After a dozen years leading Crozet Elementary, Gwedette Crummie is retiring, according to a recent announcement to the school community.
Crummie, the division’s longest-tenured principal, will step down this summer before the school welcomes 219 students from Brownsville Elementary following a redistricting approved earlier this year.
The $20.4 million, 28,000-square-foot expansion of Crozet will open this school year. (Jim’s note: if you’re buying a house in Crozet, make sure you know your school district; the MLS is driven by humans, and sometimes we make mistakes)
Crummie, who has worked in education for 36 years, wrote in her message to families that the decision to retire was difficult.
“However, the time is right for a new principal to join this remarkable school community with its beautiful new addition welcoming all students and families,” she wrote, adding that she’ll be starting a new career as a coach for young principals.
If you don’t have kids, please get involved, as school quality and perceived school qualityaffects property values. If you do have kids, get aware and involved. Even if your kids are little now, they’re going to grow up. I’m happy to talk our schools’ perceived quality about property values offline.
(read the whole thing, and the bolding below is mine)
The Albemarle County school division will start figuring out this week how to move hundreds of students from Brownsville to Crozet Elementary.
A 10-person community advisory committee will lead the first phase of that redistricting effort, which will include two public meetings in November. The school division is aiming for the School Board to make a final decision about the two schools’ boundaries in January, so it can start working with the affected families.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearby Brownsville Elementary had nearly 900 students while the building’s capacity was 764. At Crozet, enrollment was up to 360 students, 30 more than the building’s capacity.
…
The committee will hold its first virtual work session Tuesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Additional work sessions are scheduled for Oct. 12, Oct. 26 and Nov. 16, all starting at 6 p.m. Meetings can be viewed at streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/publicmeeting.html.
Virtual public meetings to hear community input will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 4 and Nov. 9.
As announced by Dr. Keiser in an email a few minutes ago, I am thrilled and privileged to be working with all of you as your new principal beginning tomorrow.
Joining—or in my case, rejoining—a school community is a time for reflection and goal setting. Thinking about this opportunity brought up memories of two Western principals who were powerful role models to me as a young student and an educator. Charlie Armstrong, Western’s first principal, was a dynamic and inspirational leader who worked with our community to build a shared vision of our new school as a place where students and teachers want to be and are proud of all we accomplish together. Anne Coughlin, the principal when I returned to Western to teach, brought a different style of leadership to our school with reflective and patient thoughtfulness and an innate ability to make everyone feel that they mattered and that their perspectives and input contributed to our shared vision.
Both fostered a school culture that supported my success as a student and a teacher and, later, allowed me as an administrator to continue to harness the power of relationships and partnerships with students, faculty and families. As an assistant principal here, relationships were at the heart of the work we did together to support all students. This will continue to be true.
Our commitment to all students is essential. Some of my most important work over the past three years has been with the Department of Instruction and the Office of Community Engagement and Empowerment, implementing our anti-racism policy and the expansion of our culturally responsive teaching program. This work will create more pathways for building on Western’s tradition of excellence as we push ourselves to meet each student’s needs and ensure their success.
This is a formative time for our high school as we recover from the pandemic, think expansively about how we will reimage and expand innovative learning experiences, and engage productively with our community, drawing upon the ideas and expertise of every member of our team. The years ahead will be an exciting time, and I look forward to working with and supporting you as, together, we realize our potential as a school community.
This process of working together will begin this summer when I will schedule opportunities to reconnect and to get to know all of you even better as we prepare for the new year. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to email me any time at [email protected] to share your thoughts and suggestions.
It has been my honor to be a member of our community and school for several decades. Throughout the years, I have appreciated the contributions of our students, faculty, families, and greater community in building that tradition of excellence. I continue to be impressed by the high expectations you each set and I am confident that, with your continued engagement, the years ahead will be an extraordinary time in our school community’s legacy.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Sublette
And the email from Albemarle County’s Assistant Superintendent
I wanted to provide you with a brief update regarding the Crozet ES project. Again, please forward to anyone else that you think might be interested. If there are any groups/individuals that are not receiving these updates, please let me know and I will add them to my distribution list.
Things have been moving fast! At the time of my last email update, we were still in the bidding phase. Since then, we have received favorable bids, and have contracted with the low bidder – Nielsen Builders, Inc. out of Harrisonburg, VA.
My previous communication indicated that we anticipated construction starting in mid-May. However, Nielsen Builders offered the County an additional cost savings credit if we were able to expedite the contracting process to get construction started sooner. We are happy to say that we were able to achieve this goal, which is of great benefit to you all as County taxpayers!
Thus, we wanted you to be aware, that construction will be starting on some areas of the project next Wednesday, April 28.
As can be expected from ongoing construction activities, some noise and dust should be expected throughout construction, but the project team will be taking every effort to minimize these where possible. The Contractor will also be bound by the County’s noise ordinances and all other County/state ordinances and building codes. Here’s what you can expect through the first summer of work:
The first week of work will primarily consist of putting up safety fencing, E&S controls, and mobilization/preparation efforts.
Beginning the week of May 3, the drilling of the additional geothermal wells will commence. We have an additional 53 wells to drill this spring/summer to accommodate the geothermal HVAC system that I have mentioned in previous correspondence.
Other early efforts will include installing temporary emergency egress stairs for building occupants, associated site work for a new kitchen addition on the north side of the school, and associated site work for the new classroom addition on the south side of the school. Footers and foundations on the two additions are expected to commence sometime in June.
Once school lets out in mid-June, work on the interior office renovations and the construction of a new, expanded playground will commence.
By the end of the summer, the general layout of what will become the new bus loop on the north side of the school should be complete.
Additionally, because the County also owns the property where the Field School is located, we have allowed the Contractor to utilize a small portion of that site for some limited contractor parking and storage of construction materials so please do not be alarmed if you see some construction-related activity there as well.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will be working from the site at least 3 days a week, and I can always be reached by cell phone. Thanks and I hope you all have a great weekend!
Matt Wertman
Senior Project Manager – Facilities Planning & Construction
I hope that this email finds you well and that you and your families are enjoying the nice, warm weather that we’ve had this week! It has been awhile since I last provided you all with an update on the Crozet ES project, and I wanted to take this opportunity to do so, as well as make you aware of some work that will be happening early next week. I apologize in advance for the lengthy email, but I hope you find it helpful.
Also, please feel free to forward this to anyone else in the community that may be interested. I sent to everyone in the nearby area that I have an email for, but there are many that I do not. If there are individuals or neighbors that did not get my original email and would like to be included in future correspondence, please have them reach out to me and I will add them to the distribution list!
General Project Update
Since my last update the design team was able to complete the full design of the project, and has been finalizing the site review process. Some of you may have received notifications from the Community Development Department during that process. The team expects to receive approval on the site plan in the next few weeks, as many of the various permitting agencies have already signed off on the plans, including VDOT’s approval of the proposed entrances to the site.
Currently, the project is out for bidding, with contractors’ bids due on Thursday, March 18. We currently anticipate construction starting full-time in May. From a big-picture perspective, you can expect to see work in the following areas at the approximate times (Note: These are still subject to change prior to contracting with the low bidder):
2021 Summer – Work will be focused on the east side of the parcel (behind the existing building), including construction of the new bus loop and expanded playground area. Construction will likely start on the new classroom addition to the south. Interior renovations to the school admin and library area.
2021-22 School Year – Work will continue on the new classroom addition to the south and the new kitchen addition to the north. Some targeted interior renovations when the school schedule allows. No changes to car/bus traffic circulation for this school year.
2022 Summer – Work will be focused on the west side of the parcel, including construction of the new front parking lot. Completion of the new classroom and kitchen additions. Interior HVAC renovations to existing classrooms and converting the existing kitchen to an expanded dining area.
To provide you with a brief update on the plans relative to the items that many of you have asked about in the past:
The project team removed the new classroom addition from the stream buffer in its entirety, but was unable to avoid eliminating the need for temporary access into the 50’ landward side of the buffer during construction. As we had previously indicated, the County stream buffer ordinance does authorize temporary access for construction purposes. In its final form, the project is making stormwater management enhancements that will improve the water quality compared to the site’s existing conditions.
I know that many of you asked about exterior lighting:
In the short term, some of you may have noticed that we were able to adjust the one exterior light outside the existing gym door that you had mentioned was a problem. That light has been adjusted to point down as far as the light fixture allows.
All spaces in the new addition will have motion sensors so that lights are turned off when they do not detect motion.
We are required by the building code to have egress lighting at all exits. There are 2 exits on the new addition – one on the western end of the addition and one on the eastern end.
The project has complied with the County’s lighting ordinances and review of those lighting requirements was part of the site plan review process.
There will be an expanded playground behind the school at the conclusion of the first summer. Hopefully your children and grandchildren will enjoy this expanded feature!
I think those were the major issues that we had heard about previously, but if I missed something specific that you’d like an update on, please do not hesitate to reach out. Moving forward, I will do my best to provide you with quarterly updates of our progress through the construction phase, and I will certainly communicate any special concerns ahead of time.
Geothermal Test Well Drilling Next Week
I wanted to also notify you all about some work that we will be doing next week. This project will be installing a new geothermal ground HVAC system to heat and cool the new additions, as well as large portions of the existing building. It will be the first geothermal HVAC system in a County facility!
If you are unfamiliar with these systems, there are lots of resources on the internet that explain the technology. However, the short version is that they utilize the earth’s temperature for heat exchanges (i.e. heating and cooling) since the earth’s inner temperature is always constant. A heat pump cycles water through long loops of underground pipes that then transfer heat from ambient air in the building to the ground and vice versa. Here is a great resource from the EPA’s website should you wish to learn more about these systems: https://www.epa.gov/rhc/geothermal-heating-and-cooling-technologies#Ground-Source-Heat-Pumps
The expected payback time for the system at Crozet ES is approximately 7-8 years. This represents a conservative estimate based on the data available to us at this time. Once the system is up and running, it is possible that we will see the payback period on this system reduced. You can see the long-term projected savings of this system compared to other more traditional systems that the design team considered here (the geothermal system is represented by the green line):
The County is excited about this system, as it is a big step forward in achieving the County’s Climate Action Plan. Let me know if you have any other questions about the system!
In order to better inform the contractors bidding on the project and to also adjust the design details if needed, we will be drilling two test wells next week starting on Monday and concluding on Wednesday. The wells will be 550’ deep. These wells are no different from a water well – the water from them is simply used for a purpose other than drinking water. As I am sure you are aware, drilling wells can sometimes be a noisy operation so we will stick to the following schedule for next week:
Tuesday: 7:30 AM – Nightfall (approximately 6-6:30)
Wednesday: 8:00 AM – Finish
As always should you have any questions about the work taking place next week or any of the items above, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I hope you all have a great weekend!
Matt Wertman
Senior Project Manager – Facilities Planning & Construction
There was a big land use meeting the other day. Here’s the blog post with the agenda, and below are the attachments sent out after the meeting. These land use decisions affect everything. Housing, schools, roads, trails, jobs, parks, and virtually everything else.
Note that the County are having Office Hours on 2 October. Read on for details.
These quick thoughts are part of an email that I sent to someone asking for my thoughts after the meeting. I wasn’t going to write a story until I was asked, so here it is.
We need creative density, commensurate with infrastructure improvements
There are a lot of people who say they want affordable housing, but want it somewhere else
Seems like a lot of Crozetians don’t like the current growth patterns, and want to shut down development. At least the ones speaking out.
Some of the stuff that is being built around Crozet is certainly contributing to the changes in Crozet
We need affordable housing here. Not “over there.”
I agree with the commenters that this feels somewhat rushed, but we still need to do something soon
We need a developer to come and propose/put up something like this that is functional and creative.
Ceasing development is not a good or viable solution (I’m working on a follow up post on this, and would welcome citations in favor or against this argument)
Zoom meetings are fantastic in that they open the meetings in a way that make them much easier to access, jump in and out, and learn.
(bolding is mine; this is part of the email from the County Staff as a followup
Thank you for attending yesterday afternoon’s Crozet Community Advisory Committee meeting. This was by far the highest-Zoom meeting we have had since we were forced to move engagement to a virtual format, with the turnout surpassing some of our public input opportunities that were open for over three weeks at a time. If you were unable to attend, please take some time to provide input through our questionnaire at https://publicinput.com/O2561.
I’ve had a number of requests for the video from the meeting as well as the Q&A list, chat, and presentation and wanted to provide those here. The meeting video can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/gCUKw8b4Mb0.
The Q&A list, chat log, and presentation slides are attached. We also wanted to create some additional opportunities for community members to chat directly with staff to provide feedback and ask questions about the Master Plan. Next Friday, October 2 from 11AM-1PM we will be hosting (virtual) office hours. Please consider joining us to learn more about the draft future land use plan, ask questions, and share your feedback! You do not have to attend for the entire time and can join whenever is convenient for you. You can pre-register/access the meeting here:
Although construction funding is not certain for a long-awaited expansion of Crozet Elementary, the school division is moving forward on designing the $20.4 million project.
Ken Thacker, with VMDO Architects, walked the Albemarle County School Board through preliminary schematic designs Thursday during the board’s monthly work session. The plans include a three-story addition, new bus loop, improved play areas and an expanded gym and cafeteria.
The 28,000-square-foot Crozet expansion was identified as the division’s top capacity-related construction project by an advisory committee last year in order to ease overcrowding in the western feeder pattern. Nearby Brownsville Elementary has nearly 900 students while the building’s capacity is 764. At Crozet, enrollment is up to 360 students, 30 more than the building’s capacity.
Dear Members of our Western Albemarle High School Staff and Community:
Earlier this evening, our School Board approved the appointment of Jason Lee as your new principal, effective July 1. Mr. Lee succeeds Dr. Patrick McLaughlin, who will be returning to his role as the division’s Chief of Strategic Planning, also on July 1.
Thanks, Joe, for taking the time to write the following. For some quick background, here’s the last CCAC meeting. I highly encourage, ask, implore all to read this to understanding how funding our schools works – costs, timelines, voices. It’s a lot to digest, and hopefully you can read it before next important CIP meeting on 22 October.
By Joe Fore
On Tuesday, October 15, the Albemarle Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Advisory Committee held its first meeting to discuss which capital projects—long-term infrastructure investments, like buildings, roads, and new equipment—the Board of Supervisors should fund over the next five years.
I attended the meeting because I was interested in one project in particular: the expansion of Crozet Elementary. Both the School Board and Board of Supervisors have prioritized the project a way to alleviate the severe overcrowding at Brownsville and Crozet Elementary. The Crozet Community Advisory Committee (on which I serve) also recently adopted a resolution urging officials to fund the project. I was eager to see whether the Crozet Elementary expansion would continue to get the same level of support it’s received so far. I was also hoping that there would be an opportunity for public comment so that I could share the CCAC’s resolution.
But before I give my thoughts on the meeting, it’s important to give just a bit of background on the CIP process and how we got here. (Those interested in a TL;DR version of the meeting can check out my Twitter thread summarizing the meeting in a shorter format.)
The CIP Process and the Advisory Committee’s Role
Tuesday’s meeting was just one part of a much larger budgeting process to decide which of the County’s capital projects get funded over the next 5 years (FY21-25). Here’s a flowchart/timeline of the full process:
The CIP Advisory Committee is represented by that green box in the middle. As you can see, there’s a lot that preceded this meeting and a lot that’s yet to happen after the Advisory Committee finishes its work. But the Advisory Committee is a crucial gatekeeper in the process because the committee will recommend the final slate of projects that will then go to the Board of Supervisors for approval.
Again, though, the Advisory Committee’s work comes in the middle of the process; it’s not just dreaming up projects and funding amounts out of thin air. The Advisory Committee relies on inputs from the Board of Supervisors and the School Board. More specifically, the Advisory Committee has two key constraints that it’s working with: (1) the total amount of money available, and (2) the list of possible projects that the Advisory Committee can choose from.
The Money: $55 million for FY21-25
The first key constraint, of course, is money. After all, if there were an unlimited amount of money, there’d be no need to pick and choose among various projects; they’d all get funded. But that’s not the case. And where does the money come from? In Albemarle County, around 2/3 of the County’s revenues come from property taxes. So if the County wants to spend more to invest in infrastructure projects, it has to raise property taxes—specifically, real estate taxes.
In May 2019, the Board of Supervisors met to consider several scenarios for CIP funding levels and the corresponding real estate tax increases that would need to happen to generate those funds. The Board of Supervisors ultimately settled on the “Level 2” scenario: a 4.5-to-6-cent property tax increase, which would generate an extra $61 million in CIP funding from 2021 to 2027. The current Albemarle real estate property tax is 85.4 cents per hundred dollars of assessed value—meaning that a property assessed at $300,000 pays just under $2,600 a year in real estate taxes. So a 4.5-to-6-cent increase would mean around a 5-7% increase in real estate property taxes.
As I learned at Tuesday’s meeting, though, the actual amount that the Advisory Committee can use to build its list of recommended projects is only $55 million—not the full $61 million. Why? Because the Advisory Committee is only looking at projects for 2021-2025, not through 2027, as the Board of Supervisor’s funding scenarios show. As a result, the Advisory Committee can only recommend a slate of projects that totals $55 million or less.
The List of Potential Projects
Because there’s a limited amount of money available, the CIP Advisory Committee must select certain projects to recommend for funding. Where did the list of possible projects come from? Over the past year or so, the Board of Supervisors and the School Board each independently created its own list of capital improvement projects that those groups wanted to see funded.
The School Board’s list was generated by the School Board’s Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee, which spent 18 months analyzing the County’s long-term school needs and issued a final report in July 2019. That report recommended an ambitious slate of 10 CIP projects—totaling more than $100 million—for the School Board to present to the Board of Supervisors for funding. The report singled out the tremendous growth and overcrowding at Brownsville and Crozet Elementary and recommended a $20.4 million expansion for Crozet Elementary as a way to alleviate the overcrowding at both schools. Although other projects relating to safety, technology, and accessibility were ranked higher overall, the Crozet Elementary expansion project was the School Board’s #1 capacity-related project. (In terms of Crozet-area projects, renovations at Western Albemarle were also recommended—though they were given lower priority.)
Then, last month, the School Board and Board of Supervisors held a joint meeting, to discuss the priorities that each group had developed and to create a combined list of priorities. During that meeting, the members of each board arranged themselves into three smaller working “teams.” Each of these teams created a ranked list of ten projects that included projects from both the School Board and Board of Supervisors list. County staff then arranged the projects based on which had received the highest rankings from the three teams.
When the results were tallied, four projects received consistent, high rankings from all three teams:
Transportation leveraging
Economic development funds for public-private partnerships
Cale Elementary expansion project
Crozet Elementary expansion
Below this “Top 4” were an assortment of other projects—including school technology, environmentally-conscious initiatives, water-related projects, and other school renovations—that received widely varying levels of support.
