Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   2/1/2023

Good afternoon everyone and welcome.

It's so nice to see so many people show up this afternoon.

I'm pleased to call to order this February 1st 2023 regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and Lane Auditorium.

Our supervisors who are present this afternoon are Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley,

of the Rivanna District and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville Magisterial District.

Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District is not able to attend today.

I would note for the record that we do have a quorum present.

I would also like to mention that our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson,

Our County Attorney Mr. Steve Rosenberg are also with us at the dais and we also have our County Clerk Ms.

Claudette Borgerson and we may also have later our Senior Deputy Clerk Mr. Travis Morris here at the meeting.

I also want to thank our Albemarle County Police Officers who are present here today and thank you for your service every day for putting your lives on the line to protect us.

If you would now please rise as you are able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

If you would now also join us in a moment of silence.

Board, it's now time to adopt our final agenda.

I do not believe that there are any amendments.

So moved.

All right.

We have a motion by Supervisor Malek and a second by Supervisor McKeel.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

I do want to announce that today we are using a temporary change to the Zoom meeting link for virtual participation.

For the February 15th meeting, a permanent change to the Zoom meeting link will occur.

After the change to the meeting link for the February 15th meeting, the link is not expected to change.

Community members are advised to go to the participation guide for public meetings on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors webpage to access the correct Zoom link.

And again, effective February 15th, you can save that in your favorites to make it easier for you to join at future meetings.

At this time board will move to item number five, brief announcements by board members.

We will go through our order.

Yes, I'm very happy to announce that yesterday I participated as a judge in the elementary spelling bee for all elementary schools in Albemarle County.

There were 15 participants and it was a nail biter up until the end and they were so

Darling, and it was really an honor to be there as one of three judges.

That's what I have to address.

And I believe here in the building last night was the middle school competition as well.

So what a great time of year.

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway?

None today, thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

All right, thank you.

Board, I have three announcements.

The first one, I'm very sorry to announce.

I just received notification that Lindsey Dorrier, Jr., who served for 12 years on the Board, recently passed away.

He was born in August of 1943 in Scottsville.

His mother was a teacher at Belfield School, and his father ran a local

Ford dealership, Bruce Doria Motor Company.

Again, he was raised in Scottsville, attended public schools, graduated from St.

Christopher School, Trinity College, enlisted in the Army, graduated from Infantry Officer Candidate School, and served as military intelligence.

He returned home to attend the University of Virginia Law School, pursued his career as a lawyer and elected official.

He was a reserve officer in the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps and he served his community for many years locally.

So it is with great sadness that I announce his passing.

I thank him and his family because you do not serve alone when you serve the public for their many years of dedicated service and I believe that the Scottsville Facebook page has more information, the funeral

Service will be at Scottsville Methodist Church and I think the burial will be at the Scottsville Cemetery on February the 11th.

I think that's the date.

I apologize not having that firm.

Thank you for sharing that, Donna.

I just want to say for those of us that are not on Facebook, I had not heard.

It may be in the paper, I don't know.

I have actually dropped social media.

Someone told me it was there, and I did get confirmation that it has been posted.

Could I just ask if someone from staff could track that information down and share it with us?

Yeah, I actually have that.

That would be perfect, just so we know.

Thank you.

I'll just add one thing.

Yeah, and again, I mean he served his country in the Army.

He served our community.

He served his town.

That truly is a public servant.

Since our last meeting, Vice Chair Supervisor Andrews and I were able to attend the VACO Chair-Vice Chair Conference in Richmond.

It was a little disappointing, the attendance, which we think was largely because they had scheduled this conference three weeks earlier in the calendar year than they normally do, and many of the counties had not yet had their organizational meeting.

in order to pick their chairs and vice chairs.

Nonetheless, it was a good opportunity to be with other counties and to be able to see the differences and the challenges that different local communities have.

And then last week, as the board knows I'm on the Virginia Council on Women.

and last week I was invited and attended a presentation by the American Council on Growth.

At the end of our meeting today, I'm going to take some of the slides from that and share with the board as we talk about some of the factors that are affecting the economy on all levels, internationally, nationally, within the Commonwealth and of course as that also affects us here in Albemarle County.

We do have a proclamation which I have requested support from the board to be able to read.

So board, I am pleased to offer as a proclamation in motion, a proclamation celebrating Black History Month.

Whereas February 2023 marks the 97th anniversary of historian Carter G. Woodson's dedication in promoting the achievements of black Americans and people of African descent.

And whereas February 2023 marks the 47th anniversary of the federal recognition of Black History Month.

and whereas Albemarle County celebrates the wisdom of civil rights leaders and community builders this month and every day.

And whereas Albemarle County seeks to acknowledge and recognize black Americans in the local workforce and community who contribute much time and service to enhancing the wellbeing of all residents.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed

that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby honor and celebrate Black History Month as an opportunity for all county residents to recognize and support the social, physical, and cultural contributions of black Americans and to take meaningful actions to create a more equitable and inclusive community for all

So we have a motion by Supervisor Price and a second by Supervisor Malek.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Thank you, Board.

And I understand that Mr. Jesse Brookings, who heads the county's Office of Equity and Inclusion, is here to both accept this proclamation and also to make some remarks.

Good afternoon, everyone.

So I'm actually here to thank you all again for accepting this proclamation.

It is a significant achievement to acknowledge the contributions of black Americans nationally, but also locally.

So whereas I'm here to receive your all and your proclamation, your acknowledgement, I wanted to call down Samuel Spencer, who most appropriately really embodies this proclamation, specifically the contributions to our community and locally.

So with that, I just want to introduce Sam Spencer.

Sam currently serves as the Self-Sufficiency Program Manager

with Albemarle County's Department of Social Services.

He has been employed with Albemarle County Social Services since 2014.

He currently oversees mandated and non-mandated employment services programs with Albemarle County.

Under the umbrella of self-sufficiency also resides Virginia's Initiative for Education Work,

employment and training program, childcare subsidies, services, and career, Virginia Career Works Satellite Office in Albemarle County Center.

Here are some additional committees and initiatives that SAM participates in.

Virginia Career Works Committee Member, Blue Ridge Area Coalition for Homeless Board Member, Virginia Department of Social Services Professional Development Committee, Virginia's Eviction Reduction Program Committee Member, Reentry Regional Partnership Committee,

Albemarle, Charlottesville Restorative Justice Advisory Council, Equity Inclusion Belonging Facilitator in Advocacy for Refugee Resettlement.

He is also a basketball official, a volunteer youth football coach, and a high school basketball coach.

Sam has worked for the past few years behind the scenes to give others the opportunity for success, empowerment, and confidence to thrive in the community, which we all know and love and appreciate.

With that,

Thank you, Mr. Brookings.

Good afternoon, sir.

I just want to say thank you for the opportunity.

I'm not one for the spotlight, but I believe that when people have the opportunity to receive their flowers, they should.

I think this opportunity to be before you is a great one.

I accept this because I know the work is hard, but we're all servant leaders in this work that we do.

And being a leader means that you have to serve those in the community.

Thank you.

While you may not desire to be in the spotlight, it's very clear from your actions that you are a leader and well recognized.

Thank you, sir.

I would be very pleased if you would come up and I can hand the proclamation to you, sir.

All right, board, I'd like to give each of you an opportunity to make some remarks.

Yes, I came across a quote this morning reading the paper, and it was from a Ms.

Lapierre, who was actually writing a book regarding the Murray family who lived here in Virginia but were denied the opportunity to check out books because the library was an all-white library.

That was in the late 50s and they fought it and finally they achieved more equity.

But LaPier had a quote that I thought was very appropriate that really resonates with me for all of us actually.

Progress doesn't happen just because time passes.

Progress happens when people take action to make things better.

Which is what the Murrays did and I

Thank you.

Thank you.

What today has helped me do is to remember all the communities around our rural areas, particularly where I grew up, that are getting so much more awareness now from the rest of the public.

I mean, the fact that we have the neighborhoods, the crossroads, the photographs of our old

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

When these proclamations come before us, I often find that they trigger memories and reflection, and the one that was triggered this year in preparing for the meeting

was Dr. Frank Henderson.

Dr. Henderson passed away in January of 04, and he was honored at a memorial in February of 04, so the timing is interesting to me that he would pop up.

Dr. Henderson was a law school professor and political science professor at Ohio University in Athens where I attended.

He was a theater arts and drama major there, but poli sci and law was something that I was interested in, and a friend of mine introduced me to Dr. Henderson

and somehow I managed to convince him, even though I had no business being in his classes, to be in some of his classes, which after meeting me he granted.

Dr. Henderson was one of the first graduates of Little Rock Central High School and he had a very distinctive voice because during a civil rights protest he had his throat partially crushed during the event.

So he spoke with this very raspy voice.

And when he called your name, you knew who was saying your name and calling you out.

But I think of his reading list, and that's what popped up this year.

And as a young 20-something, probably wasn't even 20 at the time, in a class full of graduate students and seniors, he had a class called Intellectual Heroes and Despicable Devils.

And he set you up in the room based on where you aligned politically.

So if you were on the left, you sat there.

And if you were on the right, you sat there.

And if you weren't sure, you sat in the middle.

And he demanded that you talk through your issues and your perspectives in a respectful way and back it up with readings and resources and cite your argument.

So you didn't get away with just spouting things without having some good evidence behind it.

One of the books on there that I was happy to find

in addition to his reading was Thurgood Marshall's Dream Makers, Dream Breakers book.

That was what he introduced me to that book.

So I'm looking forward to revisiting that this month and just share that little bit of reflection given that the month that we're in celebrating Black History Month.

And Dr. Frank Henderson was certainly a dream maker.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Very cool teacher.

That sounds wonderful.

We're celebrating Black History Month, and I am so pleased that we can do this every year.

It does cause us to reflect, and black history is full of acts to celebrate, historical celebrations, and sadness.

And in reflecting on it today, I think we're all aware of the circumstances that recently happened in Memphis.

And I just wanted to take the opportunity today, because I think they said it beautifully, to read the joint statement that our police chiefs

in the community released because I just think it should go on the record for our meeting.

So I'm going to try and read this and take a deep breath.

We are profoundly saddened by the actions that led to the untimely, senseless, and brutal death of Tyree Nichols at the hands of five former members of the Memphis Police Department.

Once again,

Police officers around the globe who hold dear their oath of office and work diligently to preserve public trust and confidence have been irreparably harmed by the callous actions of others who abandon their commitment to peace, justice, and humanity.

The disgusting actions we witnessed in this video are not indicative of the hard-working men and women of our agencies.

The work our officers do every day matters in the lives of others.

We must set out to do good, act with measured restraint, honor our commitment to the constitutional principles that guide our work, and to always, always respect this entity of human life, no matter what.

It is the undisputed truth that our profession has not always been on the right side of justice.

The actions of these five former members show that we have a lot of work to do.

The leaders of the three law enforcement agencies in this region are committed to building back the community's trust to uphold the oath we hold so dear.

And that was signed by Timothy Longo, University of Virginia Chief of Police, Michael Kocris,

City of Charlottesville Chief of Police, and Sean Reeves, Outlaw County Chief of Police.

And I just think, given today and the circumstances and what we're watching and listening in the news and on the press, this was worthy of going into our formal record.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I'm going to ask a question.

I'm going to make comments.

I'm going to ask that question again, and then I'm going to answer it.

I am proud to be a member of the local chapter of the NAACP, as well as serve on its executive committee.

Last week I attended the MLK community commemoration.

Notice that I use the word commemoration, not celebration.

Dr. Yaba Blay was the keynote speaker and her remarks clarified why it was a commemoration and not a celebration.

Because you cannot celebrate when the battle has not yet been won.

Why do we offer and approve resolutions such as this one, commemorating Black History Month?

That has been on my mind since listening to Dr. Blay.

We know the history of America since 1619 has been one of prejudice and discrimination, lawful discrimination.

And I'm going to mention a couple of other groups as well.

Seventy years ago this year, the federal government instituted legal requirements

which prohibited the employment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in the federal government, which then followed up with state laws and corporate policies.

This past weekend, anti-Semitic flyers were distributed in Charlottesville.

Sixteen states are pushing don't-say-gay bills and other censorship laws.

In the state of Florida, you can take an AP course in European history

in art history, in Japanese language and culture, German language and culture, Italian language and culture, and Spanish language and culture.

But according to their governor, you cannot take an AP course in African American studies.

The governor of Florida also recently announced his plans to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across Florida universities.

Racial, ethnic, religious, sexually explicit humor was never okay.

When I was a young adult and we took efforts to bring that to an end, people claimed you were being politically correct.

Today the term is woke.

I call it simply treating people with dignity and respect.

So I ask again, why do we offer and approve resolutions such as this one commemorating Black History Month?

Well, I'll tell you why.

We do so because we believe in Albemarle County and we respect the dignity and worth of every member of our community.

We demonstrate that respect through not just our words, but through our actions in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And we do so in order to achieve that more perfect union and because we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.

that we are all created equal and that every member of our community should have the actual opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And I am proud to be a member of this community and this board which honors our black brothers and sisters and the contributions that they have made, continue to make, and will make to make this a better country.

All right board at this time we'll move to item number seven from the public.

This is an opportunity for the public to speak on matters on the agenda but not listed for a public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

During the time set aside for matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board, other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing.

Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each Board meeting.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office.

Up to ten persons may speak during matters from the public session.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and a light system at the podium.

The green light will go on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking.

The red light indicates

Your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments.

In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the Board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

When addressing the Board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your Magisterial District.

Address comments directly to the Board as a whole.

Any written statements or other supporting material may be given to the Clerk.

If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in recognition.

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Our first speaker, John Hall.

Good afternoon.

I'm Johnny Hall.

I'd like to comment on

something that's been done in the past of being able to annex annexation and to what use would be the money.

I feel like I'm really addressing my comments to Ann Mallek over here because she has really put a lot into the internet and the history of annexation.

What would I use the money

from annexation, if it were to come about again.

Well, first of all, I'd annex UVA, because that's supported by the statute, as was pointed out in the literature, the research I've done.

Since it's there, I don't think anybody's really appreciated it but me, sort of like a guy by the name of Weber, a lawyer in town that said the statutes were

historical landmarks and whatever, and they couldn't take them away.

But getting back to that, the idea of annexation, going to UVA and annexing UVA, which is called for by the statute at some point.

They've always been given a free ride.

We annex UVA and tap into those billions of dollars that they have.

We wouldn't have to raise taxes.

to give a tax rebate to people, lower taxes for people.

UVA finally pays their fair share.

What would I do with the money then?

I would take the CAT buses, Charlottesville area transit, go all the way to the airport.

The roads are all there, a little extra money if we're paying for fuel.

We don't have gentrification drivers.

We have going to the airport.

Cat Shelters.

The shelters along the way would have stadium seating, they would have dome lights, they'd be powered by solar power as well as wind turbines, small wind turbines as you see on 60,000 houses in the city.

Mine has one.

That's where I got the idea.

I'm an inventor.

Here's a life pipe.

People can puff on a life pipe.

It will have activated charcoal in it.

Instead of buying bottled water, I heard of the LifeStraw here from my associate.

We would have something we could blow and puff into and clean our lungs from carbon pollution and carbon.

Just think people that mine coal in West Virginia will be able to have a life pipe

Thank you, Mr. Hall.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Margaret Maubin, proud resident of the Free Union Area in the Jack Jouett District and I've lived here since 1970.

I believe in the Second Amendment and in no way do the comments that I offer put into question the right of any citizen to own firearms.

I'm speaking to you in response to a letter that I read about a person who has applied for a major home business.

Dealing in Firearms.

I am opposed to the process that is delineated in the Ordinance 5.2a, opposed to the approval of this particular application, and opposed to even the concept that we in Albemarle County would allow personal homes or rental homes to alter, make, or store firearms in such dwellings as part of a business.

My concern is quite simply safety.

I suggest to the board that we already have commercial businesses within the county that address the needs of firearms and which, as commercial businesses, will have procedures in place wherein they can be monitored for safety.

For example, Toby's Pawn Shop.

What are the problems with the ordinance?

Number one, the intersection at Free Union Road and Woodlands and the area around that intersection is a dangerous place.

What stipulations need to be met by VDOT for ordinance 5.2a?

I attempted to reach the VDOT, but the person in charge has not been available.

Number two, letters of notification to adjacent landowners are sent only at the tail end of the application process.

Why can't these letters be sent when the application is received by the county?

thus allowing any citizens who are concerned sufficient time to do research and respond appropriately.

Undoubtedly, most people will have little if any interest with regards to most of these home business requests.

Number three, if letters of notification are sent after all the check boxes are checked, do the citizen comments have any weight or bearing at all?

Number four, letters of notification are sent only to adjacent neighbors.

Is that really fair?

Do you think that others who live near the applicant might have concerns?

Consider that a bullet from the most popular handgun, a 9mm gun, can travel 1.2 miles and rifle bullets even further, according to the NRA.

Should we not notify residents within that radius?

Number five, why aren't background checks a part of any process for a person who is applying

to deal in any form or fashion with firearms.

And number six, what is the involvement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms?

I have not been able to reach them after many attempts.

Let's keep this beautiful county just as safe as we can.

We have commercial businesses that deal in firearms.

Let's allow them to do this kind of work.

Please do not allow homeowners in any area of our county

to have firearms businesses.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Neil Williamson.

I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on central Virginia's local governments.

Today, on your agenda, you'll have a great deal of conversation about housing affordability.

I encourage you to utilize the calculator function in your cell phones as you calculate the costs and benefits of each proposal.

About two years ago, at the adoption of Housing Albemarle, this board and staff indicated the plan would not work absent buy-in from the development community.

The development community wants to be a partner with Albemarle County,

to reach your housing affordability goals.

Early in the housing Albemarle process, several members of the development community met extensively with Albemarle staff and provided a litany of incentives that could make the mandated 20% affordable housing in new projects work.

Then we heard crickets.

The free enterprise asked, begged, privately and publicly,

Please engage.

Fast forward to this past Friday, when your agenda dropped, we got our first look at the latest proposal.

In reviewing the proposal over the weekend, I'm reminded that housing affordability is a community goal and should be supported by the entire community, not just the development community.

I'm also reminded of the Hippocratic oath the doctors take, first do no harm.

This incentive package, as written, doesn't meet either your goal when you passed Housing Albemarle or the Hippocratic Oath.

If this limited proposal goes forward as drafted, the vast majority of Albemarle County's new residential projects will go forward by right or not go forward at all.

The Free Enterprise Forum hopes this board's genuine desire to move something forward

doesn't preclude you from doing the work necessary to cooperatively develop a solution that will actually incentivize the development of affordable housing.

Thank you.

All right, just confirming with the clerk.

Excuse me.

Donna, could I just ask to indulge me for just a minute and see, I think we have some information that we received today in our inboxes, which none of us have had time to read.

I'm going to ask Jeff if he might just address the concern we heard about the gun ordinance, what is being called the gun ordinance.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Mr. Richardson?

Chair Price, I will ask Mr. Walker, Doug Walker.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Thank you for passing this around the horn here.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Svoboda.

I didn't see you back there.

Good afternoon.

Bart Swoboda, Zoning Administrator.

I don't know if you have specific questions, the process, if we talk specifically about the use of gunsmith as a home occupation, or we talk about home occupations in general.

In the last, just to give you an idea of the volume that we deal with in home occupations, in the last 10 years we've done about 3,779 home occupations.

I say approximately because that's our application number, we probably haven't issued all of those.

As of this year, since January 1st of 2023, we've already done 19 home occupations.

So we have this particular one that we asked for where we sent adjacent property owner letters on is actually still pending, but that's one of the 19.

So we do on average somewhere around 370 a year of home occupations.

And so that keeps us in line with also business license and information that they have and we have we communicate to make sure similar to our home state program

where we make sure that they're licensed both with us and that they are receiving their business licenses.

Yes.

So any gunsmith home occupation that we have is reviewed by ATF.

So there's an agent that we have specifically assigned to our area that we work with.

and out of all of those home occupations, the 3700, we've done 12 gunsmiths in that amount of time.

Thank you.

And as Supervisor McKeel mentioned, and I did see there was a communication that came out a little while ago today.

Yes.

I have not had an opportunity to actually review it.

I think what we can say, however, is that the county has received communications from members of our community and that the county is examining this thoroughly as you would any application, but clearly when there is community interest it is important that we let our community members know that this is something that the county is examining.

both from the application standpoint, I would say, as well as I believe as to whether there should be any revisions to any ordinance because that's something we should always be evaluating.

Based on some of those comments that we've received, we're also looking at process.

So as an example, our home, I don't want to say homestay, so I apologize because that's been taking up a lot of our time lately.

Our home occupation process says that we notify the adjacent property owners and so we use the same criteria that we use for all the other applications to determine what an adjacent property owner is.

With that, there's a minimum of five-day notice before we approve the application.

And so normally it takes us 30 days or so since the letter.

However, based on the comments we've gotten, the letter is unclear in whether it's five days or so.

Thank you, Mr. Rispoboda.

I think at this point we could say it's a process and it's still in process.

Thank you.

You mentioned ATF.

When in the process, when you receive an application, does their review happen?

It's after our approval.

So the ATF's approval, we operate kind of in concert.

but ATF is not going to issue them a federal firearms and FFL, the federal firearms license without permission from the county.

This is not unusual process for us with state or federal agencies because those forms similar to one that we did I believe last week for air quality is we have to have local

either governing body or appropriate staff sign off on those things prior to those federal or state licenses being issued.

So that's kind of normal.

They're brought into the process almost immediately upon the submittal of the application.

And are background checks part of what the ATF reviews?

That is an ATF question.

So zoning actually doesn't have the authority under the Code of Virginia to do background checks.

That's not a thing that we're permitted to do.

I can anecdotally add, having been a prosecutor, defense counsel, and criminal trial judge previously, that there are background checks that are conducted, at least on the applicant.

And a follow-up to that, what about ongoing supervision to a business?

ATF, it's my understanding, and this has gone on, they've changed their regulations a little bit, but for the most part they do have inspections that they do on their licensed dealers or their federal firearms licensed folks.

So I don't want to call them dealers because that federal firearms license covers a bunch of activities for them.

The gunsmiths that we generally deal with here are upfitting or they're customizing stocks and things like that, meaning you might have a synthetic stock that you want to have wood or wood to synthetic or a scope that you want put on or a weapon that you've inherited, a firearm that you've inherited.

from your grandfather and uncle that you want re-blued or restored.

Are there stipulations about using sort of bonafide parts?

Because I heard somewhere in conversation, and I don't remember where, that there was some element of producing

materials for these weapons using a 3D printer at this application.

Was that spelled out in the application you received?

So there's, in the information that you receive, there's links to the application.

In this particular request, and we have not had one for 3D printing, that is heavily regulated by ATF.

And so those are things that if you are actually a manufacturer of weapons, and I'm speaking a little out of turn because I don't work for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, but if I am making a firearm, I have to serial number that firearm for ATF, especially if I'm going to sell it.

So if you have specific questions about the ATF process,

Thank you.

And lastly, you mentioned about sort of rehabbing old weapons.

Old weapons can be very dangerous and blow up on you if they're not squared away.

So where would the testing occur once one of these weapons was supposedly ready to be handed back to its owner?

The discharge of firearm is covered under other sections of the county code.

So if I'm permitted to discharge a firearm on my premises, then I would be able to test it there.

But that could be stipulated by your permission, I suppose.

Otherwise, you're leading it up to somebody to decide for themselves.

And this is a question that's been raised by people who live around.

No, I was just going to simply say, Bart, thank you.

Yeah, the form that we use for notification

actually can't tell you how long we've been kind of using that plug and play forum and with the feedback that we've gotten.

If I use home stays as the example, we put a date specific in on when we want comments back and it's usually 10 or 15 days or so out.

in coordination with the staff report and how we submit that.

So when major home occupations went from special permit to administrative, there was a difference there.

So years ago, when I used an outbuilding or had what we call the A and a B, now it's called a minor and a major.

It went from a special use permit because we were approving all of those, the governing body.

We turned that to administrative.

All right, so now we move to item number eight, the consent agenda.

I'm not aware of any requested amendments.

So moved.

All right, we have a motion from Supervisor Malek and a second from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

We'll move to item number nine, action item SC202200066, the Stoutville Farm Homestay.

Ms.

Good afternoon, members of the Board.

My name is Leah Brumfield, Senior Planner II in Zoning.

Happy February to everyone.

We do have one special exception for a homestay today And I am not presenting that's not helpful Which is requiring requesting a special exception to permit a homestay on a property held by Kay Holdings LLC Managing member of that LLC is Mr. Ludwig Kuttner who is also the resident of the parcel and The parcel under question is known as Astuteville Farm the primary residence of the parcel was built around

1820ish and has been the primary residence of Mr. Kuttner and his family since the 1980s.

The proposed homestay use would be located in two additional dwellings on the property which are pictured here on the screen.

The smaller painted red cottage predates the primary residence on the property.

Estimated construction is 1754.

The brick red cottage to the right on the screen has an estimated construction date of 1824.

So this special exception is being requested because the ordinance requires at least one individual owner of the parcel must reside on the parcel itself in order to qualify for a homestay use and an LLC

in that case must have a resident manager approved by the board.

In this case, Mr. Kuttner would serve as the resident manager for his property as he is the managing member of K Holdings LLC.

If the special exception is approved, the owners will then apply for a home state zoning clearance.

and during that process the structures used would be inspected for building and fire safety and the owners would send a notice to their neighbors providing contact information for their responsible agent.

The maximum number of guest bedrooms permitted by right on a parcel this size is five bedrooms.

The homestay use as configured in these two structures would have three total guest bedrooms.

No new structures are proposed and as the structures predate the homestay ordinance adopted in 2019

also predate zoning laws, and in one case, the United States of America.

These structures do not require a special exception for accessory structures.

Per the homestay regulations in 5148, the board may consider whether the permission of having a resident manager instead of the owner as an individual person would be any adverse impact to the surrounding neighborhood.

adverse impact to public health, safety, or welfare, whether the special exception would be consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable master or small area plans, and whether proposed special exception would be consistent in size and scale with the surrounding neighborhood.

So here I have a landscape context image.

Highlighted in the pale blue is the 16.79-acre parcel proposed for use for the homestays.

The larger 251 acre parcel surrounding the smaller parcel on three sides is also owned by Key Holdings LLC but is not proposed for use as a homestay.

The larger parcel does contain forest areas, agriculture, and additional dwellings rented as long-term rentals but is not proposed for any use for a homestay as that is not the primary residence parcel of the owners.

Zooming into the

16 acre parcel, we see the two structures here highlighted with green dots are the structure proposed for use as homestays.

The primary dwelling of the parcel in Mr. Kitten's residence is on the far left bottom of this image, the brick multiple story structure there.

Immediately to the right of that dwelling is the brick cottage homestay.

and then further up next to the vegetable garden, which is shown here in winter, is the smaller painted red cottage.

We did receive one inquiry from a neighboring parcel regarding the public notice of this application, but no concerns or objections were expressed.

We only had an inquiry about the specifics of the regulation and the specifics of the application itself.

Alright, thank you.

We will go through our order.

Thank you.

No questions, but I love the description as the accessory structures predate our country.

Supervisor Galloway?

No questions.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

It does put age into perspective, doesn't it?

No questions here, thank you.

I have no questions.

My home also comes from 1754, so I sense no significant objections.

Motion by Supervisor Price, second by Supervisor Mallek.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Thank you, Board.

Before we go on, I do have some comments, however, I do want to make in general about homestays in light of some legislative action or inaction, as the case may be, and also because there are some parallels

with this application to one that we had just a couple of weeks ago out of Rivanna where I had a number of questions with regard to how many exterior buildings, auxiliary buildings.

Over the course of the last several weeks, I've been able to have a number of my questions answered in that regard.

And as Ms.

Brumfield indicated, you're welcome to sit down.

Thank you.

This is a situation where we have a main residence plus two outbuildings.

Our ordinance speaks to no more than five bedrooms, and that was part of the conversation that I brought up last time, that a cottage, a cabin, is different than a bedroom.

Now, I want to throw out a few other things.

I try to generally get in touch with applicants

within the magisterial district I represent.

And one of the things I brought up with county staff is, is there a way to make it easier for us to connect with the applicants if we have questions so that we might be able to go and do a site visit or something like that?

So while I was trying to look up to see if I could get in touch with Mr. Kuttner, in this particular instance, I saw that he is a principal in about eight or nine LLCs, all of which are related to real estate.

which goes back to part of the philosophy as I understand the home stays in Albemarle County which is that they are to be a collateral use for income generation of what is otherwise a primary residence as opposed to what in many areas of the country you have a residential property that is primarily intended for income generation.

and we know that if we turn our residential properties primarily into income generation on short-term rentals, then we are simply going to exacerbate the problem we already have with availability of housing in our community.

Now in this one as we approved, and I'm simply using it as an example, all the evidence is clear that it is his primary residence.

But there is nothing that precludes an individual situated similarly to this to then forming a new LLC, purchasing another property, making it a primary residence, turning it into homestay use, and just flipping over one after another.

So our efforts to try and make this a collateral use of a primary residence rather than turning all of our residences into short-term rentals can be short-circuited that way.

We also know that there's a recent Attorney General's opinion that impacts what ability a county may have to regulate homestays if it is part of an agricultural activity on a farm.

Delegate Hudson has introduced legislation which would allow any property owner where there's a single family to add auxiliary dwelling units anywhere on the property.

So effectively, what I believe is that our county's ability to regulate home stays has been dramatically reduced to very little.

If the structure was built, if it's an auxiliary structure built after the implementation of the ordinance, we can deny it based on those grounds.

We do have the special exception that we can make if it's less than 125 feet from the property line or for a resident manager rather than a property owner.

but effectively where I see it today, because also, forgot the other thing, that we had as a legislative agenda item was to have the homestay approvals go with the applicant rather than the property did not make it out of committee.

So all of the actions that we have tried to do in order to limit homestays for the purposes of allowing a property owner, a person,

to hold onto the property by making some collateral income rather than not being able to afford to keep the property.

To avoid having our residential properties turned into short-term rentals which makes our housing availability even worse.

All of the things that we've tried to do basically have been gutted from us.

There's very little that we actually now can do and I simply make that as comments.

This

simply happened to be a case that in my mind brought up a number of those considerations.

So I just throw that out for the board and staff to think about how we may look to move forward.

You know part of it also is protecting the quiet enjoyment of properties.

Now here we're in the in the rural area rather than you know development residential area, but this is already and will continue to be a major concern for land use in our county.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Maybe this is an attorney question.

Is there an affidavit required to establish what your primary residence is?

Because it seems as though that's directly related to where you registered to vote.

have a driver's license, things like that.

And moving everything else.

I was just going to respond that the code provision does require residency verification in the form of the provision of two forms

But that can be just by move to another location, get the documentation, and you've just established a new residence.

But then if that changes, then you change it again.

And if you approve it as a resident manager, as we did in this case, and by the way, no ill intent is intended toward this applicant.

This is simply an example.

But there would be nothing to keep this individual, now that it's been approved as a resident manager, to go and buy another piece of property, which appears unlikely again in this case.

established residents and do the exact same thing over and over and over again.

I do think we need to make a clarification because what you're discussing is mainly for the urban, in urban areas because that's where that could happen when you're taking away the housing stock.

That's not going to happen if someone has a two or three hundred acre farm.

It's less likely, but that doesn't mean it's not affordable for anyone.

Actually, Mr. Richardson, just yesterday at a meeting that I was at, had a chart that showed residential sales over the last year in various dollar values for the property.

And you would find that those properties do sell at any number of price ranges and acreage.

So I agree it's more likely to be in the development area.

Right, I mean it's an issue that I think we need to look at but if someone has a large home and an accessory dwelling in 100 acres or more

That likely is not going to be able to be rented out for affordable housing.

I'm talking availability of housing.

Those are two different things.

I really appreciate your thoughtful remarks.

I've been very concerned about in the urban area, just to get to that urban area, where I represent and very close to the university.

What I'm seeing is that the apartments right now and the affordable housing, much of the affordable housing is being grabbed up by students.

And so we're losing, and I understand students have to live somewhere.

I wanted to add on about your quiet enjoyment comment because in that case where the lots are even smaller, there's an even greater risk to those very small lots if every one of them puts up a house of some size.

Nothing is specified in that legislation about its affordability, its size, or anything, but also throughout the countryside are mostly older

mostly smaller but very, very affordable by today's standards homes that people have lived in, their families have lived in since they were built in the 40s, 30s and they are in great jeopardy because they can be very quickly glamorized and then come off that availability.

So it is a very real issue both in urban and rural areas and I know we were trying our best

with the owner-occupied nature to keep it where it was supposed to be.

I just wanted to make one comment regarding what Supervisor McKeel said would probably behoove us to work with UVA because I did think that they were trying to have more housing on campus for everybody.

Thank you, Board.

Move to item number 10, a work session on affordable housing developer incentives.

Good afternoon.

I think that's close enough to me that everybody can hear.

I'm Stacey Pethia, Housing Policy Manager in Social Services.

And we are here today to talk about developer incentives.

And there we go.

So if the, while the board probably remembers this, sorry, that in July of 2021 you approved Housing Albemarle, which is a new housing policy for the county.

At that time, the board delayed full implementation of the policy until a package of the developer incentives could be identified and approved that would support developer efforts to meet the new goals of that housing policy.

And so this affordable housing grant program that is being proposed today through the work session is part of that package.

And this is in no way the final version.

This is a working draft to receive feedback from all of you today.

So throughout the next hour we will look for, we'll start with the goals of the work session and I'll address those in a second.

But I'll provide some background about how we got here today and then review the draft and proposed affordable housing grant program.

Open it up to the board for discussion and your feedback and we'll cover next steps after this.

And so there's really three primary items that staff would like you to consider as we work through this session today.

And we'll return to these at the end of the presentation and discuss them one by one.

But it's really your overall support for the program as it is drafted and any feedback that you can provide for that.

And two specific questions.

The way it is drafted right now is really

to help developers meet the 20% affordable housing of total housing units that is recommended in the housing policy as well as lower rents and extended affordability periods.

But I want the board to think about whether or not this program should be expanded to cover all of the units in a project if that project is 100% affordable such as Premier Circle.

And then also if the board would like the county to establish an annual cap on the total amount of grants funding that would be provided each year.

And again, we'll come back to those.

later this afternoon.

So back in 2019, or 2018, sorry, 2019, Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission released a regional housing needs assessment.

And in that study, it was identified that the county will need a total of

The majority of those units are really for households with incomes below 80% AMI, so

That will be about 9,000 out of those 10,000 units.

The remaining 1,000 are for households that are more workforce housing, so households with incomes between 80% and up to 100% of area median income.

And just to remind you that currently our area median income for Albemarle County is $111,200 per year.

So with the new housing policy, there are really three of the recommendations that the board has put on hold until a package of developer incentives is identified.

And those include increasing the percent of affordable units from 15 to 20 percent of the total units through rezoning and special use application approvals.

The recommendations to set new rent and sales prices that are lower than what has been accepted over the last several years and set them at a more affordable level and also extend the affordability periods for both affordable rental and for sale housing.

This is just a timeline to show the steps that we have taken.

So again, the board adopted Housing Albemarle on July of 2021.

Staff had met several times with developers between June and December of 2021 to get their feedback and ideas about how we could help them meet the goals of Housing Albemarle.

There was a total of five meetings during that time, two with the full group of developers on a steering group, and then several in between with individuals.

staff held a work session with the board in February 2022 to discuss an affordable housing overlay, and that overlay was really influenced by the discussions we had had with the developers.

The board did not like that idea, so staff went back and regrouped and thought about the next steps.

So we returned to the board in May of 2022 for another work session and talked about affordable dwelling unit ordinances which can include developer incentives through that process.

The board was receptive to that idea and in June of 2022 adopted a resolution of intent to amend the zoning ordinance

with an affordable dwelling unit program.

Staff will be coming back in the spring for another work session with the board specifically about that program.

And just to remind you what an affordable dwelling unit ordinance is, they are often adopted to direct or encourage the provision of affordable units in the residential developments.

They provide developer incentives to support the provision of affordable housing units.

So again, what this program is designed to do.

They must be implemented through a zoning text amendment and they are enabled under the Code of Virginia under Section 15.2-2304

The Affordable Housing Grant Program is able to stand on its own outside of an Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance.

And because of that stuff, I thought it was appropriate to bring this to you today before we go through the ADU program ordinance.

And it's able to stand on its own because of Section 15.2-958 in the Code of Virginia.

That section allows local governments to provide grants or loans for the development or rehabilitation of rental housing.

It requires property owners receiving incentives or support through a grant program to provide a minimum of 20% of the total units as affordable housing.

Affordable Housing as defined by the locality, so that would be as defined in Housing Albemarle.

And the locality, or the county as we are, may require an affordability period of longer than 10 years.

The minimum is 10 years under the Virginia Code.

So the purpose of the program that is being proposed today is really to support the creation and preservation of affordable housing, support for housing projects with 100% affordable housing units, the inclusion of affordable housing in projects where affordable housing may not otherwise be made available, so through market rate developments.

at really encouraging the leveraging of market activities to advance the goals of Housing Albemarle.

And it also really provides transparency behind the funding process that we go through.

An application process involved, review process, it will come back before the board.

The board would have the opportunity to make any final decisions.

So it really opens that up and provides opportunities for more efficient and accountable use of county funding.

Housing Albemarle really recommends focusing rental housing on households with incomes at 60% of area median income.

That is really for a family of four that's about $88,000.

annually.

The Office of Housing and the Housing Choice Voucher Program has recently increased their voucher program's payment standards.

Focusing this program, it would open up the new units to those families as well.

The rents recommended in Housing Albemarle are now more closely aligned with the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

Projects that may be eligible for funding under the proposed program are rental housing projects that have more than 10 units that are located in the development areas that provide a minimum of 20% of the total units as affordable housing at the rent levels and affordability periods recommended in Housing Albemarle.

and for a project that agrees to build at least 10% of the units that can be adapted for ADA accessibility in the future.

The Weldon Cooper Center has projected that the population of county residents who will be 85 and older by 2040 will increase by, I totally forgot that number, I am so sorry.

There will be a substantial increase in the number of seniors.

and it is often difficult for seniors who are living on fixed incomes, it can be really expensive to alter their units to add accessibility features in them.

And so really it's asking developers to build 10% of the affordable units with reinforcements behind the bathtub walls or in bathrooms in general to make it safer and easier to install handrails or handbars.

Grab bars.

Just being able to have a full bath on the first floor so that you could turn a study or a living room into a bedroom.

So it's things like that.

We're not asking them to build it through this program to ADA standards, but to make it easier to do so in the future.

The type of assistance that would be available should the board like this program.

It would offer rebates of real property taxes over a 10-year period and the amount of those property tax rebates would be equal to 100% of the cost of the water and sewer connection fees.

And it would apply to the 20% of units in the project that were the affordable units.

Again, there will be an application process, so anyone interested in applying for the program would need to complete and submit an application packet.

That form was included in your agenda materials.

The application would be reviewed with an internal review team, reviewed for eligibility to make sure that they are

eligible for the program and to make sure that what they're asking for would qualify.

Again, the board would have a final approval of any applications that are recommended for funding.

Staff and the applicant would then execute a performance agreement very similar to what we already have with the Brookdale project in Southwood.

And those performance agreements would require an annual reporting requirement.

Again, we have that built into the performance agreement with Brookdale.

It is really simply the property manager submits a list of all of the rental units in the project each year.

We verify that the people who live in them are still income qualified to rent the units and that the units are being rented at an affordable price.

So looking at what this could look like if it was implemented in the county, and I do want to take a moment to apologize for the bad math on the screen.

I had originally, when I came in this morning,

uploaded the presentation.

And as I was going through the slides, I second guessed my math in this table.

And so I threw a new slide together, rushed down here, uploaded it onto, replaced the one I did originally.

And this is all to say that you need to put zeros on the end of the last two columns.

So it should really be $6 million total, not $600,000.

So again, I apologize for that.

But really it would be looking at the three case studies that we have done in the past.

So the Brookhill Project, Rio Point, and RST Residences.

Combined those would approve at, through this program, we would have approved 452 affordable units at 20% of total units.

each of those would require a water and sewer connection fee of $13,000.

And so that would come out to be a total grant award of $6 million paid out over 10 years.

So we'll review a few other programs in other localities.

These are not.

selected to suggest that there are things that we can do in Virginia.

We oftentimes can't, not in total.

But they have components to them that I thought you might be interested in considering.

And so the first one we're going to look at is Chesterfield County.

And their program is very similar to ours, the one being proposed today.

They adopted their assentum program in 2019 and they provide tax rebates for the revitalization, rehabilitation, and redevelopment of projects in a very specific area of the county.

So it's very targeted.

Their program requires developers to make a minimum of that investment of five million dollars into the area The rebates are provided over a 10-year period and they work on a sliding scale very similar again to Brookdale where Through the Brookdale project we start for a number of years.

I believe it's the first five we we rebate 100% of the tax increment and we

Scale that down over a number of years so that by the time we get to the final year of the performance agreement We are only rebating 20% of their total taxes Through their program they have incentivized 114 affordable units Since 2019 their project their program has been currently on put on hold Because they want to go back and assess it and review and evaluate and see how it's working if they can make any changes to improve it

Montgomery County, Maryland also provides property tax.

They call them property tax reductions, but it's the same concept to encourage the provision of affordable housing.

Their program has been around since, I believe, the 1970s sometimes, so it's been a long time in action.

I chose this one specifically for the fact that they, through the budget process each year, decide an annual cap on the amount of property taxes they are willing to rebate each year.

And so for FY23, they capped the property tax rebates at $20.6 million.

So if they had a huge project that came in and asked for assistance and it cost $20.6 million to do for assistance for that project, they would incentivize one project.

Otherwise, they would provide the tax incentive up until they reach that $20.6 million in this year.

So that cap changes on an annual basis.

Washington, D.C., I also chose for the same reason.

They also put a cap on the total amount of they do tax abatements that they award each year, so their program is very new.

It was adopted in 2020, so it's just starting out.

For FY24, they have capped the total tax abatement awards at $200,000.

For FY25, that will be capped at $4 million, and from there, it will increase 3% every year.

And that is the end of the presentation and overview.

And like I said, there were those three questions at the beginning that I would like the board to consider.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Now, will you have other points?

So we're going to do one point at a time?

Yes, ma'am.

Let's go first through our order to see if there are clarifying points.

So we'll go through.

Yes, I just wanted to make sure that

It's $13,470 per unit, I don't know.

$14,000, that's right.

Well, for currently it's basically $14,000.

Correct.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

If I understood you correctly, the rebates for hookups, covering the hookup fee for 20% of the units, and this is because they're all, and then you answered my earlier question, I think that 30 years for rentals and 40 years for purchased houses.

Now, if there are more than of the 100 units, if they're going to make 60,

I guess it's a later question.

Would I support more than just the 20%?

I guess theoretically, I would think it would be helpful to offer that we would do something for all the available units, but especially if it is the

To me, it's mandatory that they be the long-term affordability and that are you confident that the attainability question is are the rents actually truly something that a person can pay working in many of our jobs in this area where they're not very high salaries?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, so you've got that figured out.

I know there are manufactured home projects that are in process here.

There are questions being asked.

Not under this program.

This would be specifically for rental housing and more multifamily rental housing.

We will have to go back.

If they were to be, I think there's a 30 or 40-year-old mobile home park in Crozet that is 55 years an owner and it has always been rental.

Because it's not a single building, it could not qualify because it's individual units.

That is my understanding but I can verify that.

So that might be something you might be able to expand so that it would be able to be used because I remember so so fondly I visit eight or nine years ago to folks in Southwood and a very senior grandma who lived there for 40 years at that point said don't make me go live in a department.

I really like my little house and I would rather stay here with my chicken in my garden than have to go live in a big building.

That is a point of view that I think others have as well and would like to have a little space around their house.

I really appreciate the comments about preparing for seniors and when you say 10% of the units

I would call it universal design, but does it really go that far?

I mean, do the doors, are the doors wider and that kind of thing?

Because I think that's the most difficult thing to do, is to make those kind of structural changes.

This doesn't go that far?

Oh, okay.

But it could, if somebody volunteered, it might help them.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Bryce.

Stacy, thank you.

I'm glad to have this conversation and this topic in front of us.

But I have to, just so I understand, so when we had on the agenda we had developer incentives but really this is just one specific program that we may offer.

So really this is a work session on that one specific program.

That will be another part of it, correct.

There are limited tools that the county can use that are allowed through enabling legislation at the state level.

Trying to find ones that fit within those and that also are sensitive to the amount of

fiscal impact the incentive programs would have on the county budget.

So those are the parts that we're trying to balance as we work through this.

So understood.

No.

One tool is not going to do it.

Well, I understood.

I just think when we put on the agenda, we're discussing developer incentives, and then we're only discussing one specific grant program.

I could understand why they would think, oh, this is it.

This is where we're going.

And myself, I was thinking I was, prior to seeing the agenda,

and a lot of my questions are probably I can skip at this point or maybe comments are better knowing that we're talking about one specific grant program and not all developer incentives as it attacks our affordable housing policy.

I will editorialize on that later.

Alright, so to go from the macro down then on this particular grant program, does the

Well first, the Chesterfield, when you were doing the Chesterfield presentation, you said something about 20%.

Do they cap theirs at 20% or are you saying ours caps?

There was something in there, I was writing a note and missed here.

I was not able to find information on what the amount of tax rebate has been, the total amount.

What they do do is scale it down so it will start at over a number of years, it will start at 100% of the taxes rebated and they scale that down to 20% over however many years their agreement is for.

And just to be clear, ours would be if we did this grant program, we would say, OK, for the 20% units, whatever the water sewer fees are, you get that amount back in the form of a tax rebate.

It's not a tax rebate plus the water and sewer going back.

It would really depend on the project.

I don't know.

We would really need to see what their project pro formas are.

All right.

So that seems to be an important part of not just this program, but will be so with the developer incentives.

So for me, to be supportive of something like that.

So let me back up.

By right, they have a cost for a project.

They spend, they pay for that, and they get an X amount of units.

Our current, under before housing Albemarle, the density bonus is what allowed them to add the extra units to offset the cost of increasing to get those additional units.

Now we're asking that to be increased further.

So the incentives need to offset that cost as well.

So it's important for the math to work.

Correct.

Or else we don't meet our policy goal.

So not knowing if the math works, how do I say yes or no to this?

I'm not expecting you to answer that.

It's going to be the same conversation with every single incentive program.

And I will tailor my comment to why it can't come down to having one incentive or three incentives or four.

We would have to come up with incentives that

It would likely always be project specific.

You might have somebody that wants the tap fees rebated, but you might want somebody else that wants expedited review.

Maybe time's more important than something else in that particular case.

I think I'm hearing from the developer world that they want some specifics to attach to.

Otherwise, it's just going to be easier to do by right, and they don't have to worry about some nebulous incentive package that could exist out there.

So I understand that, especially when you're trying to get investors involved.

Otherwise, an investor would be like, move on, go to something that's more sure and more clear.

So we have to do, we, the board, wants affordable units and more affordable unit stock.

We know it's going to cost a lot of money.

If we don't incentivize to get there, it's not going to build on its own, which if Mr. Smith's here, you're going to be hearing us talk about that in our presentation that follows.

I will be supportive of programs that will allow us to achieve our policy goal, but it has to work as an incentive to offset the cost to get them there, and we will have to commit to that.

I like the idea that someplace was saying, well, you can't just, it can't be untapped or unrestricted.

You'd have to come up with an amount each year and go, all right, well, this is what we get.

I mean, that's how we're using our fund now, right?

We've got million, we finally got $5 million.

We couldn't do the $20 million.

We picked, and we have to make those decisions.

So I'm happy to be supportive of this grant program.

I like the creativity of finding something specific under the state code that keeps us out of that.

It makes it very clear what this one particular one is.

But if it doesn't math out, if it doesn't pencil out, then I don't see why anybody would apply for the grant program.

and I don't know, I guess I don't know how we get there to make that certain other than just sitting down and I guess having conversations with applicants.

I don't think the answer is... The only way we can really make it certain, excuse me, is for them to submit a pro forma of their project so we can see what that costs over time.

Well, and I mean a grant program's that way, right?

You submit it, you get the information, that would be have to do it.

No, they have done it in the past.

So it's really just the opportunity to sit down.

Today, this is a start, and this is not the be all and no.

We needed to start somewhere.

So this is really presented as a method that can be used.

The amounts can change.

The board had expressed in the past interest in covering the cost of water and sewer connection fees.

And so that's where that number came from.

Understood.

I appreciate it.

I don't want to sound, I'm trying really hard not to be,

I've obviously made my comments in the past about getting this in front of us.

So I would be supportive of this grant program and making it work contingent on the grant program offsetting the costs to truly incentivize getting the project to where it is to meet Housing Albemarle's goals.

If a grant application was put in front of me that only incentivized 30% of the cost to get to our goal, one, I doubt they'd continue with the grant program anyway, but that would be one I'd say no to.

because it wouldn't work out.

Now, you might have a developer out there that's very generous and wants to do their part.

If they did that, they might do that for one project.

I don't know if they'd be doing that for 10 projects.

I can't govern that or legislate that.

So I would be supportive, and then we'd have to figure out the monies and the budget and the mechanisms.

But if we can get grant programs in place that truly provides the incentives

and the rental one seems to be the tough one, that 60% mark with the rental and then the longevity of time.

If we can figure that out, then I would not just be supportive of the grant program, but then supportive working with the board and the county executive to figure out where the resources come from and getting the monies there.

It could be the trust fund, it could be other things that we eventually do work on as well to make that happen.

You did.

Thank you.

Stacy, thank you for this and I really appreciate the clarity that this is just the beginning and this is only one of the incentives that we'll be talking about over a period of time.

I think that's really good because I'm like Ned, I think people, I'm not sure I understood that at the very beginning, so that's great.

Yes, in general, I am supportive of this.

I think that it's a good approach, but I do have some questions.

I made some notes.

Help me understand.

I know, as you might imagine, based on my district, I am really interested in the rehabilitation of existing affordable housing multi-family.

That's no shock to you.

So tell me how that might play out.

I'm a little confused because I see that as number one, and then number two, projects with 10 or more residential units.

So those two are not married together.

So it would be both.

Yeah.

They would be together.

So they go together.

Correct.

Okay.

This will always apply to projects with 10 or more units.

Okay, so that does take off the table some of the properties that I would be interested in.

Okay, but that's helpful to know.

Thank you.

Not that I'm not supportive of it, it's just that I have to wrap my head around what's working.

And let me just go to find my questions here.

This sounds kind of trite, but applicant must use quality grade.

Is quality grade actually a grade?

I don't even know that.

I know there's like a construction grade.

It's an actual term in the construction industry.

And so builder grade tends to be some of the lowest quality.

It will break faster.

Sure.

I think my ADA questions were answered.

When you said affordable units may flow within an eligible project,

Correct.

Correct.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure I understood what the word float was.

We ask, well I really appreciate, let me say this first, I really appreciate the fact that this is going to be individualized.

You're going to have to understand and sit down with the developer or the applicant and figure out on an individual basis for their project, right?

Correct.

I mean that makes sense.

So that gets to my question about

When I looked at the application approval, I was wondering, I see the review requirements, economic developments, county executive.

What's the timeline?

What are you anticipating this would actually take?

I would say, given staff capacity, six weeks at most.

We need time to be able to review the materials, but we don't want it to sit there for three months.

Yeah, and that's what I was concerned about because I was looking at that.

Correct, and the way these have been working recently is that a proposal comes in to me for housing.

I work with, we hired a temporary

on the last one to review everything finance-wise.

And then I passed a recommendation on to economic development.

And so that happens and then goes on from there.

So it's really going to follow pretty much the same process that the Project Enable program does.

And then I guess once we get some experience with this final approval to the Board of Supervisors, it comes to us.

Correct.

That would be ideal.

But I do think working through that process initially to get all board members used to that and what they're looking at would be helpful.

Well, we can always pull things off the consent agenda.

But just trying to think about the timeline for the developers and the applicants.

Yeah.

All right.

Maybe this is, I'll just have to ask this.

We often have applicants that come before us with developments and we say, well, how much are you going to charge for rent?

How much is this going to cost?

How much is this?

And the answer is always, oh, we don't know yet.

Seems like to me we'll get some clarity around that going forward with this.

We will know.

Yeah, just wanted in my brain to make sure that was correct.

All right, with that, I think I've asked my questions.

And you understand I am essentially in favor of this.

Thank you.

Initially, Dr. Pethey, I would say what he said, looking to Supervisor Galloway.

I do have some additional comments of my own.

Required minimum investment.

I don't see that in hours.

That strikes me as a good idea, but it also strikes me as something to be very careful about because

A required minimum investment perhaps based upon the scale of the project, but then you also, we always have to take into account things like inflation, so what might appear to be a good minimum investment based on this size of a project today, within a very short time, maybe an unreasonable minimum investment.

In our materials in attachment A, fiscal approach, the last sentence in the first paragraph about the affordable housing grant program says the Board of Supervisors can adjust the amount of the grant by increasing or decreasing the total number of installments awarded.

I'm not quite sure how changing the number of installments would increase unless

because I would think that you approve a certain amount and then you pay it over a period, a number of installments.

It's kind of like, I don't mean to make light of this, but when Yogi Berra was asked, you know, do you want your pizza cut in six slices or eight?

He said, better make it six, I don't think I can eat eight.

So it would really look at, that would really be if there was a set amount that we would provide each year.

So if you said, we will give you $100,000 a year in tax rebates for 10 years, and that was the proposal.

And the board didn't like that.

You could say, well, we'll do $100 a year for eight years.

So that's how it worked.

Just some clarity.

It was just confusing to me.

Continuing in our materials program requirements paragraph 4,

says that if staff determines a project does not qualify for the incentive, the staff will not recommend to the county executive office that the project be considered.

All right.

Well, I mean, it just seems like there should be some opportunity.

If you go to slide number 11, please,

The bottom bullet agrees to build at least 10% of units to be adaptable for full ADA accessibility.

That's inconsistent with what's in our materials that says it would be 10% of the affordable units, whereas this simply says 10% of the units.

Then I have another question.

So the eligible projects have to have at least 10 residential units.

So if you have 10 units, you qualify.

20% is affordable would be 2.

10% of that is 0.2.

So that would be basically if you round it to the nearest.

So I think there should be a minimum number listed in there.

10% of the affordable units, not less than 1.

or something, so at least there's an actual number in there.

Because the way this is, without a minimum, you'd have to have a minimum of 50 units to have 10 affordable to have one unit.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to trust that the community development department knows more about the proformas than I do.

When we get to rental under Part 4, paragraph 4, program requirements B, rental project requirements, the financial need,

Applicants pro forma must demonstrate that the tax incentive is necessary in order to provide affordable as defined below rental units in the project.

I'm not sure I understand exactly how that works.

So again, I've got great confidence in your and CDD's ability to deal with that.

One of the questions I have, having been on the other side at the federal level,

is the cost to an applicant to comply with the requirements that the government is establishing.

So when we start looking at this, do we have any sense of what it actually costs a developer to prepare all the paperwork that goes into submitting these applications?

Which I think may tie in with Supervisor Galloway's comments about if the math doesn't work, then it's not going to happen.

And particularly for smaller projects,

What I don't want us to do is have this great plan, and I'm not in any way being disparaging here, but it is so grandiose as affects an applicant's ability to actually submit a package that they could qualify that we lose those opportunities.

And I think that is particularly relevant for the redevelopment.

because that's where a lot of times some of these existing units, they may take some of them as opposed to a big project.

And then, could you go to slide 14 for just a second?

I was wondering if Stacy had any thoughts about what you just, comments about what you just said.

In terms of,

preparing an application packet.

So the information that was included in the application has been taken from applications that are used in other localities.

And it is also in line with proposals that I have received from developers recently.

It's information that they have for their projects already.

It's repackaging it slightly and writing a proposal.

Okay, so it would be $6 million for this, and then $431,000 for the top row in the last column.

Correct.

Okay, thanks.

I thought that was it, but I just wanted to make sure.

Okay, so I think those are my general comments.

Yeah, and if this was answered, I was writing some notes and then I heard Yogi Berra and I may have missed it.

I know the water, the tap fees, because that had come up in a previous conversation as a possible incentive.

If it's to cover the cost of the units, and I get it,

But it seems like it can make it complicated because we have to go there, figure out that number, then go, why wouldn't we just do tax rebates for a period of time for the units?

Is that simpler?

Is that not?

So that's what this proposal is designed to do.

Because the board had expressed interest in covering the cost of the water and sewer connection fees, that's why we chose this amount.

So it would be to cover the cost of those without having to pay for them all at once.

It would be rebated over a period of time.

Because we don't have an easy way for the county to say project A,

It would cost $430,000 to cover the water and sewer connection fees.

There's no easy and convenient way for the county to transfer those funds directly to the service authority.

I get it.

I'm just wondering like why not just the tax rebate?

But if the water, the tap fees don't cover

So we can change the amount of this tax incentive to anything.

That number was selected because it was just expressed in the past.

Also, that number is kind of in line with what we have provided.

for Premier Circle.

They were about $16,000 per unit that we've provided funding for.

So it's in line with that.

But we could change that to any number we wanted to or no number at all.

It was just put in there as a way to respond to feedback we've received from the board in the past and as a way to present this program.

So that number can change to anything or no number at all.

But the mechanism would still be just the text?

Correct.

Can I ask Nelsie a question?

Is that fine?

I hate to put you on the spot, Ms.

I don't usually do that.

She says no.

Well, Doug's fine.

So for the record, Ms.

Burch said she had no involvement in it and pointed towards Ms.

I'm asking just so that I understand, if we get into this from the accounting, from the standpoint of processing all of this, and you're doing tax rebates depending on what the program is,

The math equation to get there, does it matter to us down the road, staff time, costs, to be able to process this type of stuff?

A tax rebate's not, if you rebate money, it's not like you're offsetting or you're delaying the revenue from coming in if you give it tax rebate, basically.

You're not collecting the taxes on it.

Thank you.

It's an amount of money that's defined within the program that is then rebated through similar mechanisms that we use the EDA to rebate real estate tax revenue through a performance agreement and so in that construct

whatever the program amount is, you would have latitude flexibility through the design of the program to determine not just the amount of the rebate but how you would structure that rebate going back to the developer in this case.

That's how we structure the Brookdale development, the Southwood development, and other performance agreements.

So without being specific about how it might apply in all cases, that's how it's been used in the past and could be structured that way.

in the future.

There is an affordability issue in terms of a cash flow, which is why the cap is suggested.

So that from a budgeting standpoint, we'd have some limitations on what the impact is going to be on the general fund that actually have to then absorb the cost of providing services to those units once they come online.

So that's how that is intended to try to provide some stability

on the county side.

And you said a cap there, right?

You said that's why some sort of cap.

Yes, the connection fees are used as an equivalent.

So down the road, this is my concern I guess, or maybe I'm just not getting it yet.

But my concern would be we do this grant program, we have a program come before us and we find out that the water connection fees covered 80% of whatever the additional cost is.

And then we'd have to provide additional tax rebate or something in addition to that amount to make it flush, to make it even.

Because that's what we were saying we would do.

We're not going to cover 80% of the cost increase.

It's not an incentive program if it doesn't cover the full cost increase.

And that's just what we said earlier when I was asking questions.

but five years or three years or whatever time frame it is down the road, that's when comments such as, oh, I didn't understand that if the water and connection fees didn't cover it, we'd be in for more.

So if we get rid of the water and connection fees and we can just say, we'll refund tax amounts or something, so it's clear that it's covering the increased cost to get the units we're trying to incentivize to happen, happen.

And I don't think we can say a number, we could cap the program funds that it comes out of, but I don't think we can, I get nervous that we're just saying the water connection fees because I think there are going to be instances where that doesn't cover, that might cover 40% of the cost, that might cover 60% of the cost, and we need more

Thank you.

I would suggest that there is a challenge to overcome with both providing certainty for the developers, which is what they're interested in, to knowing

in advance as a developer, what they're in it for in exchange for the meeting of our housing goals going to 20%, and how much it actually costs the county taxpayer to actually help them meet those goals without, I'll say it this way, without overpaying for the cost of meeting that goal.

And so where that number is could be actually reconciled on a project-by-project basis.

using the pro forma, staff analysis, sitting down, penciling it out, and coming up with a recommendation on whether it does or doesn't, or if it does, at what level, and making that recommendation.

My faith lies in the economic development projects that we've done, where we have to iron out.

It's specific.

It's based on performance agreements or performance metrics.

and we did with Southwood.

I mean some of the phase one is Southwood.

So I know we know how to do this.

We do.

But the trick is making sure it's defined that way so that those who could benefit from it, ultimately the person living in the unit, but the people building those units have some sort of certainty that it's that offset and cost can happen.

I'm still.

Thank you.

Yes, to the extent that I understood that everything that Supervisor Galloway said and asked, I do agree.

I think there's, and I've spoken with Dr. Pethey about the program, I mean I do, I like this, I do agree with it, but I have an overarching question.

I'm wondering if we just match the cost of

to the developer with a real estate tax incentive.

Is that just being too simplistic?

Am I not understanding the complexity of the issue?

So I can provide an example of a proposal that came to me recently that's not moving forward because the rezoning application did not.

They were offering to provide 79 units, affordable units in their project and the incentive that they needed was

over $10 million over a 30-year period.

And that's just one project.

So that's why setting a cap on the amount of incentive through this program and through a tax rebate program could be offered each year I think is really important.

Because we need to be at 79 units for $10 million makes sense over that 30-year period.

But that's a lot of tax revenue the county is not going to be able to.

to use in the future.

So this program would not be a one-to-one tax incentive to build affordable housing, right?

I'm not sure I understand that.

OK.

So if we did a one-to-one tax incentive for affordable housing for the developers, that would actually be a lot more.

That would be less revenue for us.

As compared to the program that you're... Correct, correct.

What Supervisor Galloway is recommending is that we really look at each proposal on their own, as we have been doing recently.

and that would be, I mean it could be one project offering 79 units of affordable housing which is the 20% and they did a mix of 60 and 80% of AMI households and that was $10 million.

There could be another project that came in,

So we'll use Premier Circle as an example.

That is 100% affordable housing.

But given the multiple funding sources they've been able to draw on, they only required $3 million from the county for 60 units.

And those would be affordable for 30 years.

So it really depends on the project.

And it's hard to say.

I mean, this gives a defined amount that would be offered.

and that can change, obviously.

It might work for some projects, it might not work for other projects.

So really, for example, on Premier Housing, the fact, because I noticed what you did say, we give more if they're 100% affordable housing like Premier Circle.

If they didn't have those other grants and incentives from the federal or state or wherever they're getting it from, if they didn't have that and they wanted the same 100% from us, would we be offering that?

So the funding mechanisms are different.

Premier Circle being an affordable housing project can draw on different financing options than local for-profit developers can.

So it really comes down to the financing side of things and whether or not they will be able to get financing based on the project as it's

being funded.

So they really look at how much rent revenue will be charged over time and with 20% affordable housing, any affordable housing is going to decrease what they can get.

So with the example for Premier Circle, you're still saying let's look at each project as Supervisor Galloway suggested, let's look at each project.

and that would not be a guarantee if there weren't 100% affordable housing.

It still wouldn't be a guarantee.

Correct.

And generally with 100% affordable projects, they really come to the county as one of the final funders.

And so they have managed to get through.

I know one project had 17 different funding sources before they came and asked the county for support for $2 to $3 million.

So by the time

For more housing projects, get to us.

They've gone through the list of everybody they can possibly get funding for.

And last question, you said you talked about that one project that would have cost $10 million.

It stretched out over, I believe, 30 years.

That's a long time.

No, correct.

Yes, that's why I had suggested the developers submit that proposal to us so that we could review that for those affordable units.

It would work the same way.

They had several hundred units and they were going to provide 79 affordable through that project.

Okay, well I think flexibility seems to be an overarching theme.

Alright, any other general comments before we go to the discussion point?

Okay, this may or may not be at the right second, but I was thinking about the things that Mr. Gallaway was saying and thinking, well, it comes down again to what you all have heard me say a lot, which is, are they the people with the business model that allows them to succeed doing what they're asked to do?

Because the reason that the TAP fees is

Appealing to me is because it is the same for everybody per unit as opposed to something where you have 39 different math scenarios for different builders who have different business models and some can leverage outside money and some are expecting the county to pay for everything and so that's where I get totally scrambled up and maybe sometime in the future I will understand better, but I think that there is a

Okay, so we'll go around and answer this particular discussion point.

As part of our overall

That's a yes.

Supervisor Galloway?

Yeah, I mean, I think I've stated it.

It has to cover the cost to get the incentivized unit, and the program has to be set up to help with that.

All right, that's a yes.

And mine's a yes also, acknowledging that this may not be enough by itself.

I think we've done the discussion, but let's pull up those.

Discussion point two is should it cover the cost of 100% of the units in a affordable housing project, so something like Premier Circle.

All right, but let's do it.

Let's go around just to make sure.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Yes.

Supervisor Galloway, Supervisor McKeel, and I also agree, yes, but on all of these it may, you know, all right, let's go to number three.

And we'll go through our order.

By the county, the total amount that we fund on any given year.

So, for example, last year I think we had 5 million, is that what you're talking about?

It would be either 5 million or 6 million, 2 million?

Correct.

But not a permanent cap.

Correct, it can change.

Before we go further, I think my impression or understanding of this is to avoid the county unplanned

Unexpectedly finding itself with the bill that really is beyond our capacity.

So by setting a maximum amount each year, we ensure that we stay within our affordability.

That is very fair.

Supervisor Galloway?

Yep.

I mean, you have to put, you can't plan and budget accordingly if you don't do this, so it would make sense.

to some of the other points.

If it's a grant program, I don't think it was discussed, and to Supervisor Mallek's concern about, well, there's some people that go out and get other alternative funds.

This is no different than the grants we apply to.

We have an easier time getting grants if we offer matched funds.

If we don't have, we'll have a limited amount of funds to put towards the grants.

Of course, we're going to look to the ones that are putting their money in first.

Those are going to score higher based on our grant review than ones that don't go get alternative funding.

It's going to work itself out just like we do in grants that we go forward.

All right.

Supervisor McKeel?

Yes.

Chair Price, may I have a... Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Yes.

This is a question for County Executive Richardson.

I'm wondering whether or not there would ever be a scenario where mid

year.

We have our budget.

Let's say we put $5 million into that fund and then something happens and there's a windfall of money or something.

Do we ever make mid-year adjustments?

I think that what's happening with our finance department is that they are monitoring the budget throughout the year to determine if we're meeting our marks and that we're running according to what our projections, both on revenue and on expenditure side,

as that goes through the year.

If the board, as we go through the year, you're receiving those reports.

And if there are adjustments that need to be made or changes that we want to be made, Nelsie Birch and her team would be working with operational departments and with the board to determine what options we have.

So when that happens, you're receiving reports during the year.

We're looking at this.

So it's things that we're looking at in advance.

We'd be very careful about that, simply the cause of all the planning and work that goes into that on a year-by-year basis.

So I would say cautiously to you that we could have situations where we're able to make mid-year adjustments with revenue enhancements that come in that we maybe didn't expect.

Thank you, sir.

Dr. Pethia, have we answered all your questions?

You have.

So, next steps.

Staff will take the feedback we received today, which was actually really helpful and great.

Thank you very much.

and this needs to be, this type of program needs to be implemented through adoption of an ordinance and so we are tentatively scheduled for a public hearing on April 19th if the board would prefer

We can change that to one final work session to get your feedback on any changes arranged that have come out of this and then schedule a public hearing shortly after if that is what you would prefer.

Otherwise, we will have a public hearing to adopt the Affordable Housing Grant Program on April 19th as well as a work session on the Affordable Dwelling Unit Program ordinance.

Following the work session on the ADE ordinance, staff will also have a work session with the planning commission.

That date has yet to be determined.

We're working with the planning department to schedule that.

That follows on to a public hearing with the planning commission with an affordable dwelling unit ordinance and then a public hearing with the board.

Correct.

There would actually be two work sessions that day.

All right.

Let me poll the board to see if your preference.

If I could, Chair Price, members of the board.

There's an intention here to put a pin in the calendar to not let this issue continue to linger and to drive it forward.

And so April 19th after this discussion seems pretty aggressive for a public hearing based on the questions and comments from board members.

whether it's 2022 or 2023, either way, it's pretty aggressive.

But we are committed as a staff to push this issue forward.

So I think that the right question seems to me is, is there value in working with the clerk's office, working with staff, and coming back to

to reengage around what obviously is some complex issues before we set a public hearing date.

Well, let me ask you then, and thank you for picking up on the 2022 versus 2023.

Nelson got that one.

I tend to want to be aggressive, but that seems too aggressive.

That seems what?

It seems too aggressive.

I think that there is a need for another work session around this topic before we ask the board for your authorization to schedule a public hearing for an ordinance.

But I'm mindful that that then prolongs the policy discussion.

All right.

Well, thank you.

Last meeting, I think you pointed to Jody Filardo and gave her responsibility for something in the peanut gallery.

I was looking for Bart.

Thank you.

Mr. Richardson, do you have anything you would add to what Mr. Walker said?

No?

All right.

Can we ask Stacey how she feels?

I think it would probably be more productive to have one last work session on this.

It's early enough in the year that if we switch April 19th to a work session, I can pretty quickly follow that up with a public hearing based on that feedback if everything is okay.

It's that scheduling issue.

It's hard to get on your schedule for public hearings, but I think if we make that decision today to change this to a work session, which I think will be helpful,

then we can when I change that from public hearing to work session I will look for a date within the next you know

Let's go through our order so each supervisor has an opportunity to comment.

Is there any way to keep the public hearing to April 19th since we do want to move on this but yet have a work session prior to that at some point in time?

We have so many meetings coming up between now and now.

We don't think that that's achievable reasonably.

It's not achievable.

Too many other things on this.

I was only going to say I'm fine with another work session to make sure that everything's very put together so that when the public reviews it, it has the best chance of succeeding.

But if we can schedule at the same time, say we're doing this, but we're also going to see the public hearing in May, then if the clerk says that there's room for that.

Thank you.

I mean obviously I want to have my foot on the gas here on this but to my one of my earlier comments about today thinking it was going to be developer incentives not one specific program that can be lumped under the umbrella of developer incentives it could actually make sense since we're doing the work session on developer incentives to lump this in with that conversation so we can get them all just they're all in the mind that day

So this grant program doesn't come disjointed or disconnected when we're then discussing those.

I hope I don't regret saying that though from a timing standpoint, but it would at least give those who maybe thought we were discussing more incentives today versus just one particular program the chance to react with that mindset as well, just as some of us have, at least I did, reacted that way.

So I'd be fine with doing a work session that day and then

And nothing's going to throw that work session for those two things off, right?

We're committed to those dates for the ADU.

And are there developer incentives that can fall out of those two conversations that we have to have conversations about?

So, I'm a little confused on what Ned is saying, but I thought I heard you say April the 19th for the work session is what you feel the most comfortable with.

Is that right?

Because I feel like I'm happy to have the public hearing on the 19th and the work session on the 19th because I think Stacey has a good feel for what we've been talking about.

I agree.

If we can do both on the same day, I think that would be

My preference would have been to have the public hearing on the 19th, but at the same token, I want to be cautious not to overburden staff.

I want to do it right more than doing it quickly.

And I'm willing to defer to Mr. Walker as that's part of your area of responsibility to make that a work session, but as every supervisor has indicated,

If that's a work session and not a hearing, we want to get this all to the hearing to get it done.

I'm sorry, one last comment.

Yes, so what is presented today, the property tax rebates, is one of the ideas that they had put forward in the past.

Also covering the cost of water and sewer connection fees was an idea that had been put forward by them in the past.

And we will be able to get this PowerPoint, correct?

Yes, thank you.

I was just going to say, having these both, the public hearing and the work session on the 19th, hearing from the public will be helpful.

Yes, that's what I hear and we'll take your guidance under advisement and look to see how we can accomplish the public hearing for the affordable housing grant program ordinance on the 19th.

as well as the work session, which is specific to the Affordable Development and Ordinance and Administrative Guidelines.

So they're related, but obviously two separate topics.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Walker.

Thank you, Dr. Pethia.

If not, board, we are scheduled for a recess.

We've been going two and a half hours, so let's take a 10-minute recess.

Come back in at 20 before the hour.

All right, good afternoon.

We are back in session.

At this time, we will move to item number 11, a presentation for Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership.

Thank you Chair Price and members of the board.

I'm just going to pull up our PowerPoint.

And while you pull that up, let me just point out that at the dais there are now four supervisors.

That's correct.

El Presidente, good afternoon.

Where's the music?

And I'm just practicing here.

I'm never usually on this side.

Well, good afternoon, members of the board.

It's a pleasure to be here today in front of you as the chair of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and the chair of the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership.

With me is the current vice chair, Keith Smith.

and you met Ian and our Executive Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, Christine Jacobs is here as well.

So what we'd like to do is to go through some brief information about the partnership, which a lot of you may know.

I know Supervisor McKeel serves on the partnership, but talk a little bit about how and why the partnership was created.

Give some information about who is on it and then I'll be handing things off to Mr. Smith who's going to give you some Albemarle County specific data relative to housing and Then we'll I believe Mr. Baxter will be ready to talk about some deliverables that we have been able to do So that's kind of the overall we hope to get through that quickly so that you actually get involved in some back-and-forth conversation And it's nice that this is coming on the heels of the incentive and the grant program that we just discussed

So when we talk about how the partnership was created, I have to give, and we all need to give, a lot of credit to the gentleman who is the current vice chair and he was the first chair of the board for the first three years of the partnership and then continues to serve in a leadership role.

But Mr. Smith

really it took a lot it just took a lot of networking and going out and talking to electeds and people in the development community and people in the nonprofit world as well as people that he in his professional life helps find places to live and pulling them together and getting this into an organized body after the work of well I failed to mention Keith has been

on the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission representing Fluvanna County for 12 years.

So the work was about getting a specific body together to attack in a regional way the affordable housing issue.

So that leads to the why, right?

We know that each jurisdiction that is a member of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has housing affordability issues within their borders.

and we all can benefit from trying to work on that problem together and learn from one another to help our own inside boundaries or inside jurisdiction issues.

So the people that ended up making up the partnership, there is a quick lead.

I don't need to go through all of those, but you certainly see the six jurisdictions that are included at the TJPDC.

And then the four pillars, again, the brainchild of Mr. Smith, to make sure that the nonprofit world, the for-profit world, and then the public and the citizens were represented.

Because all of us, as Keith likes to say, and I don't mean to steal his thunder, but everybody was talking about the issue, but we were kind of using different language.

So the Central Virginia Housing Partnership was about bringing together, this is part of the why,

to have all of us in one way or one place talk about the issues that we're dealing with or the problems and then be able to data share and to be able to communicate with one another, get to know one another so that if somebody brings a project forward, we already know them.

We already have talked about what they're trying to do and what they're doing.

Premier Circle is a good example of that.

Anthony Harrow, who's the executive director of the Blue Ridge Homeless Coalition now,

that brought that project forward, I already knew Anthony.

So when he contacted me, because the red carpet inn was in the Rio district, that's something that I already knew the gentleman coming and we already had a relationship, I already knew what the advantages of his organization were, etc.

and I've heard him talk in the round table about what the benefits of his organization or what the goals and vision of our organization.

So it gets rid of a lot of that back story and we all get to know one another and it's not just Albemarle County specific, it's over to the city and out into the entire region as well.

And I'd like to say that we have six very different political jurisdictions.

Albemarle and Charlottesville, let's face it, we can bump them into a certain political ideology and then the other four member bodies, it's fair to say, have a different political makeup.

But housing affordability certainly does not get dictated by a political party or a political philosophy.

resources and how you use them does.

And it's important that the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership communicate to each of our jurisdictions that we're there to serve as resource to you, not to tell you what to do within your jurisdiction.

So when I'm listening to folks from Nelson County, for example, talk,

I think of the rural areas of Albemarle and what are our common areas and common problems that we face and what solutions can we come up with that can benefit each.

When I hear the city of Charlottesville talk, I think of the urban rink and how we can talk and share information to help deal with our housing affordability issues.

So again, the mission, the vision is there.

You can certainly read that.

But that was the how it was put together.

And then obviously, all the jurisdictions had to sign off on it, and we had

Formalize it we have bylaws all that sort of thing and that's put together and I at this point offer a sincere appreciation to Albemarle just as the other five member jurisdictions did This was the first year you contributed specifically to the regional housing partnership in its first couple of years of course we make a contribution or we paid TJPDC for services on a per capita basis and

and then that's what funded the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership initially.

This year, it was asked for a specific contribution to the partnership.

Albemarle's came in.

It was based on the per capita formula.

It was about $20,000 was our share.

So on behalf of the partnership, I appreciate the fact that you all contributed to that.

At this time, unless I miss something, I'm going to hand things over to Mr. Smith.

And before I do the handoff,

I suspect, or I hope he did today, I don't know for sure, but Mr. Smith, I think it would be important, or, well, I'd just like to do it.

He was given an award today.

He was able to announce an award today.

RIS Media gives special call-out to realtors who are doing things in their community, and they break it out into three different categories, and he won the award as a crusader.

specific to his work in our area to help housing affordability issues and folks get into affordable units.

So I'd be remiss if I didn't call that out and congratulate him on that in a public way.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Can we call each other Keith by first names?

Is that okay, Chairman?

Chairperson?

Can I do that?

I'm a little more formal than that, but that's what I always do first names.

Well, thank you, Ned, for the introduction, which I don't deserve, but thank you very much.

And I can't help but thinking all this morning, any Monty Python and Holy Grail fans around here?

Yeah, I just think of the whole coconuts and the things.

I won't tell any mighty Python jokes through my presentation.

So to follow up on Ned's comments, I wrote a note down as he was talking.

Relationships matter.

That's what this is all about.

We can talk about monies and incentives and all this stuff.

But at the end of the day, it's all about relationships.

And it's about the relationship between elected bodies,

the private sector, the non-profit sector, and more importantly, the people who we serve.

I'm not going to tell you anything that everybody either in this room or on this dais does not know at the moment.

Our inventory is down, so what you're looking at right now is Albemarle County single-family detached.

I always take out new construction because it kind of skews the numbers a little bit and we can talk about that later.

But as you can tell, as far as single-family detached goes, we're kind of looking somewhere between 2018 and 2019 as far as volume.

These are the number of units sold.

But if we go to the next slide and we take a look at, okay, what is our median sales price?

See how those bars are kind of sliding from a lower level, about 405 in 2017 up to 570.

So our inventory is kind of going back towards the 18 and 19, but we are

increasing in prices quite rapidly.

And there's a bunch of other slides in here which I will let you guys go through.

I break it down by attached and new construction.

I wanted to take a moment because I really want to get to the Q&A portion of this chat.

And I hope I have permission from my chairperson here, chairman here.

I want to take an opportunity and talk about these four pillars and the reason I'd like to spend a minute and talk about these four pillars and then talk about what's actually happening in the last 30 days in Albemarle County as I was sitting here listening.

I also chair the Piedmont Community Land Trust.

So I officially, in that capacity, want to say thank you because we took $625,000 and parlayed it into roughly $8 million worth of appraised value new construction homes with a partnership with Stanley Martin and the county for 23 permanently affordable homes.

So we took $625,000 that you guys were gracious enough to give to us,

helped us out with some red tape issues we were having, frankly, on that end of it, and were able, within 12 months or other, put on the contract to close.

The last units are going to close by the end of the first quarter of this year.

Some important stats.

We hit 65% AMI.

70% of the buyers were females.

which I totally, female buyers.

And a little bit about who we help.

This is why what I think we're all doing at the Regional Housing Partnership is important.

Albemarle Public Schools, City Public Schools, City of Charlottesville, County of Albemarle County, County of Enrico,

we've used nurses so we helped quite a few folks that are helping us every day get into homes and the reason I wanted to do this a little bit I've learned in a year and a half of doing this on the sales side of the equation

not the rental side, but the sales side of the equation.

To hit 80% AMI or below, the sales price needs to be somewhere around $215 is really kind of on the outside head of it depending upon how the mortgage rates go up and down.

So today, single family detached.

So those are detached homes.

Active, we have 110 in Albemarle County.

I've got one below $200,000 available to buy.

The rest of them are ranging between $300,000 and the medium sales list price is $700,000.

Single family attached is only $33,000 available.

There's none available below $200,000.

The medium list price is $450,000.

A little caveat on the attached R system, meaning the Charlottesville Association of Realtors system combines duplexes and what I call townhomes, multiple units, as attached.

Some of these are duplex units.

Pending sales 160 as we sit right now.

Medium pending contract is $696,000.

We have zero below 280 in the pending mark.

Single family attached pending 142.

I've got three below 300.

On the new construction side of it, the winner is the Piedmont Community Land Trust with a $225,000 new construction single-family attached.

The reason I'm reciting these numbers, and you can take a look in it, and reciting what we were able to do with the land trust, listening to the conversation a little bit earlier,

This can be done, guys.

We just need to operate underneath these four pillars and bring everybody together.

This is the success that the Regional Housing Partnership, in my opinion, has been bringing to the table.

And to speak to Ned's comment, you know, it amazes me when we sit down and do an executive session or a full board session.

It's a cross chatter.

between jurisdictions, private sector, the nonprofit sector.

Everybody wants to do this.

We just need to kind of get all into the same tent to make it happen.

I think Ann has a couple of questions.

I hope I didn't get too much on my soapbox on that, but I'm rather passionate about this.

Thank you for having me.

I just wanted to briefly touch on some of our upcoming events but also some of the deliverables that were included in our strategic plan which we adopted formally in June of 2022.

So kind of like what Ned and Keith have been talking about, I think the real strength of the Regional Housing Partnership is its ability to convey information to all of our localities, stakeholders across the region, including obviously elected officials, planning commissioners, nonprofit leaders, and developers, private sector folks.

So some of the deliverables that we've decided

to produce for the region include a real-time housing dashboard with hopefully some of the information that Keith has given to you today so that decision makers and stakeholders can easily access that information, have a clear picture of what's going on in the region.

We're hoping to produce a grant library so that for-profit and non-profit developers can look into potential incentives and subsidies that could promote and create new affordable housing, as well as a resource toolkit, including definitions.

So we have a long list of phrases or acronyms that you hear a lot, AMI obviously being one of them, but there's a lot of jargon within the affordable housing world and we're hoping to distill it down into plain English for stakeholders to use.

Those are just some of the deliverables that are going to be coming from our strategic plan that we're hoping to have up in the next year.

I really wanted to draw everyone's attention to our annual housing summit that's happening March 2023.

I know that a few of you all have registered.

We're really looking forward to that.

We have nine breakout sessions planned, as well as keynote speaker Jay Grant, who's the executive director of LISC in Hampton Roads.

and he's going to be, he has a long extensive experience in both the federal and state side of affordable housing finance and development.

So I think it'll be a really great event and we're really hoping that folks from Albemarle come.

And then also this one is a little more in the works but it is the 50th anniversary of the TJPDC this year and so as a part of that anniversary celebration we're hoping to have something similar to this roadshow but

with all the elected officials convening at the TJPDC for a discussion and conversation there.

And Chair Price, before you go to the questions, just to follow, he mentioned the strategic plan.

And the strategic plan, a consultant helped us with that.

And there was three pieces of that that the RH people would be working on.

I think it's worth noting.

and two of them are the Data Committee and the Communications Committee and what was learned in the lead up to figuring out our strategic plan and next steps was what should, in addition to the relationships that we're forming and establishing and building on, what can we be putting out there?

And we made this presentation to Green and then the City of Charlottesville

That data and that data sharing is an important place.

Like we do it for Albemarle, but then how does it work for the region?