James River Exchange

Tomorrows agenda for Town Council Work Session:

1. REPORTSa. Police Chief b. Chamber of Commerce c. Architectural Review Board d. Planning Commission e. Treasurer 2. MAYOR AND STAFF REPORTS a. Mayor b. Town Attorney c. Town Clerk 3. CARRY-OVER TOPICS a. Land use reports, presentation by Chair Caltabiano b. Council goals and strategy c. Budget d. Parks improvements 4. NEW TOPICS a. Council committee roles and assignments 5. ADJOURNMENT 

The meeting starts at 7:00 on the second floor of Victory Hall. The zoom link is:https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88059894673pwd=WjVFTzhBOEtlbVpwbnE5Mzhab21OQT09 Meeting ID :880 5989 4673Password: 1744

As always, if you have a song, a story, an event, or an issue, perhaps it is time for a conversation.

On Monday, March 6 at 7:00 pm Scottsville’s Planning Commission will begin to review the East Village preliminary subdivision plan presented by Southern Development. The plan divides property on Blenheim, Albevanna Spring, and Pat Denis Roads into 42 lots varying is sizes from under 1.5 acres to 20 acres. There are three existing lots included in the plan that are .25 acres to .74 acres. 

Greetings to the James Exchange, I am Nancy Gill your host.

In today’s episode (recorded yesterday), Zach shares one of his original songs, a story, an event, and we discuss an issue that is prevalent in Scottsville today.

Enjoy our sharing.

At this point, there will not be apartments in the tire plant building. We will now see if Southern Development adheres to the current heavy industrial zoning on the property with the Scottsville Industrial Park.

Town Council to hold the public hearing on Echelon Resource's rezoning/sup application for repurposing the tire plant into up to 205 apartments.

The debate on Town Council appears to be centered around apartments vs an industrial park. Various arguments have been made as to which scenario best benefits our town and businesses. No one has a crystal ball. 

As always, if you have a story, a song, an event, or an issue, perhaps it is time for a conversation.

Welcome to this episode of the James Exchange, I am your host Nancy Gill. Donna Price joined me at the dining room table right before Christmas. We spent time reminiscing about civility and bipartisanship. We covered the following topics:

Price’s Greatest AccomplishmentThe Keene Convenience CenterTraffic Concerns and Potential Solutions at the Rt. 20/Esmont Rd, Coles Rolling Rd IntersectionThe Industrial Solar Farm in Southern AlbemarlePrice’s Future Plans

Welcome Donna. Nancy, it's great to be here.Tell me what you think your greatest accomplishment is as a supervisor. And you are the chair?I am the chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

So what is your greatest accomplishment?It's not a physical thing. I believe what I have brought to the board is a continuation, and I hope, an enhancement of a degree of professionalism and civility in public service. And, I hope that the foundations that have been made over the last several years will continue as we find ways to disagree without being disagreeable and to always demonstrate equal dignity.

You know, I could not agree with you more on that because as you know, I'm the former Mayor of Scottsville and that was so important to me that even when someone came with, I guess they thought it was a controversial issue, I was just like, well, if you're here to talk about it, it's not all that controversial. So we would talk.

You know, Nancy, when you were the mayor, I've greatly appreciated your ability and your commitment to maintaining a nonpartisan, bipartisan approach to everything. Not allowing everything to turn into animosity and anger and partisanship and sides. Because ultimately we are all in this together. And, the more we recognize that and work towards our collective common good, then the better we are as a community, as a people, as a county, a commonwealth in a nation.

I agree wholeheartedly on that and I'm, I'm sure some people may not, but it's okay. It's my podcast, isn't it? So as you know, one of my goals in my last term as mayor was to bring the council and the supervisors together. I wanted it twice a year, but settled for once a year. I was never able to attend.

But the foundation that you laid has come to fruition and we have now had three successive years of joint meetings, which has also really helped because sometimes there's perception, sometimes there's reality, and sometimes perception can be reality. I believe that there had been a perception, albeit not necessarily a reality, that the southern part of the county had not been given the same attention that other parts of the county might have been given. What you have started, we were able to continue, is an opportunity to demonstrate that the, the county loves the southern part of the county as much as we love any other part of the county.

Well, we also don't have population density, even though in the greater Scottsville area there is 15,000 people living here, possibly even 20,000. I'm not quite sure what the exact number is. Scottsville is their town. It is what it is and we are where we where we are and we know what we know and we don't know what we don't know. So I’m going to leave all of that there.

The Keene Convenience Center

What is the status of the convenience center in Keene?

Well, the rain over the last several months has delayed a bit of the construction and the latest update I received today is, it will probably be March before its opening, but I'd like to go back a little bit and talk about this convenience center. Now I'm only going back three years, not further than that because I've only been on the board for three years. But three years ago, in March of 2020, so almost three years ago, we were starting the budget process.

And, in that first budget meeting, I stated that for the southern part of the county, my number one priority was getting a convenience center down here. And why a convenience center? Why down here and why did it end up being where it is? First off, Nelson County has six convenient centers. Nelson County has fewer people in population than the Scottsville Magisterial district has all Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville collectively have two convenient centers. One is at McIntyre near the county office building. The other is at the Ivy Materials Utilization Center. And that's in conjunction with a transfer station. So first let's talk a little bit about terminology. There are no open dumps in Albemarle County. I understand that there previously had been a dump in the Keene area. This is not a dump. There previously was a dump. We now call landfills out at Ivy, which has been closed and capped. All of the waste that is not recycled, that is turned in in Albemarle County is trucked to a distant location. So we have no dumps, no operating dumps. What you have, are convenience centers and transfer stations, A transfer station is that part of Ivy where commercial haulers and large items are brought in to be trucked away to a landfill.

A convenience center is a place where you can have recycling, —like at McIntyre— paper, plastic, glass, cans, cardboard, mixed paper, newspapers, those sorts of things. The convenience center at Ivy also allows $2 tag, a bag, black trash bags up to 32 gallons in size, and there's a little $2 orange tag you can put on the bag. The Keene Convenience Center will be recycling plus household garbage.

There will be no bulk items. There will be no commercial. An individual who has a local trash hauling company with a truck cannot bring that to Keene. It's for household trash. We also have a major littering problem in the county, and in particular we've seen it in the Southern part. We also have individuals who either cannot afford to have their regular weekly garbage picked up, or they live in a location where the trucks are not going go all the way up their driveway. I live a mile in the woods. I would not expect someone to drive their truck up to pick up my garbage. So the convenience center had been identified for some period of time by residents in the Southern part of the county as a desired service. 

How did we choose the Keene location for this? As many of your listeners know, there had previously been a proposal to place a convenience center up near the Monticello Fire Station. You don't really need a convenient center of this type in an area where there is common garbage pickup. We also looked at a location within the immediate town limits or immediately outside of the town limits of Scottsville. There weren't really any great locations. But the other problem with that is that really disadvantaged those residents who live sort of in the midpoint between Scottsville and Charlottesville.

It was affordable to use this Keene location because the county did already own the property, but it was not exclusively that which led to the decision to place the convenience center in Keene. One of the things that we were looking at is we have Ivy out to the West. We have McIntyre in Charlottesville. The plan is to next identify a location and construct a convenience center on the Northern side of Charlottesville. This one in the Keene location is not exactly halfway between Charlottesville and Scottsville, but it's sort of in that mid range.

And what it allows is individuals who are heading North from the Southern part of the county up towards Charlottesville to drop their household waste and recyclables off on their way up to work. Or if they don't want to do it on their way to work, they can drop it off on their way home. We also took a map of the county and we used a compass and we drew basically a five 10 mile circle. And by having this convenience center in Keene, the one in Ivy, one in the Northern part of the county and one at McIntyre, we are covering about 75 to 80% of the county all being within a five to 10 mile driving distance. So the location was really very convenient for people, partic…

Greetings all to the James Exchange. I am Nancy Gill, your host. This podcast is all about Scottsville’s work session on Monday, January 9.

First things first, here is the link. Town Council’s January 9th work session.Meeting ID: 880 5989 4673 Password: 1744

Meetings are recorded and uploaded to Scottsville Community Channel on YouTube.

On the agenda: Downtown parkingFactory rezoningProgress report on budgetCommunity Foundation and Town reserve funds

As we enter into a new year, how about we start looking at Scottsville a little differently. 

Garrett spoke to Town Council at their August 15, 2022 public meeting. He was joined by Liz Knotts and myself. Just four years earlier we had a ribbon cutting for the recently finished packet boat. As Vice Mayor from 2016-18, it was Liz’s goal to finish the boat which had been sitting at Canal Basin Square—hull only—for about ten years. It took less than half of that time for the boat to disintegrate into a public nuisance and safety hazard.

Fred Schneider designed the logo for Canal Basin Square.

For several years between Christmas and New Year’s Mary’s Family Players was invited to perform “Song of the Seasons” at what was then Ashlawn-Highland. This episode features a performance from December 2000.

This episode of the James Exchange is dedicated to those we no longer have:Mary Hardy “Miss Tudala”Walter Boyd-leading the singingRuth Dalsky-on bassMichael Fitzgerald-on piano

And to those who have spread their wings and followed their dreams:From the infamous Wednesday night group: Karin, Judy, Das, Liz. And her young students: Keila, Emily and Eric.

It was a good time for all.

Enjoy and remember those no longer with us that brought peace and joy to our lives.

Merry Christmas.

Nancy Gill, the creator and editor of the James Exchange.