https://tsaharrisonburg.substack.com/

TSA_Harrisonburg, Harrisonburg, VA (2026)

10/14/2026

What's in a name? Route known as University Boulevard renamed to University Boulevard

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

At least they didn’t rename it America Boulevard.

For years, people going from Port Republic Road to the primary retail area of Harrisonburg had two choices. Drivers could take the interstate or they could take University Boulevard.

Except they didn’t. They took Forest Hill Road to Oak Hill Drive to a curve next to 81 where the road turned into University Boulevard, until the road from Forest Hill to the Arboretum and the basketball arena was cut through the woods this year to eliminate a stop sign and some curves.

Too much detail?

City Council agreed Tuesday night, renaming everything from Port Road to the JMU Arboretum to be University Boulevard. Which should be no surprise to people who’ve been calling it that for decades.

Because some addresses will change, according to a memo to City Council, “Necessary coordination and notification with and within City of Harrisonburg Departments and other stakeholders will also occur.”

That means they’ll tell everybody.

For those who haven’t driven that way since the road changes, there’s a map.

The council also amended the city’s zoning ordinance to treat manufactured homes the same as homes built on-site, as required by a new state law. Said manufactured homes will be converted to real property by “removing mobility equipment,” which means taking the wheels off, and building a foundation.

Council member Laura Dent praised the General Assembly for making the change in state law so that the city council would not have to make the change and take responsibility for it. The assembly did them a favor, she said, “So we don’t have to have the local battle.”

Council also reduced the minimum lot width in an R-8 zoning from 35 to 30 feet, also required by a new state law.

The council also granted a request from Eastern Mennonite School to make technical changes to its master plan and to designate a minimum number of 435 parking spaces. More detail is available in last month’s Planning Commission coverage, linked in the comments.

The council also heard a presentation on the Public Works Department’s safe streets plan. Funds from a Federal Highway Administration grant will be used to create a Transportation Safety Action Plan, update the Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan, create a Safe Routes to School Plan, and create a Complete Streets Design Guide. The presentation is linked in the comments.

A goal of the planning will be to reduce injuries and fatalities on city streets. The city averages 3 deaths a year on its streets.

The council also heard a presentation on the city’s proposed legislative agenda. The agenda basically restates the perennial local issues of maintaining local authority while funding any state requirements placed on the localities.

Assistant City Manager Brian Vandenberg in presenting the agenda and asking for council feedback, said the hope is to have a document that legislators can read quickly. Harrisonburg is represented by Tony Wilt in the House of Delegates and Mark Obenshain in the state Senate.

Council also passed a resolution asking the Planning Commission to begin considering zoning changes to get the city ready for the Virginia Cannabis Control Act. The act will allow 350 retail cannabis establishments statewide. If their placement is proportional to the state’s population, five or more of those ma*****na stores could be in the Harrisonburg-Rockingham area. The city cannot prohibit the stores, but can restrict their location, including their proximity to schools or other cannabis stores. City Attorney Chris Brown said the Commissioner of the Revenue is already looking into how the facilities can be taxed.

Also, at council’s direction, the city staff will prepare a letter opposing restrictions on census counts that might result in Harrisonburg being undercounted in the 2030 census. Harrisonburg was undercounted by several thousand people in the 2020 census, which can reduce funding to the city under state and federal programs. The city was undercounted in 2020 by as much as 15 percent through undercounts of immigrants and college students.

During the public comment period at the end of the meeting, council members heard a request to begin considering collective bargaining for transit drivers. Council has previously rejected collective bargaining for the city’s police and has not adopted it for any other city department. The School Board adopted a collective bargaining resolution two years ago.

10/07/2026

City schools join suit against tech giants
Board also hears SOL report; all schools accredited after system-wide gains

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

The Harrisonburg School Board voted Tuesday to join national litigation against several major social-media companies, claiming that addictive product design has harmed students and imposed costs on schools.

