Thread by @socialistdogmom

running a little bit late for the city council candidates forum hosted by the belmont carlton neighborhood association but i’m excited to see the nimbys of my very own neighborhood absolutely melt down in a public forum!

in the interest of disclosure and also because i’m excited to announce it, i’m late because @CvilleDSA was holding a vote to formally endorse @MPayneCville for city council.

hell yeah i didn’t miss any of the candidate forum - they’re still doing the regular business of the neighborhood association. i’ve never been to one of these before and it’s just a nextdoor thread IRL.

a lot of my neighbors are mad about a church trying to convert part of their property to apartments for adults with development disabilities.

dailyprogress.com/news/local/cit…

it’s candidate forum time. this forum seems a little looser in format - the neighborhood association chair said that after a candidate answers, people in the audience can ask clarifying questions. this feels like it’s going to go awry.

“i think sometimes businesses get the short shrift in conversations,” brian pinkston says in his opening remarks. (do they?)

fenwick says he thinks “we are on the cusp of the city heading in a really good direction.”
“i like charlottesville being a small town. a small city,” where kids can ride their bikes in the streets.
“density brings cut through traffic, there’s no way around it,” fenwick says.

i’ve missed the forums held at other neighborhood associations and i’m sad about that - the talking points are very different to this crowd.

“i’m very concerned about how poorly the city is being run.” “everything we want to do substantively, we’re running into problems procedurally because the government doesn’t have its act together,” says lloyd snook about what prompted him to run.

first question is about pedestrian, wheelchair, and bike safety, particularly at the intersection of monticello and elliott.

pinkston says he noticed a lot of vehicular traffic on elliott while canvassing. he says he recently learned the city has only one traffic engineer. he also says he’d like to see the city beef up public transportation & blames UVA for cut through traffic in the city.

payne says the solutions aren’t rocket science - investing in sidewalks & crosswalks, restriping & speed bumps... the question is will the city invest in those solutions? we need to “ground our investments in the idea that strong neighborhoods are built for people not cars”

fenwick says he has a different approach. he says “we” (assuming he means the government) ask what people want and sometimes those ideas don’t go anywhere.
he says some people don’t like sidewalks, some people have told him they like walking their kids in the street. 🤷‍♀️

“i don’t live too far from the downtown mall, but i won’t walk home by myself at night,” says magill, citing the need for better lighting and more regular bus routes.

as he’s said at previous forums, snook notes that their answers have begun to converge on some issues.

snook manages to pack a lot of condescension into a short answer: “i walk when i can, other people should, too” and “be careful what you wish for,” re: more speed enforcement

the next question was nebulous and i missed it. snook says the problem with the city plan is that there is no city planning. he says “we can say all we want that we don’t want any more people in charlottesville,” but UVA will continue to “impose” them on us.

magill says increased density is going to happen, so we need to plan for it. we need to look at our infrastructure & also reform our zoning.

fenwick agrees, we have to plan for density, and names several parts of town that “need to be refreshed.” (none of them are in this neighborhood)

payne “growth is happening and i don’t think growth has to be a negative thing.” it can create more affordable, more walkable communities. we have to plan for it, including investing in public transit & reforming zoning. “we’re still zoned as if we’re a small suburban community.”

pinkston says the magnetic draw of a big university is irresistible. he says we need to ask the university to partner with us in dealing with the issue of density.

a woman in the audience asks if anyone would make a commitment to survey those people, not university professionals, who walk to carlton to take a bus to work. “there needs to be some mechanism” to survey people who “are really riding these buses.”

this woman just straight up said that everyone who rides the bus is poor and maybe even intellectually disabled. this is bananas.

snook says it’s important “to go beyond the riders and look at the people we want to be riding the bus.”

magill said the bus doesn’t run late enough - when she was working at giant and getting off at ten, the bus had already stopped running. we need to make our bus routes work for the people who need it.

both magill and snook have pointed out that there IS a ridership study already in existence, but magill said she’s absolutely willing to spend some time riding the bus and talking to the people who ride it.

fenwick reiterates his points about the need for smaller buses.

payne says he’s been using the bus for the last few weeks & it’s incredibly difficult to use. there are many stories of people who have to get to work an hour early because that’s the only way to get the routes to line up. we need to establish the regional transit authority.

pinkston agreed with what everyone else said.

next question is about addressing the affordable housing crisis. candidates are being given 60 seconds per response... the neighborhood association chair is responding to the question herself?

fenwick is back on his hobby horse about special use permits. i feel like comprehensive zoning reform would address the underlying cause here, where every project is relying on SUPs?

payne says he pays half his income in rent. “i feel the affordable housing crisis. i see it’s effects every day.” we need to redevelop public housing but also need to build a ladder to home ownership. we need to finish the housing needs assessment.

pinkston says he thinks R1 zoning should be “softened,” with a soft dig at “some people” who want to do away with it, and it should be easier to build accessory dwelling units.

snook says there are 3 prongs: “build where we can build,”
he says it would cost $800 million to build 4000 new units (this is a misrepresentation of the facts, at best)
“we’re not going to build our way out of this problem”

magill emphasizes the need for comprehensive zoning reform - it’s a mess.
on the subject of the SUPs, the system currently allows developers to choose to build affordable units OR pay into the housing fund, which is regulated by the state & the city can’t regulate that.

audience question: i can’t tell what the question is.

candidates have 30 seconds to articulate how they would “change the process” of city government that keeps being cited as broken.

magill rattles off a few concrete solutions - long range planning, NDS improvements...

“i don’t think it’s the process, i think it’s the people,” fenwick says.

payne says he’s been attending nearly every council meeting for the last 3 years.
NDS needs more staff to do long range strategic planning & be proactive. councilors need to go out into the community & building trust.

snook is the one who keeps talking about how broken the “process” is, so it’s weird he’s not answering this question in any kind of way that would approach being coherent or adequate.

huh that was brief and bizarre. meeting adjourned.