff, businesspeople, organizations from Rotary to Rivanna Trails, City Councilors, members of our boards and commissions, our young people too, who give volunteer service in the thousands.

How will we meet our challenges? The same way. Through daily talk and work. In Will and Ariel Durant’s famous classic, The Story of Civilization, they say "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians [and the press] usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks."