USA Today on Fare-Free Transit

USA Today interviewed me last week for a piece on cities that are exploring the idea of fare-free transit. The resulting article is in today's paper. Interesting to note that Chapel Hill's ridership has more than doubled in the 5 years since they eliminated fares...

Who Should Be Afraid of Whom?

Each year, according to Sunday's Washington Post, 4 people die from shark attacks, while up to 73 million sharks die from people attacks. Perspective--it's a beautiful thing.

Barack: Truth On Iraq

Time for a new plan.

Risen from the Ashes

Excellent news, courtesy Sean Tubbs, about one of my favorite watering holes:

http://seantubbs.blogspot.com/2007/05/court-square-tavern-opens-this-week.html

Hope they still have the Paulaner Hefeweizen on tap. Mmm.....



















Monticello Hotel, home of today's Court Square Tavern, circa 1920

Rally for Holly

If you haven't had a chance yet to meet Holly Edwards in person, or if you want to find out how you can help her City Council campaign in the week leading up to the Democratic Nominating Convention on June 2, here's your chance! Come to Cville Coffee this Friday, May 25, between 7:00-8:30pm for a Meet & Greet/Get Out The Vote Rally for Holly's campaign. There will be free refreshments and lots of great people on hand.

The Host Committee for this event includes:

Nisha Botchwey
Virginia Daugherty
Emily Dreyfus
Holly Hatcher
Joy Johnson
Julie Jones
Dave Norris
Danelia Robinson
Dan Rosensweig
Leslie Harris Scott
Karen Waters
Carmelita Wood

Hope to see you there!

PACEM Benefits

There are two events coming up that will dedicate some or all of their proceeds to PACEM. Please consider taking part in either (or both!).

1st Annual Cville Mini-Triathlon
Join the fun in the first annual Charlottesville Mini Tri to benefit PACEM. Perfect for families, first-timers, and anyone who is looking for a short challenge! Ages 10 and up welcome. Sunday, May 27th, 2007. Start: 8:00am. Location: Crow Pool @ Walker Upper Elementary, 1700 Rose Hill Drive. The events (click on event to see map and description): 150 yard swim-3 mile road bike-1 mile run. For more information, visit: www.geocities.com/cvilleminitri.

Cville Women’s Choir Annual Spring Concert
The Charlottesville Women’s Choir will present its annual Spring Concert, “Singing for Change Together,” Sunday, June 3, at 3:00pm at Unity Church, 2825 Hydraulic Road. The choir primarily performs a capella and sings “to promote understanding, raise awareness, and support women’s issues, the environment, individual empowerment, and peace and justice.” Tickets may be purchased at the door for a donation, with partial proceeds from the sales to benefit the PACEM Shelter for Homeless Women and Skyline Girl Scout Outreach Program. A reception will follow. For more information, visit: http://sbaiocco.home.comcast.net/CWC.htm.

First Year's Progress, Part 3

And now, for another look back at what we on City Council have accomplished since the last Council election in May 2006 -- this time in the critical area of:

Environmental Sustainability

* Last fall, Council endorsed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, and thereby committed ourselves to making concrete progress on several important fronts: global warming emissions, green space, alternative transportation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, fuel efficiency, green building, recycling, tree canopy, environmental education, etc. This Agreement provides an incredibly valuable framework for shaping our Council decisions in the years ahead, as will the City's new Comprehensive Plan (currently under review by the Planning Commission), which for the first time ever includes a chapter on the Environment. Charlottesville has already made significant strides in the area of environmental stewarship, but we need to aim even higher.

* To ensure that the City follows through on these commitments, Council this winter appointed a Citizens Committee on Environmental Sustainability, whose membership includes environmental advocates, neighborhood leaders, builders, architects, business owners, and even a couple of politicians -- myself and Albemarle County Supervisor Sally Thomas. (The County, I'm pleased to report, has also signed onto the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.) This Committee -- profiled just two days ago by the Daily Progress -- meets quarterly as a whole and has four subcommittees that are working to develop actionable proposals in areas of Urban Ecosystems, Materials Management [Reduction, Reuse, Recycling], Climate Protection, and Green Building. To support some of the initiatives and ideas that emerge from this Committee, City Council created a new "Green City" Fund in our FY2008 Budget and capitalized the fund with an allocation of $50,000.

* The very first recommendation to emerge from our Sustainability Committee, endorsed unanimously by Council this March, was for Charlottesville to become the third Virginia locality to join ICLEI -- the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. Doing so will give us access to the tools we need to accomplish the very first commitment set forth in the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, viz: "Inventory global warming emissions in City operations and in the community, set reduction targets and create an action plan." Newsweek magazine had a good article about ICLEI and the U.S. Mayors Agreement in its April issue.

* One of the best things we can do for the environment is to provide viable and attractive alternatives to single-occupancy vehicular transportation. Toward this end, the City and the County are actively working to develop a Regional Transit Authority that will hopefully result in a radically improved public transportation system for our region. Imagine if we had a regional transit service in which smaller, less-polluting buses, running on 15-minute headways on all routes, carried passengers quickly and efficiently to mixed-use, transit-ready destinations all over our community, at little or no charge to riders, with real-time arrival information available on-demand (at kiosks, by cell phone, by internet, etc.). Imagine a Bus Rapid Transit loop (or possibly a streetcar line) serving as the trunk route for this new transit network, using a dedicated lane where feasible. Imagine if we had a Park & Ride system in place in which downtown employees (for example) could hop on a shuttle van that would take them from parking areas on the periphery of the City to their places of employment, quickly and comfortably, thus freeing up parking downtown, relieving congestion on our streets, and saving employees from the dreaded "two-hour shuffle" (or the even more dreaded "20% of my hourly wage goes to parking"). A Regional Transit Authority would not necessarily result in all of these things, but all of these things are doable if we have the political will to do them.

* We've already taken a few small but important steps forward in the expansion of transit by agreeing to fund limited CTS bus service on Sundays, starting this summer, and by deciding to pilot-test fare-free CTS service with a "Fare-Free Month" later this year. Thanks to an increase in funding from Albemarle County, CTS has also added a new route to the Southwood mobile home community and to the new County Office Building on 5th Street Extended.

* The City is actively working to reduce petroleum consumption and improve fuel efficiency of our own municipal vehicles. Our City school buses and CTS buses are currently being transitioned to biodiesel and/or compressed natural gas, and the City now has 13 hybrid-electric vehicles in its fleet. For more info., click here.

* During our FY2008 Budget deliberations, Council put a priority on bicycle and pedestrian improvements throughout the City. The City Manager's original budget proposal included an allocation of $1 million in FY06 surplus funds for increased road paving in our community. Council decided to re-allocate 2/3 of those funds to the development of new bike lanes, walking trails and sidewalks. Recently, the Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation presented Council with a set of five proposals for improving our bicycle network (create developer incentives for incorporating bicycle amenities, build a bike-accessible loop trail around the City, improve Old Lynchburg Road for bikes, improve signalized intersections for bicycles, and improve “The Corner” for bikes) and I look forward to seeing progress on each of these proposals in the months and years to come.

* The City has taken a number of steps to enhance monitoring and protection of our natural resources. Last summer the City agreed to join the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District and last fall we voted to become a founding partner in the new Rivanna River Basin Commission. This summer the City will also be considering membership in Stream Watch. Council also approved a Low Impact Development ordinance last summer, providing incentives for builders to incorporate stream buffers, pervious paving, rain gardens, green roofs, swales, etc. in new developments.

* Improving our green spaces also involves investing in our parks and recreational facilities. Council increased funding for parks in our FY08 Budget and we just recently dedicated our newest City park -- "Schenck's Grenway," which doubles as an environmental education/service-learning site for the Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts. (At that dedication, Charlottesville also received recognition as the newest "Tree City USA" for our commitment to protecting our tree canopy.)

* This January, the City decided to expand our curbside recycling program to include plastics and cardboard, thus making it even easier for residents to keep recyclable materials out of the waste stream. Hopefully we can add paper someday too.

Next up: What else we've done...and what else we still have to do.

PACEM Pen Park Picnic Pics

Yesterday we had our annual springtime celebration for all of the congregations, volunteers, local businesses, Board members and staff who made the past season of PACEM winter shelter such a success. Thanks to their combined efforts, we were able to provide 6,622 nights of shelter and over 15,000 meals to 237 different homeless individuals from Nov. 2006 through Mar. 2007. We averaged 47 homeless guests per night this winter, up from 32 the winter before.

Despite the blustery weather, everyone appeared to have a great time at yesterday's picnic, and I thought I'd share some of the pictures here. Many thanks to The Undercovers for providing excellent musical accompaniment to the festivities (including a wonderful rendition of "California Stars" by Billy Bragg & Wilco -- one of my all-time favorite songs!).

The Undercovers, doin' their undercover thing.

During the winter, volunteers in a PACEM serving line are usually serving food to the homeless. Yesterday, we turned the tables and served food to our volunteers to show them our appreciation for their efforts. On the right, PACEM Board Chair Skip "Mashed Potatoes" Mullaney works alongside Board Treasurer Elizabeth "Baked Beans" SaundersMorris to make sure all of our volunteers go home with full stomachs.

Here's PACEM Shelter Director Shea Johnson (left) and Guest Advocate/Volunteer Coordinator Adriana Nicholson (right), who somehow survived another winter of shelter with their sanity and wits still intact...well, mostly.

Many thanks to the Virginia Discovery Museum for loaning us their "Bumpa-Bouncer" -- it was a big hit with the younger set!

PACEM, you see, is all about sheltering people from the cold -- here, Michael Kelley (of the Islamic Society of Central Virginia) tries to shield Elizabeth Breeden (of TJMC Unitarian-Universalist) from a gust of chilly wind.

Good food and good fellowship carried the day.

Please visit our PACEM website if you want to learn more about our organization, or if you'd like to make an on-line donation to support our year-round efforts to provide "A Pillow for Every Head" to those who are without.

They Begin Rather Young in Charlottesville (1912)

My posts have been a little on the serious side the last few days, so it seemed like a good time for a little whimsy...

First Year's Progress, Part 2

Following on my last post, here are some positive steps that City Council has taken in the last year in another key issue area: Poverty & Race.

Poverty

* I've long maintained that the best anti-poverty program in the world is a job. But if you're working full-time and still living at or below the poverty line, you're experiencing a constant state of economic insecurity. To lift a family of three above the federal poverty line, a worker today has to earn a minimum of $8.26/hour, or $17,170/year (source: 2007 U.S. HHS Poverty Guidelines). To be "self-sufficient" in Charlottesville and get by without having to rely on any kind of taxpayer-funded public benefits, that same employee has to earn at least $12.12/hour, or $25,595/year (source: 2006 Virginia DSS Self-Sufficiency Standards). And to actually afford a basic two-bedroom apartment in Charlottesville, she has to earn at least $15.23/hour, or $31,678/year (source: Out of Reach 2006, National Low Income Housing Coalition). For all of these reasons, I am a strong supporter of the Living Wage movement and am pleased to report that City Council recently increased the base wage for full-time City employees to $11.00/hour. While it's not high enough, it's significantly higher than what UVa or Albemarle County pays, and will help to put pressure on these and other area employers (and their contractors) to raise their base wages, too.

* One of the components envisioned for our new Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program is the creation of a dedicated funding stream to begin the process of revitalizing public housing in Charlottesville. By moving from a model of economic/racial segregation in housing (i.e., large congregations of very low-income families living side-by-side in deteriorating and neglected housing) to a model of economic/racial integration in housing (i.e., mixed-income neighborhoods with a higher-quality housing stock and better community amenities), we will not just be changing the dynamics of housing development in Charlottesville, but the very dynamics of poverty in Charlottesville -- for the benefit of us all. Making sure that the low-income residents of public housing have a leading role in this process will be essential to its success.

* In our FY2008 Budget, Council agreed to increase funds for child-care scholarships for the working poor, in the face of federal and state cuts in such funding. Without these scholarships, many families would actually be better off (financially speaking) quitting their jobs and going back on public assistance. What a perverse disincentive to achieving self-sufficiency.

* As mentioned earlier, Council also increased the size of our summer youth employment program for FY08, and is strongly supporting the school system's efforts to promote academic achievement and reduce the dropout rate so that more of our students graduate with marketable skills.

* We know that family composition is directly related to poverty. In addition to stagnant or declining wages and poor educational attainment, the authors of "Ending Poverty in America: Using Carrots and Sticks" (The American Prospect, May 2007) argue that the decline of two-parent families is one of the three biggest contributors to the poverty problem in our country today:

The poverty rate for mother-headed families is usually four or five times the rate for married-couple families. So, other things being equal, any rise in the share of children living in female-headed families will increase poverty. Beginning in the 1960s, Americans perfected every known method of casting children into single-parent families. Marriage rates fell, divorce rates increased until the 1980s, and non-marital birth rates exploded until a third of all babies (and nearly 70 percent of black babies) were born outside marriage. As a result, between 1970 and 2004, the percentage of children living in a
female-headed family increased from 12 percent to 28 percent. It's hard to fight poverty when more and more children are in families of the type that are most likely to be poor.

Unfortunately, this is largely a societal problem, and as such it does not make for an easy governmental solution. In order to more proactively address this challenge on the local level, however, Council agreed to fund a pilot program for FY08 through which Children, Youth and Family Services would expand its existing Home Visiting Program, which primarily works with low-income mothers, to include a new focus on mentoring and engagement with low-income fathers. It won't always be easy to accomplish, but getting more men to take responsibility for the children they've sired would reap major benefits for all involved.

Race

* City Council has recently taken some significant steps forward with regard to the preservation and restoration of Jefferson School, an important historical structure for our whole community and a future home of the African American Heritage and Cultural Center. In March 2007, the City announced that an impressive line-up of community and business leaders had been selected to form the Jefferson School General Partnership, which will now proceed with the building's transformation. A group of African-American Jefferson School alumni has already pledged to raise $1 million toward this project.

* In response to community leaders (particularly John Gaines, past president of the Charlottesville NAACP) who presented petitions containing hundreds of signatures from the 10th & Page and Fifeville neighborhoods, Council agreed last fall to re-name the "9th-10th Street Connector" in honor of Charlottesville native and NFL football great Roosevelt Brown. "Roosevelt Brown Boulevard" is now one of the very few public spaces named for an African-American in all of Charlottesville.

* Gentrification is threatening the cultural and historical fabric of many older neighborhoods in Charlottesville, particularly African-American neighborhoods like 10th & Page and Fifeville/Castle Hill. One of the proposed provisions in the Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program is a set of guidelines that aims to ensure that publicly-funded neighborhood development projects target existing neighborhood residents with homeownership, job creation and business development opportunities created through the redevelopment process, thereby minimizing the displacement of long-time residents.

* This April, Police Chief Tim Longo presented a status report to Council on the commendable efforts that he and his department have made to be more proactive, solutions-oriented and technologically-savvy in fighting crime in Charlottesville. Following his report, several Councilors urged Chief Longo to expand his department's community policing initiative and incorporate more foot patrols in their work so as to build better relationships with the neighborhoods they serve. This, combined with a more aggressive recruitment of African-American police officers and a continuation of Chief Longo's work to eliminate bias-based policing in Charlottesville, will hopefully go a long way toward reducing some of the disconnect that exists in the way that blacks and whites view the police here in our community.

First Year's Progress, Part 1

When I ran for Council last year, I pledged to push for constructive change in four key areas: affordable housing, education & youth, poverty & race, and the environment. (I've even kept my campaign website on-line so people could hold me accountable to the commitments I made along these lines.) Now that it's been a full year since I was elected, I thought it would be a good opportunity to reflect on some of the progress that we've made in these four areas. (Make no mistake -- we still have a long way to go...) I neither seek nor deserve sole credit for every one of these accomplishments, but I am proud to have been involved in advancing each of them in some small or large way.

Today, I'll focus on the first two topics: Affordable Housing and Education & Youth.

Affordable Housing

* Last Fall, Council appointed a standing Housing Advisory Committee (comprised of realtors, developers, housing advocates, neighborhood leaders and others) to help the City develop new initiatives to expand and improve our affordable housing stock.

* In November 2006, the Housing Advisory Committee unanimously endorsed the creation of a new Charlottesville Affordable Housing Investment Program (CAHIP) to consolidate, dedicate and expand financial support for affordable housing. CAHIP focuses on four key areas: permanent supportive housing for the elderly and disabled, low-income homeownership, workforce housing, and revitalization of public housing.

* During our FY2008 City Budget deliberations, hundreds of City residents (click here and here, for example) pushed Council to adopt the CAHIP proposal and otherwise increase City support for affordable housing development (preferably in partnership with the County and UVa). The final FY08 Budget passed by Council includes $1.75 million in new funds to capitalize the CAHIP initiative and leverage additional financing from federal, state, regional and private sources. This represents a five-fold increase in City support for affordable housing from FY2007.

