Podcast for August 1, 2026: Charlottesville City Council briefed on transportation projects and four other recent stories

For some reason, there has only been one other August 1 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement and that was back in 2024 with a recount underway in the Fifth District Republican Primary. This is a podcast edition that provides audio versions of stories and thus does not count toward a total number of produced newsletters. That number is 1,374 which comes from 375 Week Ahead versions and 1,099 general ones. There have been 2,210 days since #1. Somewhere here in may be a relevant statistic, but the best I can come up with is 0.62.But what does it mean?In this edition:* Charlottesville City Council votes to move forward with a sales tax referendum this November (read the story)* Charlottesville City Council allocates funding from speed cameras to cover the cost of providing the service (read the story)* Albemarle Supervisors approve policy to streamline installation of solar roofs (read the story)* Albemarle supervisors seek tighter regulation of concentrated agricultural feed operations (read the story on C-Ville Weekly)* Charlottesville City Council briefed on efforts to lower speed limits, prepare new mobility plan (read the story)A sponsored message: Panorama Natural BurialAt Panorama Natural Burial, we believe caring for the deceased can be simple, meaningful, and deeply connected to the natural world. As a natural burial ground just outside Charlottesville, we offer families an alternative to traditional burial that honors both the people we love and the land that will carry them forward.Whether you are planning ahead, navigating a recent loss, or are just curious about natural burial, we welcome the conversation. We host regular tours and community events throughout the year. At Panorama we are building new ways of understanding death, land, ecology, ritual, memory, and community. We believe that building community around death care helps us all to live fuller lives. We are open to the public daily 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Come visit!A shout-out for Town Crier Productions: Not entirely cut and paste from last week!It is Saturday and the final thing for me to do to end one week and begin another is to post this edition. The right move would be to produce the podcast version as soon as the WTJU version is completed, but that usually happens at a time when I want to stop working on a Friday.After six years, I have found ways to directly cover the cost of producing the written newsletter and the Information Charlottesville. I have absolutely no direct revenue from producing the audio version as the work for WTJU is free. I do the work because it’s enjoyable. And I could just put the radio version in the podcast feed.I choose not to because of the sponsor above. In the last few months I’ve been experimenting with charging for advertising across multiple products. I’m happy to send the media kit to anyone upon request so you can see the details.I’ve also had at least one paid subscriber ask me if I could put all the shout-outs at the end. I cannot do that. If I’m to continue this newsletter I must diversify my revenue. I want to provide an affordable way for entities to reach an audience that I am still trying to understand myself.In any case, thank you for reading! And now the cut-and-paste bit intended to get your help in getting more eyes on the stories:* I post stories over at BlueSky but don’t really do much else than that at this point. Here’s the account for Information Charlottesville.* You can also subscribe to get Information Charlottesville postings via email Wordpress. This is where I confess I don’t entirely know the link for this. Might be a pop-up?* Town Crier Productions has a Facebook page but I’m really not sure if it’s worth keeping as the site doesn’t really seem to like Substack material. Or Wordpress material. In six years of doing this, I’ve never had a post “go viral” and I think it’s all throttled. I don’t pay them any money anymore* And then there’s Instagram which gets a couple of likes every now and then though I am really bad at images!Thanks for reading Charlottesville Community Engagement ! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe