The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Virginia Is The Data Center Capital Of The World; FluCo Supervisor Tony O'Brien On Data Centers

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

The I Love CVille Show headlines: Virginia Is The Data Center Capital Of The World FluCo Supervisor Tony O’Brien On Data Centers Amazon Data Center = $25M New Tax $ Louisa How Will Louisa’s New Tax $$ Impact CVille Area? Will Louisa Become Even More Attractive To Live? Cav Daily: Leave Government To Those We Elect City Manager Not Elected; Is That A Problem? UVA at Florida State, 745 PM, Saturday, CW Read Viewer & Listener Comments Live On-Air The I Love CVille Show airs live Monday – Friday from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The I Love CVille Show on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Fountain, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Good Friday afternoon, guys. I'm Jerry Miller. Thank you kindly for joining us on the I Love Seville Show. It's great to be with you on what feels like a spring afternoon in central Virginia. We're live in downtown Charlottesville. We're a block away from the police station, a block away from the Albemarle County Courthouse, Charlottesville Courthouse, a block off the downtown mall, smack dab in the middle of the finance firms, the law firms, the hedge funds, and everything that really is the heartbeat of this community. A mile from UVA. I wouldn't even call it a mile. Why don't you do this, Judah? Out of curiosity.

Our studio from the rotunda. If you could check the mileage on that, I would say it's less than a mile and I would characterize it in the vicinity of 0.75 to 0.8 in that vicinity. Just out of curiosity. The talk show we hosted this morning, it's Real Talk with Keith Smith. Real Talk with Keith Smith approaching its five-year anniversary. Very few shows on any network, and I'm talking ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Netflix, have five years of consistency, two to three shows a week like Real Talk with Keith Smith. And the show, I learn weekly from this program. It's made me a better businessman and a better real estate person and a more engaged citizen in Charlottesville and Albemarle and

Central Virginia. And today's program with Chris Fairchild and Tony O'Brien, two supervisors from the Flavana County Board of Supervisors, was one of the best pieces of content we have ever created in the history of the I Love Seville Network. I sincerely and genuinely mean that. I'm going to take a portion of the show, the portion I found most fascinating. It's about a seven-minute clip on data centers, and I'm going to replay it and re-air it for you so you can have a moment to really absorb it like I did. I've listened to it three times and each time I've learned something from it. I want a couple of key takeaways before we play it. Give me a thumbs up when you have that mileage and I'll give you a

cue of when to play the sound from Tony O'Brien. I did not know this. The Commonwealth of Virginia is the data center capital of the world. There are more data centers in the Commonwealth of Virginia than in any other place in the entire world. I also did not know this. Amazon, I'll take a step back. We know the surface details of Amazon investing $11 billion into Louisa County. We broke that news for you on the I Love Civo show. This program broke that news, $11 billion into Louisa County by Amazon, an investment that's going to change the landscape of Louisa. And we haven't really had a chance to unpack how it would change the landscape. Well, we have a little bit of clarity now.

Tony O'Brien on Real Talk this morning indicated you're looking at potentially $25 million per year in incremental tax revenue for Louisa County from this Amazon deal. Furthermore, he highlighted that this Amazon deal is not really going to strain or throttle infrastructure, schools, roads, water, because the data centers for a large part are not heavily staffed, do not utilize a lot of human capital. So what's essentially happening when this deal materializes, $11 billion from Amazon into Louisa, the county of Louisa is going to have a Brinks truck of gold bars every year, metaphorically dropped off by Amazon in front of its board of supervisors.

$25 million a year in incremental tax revenue for a county whose budget is minuscule when compared to Charlottesville or Albemarle. So I want to ask this question, and those that are in central Virginia? do an aggressive campaign with its budget, with its taxing, alleviating the burden of rooftop taxes, making it more affordable to live in Louisa because they have this Brinks truck of gold bars to help offset that exposure. Basically, what I'm saying is this. If Louisa gets $25 million of incremental tax revenue a year, will it say to residents of Louisa, we're going to pass some of that savings on to you, we're going to make the taxes on your homes less expensive? And if they do that, will that encourage an influx of residents into Louisa migrating from the surrounding counties? That's a damn good question for today's talk show. Also a damn good question

