CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – As mortgage interest rates continue to remain higher than 6%, the real estate market both locally and nationally has expectedly slowed.  There is less inventory, and fewer people are willing to put there house on the market out of concern for where they would move to given the lack of inventory, especially in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.  The problem is also complicated due to the fact that only 5% of Albemarle’s 721 square miles is marked for development.  There have also been a number of complaints over the years from developers who wanted to pursue both residential and commercial projects that the permitting, approval and inspection processes took entirely too long.  Officials in the county now say that they have heard that community feedback and that they have implemented a new system where project applicants can track their approval process through a new online system.  Ann Wall, the Deputy County Executive over community engagement, parks and recreation and development says its an important priority of the county to listen to the feedback of their constituents.  “Our communications and public engagement department is tasked with two very important things, the first is that their tasked with is really communicating what’s going on with the county, what meetings are we doing, what’s the news from the county, what’s the information that the community members need.”  Wall told WINA Morning News. ” The second task of that really important mission is that their tasked with really engaging our community, getting feedback, what do people think about what we’re doing and we do that across a variety of ways, we do that through a set of community meetings where our staff goes out, we have community engagement committees in several of the magisterial districts.  Additionally we have a website called engage Albemarle, on engage Albemarle you can find the status on a variety of projects with opportunities for community members to sort of say, here’s what I think of this, I think you’re on the right track county this is great or county I think you’ve missed it and I think you need to think of these components over here.”

One of the things that has been identified whether through direct communication to officials or just in the public discourse of the business community is the frustration over delays in the approval process for construction projects and the lack of communication regarding the status of the process.  Wall says they have implemented a new system that they hope will be more effective in keeping construction applicants in the loop.  ” So this year we just implemented a new software system for community development which out hope is that it does two things.” Wall continued.  “It makes the process a bit more transparent for the applicant, so the person who has submitted the permit can check online about where their permit is and they know how it works through our system.  It also helps them track what our system looks like and how our system is functioning and the next part of that is to take a deeper dive into our development review process to figure out where are the opportunities that we can improve because we can always improve, we can always get better.”  Wall went on to say that the goal is to move projects forward more efficiently.  ” We think that there might be opportunities that we can do what we need to do to serve the public and make sure that we’re reviewing projects the way that they need to be reviewed but potentially do that at a quicker pace.”  You can hear the entire interview below, which also includes an update on the renovation of the historic Albemarle County Courthouse and more.