Charlottesville Community Engagement

Why not start a week off with a podcast edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement? There are likely many answers why not with a primary one being that it is atypical for such a program to be sent out through this feed on a Monday morning. Perhaps a better question is why produce audio versions of this newsletter at all? The answer to that is simply just to take a listen and hear for yourself.In this edition:* Charlottesville City Council is briefed on transportation happenings, including plans to hire at least ten bus drivers a year until there’s a total of 108 (read the story)* The Virginia Department of Transportation says Charlottesville is making progress towards delivering transportation projects, but the city is still deficient (read the story)* A future UVA Engineering Building gets boost from use of strategic funds (read the story)* The UVA Buildings and Grounds gets updates on various projects and adds repairs to Steele Wing to the Major Capital Plan (read the story)* Charlottesville Planning Commission gets updates on UVA projects (read the story)Shout-out to Patreon-fueled shout-outs!Since the beginning of this newsletter, several organizations and one business have been supporters of Town Crier Productions with a $25 monthly contribution funded through Patreon or some other financial method! That system is slowly giving away to something different but I thought I would take this special Monday morning slot to thank the following for still sticking to it:* Alliance Francaise* Camp Albemarle* Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards* Charlottesville E-Bike Lending Library* Cville Jazz Society* Design Develop* Plant Virginia Natives* Re-Leaf* Rivanna Conservation Alliance* WTJUIf you have a moment, take a look at any of the ones that sound interesting to you. Learn something new! A new system of shout-outs will come into place in 2026 and if you’re interested in sponsorship opportunities, please drop me a line. I’m a one-person information outlet and for that number to go up, I have to continue to grow revenue. 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

This week, WTJU is holding their Classical Marathon which means that there will be no radio version of Charlottesville Community Engagement. Yet, the production of the newsletter often depends on harvesting audio recordings of meetings. I’m Sean Tubbs, publisher and president of Town Crier Productions, and I’ve been chopping up sound into stories for over thirty years now. This podcast version for December 10, 2025 includes three sonic articles from the past week so I can make room for the next set.There will be another regular newsletter later on this evening.Here are the highlights:* Former Congressman Tom Perriello enters the race for the Democratic nomination to represent Virginia’s Fifth District in the U.S. House of Representatives (read the story)* Two special elections scheduled in Virginia on January 6 (read the story)* Virginia transportation panel briefed on $20 million for Boulders Road project (read the story)* Albemarle Schools seek funding for fourth high school while Supervisors want more data on need (read the story)Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Today’s only shout-out: Enjoy the WTJU Classical Marathon through the new app!WTJU is pleased to announce our brand new mobile app! You can download a version from either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Here are the links to both:* iPhone version* Android versionThe WTJU app is the place to tune in and listen live to WTJU, WXTJ, and Charlottesville Classical. Aside from the live stream, listen to archived shows, view recent songs, playlists, and program schedules, check out videos of live performances, stay up-to-date on WTJU’s most recent news and articles, and more!Live chat with your favorite hosts, share stories with your friends, and tune into your community all in the palm of your hand. 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

What does it mean that there is a Friday podcast edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement? In case anyone asks, an explanation: This newsletter began in July 2020 as a podcast as a next phase of work I began at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. In the spring of 2024, I began producing a radio program for WTJU and decided to separate that production into a separate process.Now it is December 5, 2025 and there is enough information to get out a podcast before the next radio show. See below for some introspection about why I hope to increase the amount of audio in the future.In this edition:* Virginia’s elections are certified; Catalano holds on to Stanardsville seat on Greene Board (read the story)* Charlottesville PC takes first look at draft Capital Improvement Program (read the story)* Albemarle Supervisors ask local legislators for help on transportation funding (read the story)* Charlottesville moves step closer to construction of Barracks-Emmet Streetscape (read the story)* Charlottesville City Council fixes an underpayment to the area ’s tourism agency (read the story)Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Today’s shout-out: Town Crier Productions!This newsletter as well as Information Charlottesville are the two main platforms for Town Crier Productions. That’s the name for the business entity I created in 2020 when I decided to launch a new chapter in journalism.I’ve been able to sustain this work and cover many stories over the past five years because of the many ways people can support the business. One way is to go for a paid subscription here on Substack which goes a long way to support all of the research and reporting.Other ways? Well, you can always consider taking out a sponsorship or advertisement or whatever it is called when you want to get a message out to draw attention to your business, organization, event, or anything that might fit in with this particular audience. Drop me a line if you want to see the fledgling media kit and help me experiment.But also, thanks to all of you who read this each time it is published. A publication like this may not be for everyone, but it has found an audience. We’re all in this together, and I’m grateful for any support so I can keep paying attention and sharing what I find.So the real shout-out here - is to all of you! After all, isn’t that what a Town Crier does?Thoughts about why this edition:Before I launched this newsletter in July 2020, I had created a website that I was going to call This is Charlottesville. If you look closely, that’s the first domain I registered sometime after I left my last journalism job.This particular edition is going to be reposted to the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, a moribund website that a longtime steward fixed this week for me. I created the website in the spring of 2005 when I realized I could post longer versions of my freelance stories to a place on the Internet I could control.Twenty years ago was an epoch ago. Social media was in its infancy but in Charlottesville, we had cvillenews.com which was an early gathering point for those who were online early when you needed a computer to get to all of it.I had no idea how to make money off of the podcast site, and a first version of my business ended up being about taking whatever revenue I could with not a lot of thought about what it was I was doing. There were some really big failures and I was grateful when I had the opportunity to join Charlottesville Tomorrow.I spent eleven years there and took a break from journalism. But from the beginning of the interregnum, I wanted to have a place to experiment with getting information out to people. When the pandemic hit, I took a leap of faith to start what was intended to be a simple newscast. But that grew and grew until I’m at this point where I’ve got to fix a lot of things if I’m going to stay in the air.There are many flaws with aspects of my current way of producing things. There are so many dumb errors that go out to thousands of people because I don’t have a second set of eyes.Until the spring of 2024, all of the newsletter were podcasts but I broke the production into separate processes when I began doing the radio version for WTJU.Doing so lost an editorial check. It’s very hard to read copy from a script with errors in it. I’m prone to silly errors and I can be hasty trying to get information out to people.But when I read the copy, I have to fix it. One solution would be to at least produce the narration for every version before I hit send.Next week there is no radio show as WTJU holds their Classical Marathon from December 8 to December 14. That may mean I take a fresh approach to audio production.In any case, this is the introspection about audio. I hope you enjoy the day. 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

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

Written editions of Charlottesville Community Engagement often begin with a historical anecdote to mark the day and tie stories to a greater sense of the world. But what about this newsletter’s history?* The first November 22 edition came out in 2021 as you can see and hear here.* The November 22 version from 2023 was the only one made that week. Go look!* Last year? November 22 rounded out a full week of newsletters!This edition is a podcast version where 92.3 percent of the material has already gone out in print form but now the stories can be heard as if you were listening to public radio.What’s in this edition?* Albemarle’s Economic Development Authority gets an update on AstraZeneca’s investment at Rivanna Futures (learn more)* Officials celebrate one transportation project while another gets underway* Jaunt CEO Mike Murphy briefs Charlottesville City Council (learn more)* With one quarter down, Charlottesville currently projected for $921K surplus for FY2026 (learn more)* Albemarle Supervisors take a look at the five-year financial plan as budget planning accelerates for fiscal year 2027 (learn more)Sponsorship demonstration: Westwind FlowersFall is in full bloom at Westwind Flowers! With the crisp autumn air settling in, they’re celebrating the season with fresh, local blooms perfect for every occasion.And as the holidays approach, let Westwind Flowers bring local beauty to your celebrations. Dress up your Thanksgiving table with seasonal blooms, gift your host or hostess with a gorgeous indoor plant, or join us for one of our Holiday Wreath Workshops on November 29th or December 6th. Create your own festive wreath, from the base to the finishing touch, with expert guidance and fresh, locally grown greenery.Westwind Flowers offers sustainably grown, thoughtfully curated cut flowers, perfectly suited to the season and the special moments in your life. They believe the blooms in your vase should be just as fresh, and just as local, as the food on your table. Visit their website to learn more!Thoughts at the end of #960-AThis is the first podcast edition in two weeks. The reason there was none last week? Last Saturday I published a text edition instead based on differing accounts of the forced resignation of University of Virginia President Jim Ryan.For a while I was posting these on Mondays, but the gravity of my workflow means they come out best on Saturday mornings. I’ve been an audio producer for most of my journalism career dating back to 1995 and an internship at WVTF Public Radio. Recording audio is how I’ve always conducted interviews, though I've not done that for a while.I would like to do so, though. Since beginning this newsletter in the summer of 2020, I’ve mostly relied on harvesting government meetings and information releases. For me that is efficient approach because it can be much more time consuming to process those interviews and turn them into finished pieces. The nature of my business plan is to be as prolific as possible.I’m a journalist first. Being a business person ranks lower, though I’ve added a lot of over the past five and a half years. I’m excited to look ahead to 2026 and trying out some new things as I can. Maybe I’ll finally finish that media kit! Let me know if you want to see a preview. For now it is time to finish this up and move on with the day. Below is an image from one of the stories this week. 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