for today's talk show is the article in the Cavalier Daily. I am very impressed by this op-ed piece by a college student in the Cavalier Daily. The author, Wiley Brunman, he penned this op-ed yesterday, basically, I don't want to say calling out Sam Sanders because I don't think that's fair, but he basically said that Sam Sanders being an appointed city manager, appointed city manager, offers him, help me out here, and make sure you're on a two-shot here, employment protection that an elected city manager would not otherwise have. Yeah, I think it clears him of at least some accountability towards the people of Seville. If Sandersville, Tent Town, and Lee Park on Market Street was authored or advanced or launched by an elected city manager, would that elected

city manager have even done it for fear of not getting reelected or fear of the reaction from the populace that votes him or her into office? Because the city manager is appointed by council, as long as whatever he does, as long as he knows that whatever he does is what council also wants, he pretty much has immunity. Great topic for today's show. Florida State and the University of Virginia, Saturday, 7.45 p.m. ACC Network. But the lead to the program is a piece of sizzle. It's some sizzle from Real Talk with Keith Smith that is absolute content gold. I'll set the stage.

Tony O'Brien is doing most of the talking. He's a multi-term board of supervisor in Fluvanna County. Also on set, Chris Fairchild, the chairperson of the Fluvanna County Board of Supervisors Keith Smith a known commodity in this community the show airs on the I Love Seville Network at 10.15am Judah Wickhow are you ready for this sound get ready and giddy up viewers and listeners

Judah give us the sound in 3 2 1 Virginia is probably the world's capital of data centers you said the world's capital yeah probably the world's capital of data centers. You said the world's capital? Yeah, probably the world's capital of data centers. I did not know that. Most people did not know that.

Loudoun County has, I think, 137 data centers. The price of an acre of land because of all these data centers went up to a million dollars an acre of land, basically. Now, the reason that happened was back in the day, way back in the day, remember AOL? Yeah. Okay. Loudoun County was sort of asked a question, well, you know, is a data center, and everybody was like, well, what's a data center? Sure. Nobody knew what a data center was. Still to this day, I don't think people know. Yeah, still to this day. Well, you drive, you use it all day long, right? There's one on 29 North, right up over by the move through, which is the ice cream place. If you drive past it, you think it's a prison. Yeah, yeah. It's on 29 North, right up over by the Moo Thru, which is the ice cream place.

If you drive past it, you'd think it's a prison. Yeah, yeah. It's just a big square building. You might hear a hum. A lot of high-tension wires. And you see some high-tension wires off of it. But anyhow, they passed in their ordinance, basically, that you could put it in general commercial zoning. So the developers all went out and started buying the land from that purposes for commercial zoning. You get it rezoned, and at that point in time, now you can put in a data center by right.

Well, that is what drove it up. Now, the reason that they located there was because of AOL having brought all the fiber into that area, which, you know, today we think, oh, gosh, what does that actually mean? But let's remember the days of dial-up, DSL. That didn't exist. When 9-11 happened, I used to have a client that worked with the FBI. The FBI came to them because they were running off of T1s. That's 1.5 megabytes. The FBI itself didn't even know a little bit about this. Dude, I know. This is fascinating. This is fascinating.

So that demand in terms of growth for the data centers is because so much of the fiber is located somewhere. The large data centers are already here so the closer you get to it the the faster your transactions are which can make a huge deal so uh... great book uh... uh... uh... called flash boys by uh... michael it's not you and me man yeah anyhow i can't remember his name but it's a great boy it'll come back to me but no flashing no no flashing. And I'll be quiet in a second and let Chris

rebut here. No, this is great. I forgot what I was going to say. Anyhow, the component was that it's become so expensive to continue to put data centers in Northern Virginia that now you're starting to see the expansion of data centers throughout the state.

Is that 11 billion Amazon Louisa? That 11 billion Amazon Louisa is pretty fascinating. What we found out last night is... Isn't that really cool? A little bit more fascinating. Well, just that 11 billion, to put it in perspective, is I think $25 million of projected revenue for the county of Louisa.

That probably... Per what? Per year? Per year. Wow. Yeah, that probably translates to, I guess, somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.12 on the dollar in your property rate. That's significant. It's huge. Yeah. That probably translates to, I guess, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 cents on the dollar in your property rate. That's significant. It's huge.

Yeah. But get ready for this. Last night at the TJPDC, the new commissioner, Mr. Manning. He was the board supervisor. I'm sorry, but also commissioner on the TJPC, but also the new board supervisor, mentioned that the data center planners are going to put seven of them up near... Cuco's and Mineral's. And Mineral's. And Mineral's.

Right? So seven are going in there, and they're putting in two substations, right? So we'll get to the power second here in a second. How many acres they want to take? 284 acres they're going to put in two substations. It's going to take 204, just think about that, 250 acres to put two electrical substations

in just to provide energy to that. For 10 data centers. Now they also have land further down which is 1400 acres. They're putting in, I think what he said was, well they're going to put in four data centers there, but they're going to put in four data centers there,

but they're also putting in substations. They're building the capacity for substations of up to 10 substations there. It's 1,400 acres. Which is telling you what? So it's telling you what? You hear that big sucking sound? That's Louisa bringing in data centers into a 1,400-acre farm. Well, if they've got $25 million from 11, what are they going to get when they have 30 or 40 of these?

And what's the cause and effect of that? Well, okay, data centers in general don't employ a lot of people. Okay. So you're saying they don't throttle county infrastructure? They don't really throttle county infrastructure. Or strain is a better word? Yeah, they don't strain it necessarily. Schools, roads is what I'm highlighting here.

Water is what I'm highlighting here. Well, Amazon is bringing in their own pipeline to do things, and they're also going to build a road that goes through. So this is pretty much a checkbook for Louisa. And that was interesting, right? They're paying for treated water, but they're only using water. Yeah, they're paying for treated water. So, I mean, it's like it's incredible, you know, what is happening.

But, you know, this is an example of, you know, how much growth is happening related to that. But I want to switch to the power side because this is what Chris was talking about. The reason that this is becoming a bigger deal in terms of power is that they do require enormous amount of energy. Now, if you're Dominion or any other public utility that's delivering electricity, you know what the regulation process is to bring in new power. You know, if you're trying to build a traditional power plant, that's pretty difficult to do. It can take years, if not decades, to do that. So what they're looking for is as many alternative sources of power that they can get. That's for their own needs.

Second need is, of course, we have both federal and state-based clean energy goals that we're trying to achieve, right? And so those clean energy goals require alternative energy in order to meet them. And so you have this tension, which is saying, hey, we're going to need more for the data centers. We're going to need more in order to meet the clean energy goals, and we're going to need more land. So it is not just a blank check, and I think Mr. Fairchild is correct in saying that, you know, counties should have general powers to regulate and say how we should do this. But it is, by the same token, a measure of saying, you know, solar is going to be something that's important for the general well-being and economy. But is there enough solar to run those substations?

No, of course not. There isn't. There isn't enough solar. But ultimately what's going to happen is... They suck some energy. Well, they suck some energy. They do. They're not going to...

It's not enough. But what you're going to start seeing is other forms of energy coming in. Let's just jump in here. Packaged power... Let me just finish with this thought. Packaged power plants, nuclear power plants. So those are basically like nuclear power plants.

A couple of them... A couple of the data centers going next to Lake Annapurna. Well, they're doing that, but I'm just saying in order of putting new energy, they're starting to get close to being able to package nuclear power plants. And then just announced this week is that through fusion, they are now generating twice as much output as they put in. So I truly think we're going to see fusion be a power source.

It's probably 40 years away, but that's the life cycle. You bring in the energy here, you replace it with something different, and that energy is going to help power us. All right, that's about seven minutes from Real Talk with Keith Smith. Seven minutes that I think is significant and content or information that our community has not heard yet in any capacity from any media in Central Virginia. The financial impact of the $11 billion

Amazon investment to come in Louisa County. I'm going to try to unpack that for you, the viewer and listener, and then I'm going to try to extrapolate a cause and effect of what we unpack. First, let's get to Tony O'Brien. Tony O'Brien is in the computer and technology business. This is what he does professionally.

He's a board of supervisor in Fluvanna County, but professionally he owns a computer and technology firm that is based in Albemarle County. He does this professionally for a living and has done computers and technology and data for decades. So he's a man who's speaking from expertise and experience. He highlights the impact tax revenue-wise on Louisa and puts it in the neighborhood of $25 million

incremental tax revenue from 11 data centers initially created by Amazon in Louisa. And then he asked the question, in that sizzle reel that we just played for you, what's going to happen when they can get 30 to 40 data centers in Louisa County? How much tax revenue can they drive? Deep Throat, number one in the family. You can find the power rankings of our viewers and listeners online at iloveceval.com forward slash viewer rankings.

He says a message, Louisa County total property tax for fiscal year 2025 is $81 million, Deep Throat writes. An incremental $25 million from Amazon is massive. That would make a huge difference. He says this is precisely what Charlottesville Council does not understand when they say new zoning is going to ease the tax burden. New housing, unless it is very high-end or specifically focused on market segments without children, is a fiscal loser. What is a huge fiscal winner is something like a data center. High value pays a lot of property taxes, and poses very little need for services. O'Brien and Fairchild highlighted that

on Real Talk this morning. I want to ask you this question again. What happens when Louisa County has 30 or 40 of these data centers when 11 data centers generates $25 million per year in tax revenue? Does that mean at 30 you're looking at $75? At 40, potentially $100? Then I want to take it a step further. If Louisa County has this Brinks truck of gold bars of incremental tax revenue from Amazon, how will its leadership respond to this incremental tax revenue? Could it possibly do this? And I'm going to offer you a very realistic hypothetical. Get ready for this, ladies and gentlemen. Could Louisa say to its taxpayers, its homeowners, its personal property owners, its real estate owners, its business owners. We have this Brinks truck of

gold bars from Amazon. We're going to alleviate the burden on your rooftops, on your businesses, and on your personal property by taxing you less because we understand Amazon has given us all this money. Remember, Louisa County is a fiscally conservative county when it comes to taxes. In a lot of ways, the polar opposite of the city of Charlottesville. In a lot of ways, the polar opposite of Albemarle County. And if Louisa County says this, we are going to alleviate the tax burden on houses and on personal property and on businesses

because of this windfall from Amazon, does that make Louisa even more enticing than it already is to move to? Remember, according to the Weldon Cooper Center, Louisa County was the, and I'm going to make sure I have my data correct. I'm looking to a previous show. The third, thank you.

According to the latest estimate from UVA's Weldon Cooper Center, Louisa County's population has now cracked 40,000 citizens. As of July 1, 2023, Louisa County had 40,434 residents per Weldon Cooper. The county's population has grown 7.5% since 2020, making Louisa County the third fastest growing locality in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So here's a fair question to ask viewers and listener. If Louisa County has grown 7.5% since 2020,

from 2020 to 2023, making it the third fastest growing locality in the Commonwealth, it clearly is appealing to people because of either its proximity to 64, because of its affordability. Louisa County was one of the first public school systems to open up post-COVID or during COVID, excuse me, during COVID. I know dozens of families have reached out to us saying they moved to Louisa because of how they managed the pandemic and how they were not as scared as some of the surrounding public school

systems when it came to COVID and the pandemic. Louisa, literally one of the first in Virginia to say, we're opening our damn doors, we welcome the kids back, and we want them learning in person and in classrooms. And that appealed to a boatload of people. And now with the benefit of hindsight, we realized what Louisa County did was the right call. A lot of reasons Louisa is having a blowing up in population. Walmart, Zion's Crossroads, Lowe's, Spring Creek, 64, proximity to Charlottesville, proximity to Richmond. Third fastest growing locality in the last in virginia what happens when they get 25 million in incremental tax revenue per year what happens when that 25 million can go as high as 100 million

potentially in incremental tax revenue and if it does will leadership and louisa tell its residents we're not going to tax you as much because we have all this money coming from Amazon? And if leadership does make that call, does it make the county even more appealing to live in? And if it does make the county even more appealing to live in, are people going to move from the surrounding counties to Louisa? And if the folks move from the surrounding counties to Louisa, what's the cause and effect of that for the surrounding counties?

What's the cause and effect of that for business? What's the cause and effect of that for schools? What's the cause and effect of that for population change? What's the cause and effect of that for extremely expensive Charlottesville City and extremely expensive Albemarle County? That's content and thinking that is not offered anywhere else but here. If you want to jump in, give me a heads up.

All right. Yeah, I think there's another way that data centers have been getting not repurposed but used beneficially for the areas that they're built in, and that's the massive amounts of heat that they produce. And a lot of people have recently been finding innovative ways of utilizing that heat because, obviously, it costs a lot of money to cool a data center down. For instance, there's a company that is using the servers in Denmark to heat almost 7,000 homes.

And I've read other stories about data centers being used to heat local municipalities' pools. And, I mean, imagine if during an extremely cold winter the people of Fluvanna had free heat coming from the data centers. I think that would be pretty amazing. Good stuff from you. John Blair, his photo on screen. Number two in the family. We've heard from number one, now we go to number two. Here's what Mr. Blair has to say.

Are you ready for this? You should listen to this. You got his photo on screen? Yep. Jerry and Judah. Louisa County's data center acquisition is the area's master stroke of economic development in the central Virginia area of this century.

That's right, Jerry and Judah. This century. I think the following is probably going to be the 2030 reality. Louisa County will have a larger population than Charlottesville, Virginia. It will also be thought of as the best school division in Central Virginia. From John Blair. I will mention this live on air. Let's take this. John Blair, effing love you. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I love your comments. Let's take it a step further. In 2023 of July, Louisa had eclipsed 40,434 residents.

40,434. Gosh, I wish I had the Weldon Cooper. Weldon Cooper. I want to see Charlottesville's population literally doing this on the fly. I'm going to Weldon Cooper. Hamilton Lombard, come on the program. Come on the program, Hamilton Lombard. John Hamilton said to me, you come on the show, he would come on the show, almost verbatim. He said that. Let's see. All right. All right.

I got the article from Hamilton. Hell of a squash player. Charlottesville population. I'm going to compare the Charlottesville population to Louisa County. I'm doing this literally on the fly in the talk show. Bear with me. Can you find Charlottesville City? Could one of our viewers and listeners, Wel Can you find Charlottesville City? Could one of our Judah,

one of our viewers and listeners, Weldon Cooper, Charlottesville City population, can you find that Judah? Oh, look. 2023 estimates, God, can I find it? Here's my point, and I'll use a rough number. Charlottesville City is right around 45,000, 46,000 people, population. Louisa's just eclipsed 40,000.

We're talking, and I got it right here in front of me. We're talking a delta with Charlottesville and Louisa right now of maybe five or six thousand people. Maybe five or six thousand people. Let me know if you find it. I would bet, not only is John's prediction accurate that Louisa's population is going to be more than Charlottesville soon, you can base that on cost of living, you can base that on affordability, you can base that on politics, you could base that on school,

you could base that on quality of life. You can base that on crime and safety. You can base that on craziness and chaos, volatility. Louisa and Charlottesville are literally 180 degrees apart. At just about every ideology component if you think about it. You can make the argument he just made about schools. I'll take it a step further and could you see the next business incubation epicenter in Louisa?

Remember, there's still 600 units coming on the market at Spring Creek. Plan units unbuilt in Spring Creek. Have you been to Spring Creek recently? Fantastic gated community, golf course community, tremendous amenities. 15, 18 minutes from Charlottesville, Spring Creek, right on the interstate. Fitzgerald Barnes, Louisa County Board of Supervisors, friend of the program, known this man for 20 years, easily 20 years. This man understands the concept of alleviating tax burdens on citizens, on Louisa Countians, and I know some of his contemporaries do as well. Charlottesville, 2023 Judah.

Population, 51,132 people. The only jurisdiction in central Virginia, the only jurisdiction in central Virginia to have a drop in population, Charlottesville. We have attributed that drop to affordability, political volatility, perhaps A12, perhaps perhaps how school was managed during the pandemic perhaps remote work if you could work hybridly wouldn't you choose to work in the most affordable spot possible definitely I was absolutely blown away by this.

Juan Sarmiento lives in Louisa. He says, Jerry, don't blow up my county. Please leave it the quiet it is, quiet like it is right now. Juan Sarmiento works in Charlottesville as the fleet technician at the city of Charlottesville. Lives in Louisa, commutes to Charlottesville. Philip Dow watching the program. I can see everyone moving out of Seville for the benefit. With people moving out, we'll call Seville to raise taxes from my viewpoint.

I know a lot of people that can't wait to get out. Not everyone. I don't want to throw shade on Charlottesville. I love Charlottesville dearly. My heart beats for Charlottesville. And our business is effing called I Love Seville. One of our businesses. My point is this.

There are obvious headwinds for Charlottesville. No doubt. My point is also this. Some invisible line is the divider between Charlottesville and Louisa and Alamaro and Fluvanna. Spring Creek from the most eastern point of Charlottesville, which is probably what?

Somewhere on Pantops? It's 12 minutes. 12 minutes away. And you couldn't have two more different jurisdictions. Even from an upside or downside standpoint. Vanessa Parkhill. Regardless of population growth, Charlottesville will remain the cradle of elites and academics because of UVA,

the center of all things in central Virginia. That's okay. Many others looking to step up a rung on the socioeconomic ladder may very likely look toward Louisa to do so. That's okay too. It may actually help release the pressure valve on the area a bit. Of any jurisdiction in Central Virginia, who's got the most tailwinds and momentum right now gotta be Louisa no doubt give me another one that's not and I would ask this question

remember when Donna price now Donna price did caveat by saying the most significant economic impact in our moral County history besides the creation of the University of Virginia was the Rivanna Station investment north of town in Albemarle County on the Albemarle Green Line to keep the spies and the

military mines in the community because of its $1.2 billion economic impact. Yeah, the military mines. In the community. Because of its $1.2 billion, billion with a B, economic impact. She called it that. I would love to know how the Amazon investment into Louisa compares. And this might be a question for Neil Williamson who's watching the program. How does the Rivanna Station purchase Albemarle County utilizing taxpayer dollars to buy Wendell Woods property to keep the spies and the military consultants and the government military subcontractors and all the other military alphabet teams in the area,

how does that compare and contrast with Amazon and 11 billion into Louisa from a significant standpoint? That's a genuine question I have for you, Neil Williamson. That question is right up your alley and I assure you it's got your wheels turning right now. I would love to hear your answer on that.

I would love to hear Mr. Blair's answer on that. I would love to hear Mr. Blair's answer on that. I would love to hear Deep Throat's answer on that as well. Two TV stations watching you on the program right now. Deep Throat says, Weldon Cooper's projections have Louisa County exceeding Charlottesville in 2050, but I think it will happen much, much sooner than that. And he also says if Richmond continues to get nicer, that will be another boom to Louisa. The difference between one hour and 10 minutes versus 45 minutes to Richmond is meaningful for people.

With Louisa, you have the option to go to either Charlottesville or Richmond. Bingo. Yeah. That's a great point. Richmond was one of the fastest growing. Richmond's population has increased over 40,000 people over the last three years. Wow.

You have Louisa as the third fastest growing locality from 2020 to 2023, according to Well and Cooper. And Richmond, its population increasing by 40,000 people and they're separated by depending on how fast you drive 35 to 45 minutes Albert Graves, welcome to the program we love when you retweet the show

Mr. DL, welcome to the program and thank you kindly for watching the show. Trey Barham, welcome to the show. All right. Bill McChesney says that purchase of Rivanna Station may help green, Madison, orange, Louisa, and even Rockingham counties as much as it will help Albemarle County. Northrop Grumman also has cracked the ground on its $200 million Waynesboro facility. Let's get to the Cab Daily article. You set the stage for that one.

I got a boatload of comments coming in here. You set the stage for Cab Daily. So the article brings up the fact that we have a new mayor and the fact that it's, well, according to the author, not very important. And the reason is that, obviously, our mayor doesn't do as much as they would in a different system. And instead, we have a city manager who is well in fact the the mayor is unelected at least unelected by we the people as is the city manager unelected and goes back and talks about the fact that before 1922 we actually did have a different system and goes on to point out the fact that we really have to rely on the city council to have our best interests at heart because there's really not much accountability for the city manager if they're making decisions like allowing people in the park.

