Although COVID-19 upended city services and sent numerous functions online, Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker said in an interview that it is no excuse to defer conversations on equity.
“A major challenge I see at this point is that, as usual, equity is pushed to the back burner,” Walker said. “It needs to be a top priority at all times and not just when Charlottesville is in the headlines, and our budget needs to reflect that.”
“It is easy during economic downturns for people to say that these extra things can’t be placed in the budget at this time,” Walker explained.
What is seen as “extra,” Walker said, is supporting affordable housing, ensuring support to minority owned businesses that often face more barriers than others and making sure that people can remain in their homes despite the pandemic.
“A real estate tax investment program is one of those things that we haven’t really invested in in recent years,” Walker explained. “I’m experiencing it at this time that people revert back to what is comfortable and what they know best, and equity isn’t it. So there’s still this fight to ensure that we infuse equity into every decision that we make.”
The city is in its second budgeting cycle amid the global pandemic. What started as something perceived as temporary — virtual meetings, social distancing and wearing masks — has instead become the new normal. And in the city and Albemarle County, officials had to balance municipal functions that only could be done in person.
The Charlottesville City Council and Albemarle County Board of Supervisors initiated the shift to virtual meetings early on in the pandemic. While there were initial challenges, the virtual format has allowed for some continued participation in local government.
“The virtual part almost makes it easier in some ways,” said Ned Gallaway, chair of the Board of Supervisors. “In terms of logistics and access for meeting with people, [it] has been pretty seamless.”
Once-occupied government chambers evolved to virtual raised hands for public comment on Zoom. Gallaway hopes that virtual meetings for some of the county’s public meetings continue to have a virtual option going forward, calling them “efficient and allowing more people to participate.”
Walker said that she might not be alone in missing the nonverbal communication and body language that comes from in-person meetings.
“Other than that, we’re reading a bunch of documents all the time and commenting on them and attempting to get policies implemented,” Walker said. “The city business is still happening.”
One of the first orders of business when the pandemic first hit last spring was to rework budgets. Both the city and county were in the process of holding budget work sessions when the pandemic began. Budgeting, which usually begins with city and county staff months prior, suddenly needed to go “back to the drawing board,” Gallaway said.
Walker said discussions in the budget cycle about equity are not as robust as they should be.
At the same time, the city also grappled with government instability and leadership issues as the result of numerous years of staff turnover and vacancies in key leadership positions.
“In terms of morale, it’s been a big thing that I’m sure staff has been struggling with on top of the administrative changes that have happened in the past few years,” Walker said. “Those can be trying anyways and then you couple those with a pandemic and all the unknowns associated with the pandemic.”
Following a series of closed door meetings at the beginning of 2021, council had suspended its formal search for a new city manager and emerged with the selection of Chip Boyles — the former executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.
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March 12, 2021 at 07:37AM
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COVID-19 forces changes to local government - Charlottesville Tomorrow
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