* Also in our FY08 Budget, Council expanded our Affordable Housing Tax Grant Program to provide deeper tax relief to homeowners who've been particularly hard hit by rising assessments. With the average property tax bill increasing by approx. $230 in Charlottesville next year, the expanded Tax Grants ($250-$500 for qualifying households) mean that a significant number of middle- and lower-income homeowners will pay less in net property taxes in 2008 than they did in 2007. I would like to have expanded this program even further in FY08 and will try again next year.

* Council has also asked staff to develop a property tax deferral program whereby homeowners can opt to postpone payment of a portion of their property taxes until they sell their homes. This will be especially helpful for homeowners who are trying to get by on fixed incomes.

* The City's Planning Commission is working to develop stronger incentives for builders to include Affordable Dwelling Units in new housing projects, and Delegate David Toscano agreed to sponsor legislation in the recent General Assembly session (HB 2451) to help move this idea forward.

Education & Youth

* Council has provided strong support to the new School Superintendent, Ms. Rosa Atkins, and to our School Board in their efforts to bring positive change to our City school system. The FY08 School Budget, which Council fully funded, includes a number of innovative initiatives designed to improve academic achievement for all children. I am especially pleased at the creation of a new 3-year-old preschool program in the City's schools and the implementation of a proactive dropout-prevention initiative to keep more kids in school until graduation. Higher-quality after-school programming and teacher-training initiatives are also getting more attention.

* In response to concerns raised by parents and students, Council agreed to expedite Americans with Disability Act (ADA) improvements to our schools to remove barriers to students with physical disabilities.

* Council agreed to nearly double the size of our City summer youth employment program for 2007, and my hope is that we can double it again in 2008, and again the year after (being sure not to sacrifice quality for quantity along the way). Anything we can do to reenforce the value & importance of work and to help our teenagers to secure marketable job skills and positive mentoring relationships is a good thing.

* We have expanded our support for community organizations that offer positive opportunities to kids -- youth sports, tutoring and mentoring, environmental education, community service, the arts, etc. -- and we are supporting efforts by our City Police to reduce negative opportunities for kids (gang prevention, etc.).

Next time, I'll discuss some of the steps we've taken on Poverty & Race and the Environment. After that, I'll talk about some of our other accomplishments from this past year, and lastly (but not leastly) I'll focus on some of the areas where I feel we've fallen short and/or still have much work to do. Thanks for indulging me in this. More importantly, thanks for your continued support. It's not easy being an elected official but I can't imagine a better place to be one, and a better community to serve, than Charlottesville, VA.

One Year Ago Today

It's hard to believe a whole year has gone by. One year ago tonight, I was sitting in the bar at Shebeen with my campaign manager and some other supporters, awaiting the results of the May 2006 City Council election. I was tired -- I had been running from polling station to polling station all day long, greeting voters and making one last push in a campaign that we had kicked off 5 months prior. Sitting there in the bar, I honestly had no idea if I was going to win election or not. (Three candidates -- myself, Julian Taliaferro and Rob Schilling -- were vying for two seats on Council.) The pundits and the political insiders had been saying for weeks/months that I was the underdog in the race. Accordingly, I had steeled myself for bad news.

The polls closed at 7pm and it wasn't 10 minutes before the results started trickling in by cell phone. The first results, if I remember correctly, were from Clark precinct. I came in first, Julian second. Sweet! But that was my home precinct, and a fairly solid Democratic one, so I didn't let myself get too excited. Over the next 20-30 minutes, though, more and more good news came our way. When I heard that I had won Walker precinct (one of the more conservative precincts in the City), I knew the election was over. Rob Schilling had run a good race, but it was a Democratic year (recall the Democratic sweep of Congress that fall) and in the end, Julian and I were victorious. We had one hell of a GOTV (Get Out The Vote) operation and boy did they Get Out The Votes!

I'm not much of a navel-gazer and I'm constitutionally disinclined to toot my own horn, but I have been reflecting a good bit about what I've/we've been able to accomplish on City Council over the past year and on balance, I'm fairly pleased with the results. One of the things that I like about this City Council is that we all tend to focus a lot more of our time and energy on trying to make good decisions than on holding press conferences to tout our good decisions. As a consequence, there are a lot of positive things that this Council has done that haven't gotten a whole lot of public attention. Lord knows we don't get everything right, but I do believe we have some accomplishments to be proud of, and in the next couple of days I'm going to share what I believe to be some of the most significant of them. Having said all of that, there's a whole lot of work yet to be done, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts on that subject too.

Stay tuned...