Galvin floats idea of reversion discussion

A Charlottesville councilor raised the possibility of the city reverting to town status in an email to her colleagues this week, suggesting the topic be investigated if Del. Rob Bell successfully pushes a budget amendment through the General Assembly that would further stress the already troubled budget for city schools.

Councilor Kathy Galvin brought up the issue in a Monday email to City Manager Maurice Jones and her fellow councilors.

“I’d like to offer one other consideration. If the current $4 million deficit balloons out to $6.5 million if the Bell bill passes, we will be looking at crippling cuts to our school division at a time when it has begun to reverse a decades old trend of declining enrollment,” Galvin wrote in the email, adding that many families are attracted to city schools due to their small size and close proximity to neighborhoods. “… All that said, if the Bell bill were to pass, I think the reversion question has got to be put back on the table (which I’m sure isn’t a pleasant prospect for the county.)”

Galvin, an architect and urban designer who served on the city School Board before being elected to the council last year, said Tuesday that she’s throwing the idea out there as one possible way to help the schools deal with their budget crisis, calling reversion of Charlottesville from city to town status “one of the arrows in the quiver.”

“What we’re talking about here are all the different ways we can get the public schools out of the deficit that they’re in,” she said.

The city schools are facing a budget deficit of $3.7 million to $4 million for next year, and Bell’s amendment could lead to the loss of another $2.5 million in state funding that would instead go to county schools, which are facing a nearly $5 million shortfall of their own.

In 1996, a Richmond consulting firm studying what reversion’s impact would be on schools found that merging the city and county school divisions would save millions of dollars, but it’s unclear exactly what the ramifications would be today.

Galvin’s email, obtained Tuesday by The Daily Progress, was also addressed to the city’s budget director, Leslie Beauregard, and Chief Financial Officer Aubrey Watts.

Mayor Satyendra Huja could not be reached for comment.

Councilor Dede Smith said she was hesitant to embrace the idea of full reversion of the city to town status.

“I didn’t entirely understand the email, because I wasn’t sure if it really meant full reversion or consolidation. I read it and thought, this needs more explanation,” Smith said. “… I think a lot of things need to be on the table. That’s pretty dramatic. I don’t think we really need to go straight there.”

Smith said councilors haven’t had an opportunity to discuss the topic further, and avoided replying directly to Galvin’s email due to issues of transparency.

“We really try to avoid having email discussions. You really shouldn’t,” Smith said. “At the point that you start having a joint back and forth, it’s really taboo to do that.”

City spokesman Ric Barrick originally said Jones hadn’t seen the email, but he and the city manager were eventually able to retrieve it. Barrick said Jones was also unclear as to what Galvin meant, adding that Jones would send another email to the council for clarification.

A state law passed in 1988 allows any city with a population of fewer than 50,000 people to initiate court proceedings to revert to town status through an ordinance.

Reversion would make Charlottesville the largest town in Albemarle County, and could shift some authority and expenses for city services, including schools, to the county. (Currently, Scottsville is the only incorporated town in the county.)

Only two cities — South Boston and Clifton Forge — have successfully reverted to towns in the last 20 years. Bedford is currently attempting to become the third.

The debate over reversion is not new to Central Virginia, but it’s been roughly 15 years since the move was last considered.

In the past, proponents have argued that reversion would lead to more streamlined and harmonious local governance by getting rid of overlapping services and functions. Opponents have argued that by giving up its independence, the city would weaken its political power.

The issue sparked tense standoffs between the city and county in the 1990s, but due to years of legal wrangling and the city’s then-brightening financial picture, the debate had largely faded from view by the end of that decade.

In 1996, the citizen-led Town Reversion Committee filed a pro-reversion petition in Charlottesville Circuit Court. Eight months later, a three-judge panel appointed by the Virginia Supreme Court dismissed the filing on technical grounds. Both the citizen group and the City Council appealed, and the full court reversed the panel’s dismissal in 1999.

The pro-reversion group dropped its push shortly thereafter, citing mounting legal bills and little appetite for further court battles.

The City Council officially killed the previous reversion efforts by a unanimous vote at its last meeting of 1999.

Bell’s amendment would adjust the composite-index formula the state uses to allocate education funding to take into account the revenue-sharing agreement between the city and the county. Bell, R-Albemarle, has defended the idea by saying the state allocates school funding based on a locality’s “ability to pay,” and the fact that the county gives the city roughly $18 million every year is not taken into account in that equation.

Bell said in an email Tuesday that the amendment has been introduced and assigned to the Appropriations Committee, but he has not yet received notice of any public hearings.