Welcome to the City of Charlottesville's
Doin' Good November Roundup!

Take a look at some headlines and highlights from City Staff this month!

Charlottesville Fire Department Donates Fire Truck to Sister City Winneba!

The fire engine is a 2003 Pierce Quantum that was a critical part of the Charlottesville Fire Department’s fleet of equipment, providing our city with nearly 20 years of fire protection.

“It’s still in workable condition,” Charlottesville Fire Department Chief Hezedean Smith said. “It was important for us to continue our contribution to the efforts of the sister city in terms of being able to transfer to the Winneba Fire Station in Ghana. Ultimately, they’ll be able to continue using the fire truck to service citizens there.”

Link to press release: https://www.charlottesville.gov/civicalerts.aspx?aid=921

Charlottesville Parks & Recreation wins State award for Best Health and Wellness Initiative

Charlottesville Parks & Recreation has won the award for Best Health and Wellness Initiative for the Free Bike Rental Program at the 67^th annual conference of the Virginia Recreation and Parks Society held in Harrisonburg this year. This award was in recognition of the Free Bike Rental Program offered in summer 2020.

Using resources at hand, the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Youth and Adult Programs Team developed the Free Bike Rental Program to encourage community members to exercise and have fun outdoors during the challenging summer. After reading a news article about the rise in cycling, staff decided to put their stash of bikes to good use.

This program was offered June – September 2020 in McIntire Park and was free of charge thanks to local partners. Community Bikes donated 15 adult bikes in the fall of 2019 that were not in use. Access to this fleet of bikes, kicked-started the inspiration to provide public access to an item that can be unaffordable and inaccessible to many.

Charlottesville Parks & Recreation also partnered with the City of Charlottesville’s Safe Routes to School Program, which provided a fleet of youth bikes for program use. In addition to providing bikes, the Safe Routes to School Program Coordinator, Kyle Rodland, assisted with bike maintenance and making sure the bikes were safe to ride.

Parks and Recreation Removes, Installs and Lights Grand Illumination Tree!

There's no Grand Illumination without the Grand Illumination Tree and there's no Tree without Parks and Recreation.

A special thank you goes to Robert Dove, Mack Ruppard, Jimmy Day, Kenny Estes
Russell Jones, Kevin Fitch who drove out to Fishersville, VA to help harvest the 30-foot, 30 year old Norway Spruce for the City's Grand Illumination Celebration, install the tree on the Downtown Mall and afterwards, they strung over 20,000 lights and tested to make sure it would be "merry and bright." for the official lighting at the event.

The Grand illumination Staff, Sponsors and Volunteers is grateful for their time, effort and dedication to making this event illuminating every year.

David Dillehunt Produces The African American Military Experience Ceremony for CPATV for CCMC Member

David Dillehunt, City's Multimedia Services Manager, helped Ms. Maxine Holland from the Veterans Committee of Central Virginia in producing their annual ceremony that Commemorates the African American Military Experience. As they did last year due to COVID, they decided to create a virtual ceremony premiering it over two nights on our Education Channel 14 for Veterans Day.

David pulled together virtual presentations from numerous contributors and he filmed a roundtable discussion in the Charlottesville Community Media Center studio featuring several veterans. It is now available for viewing on our CCMC Vimeo page.

View Part 1 here: https://vimeo.com/642300613

View Part 2 here: https://vimeo.com/642302007

The City's Budget Office Wins Award!

The City's 2021 Budget was recently awarded the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) Distinguished Budget Presentation Award.

GFOA established the Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program (Budget Awards Program) in 1984 to encourage and assist state and local governments to prepare budget documents of the very highest quality that reflect both the guidelines established by the National Advisory Council on State and Local Budgeting and the GFOA's best practices on budgeting and then to recognize individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal.