Sally Duncan and Dave Shreve are facing off in the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors race on June 17, sharing concerns over affordable housing, economic development, environmental and education issues.
The incumbent supervisor for the Jack Jouett District, Diantha McKeel, isn’t seeking reelection after three terms on the six-member board.
Sally Duncan, whom McKeel endorsed, has been an Albemarle County resident for 10 years. She’s graduated twice from the University of Virginia, has three children who attend Albemarle High School, is a substitute teacher with Albemarle County Public Schools and rents a home in the county.
“I really understand a lot of the issues facing people in the Jack Jouett District,” Duncan said.
Dave Shreve is a 26-year resident of the county who describes himself as a longtime civil rights activist, educator and public policy specialist. He earned his doctoral degree at Louisiana State University in history and economics. He has served as a secondary school teacher, coach, professor of economic history, a legislative budget analyst and a nonprofit executive.
“I decided to run for this office because I felt that I could offer county residents an experienced take on how best to manage what we often refer to as development,” Shreve said.
Housing and development
Duncan said she understands how expensive it is raising a family in the Charlottesville area and wants to be a part of the solution, especially when it comes to the housing crisis.
She said she would support fully funding the housing trust fund, implementing developer incentives and turning to national best practices like community land trusts.
She said she’d reduce some of the barriers that make it difficult for small businesses to grow and develop: “Part of the cost of housing is just that it takes a really long time to develop here.”
Shreve said he’s dedicated his career to figuring out how to prioritize development with environmental protection and good stewardship of public services and infrastructure.
“Many county residents today face untenable housing costs and associated property tax loads that will likely be more and more difficult to sustain. I think I can offer residents of the county a sensible approach to managing all that,” Shreve said.
He said he thinks the housing crisis can’t be managed without building more affordable housing, combining resources from local governments, nonprofits and outside grant-making bodies.
“There's no other way really to make the mathematics work, where you can generate either sufficient levels of affordable housing or housing that's affordable enough. The approaches that many localities take often tinker around the edges to little effect, and I don't think we can afford to do that,” said Shreve.
Shreve said he believes that in some ways, it’s possible for the marketplace, developers and builders to work in concert with the efforts of the board of supervisors — but that we shouldn’t rely exclusively on those efforts.
Education
Both candidates have children that are currently attending or have attended public schools in the county.
Shreve said that his children have gone on to have successful careers and credits the education they received, which he called “superior.”
“I think it's still very good, but I think we are also facing stresses in that system, for infrastructure needs that have been unmet, for new burdens we've placed upon both teachers and support staff that we have to be careful about,” he said.
He said he plans to work closely with school board members and county residents to ensure that public schools remain strong.
Duncan said she’s very passionate about making sure that teachers are paid well, and that there’s enough school capacity to house students.
“Some of this is up to the school board to do, but as a supervisor, I would be very supportive of figuring out funding mechanisms, whether it's through private public partnerships, a state sales tax, which has been proposed to try and get funds in order to build enough capacity to house our students,” she said.
Transportation
In 2018, county greenhouse gas emissions from transportation accounted for over 50% of Albemarle County’s calculated emissions total.
By creating local housing and supporting regional commuter lines like the Afton Express, community emissions could drop, according to Duncan.
She said it takes a regional approach to address current transportation issues, like funding for Charlottesville Area Transit or making bus stops compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“If we are going to have a continually growing county, as the projections say we are, then we really do need to commit to public transit and really invest so that it is convenient and reliable,” said Duncan.
As a member of the county’s Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee, Shreve said he came to understand two things very well during his roughly eight-year tenure.
“One was that we were always financially constrained. So we had projects that were planned on the regional basis, for which we depended on a great deal of state and federal funding. Beyond that, the other thing that I learned was that multimodal works best so that we should not put all of our eggs in one basket,” he said.
Environmental issues
Shreve considers himself an environmentalist. He said a lot of his work in economics involves the ways in which it is possible to achieve prosperous communities without imposing great or unbearable demands on natural resources.
“I think that we're often a little too eager to pretend that we have lots of wiggle room and lots of breathing room that we can we can grow without limits, and we'll perhaps come up with a technological fix that'll reduce our pressure on the environment to the extent that it can be managed properly and that we can still have clean air and water and recreational resources and so forth. I think it's more difficult and more fragile than we imagine,” he said.
Duncan said it’s important to protect waterways and supporting stream buffers during the development process, as well as ensure farmers are using environmentally friendly practices.
Responding to the federal government
Local governments have experienced big changes to their budgets under President Donald Trump's administration.
Shreve said he sees Charlottesville as a resourceful, smart and fairly wealthy community with assets to withstand challenges from Richmond or Washington, D.C.
“Hunkering down is part of the strategy, and in that light, I also hold out hope that this too shall pass,” he said.
He added that he doesn't see any other alternative in the long run for local governments, and that they will have to go through a transitional phase in the next year or two.
“It'll be really important to do things smartly and efficiently, but I trust that we can manage it well,” he said.
Duncan said that local government is often the last social safety net for people, and they need to make sure that they’re committed to the people who live and work in the community. She said they need to make sure that no matter what else is going on, that people in the community have housing, food, education and, ideally, health care.
The Democratic primary race for the Jack Jouett District of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors ends on June 17.
Read VPM News’ interviews with other June primary candidates:
Lieutenant Governor: Levar Stoney | Ghazala Hashmi | Babur Lateef | Alex Bastani | Victor Salgado
Attorney General: Jay Jones | Shannon Taylor
Richmond Commonwealth's Attorney: Tom Barbour and Colette McEachin
Richmond City Sheriff: William Burnett and Antionette Irving