The resolution in it’s entirety is linked in the comments. The case would be handled by outside lawyers on contingency, so HCPS would generally pay legal fees only if it receives a financial recovery. Harrisonburg will be able to file its own lawsuit, with Harrisonburg City School Board as the plaintiff and Meta, TikTok/ByteDance, Snap and Google/YouTube as defendants.

With the exception of narrowly defined instructional uses of YouTube, this social media use occurs outside of the school day and not on division-issued devices. Students in HCPS do not use social media as part of classroom instruction and phones are not permitted in class.

This is not a class action, but rather a multidistrict litigation (MDL), as the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation created it to coordinate cases alleging that social-media platforms were designed in ways that encourage addictive use by adolescents. Here, the HCPS Board is the plaintiff, suing for its own costs which include staff time, disruption, and resources spent responding to students’ mental health and behavior problems.

Contingency means no upfront fees, but the resolution is silent on who covers costs if the case loses, and the resolution doesn’t state the contingency fee percentage. The resolution also doesn’t say where the suit would be filed or whether HCPS would join the existing federal MDL. Section 3 just authorizes Counsel to “file suit.” Also, many districts filed earlier, and it’s not clear whether any deadlines, such as statutes of limitations, are driving the timing.

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Chief Academic Officer Dr. Joy Blosser presented the 2026-2027 District Accreditation and 2025-2026 SOL results. All schools are fully accredited.

Outcomes of different smaller student subgroups can be found in the full presentation linked in the comments. Reading continued a slow upward climb, math essentially held onto the substantial improvement it made the previous year, and science jumped seven percentage points in a single year.

Across the division, three-year results increased by approximately 6 percent in reading, 12 percent in math and 18 percent in science. The strongest relative gains occurred among several groups that historically have lower SOL pass rates. For example, English learners increased 22 percent in reading, 17 percent in math and 46 percent in science, compared with their starting point. Hispanic students showed increases in all three subjects as well.

The conspicuous negative number is reading among Black students, a 6 percent drop over three years. That’s not because this year’s reading score fell (it actually rose from 44 percent to 46 percent) but because the group began at 49 percent in 2023–24. Dr. Blosser explicitly called attention to that distinction.

Much discussion centered on the 40 percent of HCPS students who are English learners, compared with about 15 percent statewide. Roughly 70 percent are economically disadvantaged, versus roughly 40 percent statewide. Staff also said that, despite those challenges, HCPS students in every subgroup ultimately earn advanced diplomas at rates above the state, which they presented as an important longer-term outcome rather than relying exclusively on SOL performance.

There was again a fairly pointed discussion of the state testing rules for English learners. As noted in many previous meetings, students previously had roughly 11 semesters to develop English before their scores are counted in the division’s ratings. The window has now been reduced to about three semesters, a year and a half. The improvement among English learners is particularly noteworthy because students are being tested much sooner after arriving. Particularly striking is the science result, with EL students rising from 28 percent in 2023-24 to 41 percent now.

Also Tuesday, HCPS Superintendent Dr. Michael Richards, along with HCPS legislative intern Meredith Groff, presented the revised HCPS legislative program for the next calendar year. The program is a list of things the division would like Virginia lawmakers to tackle in the 2027 General Assembly session.

The School Board unanimously approved the updated division legislative agenda, asking Richmond for more realistic school funding, more flexibility in serving a very diverse student population, and additional protection for students whose circumstances don’t fit neatly into statewide rules.

Among the new priorities:

Give newly arrived English learners more time before their test scores count against school accountability measures. HCPS wants growth scores delayed until a student’s second year and proficiency scores until the third.

Make it easier for public school divisions to operate their own specialized day programs for students with significant special-education needs, including allowing state Children’s Services Act money to help pay for them.

Protect children during immigration enforcement actions. HCPS says recent enforcement activity has caused significant harm to some city students.

Fix the state’s STEM advisory system so the Virginia STEM Advisory Board can function as intended and accept grants and donations.

The district is also sharpening two existing priorities. The big one is school funding. HCPS wants Virginia to overhaul funding formulas that it says no longer reflect how schools actually staff their buildings. The district argues that using more realistic staffing numbers would help with teacher pay and with state requirements that localities are expected to carry out without enough state money. HCPS is also calling for continued support for free school meals and asking lawmakers not to impose new nutrition requirements without considering whether school divisions can actually afford them.

Some perennial priorities remain, such as teacher pay, mental health, school safety, local control, dual enrollment, school construction funding, and hiring a strong, diverse staff. However, several older items are disappearing from the list because the General Assembly has already acted on them, including broadband access, the cap on state-funded support positions, and information sharing between residential mental-health facilities and schools.

Finally, the Board unanimously approved a set of policies, most of which were up for a regular 5-year review.

Policy 432: Fundraising.

HCPS is making the policy more explicit about safety, extending some rules to all students, requiring written advance approval for school-sponsored fundraising, reducing some paperwork, and clarifying when PTO/booster-type fundraising falls under school division rules. The new policy states “Students should not be asked to participate in door-to-door solicitation for school-sponsored fundraising activities.” The old policy also said their fundraising was not regulated by HCPS. The revised policy draws a line based on location:

fundraising on school property must be approved in advance and follows this HCPS policy;

fundraising off school property, including door-to-door activities, is not governed by this policy.

Policy 424: Student Health Services. Aligns with a change in current state law to add a requirement for nurses employed within the division to get training and management of sickle cell disease.

Policy 429: Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting.This update reflects current state law and clarifies child-abuse reporting responsibilities. The revisions spell out who is a mandatory reporter (including adult athletics staff and volunteers,) make clear that reports must be made immediately, and emphasize that telling a supervisor does not end an employee’s responsibility to make sure the report reaches social services. The policy also updates required school notices and streamlines the agreement between HCPS and social services for investigating abuse and neglect reports.

Policy 714: Class Size

Here, 714 is rewritten to put the specific language from the code of Virginia about class-size limits directly into HCPS policy. It sets student-teacher ratios of 24:1 in kindergarten and grades 1–3, 25:1 in grades 4–6, and 24:1 in middle- and high-school English classes, with additional maximum class-size caps (the division is well below these ratios). Kindergarten classes over an average of 24 students would receive a full-time aide. Middle and high schools would also be expected to maintain an overall ratio of 21 students per full-time teacher. Parents must be notified within 10 days if a class exceeds the policy limit after Sept. 30, along with an explanation of how the division plans to address it.

Policy 721: Religion in the Schools

This update continues HCPS’s neutral stance on religion in schools. Students may express religious beliefs in homework, artwork and other assignments, but the revised policy makes clear that religious expression by students cannot be used to discriminate against, demean or target others. The rest of the changes are mostly wording updates rather than substantive policy shifts.

Policy 724: Programs for Gifted Students

This revision concerning gifted education involves minor wording and procedural updates. The revised policy removes the statement that all students are “uniquely gifted,” adds an explicit requirement for public review of the division’s gifted-education plan, updates references to state regulations, and makes several small wording changes involving parent/guardian consent and public access to the plan.

Policy 739: Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials

This update somewhat expands the policy, as the old version briefly required employees and students to follow copyright law and referenced “fair use.” The revised policy spells out responsibilities in much greater detail, including for software and electronic media, directs staff and students to school librarians when they are unsure whether material can legally be copied or used, and makes clear that violations can lead to discipline all the way up to termination for employees and suspension or expulsion for students. Old technology (like laser discs) mentions are deleted.

One detail worth noting is that the old sentence saying the school division assumes no liability for an individual employee’s copyright infringement is gone. The new policy instead emphasizes individual responsibility and possible discipline.

Policy 753: Regional Governor’s School(s)

This is being expanded to spell out how Harrisonburg’s slots at Massanutten Regional Governor’s School are used. HCPS students get first priority, unused slots may then be offered to other participating school divisions, and any remaining slots may be available to private-school or homeschooled students who live in Harrisonburg. The revised policy also adds language explaining how the Governor’s School calendar and schedule are set and removes an older requirement for separate superintendent-developed selection guidelines.

09/23/2026

City Council opposes roadless changes
Federal changes could endanger city’s water supply

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

“This is your show tonight, isn’t it?” Mayor Deanna Reed quipped to City Attorney Chris Brown as the Harrisonburg City Council made its way through a series of ordinance and appropriation changes that bordered on pro forma.

Among the most important, the council approved by consensus a formal comment from the city opposing federal changes in the roadless areas that include much of the city’s water supply. Nationally, roadless areas in national parks and forests are protected from oil and gas exploration and drilling, mining, and logging. Roadless rules protect 58.5 million acres, 400,000 of them in Virginia.

Information about the proposed changes and their local impact was presented by Lynn Cameron, from the Friends of Shenandoah Mountain, and Pete Bsumek, from the Shenandoah Chapter of the Virginia Sierra Club. The presentation is linked in the comments. Harrisonburg joins other Valley localities in formally opposing the changes.

Some of the largest roadless areas in the eastern U.S. are in this part of the state, and the changes proposed could allow logging on Shenandoah Mountain, among other dangers, such as interference in the spawning of brook trout in the Dry River. Runoff from logging operations there could create the need to dredge the city’s Switzer Reservoir to remove silt.

Although the topic was technically led by council member Laura Dent, she was participating remotely with an ineffective audio-visual setup. Echoes and feedback from her equipment was a consistent distraction. Because of a transmission delay, she didn’t always know where they were on the agenda. In addition to her comments being barely audible, the other Council members often had to endure delays of up to 15 seconds for her votes

Despite the delays, the council was able to work through the agenda in barely 90 minutes, including their descriptions of what events they’d attended since the last meeting. Included in those recitals were two mentions, by members Monica Robinson and Nasser Alsaadun of events with Beth Macy, the Democratic nominee for Congress from the Sixth District. Section 2.3.6 of the City Code, dealing with the conduct of council meetings, says in part, “No discussion of a sectarian or political nature shall be allowed.”

Among the council’s votes, much of it presented by Brown, they approved changes in the use of city property on Ramblewood Road for a Harrisonburg Electric Commission battery storage facility. The facility will store power that can be used during peak usage time, when buying power from Dominion costs more. Because HEC is city owned, the utility requires council permission to enter into long-term contracts. The lease had previously been approved, and Tuesday’s action increased the term of the lease from 15 to 20 years.

Council voted to write off 312 Public Utilities accounts worth $37,000 incurred in fiscal year 2024. The accounts written off as uncollectible make up fifteen hundredths of a percent of the total billings for that period.

Council also okayed revisions to the Downtown Master Planting Plan, including removal of some invasive species, following public input on the plan. The plan is linked in the comments.

The council also formally asked that the city’s desire for rail service be included in the 2026 Virginia Statewide Rail Plan, and that the General Assembly approve study of the feasibility of passenger rail service expansion to Harrisonburg and Rockingham County.

The council approved an addition to the procurement section of the City Code to prevent any money being spent on automated license plate readers, which include Flock cameras.

The council approved recommended changes to the city’s towing policy and fees.

The council approved allocation of a $200,000 Opioid Abatement Authority grant to the Strength in Peers group for support of their Peer Recovery Center.

Council allocated $37,000 in ARPA funds, which must be spent by the end of the year, for paving in the Northeast Neighborhood. ARPA is the American Rescue Plan Act passed during Covid.

09/15/2026

Long-term plan, short meeting
School Board discusses strategic plan, legislative goals

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

Tuesday’s Harrisonburg School Board meeting was a short one, but it covered some ground worth knowing about, from the division’s annual trip to lobby in Richmond, to an early conversation about revisiting the district’s long-term strategic plan.

Each year, the HCPS Board puts together a “legislative program”, containing a short list of specific bills it wants to see adopted along with broader policy positions it wants legislators to keep in mind. The board’s legislative committee, which includes Superintendent Dr. Michael Richards and board members Dr. Tim Howley and Dr. Andy Kohen, and a student intern, are meeting with system cabinet members to review last year’s program and decide what to keep, cut, or add.

One item is coming off the list for a good reason: a bill the board had been pushing for three years finally passed. The bill concerned technical details of reporting processes. On the policy side, the board continues to oppose additional standardized testing and unfunded state mandates, while pushing for more mental health support and help with students’ basic needs, including nutrition.

The committee also plans to keep building support across the political aisle, meeting with area legislators locally before heading to the VSBA’s Capitol Conference in Richmond this January. The full board is expected to review and approve the updated program at its October 6 meeting, with a printed brochure to follow once a draft design is approved.

Richards opened a broader conversation about the division’s strategic plan, which dates back roughly seven years to a planning process involving 34 community members, assembled with an eye toward representing the community’s diversity of experience and expertise. That group, working with an outside facilitator, developed a set of shared values and a five-year plan built around six action areas.

The pandemic slowed implementation, but staff say the core of the plan has now been completed. Notable examples include a multi-tiered student support system (now in year three of a five-year rollout) and the relocation of the district’s Family Resource Center from an elementary school to its own space on Main Street, now paired with a health clinic through a partnership with Sentara.

While the board has been getting periodic updates on individual pieces of the plan, it hasn’t done a full ground-up refresh since the plan was written. Tuesday’s discussion was exploratory rather than a final decision, but board members leaned toward opening the review up to public input (through a survey and possibly open forums) rather than reconvening a large committee from scratch. Members also were interested in first making the existing plan and its progress more visible to the community, so new input builds on what’s already been done rather than duplicating it. Also, Board members specifically want to capture input from Kohen and Kristen Loflin before their terms end at the end of the year.

Richards pointed to a few outcomes attributed in part to the current plan, including a 100 percent graduation rate among the district’s Black students, an overall graduation rate near 94 percent, and an advanced diploma rate above the state average.

At the end of the meeting, the board voted unanimously to endorse board member Emma Phillips as a candidate for vice chair of the Virginia School Boards Association’s Valley Region. The election itself takes place at the VSBA’s statewide convention in Williamsburg this November, with board members noting these regional races are typically uncontested.

Just before going into closed session, Richards briefed the board on a visit from Virginia’s Secretary of Education Dr. Jeff Smith and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jenna Conway to Smithland Elementary School, the secretary’s second visit to Harrisonburg in a few months. Several classroom teachers and the school’s librarian were recognized for hosting the visitors. The superintendent noted that a later dinner with the state officials gave him a chance to raise the division’s legislative priorities directly.

09/10/2026

Planners have an easy meeting: EMS plans, state-mandated changes fill uneventful agenda

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

Tonight’s Planning Commission meeting was all smooth sailing on the votes, which were unanimous across the board, but the conversation underneath was anything but boring.

The Planning Commission gave Eastern Mennonite School unanimous approval on two related things for their 26-acre campus (the block with the school buildings off Parkwood Drive and Virginia Avenue, near Mount Clinton Pike).

First, they locked in an official parking minimum of 200 spaces. City code requires schools to have enough parking, but leaves the exact number up to the school to calculate and get approved. EMS ran the numbers using state guidelines (enough for staff, plus 10 percent extra for visitors, plus student parking equal to a third of enrollment) and landed on 200.

Second, they got approval to update their whole campus master plan. This is the bigger, more technical piece. EMS’s campus has grown and changed a lot since their original 2002 plan, a 2016 update that added the elementary school building, and an update that merged everything into one tidy parcel in 2019. The new 2026 master plan is basically the updated blueprint for what the campus can look like going forward, including new buildings, more parking, and athletic facilities. Inside that plan are a couple of specific things of note:

A lot more parking than the 200 minimum. EMS wants room for up to 435 total spaces campuswide, with the extra ~235 there to handle church services, sports events, and other big gatherings that fill the lot beyond a normal school day.

Open space tracking. They’re no longer counting the athletic fields as “open space” (fields are developed, not open space) and instead pointing to a drainage channel area as the protected open space on the new map.

No traffic study was required for this, and city staff said there were no water/sewer concerns.

The commission also recommended City Council approval changes in the city ordinances, although the city has little choice. The General Assembly this year passed a law telling cities and counties they can no longer treat manufactured homes worse than regular site-built houses. If a neighborhood allows single-family homes, it now has to allow qualifying manufactured homes too.

Harrisonburg’s zoning code currently isn’t written that way, so this amendment will update the definition of “single-family dwelling” to explicitly include manufactured homes that meet three conditions: the home has to be legally converted to real property (basically de-titled as a vehicle and permanently attached to the land, with the paperwork filed at the courthouse); it has to be new-ish (occupied within 5 years of its manufacture date); and it has to go on its own individual lot (not a version of a mobile home park).

In practice, that conversion process means removing the wheels/axles, permanently anchoring it to a foundation, turning in the DMV title, filing an affidavit with the circuit court, and going through the normal building permits and inspections for the foundation, installation, and utility hookups.

Another new state law this year says any Virginia locality with 50,000+ people has to have at least one zoning district somewhere in its code that allows small single-family lots, specifically, lots no bigger than 3,000 square feet and no wider than 30 feet. Harrisonburg, with an estimated population of 51,000 has to comply.

Harrisonburg’s R-8 district already meets the area requirement, with a minimum is 2,800 square feet, but the minimum width of 35 feet be reduced to 3,000.

The General Assembly is increasingly dictating baseline zoning flexibility to localities, with two state-mandated zoning ordinance changes this meeting. The commission voted unanimously to forward the zoning amendments to the City Council.

The final piece of business involved initiating a zoning ordinance amendment related to refuse collection facilities. The city is planning to change how trash pickup works for smaller multifamily buildings, specifically, allowing “toter-based” service (those individual rolling trash cans, like what a single-family house gets) for apartment/multifamily projects with 6 to 11 units, instead of requiring dumpsters. Staff wants the zoning code’s screening rules updated to line up with that, basically making sure that wherever this new toter-based public service gets used, there are still sensible rules about how it’s screened and located, same as private trash setups already have.

Planning Commission staff also introduced proposed changes to the Commission’s own Bylaws, though at this point it’s just an initiation of discussion. The Bylaws require 28 days’ advance notice before any amendment can be adopted, so the action is really about starting that clock, as staff plan to bring the actual draft amendments to the October 14 meeting, with a possible vote to adopt them at the November 12 meeting. The proposed change would have the commission’s secretary appointed by the Director of Community Development instead of elected by the commission.

09/09/2026

Council gives short shrift to sidewalk recommendation: Planning Commission recommendation rejected

By Deb and Joe Fitzgerald

Harrisonburg City Council on Tuesday perfunctorily rejected a Planning Commission recommendation to spare the owner from a sidewalk requirement at 704 N. Liberty Street.

The council made the decision without asking the owner or his representative, Gil Colman, to speak, depending solely on information from the Community Development Department, which opposed the variance. The property was recently subdivided into four lots. The owner plans to keep the existing single-family home, add a duplex facing North Liberty Street, and build a new single-family home facing West Washington Street.

The applicant sought a variance excusing them from having to build a public sidewalk along the North Liberty Street frontage, as part of the subdivision. Planning Commission split 4-2 to grant the sidewalk exemption. Discussion there was about whether the ordinance, as written, makes sense for a project this size. The sidewalk would not connect to any other sidewalk on that side of the property. The variance request sparked a long and in-depth policy discussion by planning commissioners about sidewalk rules in general and encouraging new housing. Council rejected the variance, 4-1, after a relatively short discussion. Council member Laura Dent, the council representative on the commission, was the dissenting vote.

The vote was part of a meeting dominated by zoning issues by touching on various other topics.

The council granted a special use permit for the property owner at 387 Monticello Avenue to operate a short-term rental (similar to an Airbnb) out of the accessory building on the property, which sits in an R-1 (single-family residential) zone surrounded mostly by other single-family homes. The rental itself would be limited to two rooms and up to four guests. City planning staff and the Planning Commission recommended approval.

The council approved a special use permit to convert the former Artisan Packaging building on West Wolfe Street into an indoor recreational facility. The 5.35-acre property has been vacant since the company closed in October 2023. The plan is to physically split the building in two: the northern half, facing West Wolfe Street, would become a self-storage facility, allowed by right, while the southern half, facing West Market Street, would house the recreational use that requires this permit.

The applicant already has two prospective tenants lined up. One wants to run an indoor rock-climbing gym; the other wants to open an indoor pickleball facility with courts, lessons, and leagues. Both tenants may also add small-scale extras like merchandise sales, refreshments, or occasional tournaments and events, but everything would happen entirely indoors.

Staff and Planning Commission recommended approval, with conditions attached: all recreational activities must stay entirely inside the building; the approved uses are limited to indoor rock climbing, pickleball, and anything the Zoning Administrator considers substantially similar; and no residential units are permitted. Staff added a requirement that the owner conduct a traffic study if traffic became too heavy.

Council also voted to amend the city’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan to incorporate the Northeast Neighborhood Small Area Plan, the city’s first-ever neighborhood-specific plan.The plan’s core purpose is to directly address the lasting effects of urban renewal on the Northeast Neighborhood, described in the plan as generational harm.

Council voted to add poultry hatcheries to a zoning ordinance amendment from earlier this year. In distinguishing between meat processing and poultry processing, staff had inadvertently left hatcheries unmentioned. This had the unintended effect of turning them into a “nonconforming use” under the zoning code, even though the city has long treated them as allowed by right in industrial districts. The amendment adopted Tuesday restores that right.

Council also approved what is essentially a paperwork requirement, although for a lot of paper. Money appropriated or approved in the prior fiscal year has to be reappropriated if not spent by the end of the prior year. The total carried over was $22 million.

Council also voted to set the property tax exemption on personal vehicles at 18.2 percent. The amount is based on how much the state gives to each locality. The exemption began in 1997 when Jim Gilmore won the governor’s race by promising to eliminate the tax completely. The exemption has been gradually whittled away in the interim.

Council also tentatively approved the design for a mosaic at the Ralph Sampson Park Spraygrounds. Harrisonburg residents Steve and Chris Carpenter are donating $100,000 for artworks at the park.

Also, K.C. Kessler of Blue Ridge Rail made a presentation in favor of bringing passenger rail to Harrisonburg. The presentation by Kessler, a city planning commissioner, listed the advantages of rail, and the steps to get on the state’s list for future passenger train extension. Council asked staff to compose a letter or resolution supporting the move.

Also the council voted to participate in State Corporation Commission proceedings regarding the potential merger of Dominion Energy and NextEra Energy. The Harrisonburg Electric Commission has already filed to be a part of the discussion. Participating means the city and HEC will be informed of hearings on the topic and allowed to comment.

Council also reiterated its desire for an ordinance specifically banning city use of automated license plate readers. Council member Nasser Alsaadun said he hoped that the ordinance, which council addressed as a done deal, would not be rescinded without giving opponents a chance to speak. Council had decided in July to remove the existing ALPRs (Flock cameras) without placing the subject on the agenda.

Council ends their meetings with each member saying what meetings they have attended as council members. During that section of the agenda on Tuesday, two members mentioned the Democratic Party’s Labor Day fundraiser, which is a party function and not a government event.

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