Podcast for May 22, 2026: City Council gets updates on low-barrier shelter, current year's budget, and a pause on a sidewalk project

Happy Birthday to the Associated Press which incorporated as a non-profit news cooperative on May 22, 1846 to share the costs of covering a war between the United States of America and Mexico. Charlottesville Community Engagement is an experiment in bringing people stories about an area that seems to be in constant change.Once a week there’s an audio version and this is a chance to catch up on what’s been said: * Charlottesville’s budget for fiscal year 2026 is on track for surplus (read the story)* City Manager Sam Sanders given an update on development of a plan to make 2000 Holiday Drive a functioning support center for homeless (read the story)* Work to build a sidewalk to support additional development in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood is on pause due to higher than expected right of ways costs (read the story)* Bike Month continues and one Charlottesville City Councilor implores people to log rides with a government agency to beat Richmond (read the story)* Charlottesville will commemorate the late Mel Walker on May 30 with the unveiling of Mel’s Walk (read the story)* Supervisor Sally Duncan wants Albemarle to consider creating rental inspection program (read the story)This edition has no shout-outs except this oneCrikey, I’m tired. I pretty much go at this work non-stop because there’s a lot to get to and I have a reputation to keep. A reputation for my dedication to doing the work. Is dedication or is it something more stubborn? Either way, I didn’t put shout-outs in this one because I want to get it out the door so I can move on to writing two stories for C-Ville Weekly, possibly doing land use transactions, prepping what will likely be a fairly short Week Ahead, and then getting ready for next week’s stories. But Fridays are a good day to send out this list of social media sites where you can help share the work. And here are some social media possibilities:* I created a BlueSky account because I missed Twitter but I don’t do much except post links to Information Charlottesville stories. That may change.* There are 445 followers of the Town Crier Productions Facebook page which is currently solely used to let people know when a story has been posted to Information Charlottesville. I may begin using this to do live video of podcast recording. Interested?* There are slightly more followers on Instagram, but I have paused posting here because I want to make the images look better and so far that’s not been worth investing the time.* I post a version of the Week Ahead on Reddit each Sunday which is a little shorter. This is intended to attract people to the newsletter and many of you got here from there. But there is no official page and you have to know my username. Maybe I’ll change that in the future?* Except for reposts of this show, there is no new content on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network but it predates this newsletter by 15 years. I had a good idea and all I wanted to do was tell stories about the community. Here I am still, hoping to get more people involved.* I’m not doing video. Not everyone has to do video.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