The CIP Advisory Committee’s job, therefore, is to take this list of projects and—within that $55 million funding cap set by the Board of Supervisors—present a list of recommended projects to the Board for discussion and approval.
The Advisory Committee’s First Meeting
That brings us to Tuesday’s meeting of the CIP Advisory Committee. Here are my impressions of the meeting and how things look moving forward—particularly for the Crozet Elementary project. The bottom line is that the Crozet Elementary expansion is certainly being recognized as a critical project. But its relatively large cost compared to the available funds make it a potential target to be reduced in scope. And, more generally, I think the meeting revealed important, broader points about the County’s overall level of capital funding (it’s not enough) and the timeline for public participation in the process (it started way before this meeting).
1. This meeting was planning and overview; next meeting (October 22) is the crucial one. I’ll be honest: even for a budgeting meeting, Tuesday’s meeting was a bit boring. Informative, but boring. No real decisions got made. Instead, the meeting was largely about (a) reviewing the budgeting process, (b) explaining the Advisory Committee’s role, and (c) devising a plan for the group’s subsequent meetings. The discussion generally avoided mentioning specific projects, although there were comments that provided some insight into members’ thinking (as I’ll explain in #2). The next meeting—Tuesday, October 22, 2-4 pm, County Office Building—is where the rubber will meet the road.
2. The Crozet Elementary expansion is being taken seriously, but it may be in danger of being reduced in scale. Here’s the good news: the Crozet Elementary expansion is nestled safely among the Top 4 projects that were clearly set apart as the highest priorities by the Board of Supervisors and School Board. And, at Tuesday’s meeting, it seemed like members of the Advisory Committee generally agreed that their recommendations should reflect the rankings that were generated by the two Boards at their joint meeting.
Now, if they really wanted to remain faithful to the School Board/Board of Supervisor rankings, the Advisory Committee members could just start at the top of the list and work their way down—funding projects until they hit the $55 million cap. Well, guess what you get if you add up the cost of the Top 4 projects? $54.9 million. So the Advisory Committee could make its next meeting a short one by signing off on those four projects and calling it a day. But it may not be that easy.
Two of the “Top 4” projects—Transportation leveraging & Crozet Elementary—would take up $45.4 million out of a possible $55 million. And during the meeting, some members asked about whether the larger projects were “scalable.” I interpreted that as, essentially, asking whether the Crozet Elementary project could be adjusted in scope—funding the project, but at a reduced level—as a way of freeing up some money for some of the smaller (and lower-ranked) projects. I don’t know how “scalable” the Crozet Elementary project is, but if it is, I suspect some committee members may be interested in recommending that.
(It’s also possible that the Advisory Committee could reduce the amount earmarked for transportation leveraging, since that’s actually the largest single project—$25 million out of $55 million. But because funds allocated for that get matched by the state, it seems they would be somewhat less eager to take from that pot.)
3. The County needs more money for capital projects—which, realistically, means a higher real estate tax rate. For me, one of the clearest takeaways from this process is: there’s simply not enough money for the important capital projects that the County needs. And the tax-rate increases that the Board of Supervisors is willing to support just aren’t going to get us there anytime soon.
The prioritized list of projects created by the Board of Supervisors and School Board totaled $121 million—roughly twice the amount the Board of Supervisors was willing to raise to cover capital projects over the next seven years ($61 million). And that list is only a partial list of the broader range of capital projects that the School Board and Board of Supervisors want to fund. For example, remember that the School Board’s full list of suggested capital projects—just for the School Board—was over $100 million. I suppose it’s possible that some of these projects are just plain-old wastes of money. But looking at the list that the Advisory Committee is working off of, I don’t see a lot of vanity projects; I see basic infrastructure—roads, schools, drainage and water quality, waste-management facilities, greenways—that is necessary to support a clean, vibrant, and growing community.
