Charflottesville Tomorrow's Council Candidate Interviews Now Online

Charlottesville Tomorrow recently interviewed all of the city council candidates on a broad range of topics (there were 17 questions in all) and is posting them online for all interested voters to hear as podcasts. Transcripts of the interviews are also to be posted soon. To hear my interview, link to Candidate Interview - Peter Kleeman. It runs just under one hour. Of course, you may wish to listen to the other candidate interviews as well to get a feeling for where each candidate stands on issues related to growth, water supply, transportation, responsible government, city - county - university cooperation, and related topics.

I thoroughly enjoyed the interview with Kendall Singleton and Sean Tubbs of the Charlottesville Tomorrow staff. I look forward to hearing the interviews with the other candidates myself as time permits. Some of the interview material will be included in the voter guide that Charlottesville Tomorrow will be mailing to voters before the election. So, if you don't get to hear all the podcasts, you will get a glimpse of the interview responses in the voter guide.

Will $41.1 Million Mitigate Biscuit Run Impacts

Jeremy Borden's Sept. 14, 2007 Daily Progress article "Developers ready to build: Officials glad long debate over Biscuit Run has been finalized," states that "the proffers that were accepted will likely be one of Biscuit Run’s lasting effects. What supervisors deemed worthy or unworthy for proffer credit will be a model for area developers and may serve in the near future as the policy itself."

I question if this is the right way to establish a proffer policy. Charlottesville Tomorrow has provided terrific coverage of the proffer discussion related to the Biscuit Run project and it is not clear that $41.1 Million will even cover the transportation improvements needed to accommodate the project. You can see VDOT's analysis of Biscuit Run proffers which I believe underestimates the true transportation cost impact of the project. I provided comments to that posting showing that $32 million may be needed to improve Route 20 alone as a direct result of the Biscuit Run project (because no widening of Route 20 would be needed without the project).

I believe Albemarle County supervisors should resist having the process used in 'negotiating' Biscuit Run proffers be the model for future proffer decision-making, but instead develop a project specific approach to evaluating actual needs (and the associated costs) to mitigate future project impacts.

County taxpayers will be the ones footing the bill for all of the additional infrastructure needs not adequately covered by proffers, and I believe these costs are likely to be substantial.

Charlottesville and Albemarle County staff would do well to work together and determine an objective way of analyzing impacts from these large rezoning projects to ensure that current residents are not paying more than a fair share of the very high costs of growth.

Submit Comments Without Registering

Several readers of this Kleeman for Council blog opted not to leave comments because of the need to do a one time registration as a commenter. Apparently, this is the default setting on Blogspot.Com. So, to encourage more comments from readers, I have just figured out how to allow comments from anybody without registering. I hope this works. This blogging thing is a new thing for me, so I am learning as I go. This is also true in running for office as an independent candidate - a great learning experience.

So, feel free to comment on any of my postings. I hope this works better for my readers.

Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club Endorses Peter Kleeman for City Council

I was delighted to get a notice from the local Sierra Club that I have been endorsed by them as a candidate for city council. Their decision to endorse candidates was "based on review and discussion of a host of factors, including past performances in public life and responses to our survey questionnaire."

I have been actively involved in a broad range of environmental issues as a federal and Commonwealth of Virginia staff member, as a faculty member at the University of Virginia, as an independent consultant, and as an involved citizen in Charlottesville. I can assure you that respect for our environment will be a concern for me in all decisions I make should I become your city councilor.

I have always enjoyed working with members of the Sierra Club and look forward to working with them in the future. The announcement has not yet appeared on the Piedmont Group Sierra Club website, but I hope you will check there later to see their announcement when it gets posted.

Candidate Showcase Happening September 12

The Senior Statesmen of Virginia will host a Candidates Showcase featuring the candidates for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and the Charlottesville City Council. All candidates - including me - will make a brief statement and then the session will be open for questions from attendees. I hope you will attend this session and bring your questions for the candidates. This meeting is open to all interested members of the public.

Meeting Announcement:

Candidate Forum
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
The Senior Center on Pepsi Place

Sarah Hendley Takes Action to Preserve Pen Park

Here are two photos to complement my previous blog entry showing Sarah Hendley taking action in her effort to preserve Pen Park by speaking out at a recent Charlottesville- Albemarle Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Policy Board Meeting. The MPO must approve use of all federal transportation money for projects or studies in our urbanized area. These photos are provided provided courtesy of the Charlottesville Tomorrow weblog.

You can provide your thoughts on local and regional transportation planning issues to the MPO at its regularly scheduled monthly meeting. The MPO meeting schedule is available along with meeting agendas and background material on the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission website. Time for presentation on matters from the public are provided at the beginning and end of each MPO Policy Board meetings.

Public Involvement Does Make a Difference

I wish I had a handy picture to post of Sarah Hendley wearing her "Preserve Pen park" sandwich board roaming through the city market or other event collecting well over 1000 signatures on a petetion to keep the proposed Eastern Connector roadway out of Pen Park. Her many months of effort appear to have made a difference. Charlottesville Tommorow posted a summary of a recent Eastern Connector Steering Committee meeting entitled "Pen Park route not among Eastern Connector alternatives." Not one of the eleven proposed roadway alignments by PBS&J (the project consultants) goes through Pen Park. A Pen Park alignment was previously a favorite among promoters of the road.

Pen Park has two different protections against being used as a highway alignment under federal law. First, most of the park was developed using federal funds available through the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson limiting use of that facility to other parkland or conservation land; and second, all public parkland is protected against use by a federally funded roadway project where other alignments are feasible and practicable under Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966.

PBS&J project leader Lewis Grimm is quoted in the Charlottesville Tomorrow posting saying "it would be hard to convince the federal government that the use of parkland would be justified. Section 4(f) of the National Environmental Policy Act requires planners to show that all other alternatives have been considered before parkland can be used." Perhaps PBS&J would have made the same recommendation without Sarah Hendley's "Preserve Pen Park" campaign, but I think she clearly raised the issue to a point where it required a clear statement like that given by Grimm. This is the first time these protections were actually cited as a reason to avoid the park to my knowledge in the development of this project.

There are other parks threatened by highway projects in our region and I hope other project consultants, steering committees, and project proponents get this clear message - that parks are very special parcels of land and are given and worthy of these protections. This is a terrific example of the difference one knowledgeable and committed individual (with a bit of help from others, too) can have on our community. But the work must continue. I am sure I will see Sarah Hendley collecting more support from local residents and I will be there to help in any way that I can. Perhaps you can get involved in working for a better future too - there is plenty of work to go around. Any chance we can get PBS&J to provide their thoughts on the Route 250 Bypass at McIntire Road Interchange project that will (along with McIntire Road Extended) use a significant part of McIntire Park for a roadway and a federally funded Interchange.

Providing opportunities for the public to participate in projects like this is one of my key themes in my city council campaign. Meaningful public input shouldn't require effort of the magnitude provided by Sarah Hendley. If elected to council, I will work to bring all responsible members of the public into the conversation from beginning to end. I believe this is essential in finding the best solutions to our community's needs.