The community initiative called "Our Town Charlottesville"brings town hall style meetings to every City neighborhood throughout the year so that residents are encouraged to discuss emerging issues and voice concerns and preferences about their respective communities. Each meeting is attended by citizens, City Council and many other City officials ...

Two days before Thanksgiving, Bob Bressan was in the throes of organizing the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center’s 12th annual Thanksgiving fundraiser. He was rattling off orders for walnut stuffing and ham biscuits, reminding students to take turkey gravy off the stove, and running pots and pans through the ...

Officials from Charlottesville and Albemarle Schools are hoping their students take fewer standardized tests in the coming years. At recent meetings with the area’s Virginia General Assembly delegation, officials from both divisions cited reforming the Standards of Learning tests as a priority. On Tuesday, County officials argued that students ...

Charlottesville City Council gave the city's Fiscal Year 2014-2015 budget and its Capital Improvement Program a boost Monday night, after voting to divide a $3.2-million budget surplus between the two pots of money.   The Council voted unanimously to send $1,648,723 to the Capital Improvement Program and ...

Charlottesville is giving a shot in the arm to its nascent electric car scene, something officials believe will be good for the local environment—and the local economy.   The city is now accepting applications for a new mini-grant program that will steer $50,000 from an existing public green initiatives ...

As a commission tasked with securing city school funding nears the end of its mission, a solid, specific source of revenue remains an enigma.   Members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainable School Funding, which first met in August, said work did not begin in earnest until September, which gave ...

Aaron Eichorst, Coordinator of Fine & Performing Arts, Charlottesville City Schools    What has been the most challenging aspect of becoming an administrator? One of the more challenging aspects of becoming an administrator is meeting the needs of the myriad groups and individuals that I serve; our teachers, other administrators, parents, the ...

The legal battle over Charlottesville’s controversial ordinance banning panhandling within 50′ of traffic crossings on the Downtown Mall is back in the hands of a federal judge who threw out the case last year.   Judge Norman K. Moon previously dismissed the argument that the ordinance unfairly restricts the First ...

Starting in the 2014-15 school year, Albemarle County Public Schools will stop reporting class rankings to colleges and universities. The Board voted unanimously at its last meeting to stop sending decile rankings to schools, but will continue to report them to military academies, as well as when needed for honors ...

The Charlottesville Planning Commission started its review of the city’s capital improvement budget Tuesday. City departments submitted more than $9.5 million in projects for next fiscal year, but a committee of city employees is recommending funding only $2.1 million. “There are still many unknowns, including how city ...

Bob Bressan is rattling off how many walnut stuffing, ham biscuit, and sweet potato orders need to be filled in the next hour. Now he’s reminding a student to remove the turkey gravy from the stove. A few seconds pass, and he’s running pots and pans through the ...

Charlottesville City Councilor Kristin Szakos, not always seen as a fiscal conservative, brought important clarity to a recent discussion on planning and urban design.   City Council and the Planning Commission met with the PLACE Design Task Force to hear its ideas for guiding the city’s growth spurt.   The task ...

The federal government is promoting a pilot program encouraging public housing groups to raise private capital by mortgaging their properties to commercial banks, using the loan money for renovation and redevelopment and converting the refurbished units to Section 8 housing. Under Section 8, units are owned by private landlords, who ...

Last week, members of the Charlottesville Planning Commission got their first look at a nine-story, 240-unit student housing complex planned for the corner of West Main Street and Roosevelt Brown Boulevard, across the street from the UVA Medical Center’s trauma center, and they weren’t thrilled.   The $50 million ...

Last Saturday would have been a quiet day in Southwood, the mobile home park off Fifth Street Extended just south of Charlottesville, if not for the leaf blowers.   About a dozen residents of the neighborhood—home to 1,500 people, the majority of them Latino—gathered in the morning to ...

Three years after the city of Charlottesville began planning the replacement of the nearly 52-year-old Belmont Bridge, residents gathered in CitySpace once more this week to express their thoughts about what an “enhanced” structure would look like. “There are a number of people at our table who were here three ...

Arguments in a suit against the city of Charlottesville filed by a group of homeless men focused Thursday on whether the city targeted a specific form of speech when it banned panhandling within 50 feet of two vehicle crossings on the Downtown Mall.   Jeffrey Fogel, attorney for the homeless men ...

A Charlottesville school and an area architectural firm have just won an award for implementing an impressive concept that could transform science teaching.   Also deserving kudos are the University of Virginia leaders who came up with the idea in the first place.   That idea is to use applied engineering to ...

The Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review has offered its support for the design of two student housing projects on West Main Street. The buildings will be adjacent to The Flats at West Village, which is under construction. Despite the approval, ome board members expressed concern with the scale of the ...

Early figures show that Albemarle County Public Schools are projecting a $6.5 million deficit for the 2015 fiscal year. Officials briefed the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and school board in a joint budget meeting Thursday, where they identified that new revenues are not keeping pace with current expenditures ...

AGENDA 1. PLACE Annual Report 2. Comprehensive Plan Implementation

Charlottesville City Council took no action on a resolution to implement permit-only parking on seven streets in the 10th and Page and Fifeville neighborhoods Monday night. Councilors asked staff to do further research on the proposal. Council was scheduled to vote yea or nay on the measure, which would have ...

Charlottesville High School students are challenging themselves and other city students to become more aware of their recycling and waste disposal habits. Student volunteers kicked off the Recycling Challenge by going through waste and recycling bags that came straight from the CHS cafeteria to identify how they can do better ...

Charlottesville’s legislative wish list calls for new city restrictions on guns and vehicle idling and a ban on smoking in certain public parks, but getting the General Assembly to approve the measures could prove a tall task. The City Council is scheduled to vote tonight on its 2013-14 legislative ...