Charlottesville City Council announced at its meeting last night that the Virginia Municipal League certified the City of Charlottesville this fall as a “green government” through its Green Government Challenge.
The challenge sought to encourage localities in Virginia to make their communities more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprints.
Charlottesville also won first place in the competition among midsize localities in Virginia as well as $3,000 in prize money. The money will be used to fund public outreach and education efforts, Charlottesville’s environmental administrator Kristel Riddervold said.
VML Executive Director Mike Amyx said VML announced the challenge in the spring, and localities had to submit their reports by Sept. 30. He noted that 26 of 41 participating localities in the commonwealth — including Albemarle County — earned the “green” designation.
A locality was proclaimed “green” if it received 100 out of a possible 200 points in the challenge based on categories such as energy efficiency, green buildings, waste management, land use, transportation, air quality, education and community participation, employee incentives and schools, said Sarah Temple, Albemarle County’s environmental manager.
The scores were tallied using “a scorecard, and if [a locality] has a program that matches a program on the scorecard” it was awarded points for that program, Temple said.
Charlottesville scored 175 points, earning the city the top ranking among localities with populations between 15,001 and 90,000 people. The city of Blacksburg took second place in the category.
Charlottesville formalized some of its ongoing sustainability efforts and made a few adjustments after entering the challenge, Riddervold said, noting, however, that the changes that were made were “not driven by the challenge but by our vision of being a green city and achieving sustainability in our options.”
Charlottesville participated in the challenge because it saw the challenge as “a unique opportunity to pull together all the different sustainability efforts that have been going on and package them so that [VML] could look at them holistically,” Riddervold said.
Amyx noted that Charlottesville has been involved in many sustainability efforts before this year, adding that these efforts not only help the environment but also save taxpayers money in the long run.
Riddervold noted that Charlottesville has received 12 awards and recognitions in the last calendar year related to sustainability and its environmentally friendly measures.
“It wasn’t a fluke that we got this [award],” Riddervold said. “It’s how we do business and how we plan to continue doing business. This is ongoing.”
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