Brace yourselves now for another sonic edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement with audio versions of stories that have already gone out in this feed. These podcasts also appear in radio form on WTJU on Saturday morning at 6 a.m. but you can decide when you to listen the podcast. I’m Sean Tubbs, and I could decide to wait to produce it, but then everything would go stale.

In this edition:

* The executives in charge of Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia talk collaboration and innovation at the Tom Tom Festival (learn more)

* City Council votes 3-1 to approve special use permit for commercial lodging at 401 Ridge Street (learn more)

* Charlottesville City Council holds first reading on pass-through grant for police technology (learn more)

* Charlottesville City Council also votes to approve a new lease for the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial Foundation for their memorial in McIntire Park (story not online yet)

First shout-out: Celebrating the community’s other information organizations!

There are a lot of stories each week that go out through this newsletter, but no one information outlet can put together the entire picture. That’s why each regular edition ends with a section called Reading Material.

Charlottesville is fortunate to have a media landscape that includes the Charlottesville Daily Progress, C-Ville Weekly, Charlottesville Tomorrow, and Cville Right Now, I curate links from these sources because I believe a truly informed community needs multiple perspectives.

There’s also the Cavalier Daily, Vinegar Hill Magazine, the Fluvanna Review, the Crozet Gazette, NBC29, CBS19, and other sources. But if you look every day, you’ll find links to articles in national publications, all linked to give you more perspectives on some of the issues of our times.

Now more than ever, journalism is needed. To be a citizen of a democracy, you must seek information from multiple sources. Consume only one and you are at risk of becoming a zombie!

Second shout-out: Advertise on Information Charlottesville

Long-time readers may know that most of the stories posted through this newsletter are also posted to Information Charlottesville. Sometimes the stories go there first! Both this newsletter and that website are part of the same information gathering operation, an operation I hope to continue to grow!

There are multiple ways to contribute to Town Crier Productions.

One new one is to place an advertisement on Information Charlottesville. I’m in the early days of experimenting with visual ways for organizations to get their message across to a growing audience. I’ve not yet put together a media kit, but I’m ready to offer a special for March. What’s the special? More details in the audio version of the podcasts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe