April 7, 2008

A plan to help people navigate around Charlottesville may see a big cut in funding.

"Charlottesville is a hard place to direct people, it's a hard city to learn your way around for one thing," says Vice Mayor Julian Taliaferro.

When you drive around the city, you'll see many different signs.

Co-Chair of the Downtown Business Association, Bob Stroh, says, "Probably the people who find it most unsettling are the visitors to Charlottesville who want to find their way around the town, and yet as they try to locate their destinations, they end up lost somewhere."

Back in 2006, the city started looking at a new Way Finding Program. They were looking at ways to help visitors find their destinations in Charlottesville. That includes getting rid of the multiple existing systems of signs in the city and replacing it with one consistent system.

"It includes signs that will take you easily by following the same signs that look the same with the same color patterns and the same fonts will take you throughout Charlottesville," says Stroh.

The plans are ready on paper. Its budget was originally slated for $1 million dollars over four years, but council may cut that funding, perhaps by about half.

"I'd like to see us support the signage of downtown. I wouldn't be opposed to reducing it a little bit; $250,000," says Taliaferro.

Some are concerned that it must be properly funded to be worth doing.

"A signage program works when a whole signage program is in place; that's when it's really helpful. When you just do a little bit here and a little bit there, it's just another piece of the chaos and that's not helpful to anybody," says Stroh.

Council is going to take up the sign issue at their meeting Monday night at City Hall starting at 7:00 P.M.