To live in the park. Yeah, to live in the park. For about a month. Mm-hmm. A public park. And talks about the realities of unaccountability and how clear it is in Charlottesville. For instance, back when then city manager Chip Boyles

fired police chief Brackney without cause. She later tried to sue the city and claimed that she was fired because she was a black woman, that lawsuit seems to have been meritless. So it's an interesting argument that the current system may be more efficient,

but it leaves much to be desired in terms of how our city is governed and how much you and I have a voice in that governance. Well, the voice we do have is who we elect who then appoints and hires the city manager. Keep going. And also appoints the mayor. So,

essentially what the article boils down to is the belief that governance should always be we would have a better, more accountable, more effective representation. Strong mayor. Mayor Stoney, Richmond, example. More effective representation of everyone in Charlottesville. Here's a little history from you for John Blair. Deep throat. This is right up your alley. Get ready for this, deep throat. Get ready for this, all viewers and listeners. This is a fantastic comment by John again. Here's a little history for you and your

viewers. The city manager form of government began in Stanton. Why? You may ask. Before the city manager form of government began in Stanton. Why, you may ask? Before the city manager system was invented, the city had a superintendent of streets who reported to the city council street committee. In the year of 1906, only one block of the city streets were paved. No other street was paved or repaired in the entire city.

There was a large budget for city streets that year, but there simply was not proper oversight of the streets department. The city council determined that a large amount of supervisors who were elected with the loudest political voices getting streets paved

was very inefficient. A professional unelected manager was installed. Within two years of this appointment, the amount of streets paved per year increased by 800% for a similar budget as the pre-manager days. Yeah, back then, the article also mentions the fact that uh back when the style of governance was changed um a lot of the problems had to do with uh with people thinking that uh um mayors were less effective and they were worried about corruption in government.

And that may have been the case. But is that still an issue today? Philip Dow says, a friend of mine is a project manager for a massive developer in the area and he said the plan is to take Zions and Richmond on 250 and develop everything. And it will not be rural anymore. Randy O'Neill watching the program throws a little shade to Mayor Stoney in Richmond,

calling him weak in everything. Cavalier Daily offering us a talking point when it comes to the city manager, an op-ed by one of the college students saying that Sanders being appointed as opposed to elected really impacts accountability. He says he functions more like, city council functions more like a board

and the city manager as a CEO. Which is what we have said on this talk show for years. That's why the elections matter, to steal a page from Neil Williamson. And why we really saw it during the turnstile of the city manager spot a handful of years ago. Yeah. And that brings up another good point, that with the current system, with a revolving door of city managers, a lot of the positions that are appointed by the city manager rather than also being elected end up becoming revolving doors where we end up, I think we ended up at one point

with quite a few spots, quite a few positions being open as city managers were cycling through. We still have quite a few positions open. It's a fine line because the last thing we want is career politicians. And a lot of people have made the push of doing a ward system in Charlottesville where certain areas or the city is broken up into five sections,

and the five sections elect like a district, and the five districts in the city elect their own representative. But the fatal flaw with that is that could birth career politicians, which we do not want. Because can you imagine a career politician if you have a bad apple? And I'll leave it at that. But couldn't the same thing happen with city council? Much more difficult to do so.

Because you have to get support from across the city with city council, as opposed to just maybe if it's five districts and 50,000 people, 10,000 people. It's much more possible that you as head of a ward or head of a district can influence 10,000 people and maintain control as opposed to garnering the support of 50,000 people. Fair. Much easier to become the senior class president as opposed to the SCA president in a high school. SCA president has got to win the vote of the freshman, sophomore, and junior,

where the senior class president just has to worry about the seniors in his or her class. Right. where the senior class president just has to worry about the seniors in his or her class. Friday edition of the I Love Seville show really get me excited. All right. Anything you want to add before we close the program? I do want to say Florida State, the University of Virginia, they play college basketball tomorrow night, unfortunately, on the CW network.

It's a 7-45 tip-off, another must-win game for the Cavaliers, who, according to Lenardi, are in the last four in the big dance right now. Riding a seven-game win streak, those Tony Bennett boys. Judah Wickauer, closing thoughts. I'm excited about this data center plan, and I hope they decide to do something with it besides just creating giant buildings with banks of computers, because I think there are a lot of interesting prospects going on right now, and I'd like to see some of those ideas expanded on and developed here in Virginia,

especially if, as Tony said, we're the data center capital of the world. I had no idea the Commonwealth was the data center capital of the world. He's Judah Wickher. My name is Jerry Miller. It's the I Love CBOE show where we talk everything and just try to relate it to this region. Sociology, anthropology, sports, politics, current events, crime, parenting, music, pop culture, just relate it to Charlottesville and Central Virginia. Thank you for joining us. Enjoy the weekend. Keep your business local. So long.