Supply and demand
I am dismayed and more than a little alarmed that a majority on City Council want our city to take on the responsibility for housing central Virginia’s low-income families [“The definition of affordable,” Development News, February 9]. Affordable housing is a regional problem that requires regional solutions. If we build it, they will come…from Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Buckingham and Nelson counties. Indeed, they already have. In the 36 years that I have lived in Charlottesville, I have become familiar with Albemarle County’s Marie Antoinette attitude toward the poor: Let them move to Charlottesville. Meanwhile, the county’s ever more restrictive zoning, requiring multi-acre lots, attracts the wealthy and pushes out those undesirable poor people who require social services.
Affordable housing is just one of many needs competing for the city’s tax dollars. Instead of earmarking funds for affordable housing for the next 15 years, our elected officials should be required to make value judgments in every single budget cycle, weighing the need for subsidized housing with the needs of our schools, our transportation system, our crumbling sewer pipes, and so on. These needs should compete each year on a level playing field.
I’d like to ask each of our Councilors who support the idea of earmarking tax dollars for affordable housing what other programs they are willing to cut and what other needs they are willing to ignore for the next decade and a half. Setting budget priorities involves making difficult choices. We voters elect City Councilors to make these hard choices, with annual input from us, not to commit future City Councils to their pet projects.
Elizabeth P. Kutchai
Charlottesville
Power to you people
Since you and your “green” followers seem to feel that Dominion Power is terrible [“Green is the new black,” February 16], might I suggest that you people cease obtaining power from Dominion and install your own solar and wind power facilities and save the planet until the rest of the people come to their senses and follow you.
Of course, you may have to use flashlights and kerosene lamps most of the time, because solar and wind do not provide much electricity, but you will be standing up for your principles.
Frederick W. Kahler
Earlysville
CORRECTION AND CLARIFICATION
Due to an attribution error on the website of the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), last week’s story about Dominion Resources [“Green is the new black”] identified the following sentence as a quote from State Corporation Commission staff: “Not only has Dominion not taken any steps to make its plant carbon capture compatible, it has also selected a technology that is in fact incompatible with carbon capture processes currently in development.” In fact, the sentence was written by SELC attorney Cale Jaffe.
Due to a reporting oversight, The Working Pour column of February 9, “Crowning Achievements,” failed to note that Laurent Champs assisted in the creation of Kluge Estate Winery’s 2004 sparkling wines. Cheers!