Interesting.Graphic and story found at Seeking Alpha, who found it at Cafe Hayek, who refers to the actual original story. Charlottesville’s Free Enterprise Forum released a comprehensive study last year enumerating some of the local impacts of government regulation on housing costs (PDF). This is a good conversation from last year about growth and housing in Charlottesville/Albemarle and beyond.
Browsing Category Politics
Transfer of Development Rights bill moves forward
The Transfer of Development Rights bill, HB 991, is moving forward in the General Assembly…. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, said his House Bill 991 would help create a pilot project to allow a market for the sale of development rights through a broker. It would allow landowners to sever their rights and sell them for use elsewhere.Creating a market for intangible development rights? Creating a value for these is going to be very challenging.Learn more about TDRs at Charlottesville Tomorrow, and these are a few stories from RealCentralVa – October 2006, January 2007, October 2007It’s worth noting that the Realtors support this bill.
Hopefully, they’ll study the consultant’s recommendation
Please excuse my cynicism.This is a potentially very encouraging step forward – from the Daily Progress:More than a year after discussions began on creating a jointly run bus system, Albemarle County and Charlottesville elected officials unanimously agreed Monday to form a regional transit authority.Next year the two localities will ask the General Asse-mbly for permission to establish the new transit body, which would have the power to levy fees and float bonds to pay for the expansion of the bus network.Officials in both localities have concluded that forming a transit board with the ability to raise its own revenue is critical to attracting thousands of new riders and to realizing their ambitious visions: high-frequency buses running on an L-shaped backbone from downtown Charlottesville to the University of Virginia and up U.S. 29 to the airport, with smaller buses servicing neighborhoods.Charlottesville Tomorrow has more:Next the consultants will finalize their report and recommendations. Additional public meetings on the plans for creating a Regional Transit Authority will be held in 2008.Four thoughts – 1 – Right now I’m still like this system, which combines bigger buses, smaller buses and bikes. 2 – Realistically, my prediction is that nothing is implemented for at least four years – (hopefully) get General Assembly approval in 2009, study and tweak for at least two more years.3 – Will people buy houses or develop commercial based on either the hope that one day transit will come, or will they wait until it’s implemented – and will they even do it then?4 – This is a good start – now we need to start talking about working with the University of Virginia and the surrounding counties. I’d love to see more recent commuting data than the 2000 Census.
Vote today
It matters. If you don’t know where to vote, go to the Virginia State Board of Election’s page.Take 15 minutes to do your duty.
We’re lucky to have great GIS in Albemarle
Contrast Albemarle’s open and excellent approach to GIS to West Virginia’s:Now a county tax assessor has filed a lawsuit trying to block the tax maps from being put online, claiming copyright infringement and financial damages since fewer people are coming to her to buy paper copies at $8 per page.It would be very useful if the City of Charlottesville would upgrade their GIS applications – rich and accurate GIS applications are mighty useful to the well-prepared Realtor (and consumer).The comments in the /. article are mighty interesting.
More on SB 768
Bacon’s Rebellion has a good post today about the previously-referenced bill that would mandate impact fees on new development and eliminate proffers.The bill would remove localities’ ability to negotiate (some say extort) proffers from developers; but … is this the consequence the bill authors were looking for?”Be careful what you wish for,” warns Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors. SB 786, which would eliminate proffers and impose uniform impact fees on new real estate development, “will shut down residential development all over the county. I will make sure it shuts down residential development in Prince William.”
“SB768: Conditional zoning; replaces cash proffer system with system of impact fees.”
When the Republican Chair of Albemarle County’s Board of Supervisors, who has a history of siding with real estate interests, says that “that he had already been making personal calls in opposition to the bill,” something is amiss…. This bill will impact everybody in the state – homeowners, landowners, renters – by forcing (from what I have read) localities to seek other sources of revenue – read: property taxes – to make up the difference. This is exactly the type of bill that Realtors need to come out against, in my opinion, but politics is like the show Survivor; sometimes distasteful compromises are met with the expectation that the next round will require another allegiance…. The bill has 10,230 words and was written at a grade level for those who graduated 18th and 19th grades (per Flesch-Kincaid).Coincidentally, an Adequate Public Facilities bill shows up on the page as a “related bill.”