Realistically, it seems the only way to generate the money to fund these projects is to increase real estate property taxes. Look, no one likes to pay more taxes. But, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
And here’s the thing: it wouldn’t cost that much more to take care of our needs—or, at least, more of our needs. For example, if the Board of Supervisors had chosen the highest funding scenario, “Level 3,” it would have generated over $100 million for capital funding over the next seven years, rather than the $61 million currently available. That would be enough to take care of almost all the projects on the prioritized list (except the high school renovations). How much would that have cost homeowners? An extra 5.5-7 cents in tax rate. For someone with a $300,000 home, that’s an increase of around $180 a year. $15 a month. 50 cents a day.
Ultimately, when it comes to infrastructure, you get what you pay for—in the form of taxes. And right now, Albemarle County residents aren’t getting as much as we need.
4. It’s probably too late for the public to have much meaningful impact on this round of CIP priorities. One frustrating thing happened at the very beginning of the meeting: the audience was told that there would be no opportunity for public input. This was particularly irksome, since I was specifically there to share a resolution passed by the Crozet Community Advisory Committee expressing our support for the Crozet Elementary expansion and urging the County to fully fund the project. Our White Hall supervisor, Ann Mallek, helpfully pointed out that members of the public could provide written input, and I did take the opportunity to present the CCAC’s resolution supporting the Crozet Elementary project to the staff in attendance.
I’m a huge believer in public participation in local government. And I certainly don’t want to discourage people from attending meetings and making their voices heard. But, at this point, final CIP priority list has largely already been set by (a) the amount of CIP money available, as set by the Board of Supervisors and (b) the priority list decided upon by the Board of Supervisors and the School Board at September’s joint meeting. Each of those things was decided at least a month before Tuesday’s meeting, and those decisions were based on input and discussions that took place even earlier.
Now, to be sure, if the Advisory Committee goes off the rails and jettisons the Crozet Elementary project altogether or slashes its funding drastically, then the community should certainly object loudly and often to the Board of Supervisors. But it seems unlikely that the Board of Supervisors will be willing to do much tinkering with the nuts and bolts of the CIP recommendation—not after the Advisory Committee’s coordinated with County staff to do the hard work of considering all of the various scenarios and making a final recommendation.
So just like with the funding point, there’s a larger takeaway here: The time to advocate for capital projects is EARLY. For example, let’s say, hypothetically, that you wanted to push for a new elementary school in the Crozet area, rather than expanding Crozet. When should you have done that? Not at Tuesday’s meeting. Too late. Not at last month’s Board of Supervisors/School Board meeting. Too late. You’d have had to probably start advocating for that before the School Board’s Long-Range Planning Advisory Committee sometime in 2018 (18 months ago), when that committee started its own planning process that then filtered up to the School Board and then to the joint Board of Supervisors/School Board meeting. But at this point—when the Advisory Committee is sitting down to do its work—we’re simply too late in the process to have a meaningful impact on the capital projects that will get funded for the next few years.
So if there are capital projects that the Crozet community really wants to see done (like Eastern Avenue, Western Park, the Crozet Park recreational facility, or an entirely new elementary school) it’s critical to really start pushing for those projects with the School Board and the Board of Supervisors now—not because they’ll be funded this go-round, but, rather, in the hopes that they will percolate up to future CIP funding cycles years from now. As the old proverb says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
Final thoughts from Jim
The timelines for this stuff are infuriating, but a key takeaway is that our government demands patience, persistence, and being present, at damn near every opportunity. Those who show up and advocate for the things are the ones who get the things. As was suggested somewhat offhand at the last CCAC meeting, maybe we need a Crozet lobbyist, to simply go to all of these meetings and push for more funding for our schools. I genuinely don’t know the answers, but I know that without proper funding for our schools, with a plan that looks beyond 5 years- and plans to fund the things that we – our community, our kids, our society – need, we are in a world of trouble.
