Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   4/19/2023

Good afternoon everyone and welcome.

I'm pleased to call to order this April 19th meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors at 1 o'clock p.m.

in Lane Auditorium in the County Office Building.

The supervisors who are present today are Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, and

Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller 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 District.

I would also like to mention, and so we do have a quorum present, I would also like to mention that we have at the dais our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney,

Mr. Steve Rosenberg, as well as our clerk for the board, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

Mr. Travis Morris may be joining us a little later at the dais.

Let me also welcome and introduce Officer Matt Riley and Officer Christian Hernandez of the Albemarle County Police Department.

If you will now stand as you are able and join in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

We're now ready to move to adoption of the agenda.

Before doing so, however, under item number 20, I would like to add an item to request authorization from the board for the chair to sign a letter regarding a letter of support for the Botanical Garden of Piedmont, America, to the beautiful challenge.

So the floor is open for a motion to adopt the agenda as amended.

Alright, we have a motion from Supervisor Mallek and a second from Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

At this time we'll move to item number five, brief announcements by board members.

Announcements.

I'm up first today.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Just wanted to mention that I held the first community meeting at the Westminster Canterbury and with my constituents.

I know everyone's been doing budget meetings and this was a semi-budget meeting, but it was really nice to be able to get to

know everybody in here with their concerns or what they wanted, which frankly weren't many.

So that was really nice.

Other than that, I did go on a farm ride in my district in tractors and trucks and need a ladder to get up into the tractor, but it was quite an experience and I really, really enjoyed it and I thank Paul Haney.

Thank you very much.

Last night was the completion of the three spring town halls for members of the White Hall District.

And first I want to thank members of the Albemarle County Police Department who came out and provided White Hall District-centric transportation town halls and public safety briefings for each of the regions, Crozet, White Hall Village, and Earliesville.

So thank you and I'm going to get the ranks all wrong so I'm just going to use names and not make a mistake with the ranks.

Deputy Chief,

Terry Walls, Kevin Miller, Jason Barden, and Jeremy Wood who all amongst those three meetings provided lots of detail, answered hundreds of questions from citizens about what was going on and their concerns as well.

So I really appreciate their time and also to all the residents who attended and discussed their issues both in public safety, bicycling, pedestrian safety,

and also for good questions about the budget, the tax waiver program which will be on our agenda later on tonight and other questions like clean fill and growth and infrastructure issues in general and about particular sites as well.

You see this lovely picture here on this Friday, April 21st at 11 a.m.

will be the 57th annual rededication on the hill that heals, the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial on John Mortar Parkway.

Parking will be on the hill at McIntyre Park with access off the bypass through the skate park beginning at 10 a.m.

Parking guides will be on hand as well as buggy transport to the site from your car if needed.

It is a hike.

The Charlottesville Dogwood Vietnam Memorial was the first civic slash public memorial in the United States.

This one is dedicated to the 28 young men from the Charlottesville and Albemarle area who served and sacrificed their lives in service to their country in the war in Vietnam.

The first Albemarle casualty was SP4 Champ Lawson Jr., Champ Jackson Lawson Jr.

Champ was a resident of Earliesville and a very young man at the time.

His grandson is president today of the Earliesville Fire Company.

The stories of these 28 remembered with plaques at the memorial site are an important visit for anyone to make.

The April re-dedication and the wreath laying in December for Wreaths Across America are two annual events at the memorial.

to which the public is invited.

The site is open to the public with parking at the rescue squad across the street on regular non-ceremony days.

Other Albemarle County Soldiers Memorials are at the county office building on McIntyre and also at the Blake on Rile Road where a children's playground and a water feature provide a peaceful place for contemplation and remembrance.

Post 2044, we'll host a Memorial Day ceremony for the combined Crozet VFW 8436 as well as 2044 on 29 May at 10 a.m.

at the Earliesville Center at 600 Earliesville Green.

Colonel Joel Jenkins is the keynote speaker.

Music will be provided by the Senior Center Second Wind Band and everyone is welcome.

Thank you.

Yes, just a couple of things.

I just wanted to remind everyone

that two-thirds of Virginia is now abnormally dry.

And Central Virginia and specifically Albemarle County are in moderate drought with 84% of Albemarle County moderately dry.

Obviously that's very concerning.

We are approximately four inches below normal and in a warning status for our groundwater levels.

which is very concerning and as windy as it is right now.

We are primed for fires and I've been noticing on the logs that the fire department is responding to a lot of fires.

So people need to be very careful and especially with cigarette butts that you're flicking out of car windows.

Not that you all are in the audience, but people need to be really careful about that.

It's very dangerous.

The good news is that our reservoirs are full and we hope to keep them that way as best we can.

The other thing I wanted to share with everyone is that I had the opportunity to go to the Vanderlinde Recycling Center in Troy and took probably what was about a 45 minute to an hour tour through the facility.

They offer tours weekly and I encourage anyone and everyone to go down there and see the facility and what they're doing.

It's been a long time since I have learned as much and enjoyed a hard hat tour as much as I did this particular tour.

The Vanderlinde Recycling is

only the second recycling center in Virginia to receive certification from the Recycling Certification Institute, which is of course a national organization.

They also have an audit every year, which they're very proud of, and they run totally on solar power.

Very cool.

and I'll just mention a few of the, of course they're doing a lot of sorting and let me just point out that they are recovery and recycling of items that are not collected in curbside recycling is what their focus is.

But they're selling mulch from wood chips, they're selling gravel that they

produced from concrete, brick, block, and asphalt.

They're recycling roof shingles.

They're selling topsoil and fill dirt.

And they are now recycling mattresses, which is the best, because I don't know of any place here that's recycling mattresses.

It's hard to even get rid of a mattress, much less have it recycled.

They're, of course, recycling carpet and padding.

And what I didn't really know, one of the many things that I didn't know, was that carpet material takes thousands of years to decompose.

I guess it never really occurred to me that carpet is one of the things that's really hard to get rid of.

So that was a fascinating tour.

I was thrilled to know when I was there that our economic development folks had already been to the tour a couple of weeks before.

So anybody can call down there and just join a scheduled tour that they might have happening over the weeks.

It was fascinating.

Late edition, there is a second budget town hall that's associated with Samuel Miller, at least, that I'll be holding tomorrow night in connection with the 5th and Avon CAC meeting, 7 p.m.

at the 5th Street Office Building, Room B.

I want to follow up with Supervisor McKeel's comments on Vanderland.

83% of the material dropped off there is recycled.

I repeat, 83% as opposed to 100% going to a landfill someplace else.

And I would really love to see, you know, Rivanna solid waste, see if there's more we can do to recycling in that area.

Yeah.

Question is, Supervisor McKeel, is it a MRF facility or just general trash and recycling?

It's trash and recycling.

I would differentiate between garbage, which is meat packaging and stuff like that, which goes to a different section, as opposed to dry waste, everything Supervisor McKeel mentioned.

and then not only do you go through the facility, but they'll drive you around to where they accumulate and you'll see piles of asphalt and timber and things that are then reprocessed again.

So thank you, Supervisor.

And they hire locally, I have to keep adding things, I'm sorry, but we have

Just one comment, my understanding is that before they would have a MERF facility where you bring your garbage and it goes through a

A long line and things are picked out and everything.

Well they do that with the stuff that's recyclable.

But your household garbage, again I differentiate between garbage which is wet stuff like the packaging that meat comes in.

Which is why they differentiate it and say not in your curbside trash can.

Right, exactly.

Thanks.

Okay, I've got a number of things.

Since our last meeting, had an opportunity to attend a little open house and met the new chancellor at PVCC, David Dore.

Sunday night, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and I were able to attend a Ramadan community Iftar dinner, which included a lot of trivia questions and education as well.

Really fabulous hospitality, wonderful youth that were there, every single one of which is pursuing high level

Higher Education, just a great part of our community and we were both very honored to have been invited to attend that.

Going forward, we have a number of things coming up on the calendar.

The Red Cross Heroes Celebration is tomorrow morning at the Center.

Dogwood Vietnam Memorial 57th Commemoration is on the 21st.

Panorama Natural Burial Cemetery is having their grand opening on Saturday the 22nd There will be the grand opening of the Forum Hotel at the Darden School next Wednesday Therapeutic docket will be celebrating their five-year anniversary And we've got a public

I'm hearing for our tax rate on next Wednesday, so a lot going on.

On the personal note, I had the exciting pleasure of being invited back to my law school to be on a panel at a symposium.

I got this beautiful coffee mug, which is why it's up here on the dais for everyone to see.

You know, it's really cool to do more than just be asked to donate money at your alma mater.

and that's all I've got.

Anything else by any supervisors?

Thank you to Supervisor McKeel to talk about the drought.

There were two grass fires yesterday, one on each side of the mountain.

The one on 64 began with a vehicle fire that then spread into the woods and I don't know if anybody was out after four o'clock yesterday afternoon but nothing was moving on any of our roadways.

because you couldn't go west on 250 or anything on 64 and it was backed up way beyond the Barracks Road exit.

So that's something for us to think about when we talk about the interconnected nature of our roadways is that when one of them is completely decommissioned, everything else cannot function.

So it was a real surprise when my grandson got home from his EMT training last night to tell the length of time it took him to get from basically Hydraulic Road to Bel Air to try to get to work.

and the red flag warnings are really, really strong out everywhere now and with these winds it is so, so scary.

I've been very grateful to see no burn permits being issued on that daily thing that we get from Damon's software because people are being more sensible.

And the only thing to add is I'm really, really glad that VDL is operating and modified because they had, I think, were in process of modifying the recycling plant maybe five years ago or so, had a big, big up people.

When I toured years ago it was a great example of the damage that plastic bags do and how important it is for us to be going forward with reducing the number of plastic bags that are in use and therefore not getting into our trash.

Was it in the short period of time, an hour or so that we were there looking down the

Conveyor Belt, and they were having to throw them up into the suction thing, but there were still ones that got missed or went by too fast, and they completely gummed up the sorting machinery, and then they'd have to shut everything down and fish them all out, and it was a real nuisance.

And the farmers complain about that when they blow into their fields and get caught up in their equipment.

Well, and animals are very curious and not very sensible, and they eat things like that, which cause real problems.

So it's a health hazard as well.

I just wanted to mention regarding Supervisor Mallek's comment about the signs.

There was a sign on 29 going south, but one sign, and I caught it regarding the fire, but at the rate of, I was going the speed limit.

and I couldn't catch if it was eastbound or westbound, but there was just one sign.

I thought, were the other signs warning everybody?

So that's one thing.

The other thing is I forgot to mention that Pole Grounds and Bentevar and Prophet Road, they do a community cleanup of litter twice a year, fall and spring.

So I was able to participate that and they collected 35 bags of trash

that then VDOT comes along and picks up.

Thank you.

All right.

We have none today, so we'll move to item number seven from the public matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

Check with the clerk.

Do we have both in person and online signups?

Just in person.

Just in person.

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 each matters of public session.

We have nine today.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and 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'll be asked to end your comments.

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

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

Please address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

Any written comments 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.

Please do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

All comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

and I'm going to read off the first three names so that we can have people ready and then we'll go from there.

Carol Fairbourn.

Good afternoon and please feel free to move the microphone so it points more towards your mouth.

Thank you.

Good afternoon board members.

My name is Carol Fairbourn and I've been a homeowner within the Westlake Hills community in Albemarle County in Crozet since 2017.

I'm here to share four main concerns regarding Riverbend Development's Oak Bluff housing proposal for Crozet.

1.

This plan calls for the construction of 134 new dwellings which will impact already congested and overused neighborhood roads, causing a danger to the public.

I am formally requesting the board to order a traffic study of the plan's effects on this geographic area prior to this proposal moving forward.

Although I appreciate that the growth of Crozet is a priority for the county, I think we can all agree it must be done responsibly.

The necessary infrastructure must be put in place first.

This plan should not be allowed to move forward until after the completion of the 240-250 Eastern Avenue connector road by VDOT.

This plan will impede upon land which is part of the Westlake HOA.

The plan calls for building homes and a new access road off of West Hall Drive using land parcel 56LF.

That particular parcel belongs to the Westlake HOA and the developer has no legal right of way to build upon it.

3.

This plan will harm the environment.

Besides the loss of natural habitat and wildlife, the construction and residential runoff will increase the flooding risk for Westlake Homes and further pollute Licking Hole Creek, which is, per the Virginia DEQ, already an impaired stream.

Furthermore, that stream feeds into the South Fork River Reservoir, which is the primary source of water for Charlottesville.

I am formally requesting the board to order an independent environmental impact study of the plan's effects on this geographic area prior to this proposal moving forward.

And four, the proposal will impair the character of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The plan calls to rezone the land into PRD zoning, which allows up to six dwellings per acre.

The plan also includes buildings as tall as 65 feet, which will be an eyesore and obstruct the beautiful views in Crozet.

I'd like to conclude with an important logistical related question for the board.

Other than eminent domain, does Albemarle County own the actual rights to build the 240-250 connector road?

Or is the county relying upon Riverbend Development to grant the easement to the county to build the connector road?

I'm formally requesting the board to verify the status of this VDOT project, verify which entity holds the rights to build that connector road and to publicly communicate its findings.

Thank you board members for your time and for your consideration to pause this housing proposal so that key studies may be conducted and key answers may be obtained.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

My name is Keith Smith.

I'm before you today as the chair of the Piedmont Community Land Trust.

Madam chairperson, can I hand this to the clerk of court to circulate?

Sure.

The clerk's over here.

Oh, got it.

Thank you, Chair Smith.

So I'm here today as the chairman to kind of give you my final wrap-up of the $625,000 that you guys graciously granted the Pima Community Land Trust and what you have before you is just a quick overview of what we've done.

So we have taken that money and converted it into 12 permanent

New construction units, just to put a little numbers to it, that's translated into $4.8 million worth of homes.

Our average AMI is 65%.

Our average household income is $49,500.

Go back to the 12 so that you know we had additional money from different sources and we actually put together a total of 23 homes, including the 12 that you guys helped fund.

I think an important thing to note is who actually was the buyers?

And you'll be happy to find it was a lot of Albemarle County employees.

So we had AHIP, Albemarle Public School, County of Albemarle, UVA Hospital, we had those folks in the city, council of city public schools in the city of Charlottesville working.

So that's who filled up those particular homes.

So, why does it matter?

Why is what we volunteer at Land Trust matters?

Why it matters is it creates permanent affordable housing.

I'm going to talk about that a little bit later.

It helps homeowners build equity.

I'm going to talk about that a little bit later on why.

Should I turn around?

And look at this I got one minute left so it the $52,000 that you guys granted us.

Let's go to the last slide I'm going to give you an example of Nassau Street.

Nassau gave the city gave us $60,000 that one time contribution

is already translated into two buyers, the original buyer who bought it at 80% AMI, actually 65.

They recently sold the home, made $50,000, moved up the ladder of affordability, home ownership, and they are

purchased a market rate home.

Then came another 80% AMI buyer below and bought that existing home.

So why this is so important, that $60,000 or $52,000 in your case will continue to give forever.

So we won't have to come back to you and ask for another $52,000 to help somebody else.

And I've got eight seconds.

So look at this.

And I promised everybody I would be done.

So thank you.

I'm going to hang around for the work session.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Sally James from the White Hall District.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak today.

I'm adding my comments to those concerning changes to the requirements for the real estate tax relief for elderly and disabled.

First, the proposal to increase the net worth from $200,000 to $250,000 comes nowhere near being of any practical help for seniors in the county.

taking into account inflation and the increased cost of living and recognizing that anyone who's been responsible for saving for their retirement years

It's readily apparent that a net worth figure should be closer to $400,000 as we see in the counties of Northern Virginia.

In addition, farmers and others who care for large tracts of land despite low incomes could never qualify with such a low net worth limit because of the predicament of being land poor.

But I would suggest that the net worth eligibility be eliminated altogether, thus saving county staff and applicants a tremendous amount of work to document these monies

and making the determination for eligibility a more level playing field.

Instead, as has been suggested, qualify applicants by income alone.

If deemed necessary, lower or at least keep the same the current income limit amounts to help compensate further percentage of revenue lost by eliminating the net worth requirement.

This simplification of the process would not affect those already qualifying for relief.

another suggestion to generate income is to increase the amount of cash profits from developers which I understand at present are quite low and of course the county will benefit from additional real estate taxes from these new properties

Finally, after attending Ann Mallek's town hall meeting in White Hall on Saturday, I came to realize one reason why there may be a disconnect in understanding the concerns of residents living in the rural areas.

For the most part, the people living and often farming in the country have been there sometimes for generations.

We have watched the tax rates and assessments rise year after year.

Conversely, someone who has recently moved to the area only knows what the real estate situation is when they get here and doesn't have a history to compare it to.

Longtime residents have invested years of time, sweat, heart, and money

to maintain their properties and we have helped build our communities with a continuity missing in more transient neighborhoods.

We have helped to build this county and we continue to care for it.

Please do not penalize us by making it too difficult financially to continue to live in the homes and the communities that we love.

The loss of these longtime residents and families would affect the county as a whole by losing this valuable core of stability and wisdom.

Good afternoon.

My name is Carmen Alicia Morales-Perez, and I reside in the White Hall District of Albemarle County.

I come before you today to comment on changing the eligibility requirement

for the elderly and disabled who seek real estate tax relief.

I speak not only for myself but on behalf of many low and modest income elderly taxpayers who do not qualify for tax relief and who will remain ineligible even after your proposed modifications are enacted.

Here's what would help us.

Do away with the net worth eligibility requirement.

The state does not mandate it and you have the authority to eliminate it.

We're not asking the county to increase services for us.

We simply wish to live out our lives in dignity in the homes that we love, surrounded by our families and friends.

and speaking of family, I wish to emulate the latter years of the life of my father, Luis Angel Morales, who passed away a hundred years, at a hundred years, two years ago this April.

He managed his resources so that we could pay for his care right to the end of his life and this was no feat.

The youngest of 14 children, Poppy left his home in Puerto Rico

to come to America in 1930.

And in a mere six years, he went through from a shoeshine boy on the streets of New York to helping plan and execute Operation Overlord to free Europe from tyranny.

As a Ritchie boy trained in military intelligence, he was attached to the 116th Infantry Regiment in Stanton, Virginia, and he became proficient in French, German, and Russian.

Possessing the highest military clearance and blessed with a photographic memory, he had total recall of all enemy positions in the coastal Normandy, France.

My father fought so we could live a democracy.

As a civilian, I try to do my part to preserve this legacy.

And it is in this spirit that I'm asking you, as our democratically elected representatives, to take the simple step and illuminate the net worth eligibility, if necessary, just like Henrico County does.

Put a cap on the amount of tax allowed.

Could we try this approach for a year and then re-evaluate?

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to offer your suggestions.

Thank you.

Board, before the next speaker, the three individuals, the two that have just spoken and the next one, when they signed up for matters from the public for items that are not public hearings,

They actually are speaking about something for which we have a, could you wait just a moment please?

Thank you.

We actually have a public hearing on this, but that's at six o'clock.

So, what I would ask the board to consider

is allowing this third individual who has signed up for the same subject to speak now rather than having to come back at six o'clock or have the option of coming back at six o'clock if the individual would prefer and what we need to work with from the board and the clerk's office is clarification that people understand this is for matters that we do not have a public hearing

not for matters where we do have a public hearing, but as a courtesy to our community members who have come, I would ask if the board is willing to waive that requirement for today in order to allow these individuals to speak now rather than having to come back.

So let me first check with our county attorney.

all right so I would make a motion that the board suspend the procedural rules for matters from the public for this one item with regard to comment involving item number

816, which is a public hearing on the ordinance to modify the real estate tax relief for the elderly and disabled so that those who have already signed up to speak at the one o'clock session are able to have their comments heard today and that those comments be considered by the board when considering the ordinance later this evening.

Second.

Any further discussion?

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

All right.

So I hope the public understands the three speakers, the item that you

Good afternoon, my name is Dirk Neese.

For your consideration, I wish to provide guidance derived from five Virginia counties on how to set eligibility requirements for real estate tax relief for elderly and disabled residents, which in the words of Henrico County, quote, are deemed to be bearing an extraordinarily high real estate tax burden in relation to their income and financial worth.

Focusing first on net worth, here are the figures.

For Albemarle County, the

Net Worth is now currently $200,000, Arlington $467,402, Fauquier $440,000, Henrico $500,000, Loudoun County $920,000, Prince William County $340,000, and they exempt up to 25 acres of the land on which the residence resides.

turning now to income levels for which 100% of real estate tax relief is available to the elderly.

Albemarle County is currently at $37,550.

Arlington is $54,706.

Fauquier, $72,000.

Henrico, $75,000.

Loudoun County, $77,000.

Pennsylvania County, $72,000.

So I hope you find these eligibility requirements in these five Virginia counties to be informative in your deliberations this evening.

And in closing, I leave you with this quote from the Henrico County website.

The tax relief credit will provide a projected $11.2 million back to Henrico County property owners.

These funds were not factored into the 2023-2024 budget.

They are surplus from real estate tax dollars collected in the prior fiscal years.

State code specifically allows for surplus funds to be refunded to taxpayers.

Returning these funds will not impact funding for education, public safety, recreation, or any other county agencies, programs, or services.

So that's what Henrico County is doing.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Thank you very much for your time.

My name is Dave Vanderwerf.

I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller district here in Albemarle County.

And I would like to request today that you remove from the consent agenda item 23-219, the Bellaire personal wireless facility special exception, and that you either reject the request or impose conditions consistent with your authority under section 33.9.

As you consider this matter, I think it's important to understand that the existing site is no longer in compliance with the proposed site plan submitted with the application of 2017, which enabled the installation of the current metal pole structure.

Several trees shown on that plan and indicated to be conserved have died or declined, including, importantly, the reference tree, which as noted in the original application provided significant canopy screening the tower.

In terms of reasons for rejection of the request, firstly I would disagree with the report and analysis you've been provided and do not concur that a modified regulation would satisfy the purpose of the chapter, at least to the equivalent degree as specified in the requirement, referencing basically the standoff of antennas allowed from the tower.

The proposed antenna are significantly larger and will project significantly farther than those currently installed, which comply with the regulation.

and I've provided in the correspondence to the general email and a diagram that illustrates how much more they do project.

I don't think it's reasonable to say that they don't have a material impact relative to the regulation.

Additionally, the full array is proposed to be located at the very top of the pole where effectively no screening for a treetop tower exists.

Lastly, I don't believe this is one of the avenues that's provided but the other avenue that's allowed to provide a special exception is when there's an interest in the public safety or health or welfare and in this case cell service is provided by the existing complying installation as well as by two other carriers that provide service to this vicinity.

If you do elect to approve the special exception I would request that you give consideration to attaching conditions as you are authorized to do by section 33.9 and I've provided again in the correspondence which is in the record with the clerk a diagram for your consideration which would provide screening to succeed that for the tower which is in decline.

Most importantly, I'm eager to bring this matter before your attention today because I know the board will be considering updating the wireless ordinance and regulations later this year and want us to highlight the importance of legacy sites like this one throughout the county which were created and distributed but as treetop towers that live oftentimes in very sensitive residential areas like my own and so I just hope you'll consider ways to establish and balance the interests

importantly in creating self-service but also in balancing the interests of neighboring property owners and avoiding visual impacts.

Good afternoon.

Neil Williamson with the Free Enterprise Forum.

Today, on your agenda, you have a work session, not a public hearing regarding an affordable dwelling unit ordinance.

I think this is the appropriate time to speak on such a matter as public comment is not usually accepted at work sessions.

Am I correct, Madam Chair?

Very good.

On that work session, you have an executive summary that always includes a line item that says budget.

The budget line item I think is understated in that particular document and it references the ramping up of such costs will be dictated by the number of developments that come forward.

The Free Enterprise Forum has identified 16 specific elements some of which will have to be in place regardless of how many folks are engaging in the program.

Based on our analysis, the ADU program would require the county executive or his or her designee to annually set price limits on ADU sale, annually set price control limits on ADU resale, establish qualifications for all potential ADU buyers,

Recruit and certify potential purchasers.

My understanding is that currently goes, you need 20 interviews to get one potential purchaser.

Create and maintain a database of county certified purchasers.

Maintain account files and correspondence with all lenders associated with each and every financed ADU purchase.

Maintain annual owner certification for each and every ADU.

Maintain a home improvement file for each and every ADU.

maintain a list of eligible home improvements, establish and maintain a housing fund reserve account, track ADU resales even after the 40-year affordability period to capture quote, excess proceeds.

I love this one.

Track marital status of ADU owners to ensure divorce settlements accurately reflect the ADU status.

Track monthly rent and family size, heaven forbid you have a baby, of all rental ADU units.

Annual recertification of rental ADUs, annual recertification of ADU tenants, issuing zoning violations and collecting fines for violations.

As a reminder, the Albemarle County Office of Housing currently has one employee.

Paul Haynie, Albemarle County Farm Bureau.

I reside in the Rivanna District.

I came with great anticipation of announcing a new farmer.

After a nice wonderful tour, but it seemed like the 6 a.m.

start time every day was a bit of a problem.

So no new farmer in Miss Curley.

To your fire comments.

Be very concerned.

With all the people I have working in the woods right now, we have fires about every day.

Fortunately, the guys have got their eyes open and are getting them out quickly, and a lot of them don't mount anything other than just a little spot.

We did have one about an acre, and we have no earthly idea how it happened.

We had no one working in that area, but we had equipment there and it got put out, so it is a concern.

Primarily, in all your email boxes right now,

The General Assembly wrap-up from Farm Bureau this year is in there.

Specifically what I know many of you have been interested in was the farm use tags.

It has been straightened out to some degree.

If you have a vehicle that is 7,500 pounds or greater, it does not require a placard from DMV.

If it's less than that, if it's a pickup, an SUV or panel van,

then it does require a placard from DMV.

This goes into effect January 1 of 2024.

If you read the summary that I've given you, you've got to dig into the weeds a little bit more.

If you go to the DMV site, you can see specifically it says it references pickups.

And we got into it in our board meeting recently about what that meant.

We clarified 7,500 pounds is the Trump.

So if your vehicle is 7,500 pounds, you do not have, even though it's a pickup.

We all have three-quarter ton pickups.

That still qualifies to have no placard.

If it's less than that, then you do.

So your half-ton pickups, your SUVs, and your panel vans will have to have them.

And no car, under any circumstances, has in the past nor now, can have

a farm use tag.

So we're anticipating a meeting with the chief of police to be sure that we're all on the same page.

There's been some confusion about that.

I know they're working at it from the state level with the police organizations to be sure we're clarified on that.

And also a reminder, I know we've heard from some of you, but we do have a producer's meeting next month and three have and three have not responded.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board, I'm Valerie Long with the law firm of Williams-Mullen.

I'm here to speak with you today about two matters on your agenda that are related, although primarily speaking today are now about the ADU ordinance that is a work session later today.

So the two items together are related, so I certainly understand the rules, Madam Chair, about the

element tonight as a public hearing, the incentives grant program.

But I come today because they are so very related.

The affordable housing dwelling unit ordinance which would require affordable housing at the new goals of housing Albemarle on all applications that go through the rezoning or special use permit process.

They will be mandatory under that ordinance.

However, the Affordable Developers Incentives grant program that is up for consideration later tonight, which is intended, as I understand it, to be the incentives to enable the developers to provide the amount of affordable housing you all want,

That is not at all guaranteed.

It is capped at a very low level and the proposal itself for each project does not achieve your goals of enabling the developers to provide the amount of incentives necessary.

So my strong concern and that of our many clients who have reviewed these proposals is that if the Affordable Dwelling Units Ordinance is adopted but the grant program does not balance that out

No one will be able to develop any housing under rezonings, much less affordable units.

So we would ask that you all consider that.

There are a number of other challenges.

The ADU ordinance would apply to both rental and for sale units that are affordable or projects.

but the grant program only applies to rental programs so that would be yet another additional burden on providing for sale affordable units which is already very very challenging.

So again your goal was to

provide an ordinance and a grant program that would enable the development community, private development community in particular, to be able to provide the amount of affordable housing that you all want per your goals.

The ADU ordinance does not include that.

I think they should be together.

I'm not quite sure why they're not being considered at the same time.

I know one's an ordinance and one's a work session, one's an ordinance, but we think that

they could be considered together.

So that is that is my main concern and we would ask that you not adopt or not move forward an ADU ordinance today that does not provide a directly related connected developers incentives program as you all have been discussing over the past I think two years.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now move to item number eight, the consent agenda.

I would like to request that we at least be allowed to ask some questions about 8.3.

I think we would need to pull it then.

Point of order Madam Chair.

Items that are to be pulled are supposed to be pulled before we approve the agenda.

So we would have to modify the rule allowing for an item to be pulled at the consent agenda time.

That's the point at the beginning to ask if we make the motion to approve the agenda as amended.

I believe there's certainly room to have discussion

Alright, thank you.

Discussion is what I'm looking for.

Not pulling it?

Alright, then so the floor is open for a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Is there any discussion?

Yes, thank you.

I just want to take an opportunity to thank Mr. Van der Werf for coming to the meeting today and expressing concerns about the Bellaire cell tower, which we've also received other emails on.

I recognize that this application by itself is a one-foot additional offset.

and by itself doesn't open up a new review of an existing tower.

But I know also that we're going to be looking at the ordinance at some point in the future and it would help me to understand what the procedure is for considering when a screening requirement or a reference tree is no longer in compliance with what

was originally approved, what the process is for notice or otherwise correcting issues with screening.

And that is really just more a question for staff to clarify.

I think later would be better.

We should go ahead and finish the consent agenda and then we can check with Mr. Richardson on when would be a good time for staff to be able to address that.

I don't have a disagreement regarding, because I read that and they said that the trees are dead or dying and everything.

I think that's going to happen, and I'm not saying not to look at it, but we do have wind issues, we do have trees going down all the time, we had freezing last year.

where trees came down.

So I think putting up other trees would be a good thing, but you can't say the screening is always going to be there because of the fact that depending on how thick it is, nature happens.

I look forward to the next discussion when we have staff here because I think there was an understanding that as things evolve, replacements are made, as in other required plantings and other community development things.

So we'll wait.

All right.

Thank you.

I mean, I would think that the two questions, the site plan compliance, is separate from when we revisit the wireless policy.

Alright, thank you.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

All right.

Thank you board and Mr. Richardson.

So I think you heard the board would like to have some further discussion with regard to some of the issues related to these towers and the reference tree and things like that.

All right, anything further from the board, Mr. Richardson, that you need for that?

No, ma'am.

All right, board, we'll move to item number nine, a presentation, Department of Social Services Advisory Board Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2022.

Ms.

Dimock, good afternoon.

Let's open up our presentation.

Thank you.

I'm Kaki Dimmick, Director of the Department of Social Services.

Thank you very much for this opportunity to present our Fiscal Year 22 Annual Report from the Advisory Board.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the Board of Supervisors.

So my intention is to just click through the PowerPoint, allow you guys some time to read it, and just to have some comments about each one.

So these are the members of the advisory board.

As you can see, there's overlap in new members.

Okay, so this year we're seeing about 27,000 members of our community are receiving some sort of benefits.

And we know that unduplicated is about 19,000.

So this would represent some of our members that are receiving multiple benefits from SNAP to Medicaid.

And just to put it in perspective, approximately 100,000 people live in Albemarle County.

And here are some of our information about some of the programs that we're providing.

And there was a variable increase in each of these categories across the board for referrals from last year.

Any questions?

Okay.

Moving on to the Family Preservation Services Unit, something we wanted to highlight as you're reading through this is that kinship placement is a nationally recognized best practice and Albemarle County is seen as a state leader in this area of having children that have referrals, keeping them in family units, either someone that they know

Any questions?

Okay, next one is affordable housing which I know is a focus of this board.

With the first bullet point we know that that's a 10% increase from last year and

Our second bullet point there, the high performer.

This is nationally recognized by HUD because Albemarle County is both efficiently processing requests and also have positive outcomes for housing.

So we are a high performer.

And as we go through, we see that the county has awarded more than $6 million

and I know I speak for all of us at the board that this has gone a long way to providing housing to members in our community.

And the last bullet point is the five project-based housing vouchers, which is a partnership with MACA.

And just so you know that there is an application is open right now for members in our community to get vouchers and it's been open I think for a week and we have over a thousand people that have applied.

and this is something I know Supervisor Ann Mallek has been very interested in is the self-sufficiency unit where we're helping people find jobs and again this is another program that is recognized by the state as innovative.

It took the county about a year to go through the process of designation and all the requirements and I just want to say thank you to Board of Supervisor Ann Mallek for your support.

700 job seekers, that's amazing.

And this is a huge statement.

I'll take a moment for you to see this.

So the DSS has leveraged $10 million of local funds to actually get nearly $200 million in state and federal funds for Albemarle County residents.

This is an incredible feat.

And just so we understand this, this is when people come to us with a referral for need of services.

Of course, we have the intake people.

But to submit the paperwork and then give out these funds, it's only six people that are processing all these requests.

I mean, it's an incredible amount that is being leveraged.

And the audits that are done yearly are always positive.

And these are just a couple of the organizations that we are partnering with to serve our community.

And this is, I think what we're trying to say here is that every staff member has had a supervisory responsibility, has a 360 degree anonymous feedback by their peers and staff, and DSS is really trying to become

not just a process and compliance department, but really human services.

You know, CACI gave a great example where somebody, you know, the local police, you know, had an encounter with a person.

They brought them to social services to get, you know, some help.

And it wasn't about the compliance.

It wasn't about the process.

It's about where is this person right now?

How can we help them?

and give them the services they need.

And I think that's a real reflection of our community and really the efforts of CACI to move us into talking about human services, human dignity, not just compliance from state and federal regulations.

I'll just let this one sit here for a while.

22,460 individuals over 65 years old in the county, which represents about 7% that live in poverty as we were talking about our aging community earlier.

I think this really speaks to the breadth and depth of services provided to our community through social services.

I don't want to move too quickly, but

It's a lot to take in.

So, you know, we wanted to highlight what does this look like, like possibly on a person to person, because the numbers are large.

But this shows how many agencies are working together to help one individual, one family, the ACPD, the ACDSS,

and FBI came together.

They connected a family to therapeutic support, civil air patrol summer camp for a child, free art lessons from a community artist, medical care and a safe space in school.

And, you know, all of these things came to a positive outcome for this family and this individual.

And I think it's really important to note that, you know, this work as is written here is like I often feel like I'm doing a good job.

This is altruistic and I get paid to do it, but in this case I know I've built a lasting supportive team for this family and I think that is something that we all aspire to do for each of the individuals we're supporting in our community.

Definitely focusing on the future.

And we really wanted to say thank you to the Board of Supervisors for supporting these efforts and having the funding for more employees as we go through the great need that we have in our community.

And we couldn't do this work without you.

All right.

All right.

We will go through our order.

Thank you, Ms.

Laufer.

Well, I'm very appreciative of the report and the work of the board and CACI, the whole department.

I'm always quite amazed at how much you guys pull off and do when it's obviously multiplied based on what they have the actual time and capacity to do.

So thank you for that.

I'm curious.

There's a couple of things.

I mean, obviously, when you scroll through the report, some of your reds with big percentages on them.

I mean, when you look at the year to year,

I mean, all of that taken into account.

But the adoption and the, is it the foster care?

I mean, those stood out.

And I'm sitting here going, all right, I'm trying to, in my brain, understand, is this pandemic-related?

Is this cost-related?

What is your take on why we're seeing those jump?

Yes, it's really our capacity to meet our obligations in both foster care and adoption and because of those issues and concerns we came to the board mid-year and requested additional resources which we're tremendously grateful for.

We've had a hard time recruiting and hiring folks for those positions and we've had an increase in the number of, a pretty significant increase in the amount of expectations in both of those programs.

from the state for every case.

So what used to be a body of work that looked like this in order for us to meet our obligations now is a body of work that looks like this with no additional support from the state to meet those obligations.

And certainly during the pandemic we noticed a pretty significant increase in the acuity and intensity of need across the board.

Sort of if anyone walked through any one of our doors for service

Right, well it's great that

you know it's not that you wait for a report you already have it on the radar and let's go get to it.

The 10 million to 188 million is always when you can see money leveraged in that way but it also gives me the opportunity to each year I look at that goal that says that we're gonna be good financial stewards and we're gonna stay 1% below our allocated budget and this is the one I always like to remind that

Well, I understand keeping a little capacity for something that's uncertain is the department that needs to be a good financial steward by using all their resources, even that 1%.

So because we can see how it can get leveraged by the good work that's being done there.

I guess my final comment, the slide that had, and you don't necessarily need to go there, but there was the slide that was talking about the number of folks on SNAP, and the report only goes back a couple of fiscal years.

I think some of this information in those slides, if it were, I don't know how easy or difficult it would be to pull together, but looking at it in a longer snapshot of, no pun intended, of what's that doing over maybe even the last 10 years.

I'm thinking of our economic outlook report we received.

Well certainly the trend was up and then pretty consistently, not dramatically, but consistently down until the pandemic for almost all needs.

Sort of the level of need across the board was going down for benefit programs for sure.

We'll have these multiple years of anomalies for the pandemic and then the post-pandemic era as well so it'll be interesting to sort of see what the long-term trend line what it really looks like.

A SNAP increase certainly is related to the fact that the number of folks are in a greater number of folks who are in need but also because there's been a significant expansion in that both the amount and eligibility for SNAP during the pandemic which is completely inappropriate and good

Just phenomenal, I mean we're going to talk focus on affordable housing which is just one segment but this report gives you the total outlook of what folks who are struggling are struggling with.

It's not just one thing, it's everything.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for the presentation, all the information.

I was just wondering, I think it was on slide nine, I'm not sure, but do you also involve CASA in everything?

Certainly, CASA is one of our critical partners for kids who are in foster care, absolutely.

Okay, okay, that's what I was, I just wanted to make sure of that, because I know you did.

I was volunteer so I mean you guys are fabulous and what you do for children and the kinship program very important and I was able to also the adoption rate I think you help kind of fast track that when needed so that's greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Thank you very much everyone.

I wrote some things down as you were going through the slides, and I look forward to having this at home so I can study it some more.

I may send you some more questions later.

You talked about the high-performing recognition from state and feds.

Does that mean more vouchers are going to become available as a bonus?

I don't know that there's a direct correlation.

I will say that we have received additional vouchers in the last year, whether they're directly connected to that designation or not, I doubt.

That is very good news, considering that in the old days, it used to be the numbers that stayed the same, and now it's the amount of money that stays the same.

So when divided by increasing rents, the fact that you have more is actually a miracle in my perspective.

I was a little confused by the statistics 22,000 individuals.

Is the 7% of the county residents of 22,000 or is it 7% of the residents as a whole?

in those categories, just so I know how to interpret this when I study it.

I'm going to look on the piece of paper that I have in front of me just to make sure because now I just got confused.

There are that many children total in the county.

Okay, got it.

And then the same ratio would work for the seniors as well?

Yes, ma'am.

So 70% of the total property.

Very good.

Is there a work plan for Bright Stars?

I would not actually characterize it as struggling.

It looks like it's struggling because of the big red box, but in fact it's about the way that the shift from Bright Stars grants management from the county to public schools has changed the way we collect data.

We should have actually put an asterisk there.

Very good.

And I saw mention also of auxiliary grants.

Is that a program that's still going on, or since Mountainside is gone, are we out of luck on auxiliary grants?

I think we still have them, but I don't know that.

Could you come to the microphone, please, and identify yourself?

Mary Stebbins, Deputy Director for Albemarle Social Services.

I know Ms.

Demick referred to you earlier, but just to make sure we have that.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you for the really good report and lots of good information.

And I was going to ask about Bright Stars too.

So in addition to what you and Ann were talking about, I guess I'm wondering, I know that the Bright Stars program includes in the school social services, right, a social worker, right, working with.

So I'm questioning what the connection is now for social services.

You all are still there with the Bright Stars program.

even though they are really under the auspices of the school division.

I do.

It really is about sort of who's the boss of the grant.

And now the public schools is the boss of the grant.

They manage the money.

And we have always provided the social workers attached to the program that are in the schools.

OK.

So that helps a lot.

It's really about management and the grant.

I got that.

That makes perfect sense.

Thank you.

So my follow-up question to that is, we don't have a budget right now in the General Assembly, may not have one until June, and just wondering how that

How your department is, what the impact from your department and is there anything in that budget that they can't decide on?

I'm trying to figure out, I'm very concerned that we don't have a budget in the state right and it looks like it's going to be very slow and late and are there any red flags for you

Well, the process is not preferable.

I'm not concerned about funding for the localities or the Virginia Department of Social Services and the proposed budget that we've seen has been fairly reasonable with some increases in places where we saw need.

The places where I have concern is the community-based behavioral health system upon which we all rely as a referral source for families and individuals in need.

Right, which it gets at a problem we've known existed for many years.

And there was a JLARC study that came out in December commissioned by the General Assembly.

that speaks to recommendations to solve that problem.

So it would behoove all of us when we're talking about our legislative packet just to remember that support for that JLARC study for the community service boards needs to be implemented and not just another study that goes on the shelf.

based housing vouchers.

And then there was a reference to a number of applicants, a thousand or something like that.

Two different things, that's right.

We have five project-based vouchers and we have a mainstream voucher program that actually distributes the 400 or so vouchers that we have families benefiting from now.

And so those funds, both the number of vouchers and the funds available are extremely limited from HUD.

And so when

We have a little bit of opening either additional vouchers or opening in our sort of space to allow for new applicants.

We open our wait list and so then we welcome new applicants to then be on our wait list to be prioritized based on risk and need and so when an opening comes up then we'll go to our wait list and not open the whole thing up again.

So we have folks who are pre-qualified sort of in the pipeline ready

I appreciate the work that goes into that, and I am curious as to when you have that many, the rate at which they're qualified.

I understand that there is within that an effort to prioritize, but at the same time, these people are eligible, I assume for the most part.

I don't know.

I should look at that.

I should discover sort of how many folks apply and then of those how many are eligible and then of those how many actually are selected for a voucher.

My guess is it's going to be a pretty low percentage for that final number.

We saw on the community needs side we have 10,000 families that we know about that are rent burdened paying more than 30% and half of them are paying more than 50% of their

Thank you all for your presentation and also for the staff and the board that works with you.

We anecdotally will say that about 85% of what the Board of Supervisors does is land use, but what you do affects a substantially greater percentage of our population than what happens with land use, although you have to kind of, how do you figure land use?

Just the applicant, that piece of property, those around it in the neighborhood.

So your statistics, when I looked at the numbers, are really striking.

I was really moved by that 19 to 1 leveraging of money.

10 million in, 188 million out.

I mean, that's 19 times the value.

That's incredible.

But also, if you served about 19,000 individuals, 28,000 roughly total with some repetition,

That's 16% of our population.

I mean, that's a huge amount.

We've got about 116,000 people in the county.

So you are touching the lives and the houses of so many people.

And when you think about those are individuals, but then you take the average house as maybe household of four or five people, it means that you are affecting even a greater percentage directly of households than just the individuals that you might be dealing with.

You know, the other interesting thing is I'm looking through this 22,000 plus are children under 18, 22,400 are seniors, 65 or over in our population.

So you've got about 38% of the population are either children or seniors and then you've still got that 62% in the middle from 18 to 64.

You really are touching across all economic, all age.

all ethnic, all cultural boundaries and the work you do is amazing and it largely goes unseen by the public because it's dealing with personal, private information whereas what we do here at our meetings tends to be more public.

What I would ask for in our report pages 7, 8, and 9 on each of those was one item in red.

And percentages are often helpful, but they really don't tell the whole story.

So if you would be able to follow up with us and give us the numbers in those three categories, that might help us to see a little better as to how significant that difficulty of that area may actually be.

Because if the number of adoptions is relatively small, while you may not be satisfied with the time period,

It may be a fairly small number of people that are actually being impacted.

So like for adoption and the foster care, I would kind of think those two are somewhat correlated.

The other one, the children are successful in school with the Bright Stars program, where they attend at least four functions during the year.

Numbers would be helpful, but also if you've been able to identify the barriers to the families participating.

Because I suspect that given the demographic of children that are involved in the Bright Stars program, those families also are struggling with things that would impact their ability to attend school functions.

Thank you, we'll certainly follow up with that, and just a reminder that this is a report for a period of time that ended in June of last year, so some of those things have already improved a little less.

Now, we understand, but you know, just, but I think by not looking just at percentages, you know, if I paid a dollar for something last year and it's two dollars this year, oh my gosh, a hundred percent increase, but on the other hand,

It was a dollar.

So anyway, thank you.

Thank you.

So the five project-based vouchers means there are five places each with multiple

units, or all the units in that place are in that program.

It's a little bit of both.

So the project-based vouchers mean that the unit itself is subsidized as opposed to the subsidy attached to the person that's in the unit.

So it's five units as opposed to five places.

And is there any concern or not about funding for Region 10?

How are they doing as far as being able to be

And the last thing relating to the leveraging that's been mentioned already

CVSOs is a big effort in Congress from the NACo veterans group.

They're called county veteran services officers.

Only for training as opposed to helping them get veterans benefits.

Exactly, not at this point.

Okay, so that's something where we do perceive a gap where the counties who have been able to add a CVSO of their own have found that dramatic increase in

All right, board, we'll move to item number 10, work session, proposed affordable dwelling unit ordinance.

Dr. Pethia, there you are.

Good afternoon.

I think this is close enough.

Thank you for allowing me to be here today.

My name is Stacey Pethia, and I'm the housing policy manager.

and one moment while I pull up.

Right, so again, this is a work session on a proposed affordable dwelling unit ordinance.

If you remember, I just feel like that's too far away, sorry.

If the board remembers, we have had a work session previously about what affordable dwelling unit ordinances and programs look like and what they could, the types of components they could include.

And so that is what this work session is about today.

We'll briefly go over the goals of today's work session.

So what staff is hoping to receive feedback from all of you on.

A little background on the work that has been done over the past couple of years on affordable housing and specifically the affordable dwelling unit ordinance.

Then we will look at what the proposed ordinance and program includes and then we will open it up to the board for discussion and we will also discuss next steps in the process.

and so today the goals for the work session are really first and foremost to review and discuss the goals and outcomes of the proposed ADU program and to receive board feedback on those.

And then looking specifically at some of the components that are included,

We would really like to get feedback on the proposed cash and lieu payments, so if those amounts are set at an appropriate level.

Board feedback on a proposed right of non-profits to purchase affordable dwelling units, and we will get into that later in the presentation.

and also the other types of incentives that the county can include in this program.

And keep in mind that the county is very limited on the types of incentives we can provide and offer to developers, so we will discuss what we can actually do.

And so just a timeline on what we've been doing since the

Housing Policy was adopted in July of 2021.

Again, we had a work session with the board in February of 2022.

And at that time, we discussed an affordable housing overlay.

Feedback received from the board during that work session really led staff to rethink our approach.

And so we had a second work session in May of 2022 about affordable dwelling unit ordinances.

In June of 2022,

The board did pass a resolution of intent for zoning text amendment to potentially amend our zoning ordinance with an ADU program.

So ADU programs are enabled under section 15.2-2304 of the Code of Virginia.

There are two.

Some of you may know there are two pieces of enabling legislation and state code related to ADU programs.

One is really has a lot of specific direction attached to it.

And that is for the majority of the localities in the state.

There are a handful of localities across Virginia that have a less restrictive version of the enabling legislation and so really we fall under that less restrictive version.

It doesn't say much in it.

What it does say is that

We can set a percentage of affordable units required at any level we want.

We can also dictate the level of the affordability of those units and how long they need to be affordable.

And we can also provide incentives to support the program.

The only thing that we are required to do is attach this to rezoning or special use permits that request an increase in density.

And so as currently drafted, the AGU program that is included in your agenda packet really does a few things, has a few goals.

And one is to direct or encourage the provision of affordable units in the residential development.

It is also to provide developers incentives to support the provision of affordable housing.

and the program must be implemented through a zoning text amendment.

And so thinking about the people in our community that this program would serve, looking at the housing spectrum of affordability and housing needs, this really focuses on sort of that not quite what is defined as workforce housing,

The area is right between that, so the 60 to 80 percent AMI households.

And those are the households that often do not qualify income-wise for any type of housing assistance.

So this is filling a need that is difficult to meet for affordable housing.

And just some indication of what those target income levels look like.

A 60% AMI household of four would need to have a maximum income of $66,720.

And that really would be, say, two parents and two children with both parents working, one as a home health aide and the other as a carpenter.

So these are really looking at those service industry-oriented jobs.

The proposed program includes a couple of components.

The first is a density bonus through legislative actions.

So again, that would be a rezoning request for increased density or a special use permit requesting an increased density.

The projects would need to have a minimum of 20% of the units provided as affordable housing and this is the recommendation in Housing Albemarle.

It also includes a component that would provide non-profits the right to purchase affordable units after 60-day marketing periods.

So the initial 60 days that units come online for sale, that are being marketed for sale, would be marketed directly to a waiting list that the county would maintain of households that are interested in purchasing affordable units.

After that 60-day period, if no income-qualified buyer from the waiting list has been identified, then the units would be offered to local nonprofits to purchase.

As some of you may remember, we've had a great difficulty

connecting income qualified buyers with the affordable units that we have for purchase.

And so this is one way, first of all, to market to a waiting list.

But second, providing the opportunity for nonprofits to purchase those units would make them available to those households for the long term, and often at lower income levels, as the nonprofits would be able to provide down payment assistance and other support to move families in.

The units would need to have affordability periods of 30 years for rental units or 40 years for units that are for sale.

The program could be supported with the affordable rental housing grant program that is being proposed later this evening.

There is a cash in lieu fee.

the developers could opt to pay instead of providing units and those revenues would go into the housing fund reserve to fund future affordable housing projects.

And again there would be a waiting list for income eligible households.

Staff has been working with the police foundation

to figure out a good way to create a waiting list and get that process rolling.

The waiting list would initially be open to county staff, police, fire, rescue schools until we worked out the details.

So probably for one year, we'd really focus internally and make sure everything's working properly and then open it up to anyone in the county to register.

So the program would apply to sites that have an approved owner initiated application for a rezoning for any project that has 11 or more units.

So any projects with 10 or fewer units would not fall under this program.

and a special use permit that has been approved again that request greater density increase and that has 11 or more units would qualify or would be covered under this program.

And also development seeking to use incentives to develop affordable housing.

So any incentives that are being sought outside of a rezoning or special use application would also fall under this program.

The program offers several options or alternatives that a developer may choose instead of building affordable units on site.

One would be to provide those ADUs at an off-site location.

That would need to be requested at the time that a rezoning application is submitted.

They would need to provide a reason as to why those units would be inappropriate to build on those sites.

on the project site.

And oftentimes that is some of the projects that come through are not located anywhere near public transit or any services or amenities.

And in that situation, it may be more appropriate to build those units at a different location.

But again, that would be done through the rezoning process so the board would have the ability to approve that request.

So again, the developer would have to demonstrate the provision of affordable units on site is not feasible or inappropriate.

The request must be made at the time of application for the rezoning or special use permit and the board would be able to approve that or deny.

It also offers the opportunity for developers to opt to pay into the housing fund as opposed to building the units.

And that cash in lieu fee would be equal to 50% of the affordable dwelling unit sales price for each ADU not provided.

That would currently, as you'll find out later what the sale price is, but currently that would come out to be about $109,000 per unit.

I can get you the exact amount as soon as I remember what the sale price is.

Or the developer could provide a combination of affordable units and pay for some units they cannot build.

There are some overall general requirements associated with the program.

First, ADUs must be designed, built, and landscaped at a quality equal or greater to the market rate units, and that's really pretty standard and what we ask for now.

And so that would include making sure that the affordable units are the same square footage as the market rate units, have a mix of bedrooms per unit similar to the mix of bedrooms in the market rate units, and that the ADUs would include a minimum set of appliances.

And this is really to ensure that the affordable units would blend in with the surrounding community.

What we don't want is for those units to stick out like sore thumbs.

We want the units to be distributed throughout the community, not located in a back corner of the development.

And we want to make sure that the individuals and families that move into these units are offered the same set of appliances.

And so it would really be if each unit, whether rental or home ownership, comes equipped with a refrigerator and a stove and oven range and a garbage disposal, those same types of appliances would be in the units, the affordable units as well.

Again, the units should be dispersed among the market rate units so they're not all congregated together in one section.

And not only should they have the same sets of appliances, but they should have the same amenities as the market rate units.

And the residents should have access to and enjoyment of the common open spaces and facilities that are provided in the community.

And so that would mean if there is a community pool with a clubhouse that the residents of the ADUs would be able to access those as well.

They wouldn't have a separate entry door if it's a building.

I think many of you may have heard of poor doors in some of our larger cities that were happening years ago.

So it would just need to make sure that everybody is treated equally and have equal access to amenities on site.

So looking specifically at ADUs offered for sale, again, they would need to have a 40-year affordability period that would be controlled through deed restrictions.

The initial sales price of the ADUs would be tied to the federal home program and their purchase price limit for new housing.

And that would be set at 65% or less of that amount.

So currently the sale price limit for the home program is $337,000.

so that would currently make our maximum affordable sale price $219,050.

One of the problems we've had not only being able to connect income qualified buyers to our for sale affordable units, they have not been able to afford to purchase a home at $243,750 which is our current price.

So this price really makes it

accessible to 80% AMI and even down to that 70% AMI range, you could potentially get a bit lower, maybe around 60% AMI if those households were able to access down payment assistance programs.

So again, we're looking at our teachers and firefighters that could purchase these units.

The units for sale would be marketed to the individuals and families on the waiting list first.

Again, that would be for a 60-day period.

If no one is under contract or in negotiations to purchase one of those units after the first 60 days, that would then open up to the nonprofit organizations.

After a 90-day period, any units that had not been purchased by someone on the waiting list or a nonprofit organization, the units would then be opened up for sale to the general market.

However, that sale price would still be controlled for 40 years no matter.

So someone could come in with an income of $200,000.

They could purchase that unit at the sale price, but they would not be able to sell it beyond

the price that is set by the county five, ten years from then.

So they will still be controlled price-wise.

So again, the resale price would be established by the county.

And after the 40-year control period ends, so after that 40-year affordability ends, there will be a person who bought that home an affordable price.

When they go to sell the home on, after that affordability period ends, they will need to notify the county and we would receive 50% of the equity earned through that sale.

That will help us fund more affordable initiatives in the future.

There are some requirements for people who purchase ADUs and those are households must have incomes at 80% median income or below.

They must use the affordable unit as their primary residence and there will be an annual certification process and that is really a letter that they send in, they have signed

Road notarized that they state that they continue to use the home as their primary residence.

Moving on to affordable units for rent, the rental prices will be controlled for a 30-year period.

The maximum gross rents for the ADUs are set by housing Albemarle, so if you remember there is a list of bedroom size factors in the housing policy.

Those factors are used to multiply those with the current area median income and that gives you the maximum rent for those units for that year.

That maximum rent includes not just the rent that is charged for the unit but also a utility allowance.

And so what it does is make sure that the rent plus utilities is 30% of 60% area median income.

The rents for the ADUs at lease renewals may increase 3% annually.

So if I'm living in a unit and my lease is expiring and I choose to renew, then my rent can increase 3%.

For any new leases, so I decide not to live there, I move out, a new family comes in, then the rents are set again according to Housing Albemarle, we reset that process.

Rental units will first be marketed to people on the ADU waiting list, and that would be for a 15-day period at the moment.

That can change if anyone here would like to see that change.

After that, the units can be marketed to the general public, but the future tenants, whoever is selected, would need to income qualify for those units and abide by the rules of this program.

Requirements for the tenants themselves, household income would have to be at or below 60% area median income.

They would need to use the unit as their primary residence and they would need to annually recertify every 90 days prior to their lease renewal date.

That's to ensure that their income has not gone above that 60% AMI level However, one of the reasons affordable housing is so important is that it provides stability for individuals and families and provides them the opportunity and stability needed to increase their income and move up the economic income ladder

So we don't want to say you've reached 61% AMI, you've got to go.

Really, it would give them the opportunity for their income to increase to the 80% AMI mark, which would then make them eligible to purchase an ADU.

And so until they reach that 80% AMI level, they would remain in the unit.

There are some enforcement

Parts to this, it's great to have programs and roles, but if you don't actually make sure people comply with them, they are kind of useless.

So there would be penalties for developers or property owners who fail to comply with the program rules.

For anyone, any developer who does not actually build the ADUs that they say they will, the penalty would be up to two times the payment and lieu fee until the units are built.

For rental units that are not rented to an income eligible household, the penalty would be $250 per unit per day, as long as those units are out of compliance.

Once the units come back into compliance, the penalties would end.

Looking specifically at people who purchase an ADU, should they fail to submit their annual certification, the penalty would be up to $50 per day per owner and up to $3,000 total.

And for tenants of rental ADUs, if they fail to recertify their income within 30 days of the recertification date, then they would not be allowed to renew their lease.

And that we would be working with the property owners and property managers to make sure that that happens.

We are able to provide incentives with the program.

So one of those incentives would be the affordable rental housing grant program, which will be discussed later this evening.

And we are limited in what we can offer.

So some of the potential incentives we can offer would include parking reductions for the affordable units, expedited review and or permitting, and also reductions or waivers of local fees.

and all of these would require not so much the parking reductions but the last two, the expedited review and the reduction or waivers of local fees.

Those would really impact the county staff capacity in community development for one thing, but also any fees that we do not collect associated with these projects would impact the county's budget, so we would have to keep that in mind.

But looking at what other cities localities across the state do, the City of Alexandria and Arlington County do offer parking reductions for affordable units.

In the City of Alexandria, those are optional reductions that can be requested by the developer.

And they are tiered depending upon the level of affordability those units are provided for.

In Arlington County, the parking reductions apply to Special Revitalization District and the Form-Based Code District, and those are both along the Columbia Pike corridor.

And they are offered to projects that offer more than a minimum required ADUs in a program, and it would reduce the parking ratio to 0.825 spaces for affordable dwelling in it provided.

Loudoun County and the City of Suffolk both offer expedited review or permitting of Loudoun County for projects that include affordable dwelling units, reviews, completes review of site or subdivision plans within 90 days of receipt of those plans provided that they substantially comply with county regulations.

and the City of Suffolk takes no more than 280 days for the processing of site or subdivision plans proposing AD construction.

Again, they need to substantially conform with the zoning ordinance.

and looking at deferrals or reductions in local fees, the City of Falls Church is the only locality in Virginia that I could find that actually does that.

They do not waive the fees but they do defer the fees until the end of construction.

They are also done on a sliding scale depending on the number of ADUs that are provided and the fees must be paid prior to the issuance of the first certificate of occupancy.

So looking outside of the state of Virginia, the city of Flagstaff, Arizona also offers an incentive program which provides waivers or reimbursements as a percentage of the building permit and planning fees for developments with a minimum of 20% affordable dwelling units.

And they utilize a sliding scale based on income level served.

So again, the lower the income level that is served, the higher the percentage of fees that will be waived to reimburse.

And so looking at next steps, after the work session today, information collected here and feedback from the board will be incorporated into the Affordable Dwelling Unit Ordinance that has been proposed.

After that, a public hearing with the Planning Commission will be scheduled and then there will be a work session with the Planning Commission.

and then a public hearing with the Planning Commission to adopt the new ordinance and then a public hearing with the board for that as well.

And so that's the end of the presentation and so

I thought it would be easier if we had some questions to guide our discussion, but please feel free to ask any other questions that may come up.

But really looking specifically at what is currently included in the program, one of the things that staff really wanted your feedback on was

The cash in lieu fee that is being proposed in the program is $109,525.

That's what that would come out to be for this year.

It does conclude my presentation.

All right.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Are we going to ask questions and then do commentary?

Because I can take about 60 minutes right now.

So I've really struggled walking into this meeting how to best use the time we have this afternoon based on the process for how we do work sessions.

So I guess I'm wondering if a lot of times with public hearings we will do, slipped into some West Virginia there, hearings probably, that we will do a round of questions and then do some editorializing and comments later.

And I'm just asking that it would be really helpful for me at this stage to hear questions from the other board members before I launch into the commentary that I have.

That makes good sense.

So we'll do questions first.

That's what we usually do.

So the questions, I'll just hold my questions specific to information here.

And then some of my larger kind of questions I will get into on the second round.

In getting some feedback or in the lead up to today, the question was, one of the things just to clarify because I thought I had an understanding and then a different person's comments shifted my understanding and now I'm questioning again now that I see it.

So this is only, I'm going to restate, for ZTAs this isn't like if

Rio Point came before us, that was a rezoning request that would happen.

So if they did a by right project, in that case,

It would have been roughly maybe 200 single detached homes, I suppose.

Quarter acre, one per quarter acre lot.

And they wanted to make 20% of those affordable.

Then they need the incentive program.

So the alternative is, OK, if the ordinance was in play and somebody wants to develop a property and what they see isn't their cup of tea, they just move forward by right.

Alright, thank you.

So, and if you can't answer this now, then I'm certainly open to getting this at a different point.

Well, there weren't TAP fees, and we were considering TAP fees two months ago.

And now the program, the public hearing tonight is a different type of incentive than what it was originally designed for under the grant.

I know the grant gives us leeway, because it's a grant, but you know,

So we could refund tap fees through the grant program.

So as we'll discuss later this evening, the proposed grant program really looks to fill a gap between the market rent, rate rent, and the affordable rent on the affordable units.

And those TAP fees would be included in that amount of grant.

I think I need a better understanding of how and why we are limited to what incentives we can provide, because I just don't have my head wrapped around that.

And I think that alone could take a lot of time just to work through.

But for two years I've been throwing out what we can do, a menu of incentive options.

and it seems to be collapsing and I don't understand why and I was told at the beginning that that was possible and now I'm hearing it's not and I don't think I can get a satisfactory answer today without going, alright, I want a list of things and if it's not allowed, why it's not allowed and how we can work, how would you get to it?

We've done incentives with other projects already and I don't recall there being

Well, we're limited in what we could provide.

We figured out the incentive program and we did it.

So I'm clear there's a disconnect in my understanding of that.

So looking at the way these programs are staffed in other counties, and our program is written very similarly to that of Loudoun County.

Loudoun County staffs their entire ADU program with one staff person.

expedited review and permitting.

We have not, but I did speak with Ms.

Filardo prior to the meeting.

The fees, the second item after the

All right, I think for right now, those are my questions relative to the presentation.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah, my head is spinning, but it's probably normal anyway.

Okay.

So right now we're having a work session on a potential affordable dwelling unit program.

So the ordinance and the grant program will be this evening.

So right now we're just doing the work session on this whole thing, but we can't

Tonight will be the portion that we actually go into this more in detail.

I guess I've got some, and I have some questions regarding the presentation.

I was thinking as you were going through everything, if someone cannot afford to continue paying, and I was glad that you said between if their income goes up, if it's 60% goes up to 80%, then they can still stay there.

They would stay?

Yes.

Once you purchase the unit, we're not going to kick you out if your income goes up.

We would not be allowed to do that.

Awesome.

We want that to happen.

Where this program comes in on that side of the equation is that they would not be able to sell that unit at market rate.

So they couldn't just open it up and sell it for whatever the market provides them.

So if they bought the house for $219,000, five years from now they could not sell it for $600,000 if that was the market value.

They would have to come to the county and we would work with them to make sure that

If you remember, Mr. Smith talked about how homeowners through the community land trust, when they sold the house, they earned $50,000 in equity.

But they restricted that sales price for the next family, income qualified families.

I don't like to do what ifs, but that person who sells 15 years later, five years later I think you said, with the increase in price, they cannot sell it at $600,000.

Correct.

Because you also mentioned somewhere in one of the slides you mentioned that

That's at the end of the program, okay.

These will not be subsidized beyond any incentive that they provide.

So if you think about projects like Brookdale Apartments, which is a low-income housing tax credit property, the financing that they receive helps subsidize those units throughout a 30-year period, 15 to 30 years.

And so they are able to place households that have incomes at 40% AMI to 60% AMI, sometimes even below that, because of that subsidy.

OK.

And you feel confident adding one additional housing person would be able to handle the ADU request?

Yes, ma'am.

And do we currently have a list?

We do not yet have one.

We are working on creating that.

And what we're trying to do right now is find a really good type of software that can make it easy.

So everything would be done online.

There would be online applications.

We will be able to track everything online.

And we have a couple of options.

Okay.

No more questions right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I'm going to wait for the comment time to talk about cash in lieu because that's the first thing that jumps out of my notes here.

So the waiting list issue was we didn't have one.

It wasn't that we couldn't have one.

We just gave up having one because there was no ability to get in touch with people, I guess, or maintain it, or it took too much staff or something.

But that's sort of on us and the previous board's decisions over the years.

as far as that, so I'm really glad that that's coming forward.

Overall requirements, let's see.

Just in relation to something else you said about working with the police foundation, last night one of the constituents at my town hall asked about how we could support police officers.

the officer who was there described how there is down payment assistance through the police foundation and how helpful that had been and I didn't know that that was happening and I was so glad to hear that.

Now, where the affordable units are to be built, you mentioned something about off-site construction.

Is that in this category or tonight, just so I don't start down a rabbit hole?

If our goal is to have neighborhoods with different sizes and different incomes,

allowing them to all be built somewhere else is sort of like taking our stormwater credits and putting them in Appomattox.

It does not help us with our main goal.

That is what we're talking about, but the way the program is currently drafted,

The board would have the ability to deny that request through the rezoning process.

And sometimes it is, while we do really want to create these mixed income communities, it is sometimes more appropriate to put those units in an

There's affordable units in an area that has access to public transportation or is in walking distance of other services or amenities.

Some of the areas, particularly up north on 29, may not

have easy access to public transportation and there may not be a lot of job opportunities or services that are up there appropriate for those households.

but the applicant couldn't take credit for affordable housing if they were going to do that.

It would count towards their affordable housing requirement but sometimes when you think about this you have to consider

I understand that but it also impacts the ability for a regular neighborhood to go there too.

So that's not on your portfolio so I won't worry you with that.

80% AMI, verification is IRS form or something like that, something that can be used to simplify a person's recertification?

And how does that burden fall?

Right.

That's why we're really looking closely at different types of software programs that we could set the entire thing up.

but there would be, would there be caseworkers available to help them sit down with them because many people also don't have access or familiarity with all those forms.

I have trouble with the state forms all the time.

Okay, so that's something to be developed.

would have the

not recertifying something because there's no way some tenant can come up with a $3,000 penalty.

That would just be crushing and they would be done.

So we have to admit that ahead of time.

Failure on the first deadline.

There needs to be some effort made by one of our nonprofits or somebody to make contact with people so we don't have those kinds of failures that are going to be predictable.

People are busy for lots of things.

Let's see, I'm trying to find the other questions.

Okay, you answered that one.

I guess I'm done for now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Stacey.

I think we're all feeling like we've been

Hit with a lot, even though I know all of us did our homework as well, so it is a lot.

Help me a little bit with, we're talking with this particular item today, talking developers and nonprofits.

Tell me a little bit about how you see the development community and the nonprofit community

I think one of the biggest differences between the two is the types of financing that nonprofits have access to that for-profit developers do not.

And so when you look at a project, and the one I know more about than any of them is the crossings at Fourth and Preston, that project had 17 different types of funding sources associated with it.

And they included low-income housing tax credit,

financing, various federal and state grants financing that went along with that, as well as I believe there's some project-based vouchers from both the county and the city.

So all of those pooled together enable nonprofits to bring those

rent levels down to affordable places without sometimes additional incentives.

They generally need some sort of financial support from local governments.

But if you look at the Brookdale project, that performance agreement, they requested $1.5 million.

And that was to help subsidize the development of 96 affordable units.

So all 96 of those units are rented at between 40% and 60% of area median income.

and they had a number of different other sources that were low-income housing tax credits and I honestly don't know what else was in that thing.

With developers, they don't have access to those types of things and so being able to carry those rents at that, what is it, 60% AMI level, we have been asking them to do that at 80% AMI, so bringing that

down a few hundred dollars a month, it can be a challenge.

Right, okay.

So nonprofits will generally come in with all of their units.

They will have 100% of the units being affordable.

So when you look at Premier Circle, Piedmont Housing Alliance and Virginia Supportive Housing came in.

and asked for rezoning for that red carpet site.

This would apply.

They would fall under this category, this ADU program, if it were adopted.

But they will easily meet that requirement because all of their units are going to be affordable.

So the difference is developers who now, we ask them to voluntarily proffer affordable units, this would require them to do that instead of being voluntary.

Thank you.

Well, no, but it was helpful for me, and I'm not as experienced in all this as some people.

I think I had a couple of my questions answered.

Help me a little bit with, I'm still a little concerned about the cash in lieu, because we've had that before.

It's not really helped us.

I can think in my head of several examples where the developers just paid cash, and I think they had their reasons for it.

I'm not trying to be critical.

So I think part of it is the cash-in-lieu payments have varied.

I have seen some in the proffers as low as $750 a unit up to, say, $22,000 per unit.

And so there hasn't been consistency in the amount that we have received.

All of those cash-in-lieu proffers for housing do go into the housing fund, which does allow us to fund other programs in the future.

but having some consistency and being able to determine if a developer is going to proffer, not proffer, sorry, if they do not want to build the units and they want to give the cash proffer, then we would know pretty consistently.

We could plan better for the future, right?

So if we know we're going to get $1.5 million in cash proffers into the housing fund,

We can begin to think strategically about how to use what types of projects we know are coming up affordable housing wise and be able to begin to think about how to use those funds.

It also allows developers who, for whatever reason, and there could be many, it could be site restrictions or whatever,

All that made sense so far.

Yes, no.

We have been working with the police foundation to figure out a way to set it up.

So we would be maintaining it, but we have been working with them to figure out the best way to collect the application process.

And we're trying to figure out how we can work together to help.

And so one of the things that we would look at doing is really getting people to sit through first-time home buyer courses.

So there's the connection.

And I think that educational program is a great idea.

I always get worried though when we have some

an initiative that important to a process because it's very difficult, I think, to ask volunteers to maintain that, right?

Because things happen and life happens.

And I'd be interested in a little bit more, well, maybe somebody in the Police Foundation more permanently, you know what I'm saying.

I just, but that's a great idea.

I like the idea of education as far as home ownership.

On page 10, my eyes are going crazy, Stacey, because I'm looking right into the light and I can't see your face at all.

And when I look down at the paper, I can hardly read the paper because my eyes are going like this.

Anyway, sights, oh, there goes Emily.

Bless her heart.

She's going to put that shade down.

I hate to cut off the light.

On page 10, it says sites with approved owner initiated.

Okay, I was trying to figure out what.

There's a note here about incentives and I think Ned got it, what I wanted to ask about that with the list of incentives.

must demonstrate provisions of ADUs on project site not feasible.

Could you give me an example of how or why that, or where that might happen or what that would be?

What that might look like?

Because it begins to, they're doing something on an additional site, another site.

And I'm just really struggling if a developer is proposing something.

Generally, no.

And I've had this request twice since I've been in Charlottesville.

Once was in the city when I worked for the city and once here in Albemarle County.

And it was really, the request came because the project site was really

Way disconnected from transit services, it was disconnected from job centers, and so the request had been made to work with one of the non-profits who did have a property that could be built on, that they could work with them and build the units on those sites.

and then that way that whoever moved into those units would be closer to the services and amenities that they often use.

We'd be closer to job centers who would not have to spend as much money traveling back and forth.

I got it.

So it might be unusual, but this would provide for it, allow it to happen.

Right.

And I have under comments, I have some comments about transit and whatever, but

I think.

Let me just make sure.

I think you said units marketed to ADU waiting list first, 15 days?

For the rental units, yes.

Well, for rental units can turn over really quickly sometimes, especially depending upon the time of year when you're getting closer to UVA starting classes.

Schools, yeah.

So when schools are coming, yeah, that term is coming up.

Rental units can flip really quickly.

And so what you want to do is not leave a landlord.

It costs money to have vacant units.

So you want to provide the landlord with time to get those units re-rented as quickly as possible so they don't lose money.

So having most renters, if they're looking for a place, they're going to take it if they find one they like.

We will, renters, because I am one, we don't like to look longer than two weeks.

We generally have a deadline when we need to renew our lease.

And so we need to figure out if we're going to find a unit before that lease renewal deadline or do we just go ahead and sign a new lease.

So we tend to look really quickly for a place to live.

So I don't think that 15 days would be an issue.

We can always extend that.

That makes sense.

I really hadn't thought about it through that perspective.

So thank you that I get that And the only other comment I have or a question I have is and I think Ann mentioned this as well we have

within our organization, we have penalties that are really not much higher than the cost of doing business.

We have all dealt with that, right?

I'm just simply saying that I guess you are comfortable that the charges that you're listing are appropriate and would actually be meaningful.

And I'm talking about penalties that would not necessarily be going to the individual, but to the... Correct.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I'm going to run through some questions on the slides, if I may, and then I'll have a couple other broader questions.

So I'll start with slide nine, and some of these probably will be discussed tonight, so I don't want to do any more than at least raise the issue, and then we can talk about it.

But this talks about support with Affordable Rental Housing Grant Program.

and then cash and lieu fee with revenues going to the housing fund reserve.

I know we've already had a conversation about this, but I want to make sure at some point that there's a discussion that sort of explains the two different programs and the relevance of the 1% cap, which is coming up tonight to that.

Thank you.

They are definitely two separate programs.

I get that.

The next slide, all three things if we go through.

Again, clarifying, we've got three different ways in which this applicability might be determined, and the third one doesn't have the other restrictions because it's a developer seeking to use these incentives directly.

The other two talk about approved owner ZMA and special use permit.

Right, so all of this information would be

This would apply if a project is approved for rezoning, and it would not apply otherwise.

So once that rezoning is approved, there will be paperwork and agreements that are done, and it's very similar to what we do now.

And I don't know that exact process because I don't sit on that side of the process through community development, but there are

ways that we start that process and to make sure that everything is done.

There are a couple of things that will need to be done at the front end and get approved through the rezoning process is right now developers often come in and they say we're either going to rent or we'll build rental housing or we'll build housing for sale and we don't really know what that's going to be.

Okay, I'm concerned about us knowing what's happening when it's happening so thank you.

I could jump to slide

We'll go all the way to 19, I think.

On 17, there was the question that Supervisor McKeel asked about whether the penalties were enough, and up to $3,000 for

Failing the certification, $3,000 per year.

It may not be enough, it seems, but I don't know.

But on to 19, I guess.

So when we start talking about parking reductions and then related, we talk about experience with waiver of local fees.

I guess I wonder, a couple of questions.

With this one, apples and oranges, I mean,

public transportation availability in these locations is very different from what we have currently.

And so as we look at that, I'm kind of concerned about whether we can apply what's been done elsewhere.

But if I go to the next slide.

Louden County, and the Furlafees, both of them together, really.

I'd be looking for some sense of whether we have any evidence of how well this has worked.

We're trying not to completely recreate the wheel, so as we propose things, if we've got evidence that this is what's been done elsewhere, it'd be great to know whether it worked elsewhere and how much we can find out about that.

I appreciate that.

And then a couple of sort of broader questions that may not be easily answered.

I apologize, but I just want to at some point wrap my head around it.

We have in this section, we have in our materials an ordinance proposal and a regulations proposal.

Yeah, so right now the ordinance for the Affordable Dwelling Unit Program is written in such a way that the details about how the program will be administered are not included in the ordinance.

Okay, appreciate that.

And then in connection with all of the different aspects we heard earlier, a comment about the amount of record keeping, which, you know, one person handling this is great.

I'm just trying to understand why that works.

And I would think, just correct me if I'm wrong, that we collect a lot of this information already because we're always assessing properties.

And as part of that assessment and part of our

watching over transactions, sales of properties.

We collect a lot of information that's necessary to do this.

Once you collect that initial information, it's really just the annual updates, and those are forms that would be submitted by renters and homeowners of the affordable dwelling units.

And as long as we have the right software package or program, it makes it much easier.

What this proposes to do is very similar to how the Housing Choice Voucher Program works.

for lack of a better word, a caseload.

And the voucher program is really, once someone has issued a voucher, they need to go through an annual recertification process.

So they get their voucher, they move into a unit, and if they stay in that unit, we never need to talk to them again until it comes to that annual recertification process, at which point time they fill out a form, turn in some documents to verify their

income and family composition has remained the same.

And so it's really looking at that once a year.

Now, if you do it right, not everybody rents or purchases a home on the exact same day so that it's spread out over the course of a year.

So it's not like you would be sitting there looking at trying to certify 1,000 people in the month of July every year.

It's really staggered month by month throughout the year.

Thank you.

I think there had been

And I'm not sure you're here yet, Supervisor Andrews, but I and one of the county attorneys had pulled together a list of all the enabling legislation related to affordable housing.

And so many of the incentives are really

that the enabling legislation allows are really attached to very specific things.

So doing property tax abatements, waivers of fees, either the waivers of fees would need to have a separate ordinance done or they must be again under an ordinance but it would be under

a housing revitalization district.

So if you identify a specific spot in the county, then you would be able to do a broad array of fee waivers and tax abatements and tax rebates all through one ordinance.

But we are sort of restricted on what we can offer outside of these very specific things.

All right, thank you.

I've got a couple of questions that would be related to both you, Dr. Petey, as well as our county attorney, Mr. Rosenberg.

In the draft ordinance, section 4.21.5, modifications to the affordable dwelling unit program, paragraph A, an exceptional cases in lieu of the required number of affordable dwelling units, the Board of Supervisors,

This is the operative language I have a question about.

Upon recommendation of the Planning Commission may permit an applicant to.

My reading of that is that the board could not make an amendment or an adjustment unless the Planning Commission were to recommend it.

I will answer and then if I need some help, hopefully the county attorney will help.

So right now, rezoning applications, they will go to the Planning Commission for a public hearing.

And through that public hearing, the Planning Commission will make a recommendation for or against approving the rezoning, which is then brought to the board.

You then hold your public hearing about the same rezoning application and you can either follow the Planning Commission's recommendation or you can make a different decision.

Alright, Mr. Rosenberg, do you interpret it that way?

Madam Chair, I know that Deputy County Attorney Andy Herrick had a hand in drafting this language, so I'm going to ask him to share with you what was in mind when this particular provision was crafted.

I have thoughts about the way it appears, but

Madam Chair, good afternoon.

Andy Herrick, Deputy County Attorney.

That is how the ordinance is currently written.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I thank you, Mr. Herrick, and for the board consideration as we make a recommendation or decision on this.

So to be clear for the other board members, I think it's different than

your procedures for other matters coming from the Planning Commission.

Where the Planning Commission makes a recommendation and the Board can act contrary to that recommendation.

This language only allows you to take these additional actions if they are recommended by the Planning Commission.

I for one would say I am not in favor of the Board limiting ourselves

As the Chair knows, the Planning Commission reviews special use permits and zoning map amendments, but that doesn't necessarily constrain the board's action on it.

In other words, it can come with a negative recommendation.

on special use permits and zoning map amendments.

But the way that this particular ordinance is currently awarded will require a positive recommendation.

But obviously, as the chair suggests, that can be amended in the next version of the draft ordinance that comes to the board.

Obviously, the board members will comment upon that.

Thank you.

One second.

Let me finish.

I've got another question, which I may again be overly concerned here.

Apparently I wasn't on that one.

But we have a difference between an ordinance and a regulation and my question then would be would the county be at risk by the board through an ordinance delegating to a regulation decisions that would be made?

Could someone then challenge that as an inappropriate delegation of legislative authority by the board through a regulation?

As the Chair is probably aware, the Supreme Court has said that the Board cannot delegate its legislative authority, and so that would be a concern.

Thank you, Mr. Herrick.

I think you can sit down this time, at least for me.

Board, before we go to our round, thank you, Dr. Pethia, for your presentation.

I appreciate the questions the other board members, both through previous emails before today as well as today, have asked, which I think addresses most of my areas.

Before we go around with additional comments and perhaps questions, I do want the board to be cognizant of our time constraints today.

As we look at the agenda, we do not have any matters for a closed meeting, so items 12 and 13 we can eliminate.

We still have, however, scheduled an hour and 15 minutes for our next item, which is a work session on the budget.

So I really want to ensure that we take a break not later than 5.30, not that I want to wait until 5.30, but not later than 5.30 for the board to eat, have a little bit of break before we come back for our 6 o'clock session.

So if you take 5.30 and you go back from that, we are approaching the time shortly after 4 o'clock where we really need to make sure we've wrapped up this item and can get to the budget in order to ensure that we give our budget team sufficient time for their presentation.

So really, somewhere between 4 o'clock and 4.15, we've got to wrap this up.

And with that, Supervisor Galloway, we'll go back around for comments starting with you.

I'm going to be hopefully as concise as I can be without getting into this.

First off, Dr. Pathea, thank you very much.

I mean, the work that you've put into this, knowing full well that basically you're working within the confines of what you're dealing with relative to other departments in the county.

all the different stakeholders in the community that are shooting arrows at you and asking questions and all of that.

So you're really, I mean, in a position and not to mention the board comments when things come before us after you do presentations.

So I really appreciate the effort and the work to get us here.

I'm going to pick on Neil Williamson a little bit.

Today he released a report and his photo had a sign that said wrong way.

And I thought about that.

I was like, okay, so what's the alternative sign?

The alternative in that situation would be right way.

And in thinking about this today, I don't think that's the sign I envisioned right way.

But what I did envision was a sign that said welcome.

And once you're in and past the starting line, a bunch of signs that point you in directions of where you'd like to get to and go.

I think the county has different ideas of where they want to go and I think that changes relative to projects.

I think developers have ideas of where they want to go and how they can make it happen and how they can make it pencil.

I think nonprofits are the same way.

And at the end of the day, I think people would want to be able to point at a sign and go, that's where I need to live, that's what I can afford and how the hell do I get there.

My concern about all of this and most of the presentation today is basically on what happens after we're inside the park, right?

You think of the amusement park, the big welcome sign, we go in and now we've got all the, and the signs point us in all those directions.

But this is all what happens after we get through the door, through the opening gate.

I'm concerned that we're not going to get people through that opening gate with what currently exists.

Part of it could just be my lack of understanding, and maybe it's overly simplistic.

So in thinking about that, I'm like, all right, well, if we don't get people through the welcome gate, then they're going to do buy-write projects.

and we're not going to get any of the units that we need if we have altruistic developers who really care about affordable housing, which we do.

They may do stuff under their buy right ability to through proffers to provide affordable housing, but we are where we're at because we've lived in that reality for the past forever.

You know, that's what's existed.

So the question becomes, well, all right, what work has to happen

And this is a rhetorical question to myself that I've been asking myself.

What do you need to do as a supervisor in order to get yourself to the point where you can go, that's an ordinance I can get behind.

Those are incentives that make sense to me that then I think can make sense to everybody else.

And what has to happen for that to go forward?

Knowing how we do work sessions here,

I knew I would not be satisfied and be able to answer that question today.

And it really didn't matter what content you brought forward, so it has nothing to do with your work and efforts, Dr. Methea, or you for sure.

Supervisor McKeel and I were spoiled when we were school board members.

Our work sessions were not presentations followed by questions that we asked and then an editorial point.

I've said this before in these meetings.

If we had a work session, we would be around a table and we would have staff for sure, but then we'd have teachers and students and parents and nonprofit providers, depending on the topic, would be at the table with us to be able to work through issues and information.

And a lot of times that was about getting the board member to a certain level of understanding.

of impacts, knowledge, filling those gaps, and the ability to make decisions after those type of work sessions was really empowering.

I think it certainly changed her mind.

Now I'm not, you know, we have what we have time-wise, but I'm saying as a supervisor to my fellow board members, that's what I need on this one.

I cannot make a decision on this

because right now I don't think anybody walks through the welcome sign and gets into our park.

I think they all will hedge their bets, do something different.

And frankly, I don't think the board, I don't understand the full reality of what I would envision.

If you said, well, okay, Supervisor Galloway, what's your goal?

And then if you said, how much would your goal cost to achieve?

I don't think I know the answer to that question.

So what do we have available to us and how do other things operate in order to get to where I want to go?

Well, when we do long-range transportation planning at the MPO, we deal with constrained and unconstrained conversations.

What's the unconstrained list to meet a vision?

And then we go, well, what's the money?

And then we have to pull back and figure out the constrained list.

The transit study, the transit's got the constrained and the unconstrained and you have to look at it and how do we do that?

I've never seen an unconstrained, the policy points what we're going to achieve, but I've never seen the related costs to achieving it in an unconstrained way that then makes us do what we have to do.

Holy, it's 150 million dollars.

Well, then we only have five.

What $5 million is going to be selected out of that $150 million list to do?

So the incentive program in my mind, an incentive is supposed to be that.

It's supposed to encourage people to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do on their own.

I'm in the car business.

If you get a rebate, the rebate may encourage you to buy the car.

It doesn't change the reality of what you can negotiate.

It doesn't change the MSRP.

But in addition to whatever you can achieve on your own, you get this extra incentive.

And sometimes that incentive is what pulls somebody into the market to buy a car.

So that's how I think of incentives.

Is it 0% financing?

Is it an extra $1,500 that I can take off of your negotiated price?

So I may be wrong, but I think developers look at that.

I think they look at their spreadsheet, go, here's what I can achieve based on what I have available to me.

And if you want me to go further, then what's the incentive to get me there?

And what's your rebate that you're offering?

What's your financing rate that you're offering?

And I don't see how that's spelled out yet.

And frankly, I don't think I'll ever support an ordinance without it being spelled out and crystal clear to me.

To get to that point, I need to get into the weeds, roll my sleeves up and do some work.

And how we do that, I have some suggestions, but I don't know how the other board members would feel about it.

But the aim is, you know, I pulled back and re-looked at our housing policy and objective one is increase the supply of housing to meet the diverse housing needs of current and future Albemarle County residents.

I think I've got my hand too close to my face and the hand are incentives.

So I've got to pull back on that and go, all right, the incentives are a piece of this.

What else can we do to help move the needle and get there?

I don't think a work session with the Planning Commission helps us at this point.

I think going in the room with the Planning Commission would probably be a great discussion.

I think it would be fine.

But if we start running that as the course, I don't think we get anywhere further than where we're at right now.

At least I won't feel that way for myself.

So what else do we have as an option?

This board either has to meet.

in a work session that's designed with no offense to you, Stacey, because you do wonderful bringing stuff to us.

But we need unfiltered access to the information of the players out there that are going to do the projects.

We need to hear from staff and what their concerns are.

We need to hear from nonprofits.

And frankly, there need to be residents out there who are struggling to afford things to be sitting there telling us information and telling us what they're experiencing.

Now that would mean a special meeting of this board and extra meetings and how we would do that.

The other alternative is what we've done, what we do with transportation, how we do long-range transportation planning and what we've done with the transit study.

We actually have a body right now in existence that has made presentations to four of the six member jurisdictions that I happen to chair

that has said to those elected boards, if you have ideas or thoughts, you can bring that to this body as a sounding board to wrestle with these and we can give feedback back.

Not to take away your authority, not to take away your decisions on what to do, but to wrestle with the topic based on what you've come up with and just give you unfiltered feedback.

That regional housing partnership is designed of electeds.

for profits, non-profits, and the public that we serve.

I would think that the experts that already are members of that body

I don't know, I haven't run this by my vice chair, I haven't run this by the Executive Committee of the Regional Housing Partnership, but it would seem to me that we could take this, what Stacey's created, go this is what exists, this is what's on the table, we'd like you to run this through the bingo mill, because right now it's B4, and let's see if G16 comes out on the other side.

I could then feel like I could get involved or other board members could get involved and say, all right, we could get the developer incentive questions done, why isn't it as simple as I think, et cetera.

And I think that would give us the opportunity to really get all of the players together, so it's not by email here or based on who you can get on the phone to individual supervisors, tackle this issue that you brought to us at this point,

Let's get in the weeds and wrestle with it for a little bit and see what comes of it.

It comes back to this board like it did today in a new form.

It's very clear to all of us.

And then we can say yes or no to it.

Then it goes to the Planning Commission and we can have our dual conversation.

And then it can go through the public hearing with the Planning Commission and then come to the board.

So as it moves through your commentary period, I don't want to go through and just do what I've done in the past about, well, this is what I said.

I think the process has hit a point where we need to do something a little different than what we otherwise have done so that we can get to an area where the board, staff, the for-profits, the non-profits, and the folks looking for affordable places to live can all say, I think that's a good place to be.

Thank you, Chair Price.

Thank you.

Okay, so that's what I need to follow up on, Supervisor Galloway, I thank you very much because I actually agree 100% with what you said.

When I opened up my remarks earlier, I said my head was splitting, and the thing that kept coming to my mind is I'd like to have a separate work session with us, actually with all parties involved.

I know that's going to take a little bit more time, but whether or not we do it with all of us, whether or not the chair chooses to have two or three board members work with the developers, the interested parties, et cetera, et cetera, all interested parties in hashing this out and then it comes back to us.

I was even thinking, okay next Friday, I know it's soon, but next Wednesday we have another meeting, meeting a couple hours earlier, but we've got to get this done and Supervisor Galloway is correct.

We have to do it correctly.

We can't afford not to do it the right way.

There's just too much involved, and we're not hearing everything at the same time with all of us so that we can understand it, so we can help.

Once again, Dr. Petey has done a great job.

So we can help guide her by hearing from everybody.

And if it's understandable to us, and it makes sense to us,

That's where we're going to have our best decisions.

Right now, it's not that clear there's too many things that I don't understand or I'm not getting or I'm hearing conflicting information and I don't like that.

I just want to hear everything.

I want to be

Thank you.

Thank you.

I agree to the idea of a different process.

I think the Committee of the Whole plus the other stakeholders is better because it doesn't require translation and repetition to the whole.

What you said about each of us hearing it at the same time is very important to me because that way I hear other people's questions and can share mine and that helps perhaps other people.

So I guess my follow-up question is, do you want, need feedback today about the cash in lieu?

Either way is fine.

So I mean, if the board is interested in doing something different, as Supervisor Galloway has suggested, then we can certainly wait on that.

Or you can give it to me today, and we can see how that would look in a future draft and incorporate these things moving forward.

I think either way I am fine with whatever comments you want to provide.

I do think it's important to have all or some or all of you sit down in a room with stakeholders and really talk this through.

It is a lot of information and I tend to come to the board with at least two housing items at one time.

which makes it difficult to follow.

And there has been a lot of discussion with me.

I sit and I talk to developers and I've talked to county staff and so it's all trying to put it together and come bring it back to you and it all goes back and forth.

So I think all of you miss out on a lot of those conversations and it might help you moving forward.

I think also having all of the stakeholders

talk to all of you at the same time to hear your opinions would really be helpful as well.

I think I am happy to be that middleman person, but it gets to be difficult in the interpretations on all sides and putting them all together.

The only bit of feedback to that initial bullet about Cassius Liu is that

This is part of how we got into this mess over 20 years is $16,000 as the max ever was completely inadequate to get us anywhere.

So I would be very happy to do away with it altogether or the much more substantial amount that you had proposed is a minimum, I guess, and I'll stop there.

I'm happy to do the powwow whenever the powwow happens.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

In an effort to save a little bit of time, I'm just going to throw out a few comments and some thoughts, trying not to be too lengthy.

One of your slides, page six, and you don't have to go to it, it says, Affordable Dwelling Unit Program proposed directs or encourages the provision of affordable units in new residential developments.

I have a couple of thoughts about that and just to take and ponder.

We as a board really have struggled with do we create jobs first or do we create housing first?

What's the chicken and the egg, right?

And I can make cases either way.

but it does get to marrying these two items, right?

So I'll let that stand on itself but I would say that I think if we're going to have this big discussion, I think economic development should be at the table as part of that discussion.

Someone from economic development perhaps might be helpful because it is a chicken and the egg, right?

And I see on page one of two,

It says very clearly, on February 22nd, the board held a work session to discuss a proposal for an affordable housing overlay.

Based on feedback, staff determined an alternative approach using incentives as more appropriate.

I'd like to stop there and let's think about an overlay in a different way, and I know this is taking us back to another age, but

During the discussions, if we had, for example, if we focused an incentive on areas where we need housing, and we've talked about transit, how many times have we mentioned transit here today?

So if we focused an incentive of some sort that might be an overlay, with an overlay, I have no idea even what I'm saying here, but in transit areas, areas where we need transit, we know over at Rio and 29, we're probably going to need a transit hub.

What a great place to put an overlay for affordable housing, because we could really use affordable housing in that area.

So I'm thinking maybe as part of our discussion we could think going forward about bringing back the idea of an overlay, but I would suggest it would be focused on transit.

It would give us an investment in climate change, an investment in equity, it would

allow us to talk about less parking, more density.

It's an idea from our past and rather than just talk about overlays everywhere, let's focus maybe on how we can have an overlay around transit that would get the work done that we've been talking about.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the comments being made by the other supervisors.

I recognize that this was not done in a vacuum, but we are obviously feeling as if we want to hear more directly from the development community.

We've been getting emails, of course, and most recently in response, but I know that there have been many meetings where a lot of these have been discussed and the feedback may be

It feels a little different sometimes as things progress.

I also recognize that there are other ways to get into the park, I guess, and whether Southwood models and others are things that we need to focus on while we're trying to do this, recognizing that we're not going to accomplish anything with just one program.

I'm a little worried about kicking the can down the road very much further.

I know that's already been a concern, but obviously it's not really a staffing issue.

It's a logistics issue and a question of just getting us together to do it.

I'm a little concerned about bringing a lot of economic development into it because I don't really see it as jobs versus housing because right now we're in a market where

I have a couple of comments although basically what I would do is point to Supervisor Galloway and on the record say, you know, let the record reflect Supervisor Price is pointing toward Supervisor Galloway, what he said.

because I really do think, Supervisor Galloway, you really covered it.

The complexities and interconnectedness of what we're dealing with in this program are such that what I'm hearing from the board is we almost need something like the strategic planning off-site where we actually have all the people come in together logistically that would require

some planning and we recognize it will be delaying further a decision here, but I believe that we all recognize the significance of this and doing it right may make that appropriate.

I really appreciate Mr. Williamson, Ms.

Long, Charlie Armstrong sent us an email today, the input that you are providing us to help us to better be able to see areas that still need improvement on this.

And that is not in any way to take away from the great work Dr. Pethea that you and everyone else on county staff has done.

I do not feel comfortable today in being able to make much of any decisions with regard to the cash in lieu.

I'm reluctant on cash in lieu because it appears to me that over time we've gotten money but not housing.

But if we were to have a cash in lieu component,

I think it needs to be scaled and easily adjustable so that it doesn't almost immediately become antiquated in its application.

But again, what I'm hearing mostly from the board is we feel like we need a separate work session much like the strategic planning and I'm seeing a lot of heads nodding for that.

I think we can follow the board's direction to create a work session in the near future, the nearest future that we can have time to put the calendars together with board and staff and key stakeholders from the community.

Additional time for the team to

put some framework around it to where we have an idea of how that time will be utilized with the board and with the community.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Anything else by supervisors?

I mean, I suggested this idea.

I had no idea.

I haven't talked to anybody ahead of time what the idea would be.

But in thinking of throwing the idea out there, I do have thoughts on how the process could play out thinking that time is of the essence and this can't take a bunch of other time.

I'm not going to get into all that right now, but part of this is wanting to have board level involvement and more detailed conversation and the board

Absolutely.

Anything further, Supervisors?

No?

Did we come to consensus regarding the, what Mr. Rosenberg suggested, that we want to change the, we don't want the Planning Commission to be able to have something, was that, I mean I know how I feel, I want to be able to have the final say, not the Planning Commission, but was that clear?

Certainly not, but it sounds like there's a lot more for the Board to do before we get to that point.

It would just be part and parcel.

Thank you, Dr. Pathea.

Thank you, Board.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

And now we can move on to our next item.

We will skip our recess right now because we don't want to cut Mr. Bowman short, Chief of Office of Management and Budget.

Good afternoon, and thank you for the introduction.

One moment while I pull up this presentation.

So we are here today for work session number six, which is just continuing topics on prior work sessions.

I'd like to start with the budget schedule, as we have at the start of every meeting.

We are in the final weeks of today's budget process.

And so today is not going to be necessarily brand new topics, but it's going to be additional information on topics where the board has desired further discussion.

So through those previous work sessions, there are four topics for today where the board has desired additional information.

They are field investments, discussing housing policy investments, boards and commissions compensation, and tax relief for the elderly and disabled.

For today's work session, staff has put together a plan if the board would like to do more in all four of these areas, a proposal that could fund all of those.

Now, the board may not want to go to those.

They may have other options.

They may want to do more or less.