Today, Charlottesville citizens head to the polls to decide the political fates of several local campaigns, the most contentious of which is the City Council race.
Five candidates are campaigning for three seats in Charlottesville's City Council: incumbent mayor David Brown, Democrat Holly Edwards, Independent Barbara Haskins, Democrat Satyendra Huja and Independent Peter Kleeman. In their campaigns, the candidates agree on what are the most pertinent local issues, but they are pursuing slightly nuanced paths to resolving those issues.
The Issues
Affordable housing
Candidates said they consider providing affordable and safe housing for all Charlottesville residents to be one of Council's largest hurdles in the upcoming term.
According to City Council Member Dave Norris, the first thing that needs to be accomplished is for the City to offer affordable housing, that will include full resident participation and resident leadership in the plans for improving housing.
"It's a resident's bill of rights that we need to establish from day one," Norris said, noting that housing renovation is the key to raising people's quality of life.
Haskins agrees that affordable housing is a top priority for the future Council.
"I just got a phone call yesterday from a man who said he was up all night because of gunfire and wanted to know what I could do as a candidate," Haskins said.
According to Brown, the issue that complicates possibilities for affordable housing is the City's emphasis on property tax revenue.
"The bulk of the City's revenue comes from property taxes, and those have risen recently as the value of houses has increased," he added. "For some homeowners the increase in the value of assessment is problematic."
Brown said "problematic" can only begin to describe the struggles of the one in four Charlottesville residents who live in poverty, constituents the Council aims to help in the coming year.
According to Edwards, there are other things the city can do to address the struggle for affordable housing.
"We are preparing people for responsible home-ownership by doing things such as making sure people have living-wage jobs," she said. "We want to get people to their goal, and that includes middle- and low-income families."
Kleeman said the Council should focus on types of "entry-level housing" for people who are emerging from poverty, time served in prison or who are starting their first jobs.
"This is a way to get people into their first level of housing," he added. "My feeling is that groups need to sit and figure out the holes in our housing plans and fill them, because in this changing environment people don't seem to have a good idea of what's going on."
The budget
The candidates said they see the city budget as a source of some of the stress on Charlottesville citizens and, in turn, as a place to ease residents' financial burdens.
Haskins emphasized that despite this year's $6 million surplus, taxes were still raised.
Edwards echoed Haskins' concern about fiscal responsibility.
"The best way to combat spending is to look at the logic that went into making the budget this year," Edwards said. "It will be interesting to see how the money is spent, whether or not the Council's goals are achieved, and if they weren't, how we can evaluate how the money should be spent."
According to Brown, a lot of the budget is out of the Council's control, as there are important mandatory costs that are included. For example, directing the Comprehensive Services Act, which guides Charlottesville's foster care system, healthcare, retirement, and maintaining the City's infrastructure is very expensive.
While Brown admitted that "we should lower our budget," he remarked that there were "a lot of challenges in the way of doing that" when asked how he would achieve this goal.
Kleeman said one way to lower the budget would be to develop a more equitable system where taxes are more in line with inflation.
Both Huja and Kleeman said another way to become more financially efficient is through a better transportation system.
"Perhaps [with a more efficient system] we can reduce our use of automobiles and reduce our energy costs," Kleeman said.
Transportation
Transportation efficiency is more than a solution to overspending. According to the candidates, it is also an important issue of the campaign.
"My personal feeling is that if we look at all the growing models, no city today has succeeded in paving their way through their infrastructure problems," Kleeman said. "Urban transit is the way we need to go."
Addressing individual concerns about transportation is one issue Edwards highlighted.
"We need to talk to people who are using the transit system, and they will be able to give us good advice," she said, noting that small things like more effective bus stop locations could make a big difference.
All five candidates stressed that the biggest improvement to public transportation would be to encourage people to use it. According to Brown, the shift to public transportation will come slowly because it requires a change to the fabric of residents' daily life.
"It's like that saying 'eating an elephant one day at time,'" Edwards said. "We have to encourage people to take it one day a week and then have people plan ahead to catch the bus, because it requires a change in culture and lifestyle."
According to Kleeman, providing free fare for public transportation is a good way to encourage people to use the system.
"If people don't have to worry about change, they can make the choice to just jump onto a bus," he said.
Regardless of how the residents are encouraged to use public transportation, all the candidates agree it is a priority.
"Roads get less and less effective because of congestion, but if you get a public transportation system that works, the service just keeps getting better," Kleeman said.
Cooperation between local government and the University involving transportation is also an important concern among the candidates, as they encourage the University to become more involved in the local transportation system.
Huja said the University needs to see the development of a City-County-University transit system as a cohesive and effective system rather than a financial burden.
If the University was to become more involved in the transit system, its participation could significantly increase revenue and efficiency for users, Brown said.
"Transportation is an example of the University's and city's good relationship, and we are working together to form transit systems that avoid duplication in routes," Brown said.
Environmental sustainability
Aiming to limit the number of automobiles on Charlottesville's roads for efficiency reasons, the candidates also have environmental concerns in mind.
According to Brown, there are three things the city needs to do to work towards environmental sustainability.
First, he said, Council must enforce a stream protection ordinance that applies to Meadow Creek, Forest Creek and the Rivanna River and that will help with pollution and ecosystem protection. Second, the city needs to enforce the Climate Protection Agreement, which calls for a 30-percent reduction in emissions from the 1990 levels. Brown said this will require establishing what the levels are now and finding out what they were in 1990. Third, and most important, the city needs to engage and educate the citizens about environmental issues and their responsibilities, he said.
"The cool part about environmental success is that it's a win-win," Brown said. "You save energy, money and help the environment."
In order to engage Charlottesville citizens, Huja proposed a need to create pedestrian-safe neighborhoods.
"Right now the problem in neighborhoods is that people are speeding and there aren't many sidewalks," he said.
Edwards echoed Huja's opinions, noting that the City's roads need to be safe for cyclists and drivers need to be more considerable of cyclists.
"I have a feeling we have many cyclists just waiting for the opportunity to get out there," she said.
All five candidates said they see the environmental aspect of the campaign not only as a priority, but also as a helpful tool in transportation, energy and financial efficiency.
"Charlottesville is truly a city where you can throw a stone into the dark and hear a good idea," Haskins said, noting that, like all the candidates, she looks forward to working with the residents of Charlottesville to improve daily life.
City-county cohesiveness
The communication between the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County is another area of interest for the future Council, according to the five candidates.
The two localities are separate entities because each has different interests: Charlottesville residents have concerns indicative of a city and Albemarle of a rural area, Brown said.
According to Haskins, the city and the county should be more interwoven. Kleeman and Brown both emphasized, however, that while stronger cooperation is important, tampering with the structure of the two entities could threaten the ability of each to meet the needs of its residents.
"The city needs to provide clear leadership to decide on its needs and how that can be coupled with the needs of the county," Kleeman said.
Brown echoed Kleeman's opinion, noting that there will always be differences between the county and the city, but the two still need to cooperate on issues such as traffic control and the environment.
Other races on the ballot today include the representative to the Virginia Senate from the 25th district, the representative to the Virginia House of Delegates from the 57th district, two Soil and Water Conservation directors for the Thomas Jefferson District and four members of the Charlottesville School Board.
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