When my brother and his family came to visit a few years ago, we knew we wanted to go to wineries for the view. When my dad came down for the first time, we knew immediately our first visit would be to the presidential homes. When my mom visits, we take her to breweries and to putt-putt. My kids take their friends to thrift stores and go paddle-boarding on the Rivanna. When we have visitors, we are excited to introduce them to the things we can do here, the places we can go, the views they can see.
It is fun to let our loved ones see why we love living here. It makes them feel more a part of our lives – it helps us feel connected. Similarly, if you live or work in Albemarle County, we are also connected, whether we know each other or not, because you are a vital, welcome part of our community. All of us get to share our lives here every day with people we don’t know. Restaurant servers, water facilities employees, bus drivers, the people who trim trees over power lines, the cell phone salesmen, the road pavers, the line stripers, and the roundabout builders. Our community is sustained by thousands of daily activities that all of us do. We share our county with each other in even deeper ways than we share with our visitors, and we should be just as welcoming to the people who work here as we are to the people who visit, because we are one community.
When someone drives from downtown Charlottesville up to the Hollymead Town Center, or when someone decides to see a movie at Stonefield instead of downtown, they are not thinking about municipal boundaries. When someone who lives in Earlysville decides to eat at a restaurant on the downtown mall, they don’t consider themselves a visitor to a different city. When someone attends a UVA Basketball game, they don’t think about being on state property. When people from Waynesboro drive in to work in the county, they are not thinking about where they live vs. where they work. (Just kidding, they totally are!) Everyone in our community crosses borders, so our collaborations should as well.
There is a lot of community collaboration already, but we should increase our cooperation even more. We should have public works plans that create seamless transitions between our boundaries. When sidewalks and roads meet, so too should the policies. We need to increase our investment in regional transit, including rapid transit, to address the collective issue of traffic on our roads. The core of the University of Virginia is within Albemarle County; the “town and gown” phenomenon should also include Albemarle County. When we collaborate together across neighborhoods, villages, agencies and governments and non-profits, we are supporting our broader public good. There should be no division in the county between rural and urban, northern corridor and southern areas. We are one community, and one county, and when we support each other, we grow closer. When we invest in each other, we get better, and when we do this, we can build an even stronger, healthier, and more affordable Albemarle County.
