Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   6/21/2023

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's my pleasure to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on June 21, 2023 at 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

The supervisors who are present are Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price,

of the Scottsville District.

A quorum is present.

I would also like to mention that the dais we have arriving our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, we have our County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, our Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, who are also present.

Let me also welcome and introduce our Albemarle County Police Officers who are present today, Sergeant Angela Jamerson,

and Master Officer Andy Munsey.

As I saw you this afternoon, first off welcome.

As I saw you today and saw your shields and a shroud, I and of course the public are reminded of the death just the other day of a local law enforcement officer in Nelson County.

It is a reminder of the danger that you daily put yourselves in in order to protect us and we thank you for your courage and your dedication and your service.

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

Thank you.

You will now join us in a moment of silence.

All right board, it's time to move towards the adoption of the final agenda.

Chair Price, I need to remove my minutes.

I did not review my minutes by today.

Very well.

Very well, thank you.

Other than that, are there any other actions on either of the agendas?

Seeing none, then the floor is open for a motion to adopt the final agenda as amended.

All right, we have a motion from Supervisor Andrews, a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Moving on to item number five, brief announcements by supervisors.

Supervisor Galloway?

No announcements today, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, we're glad to have you back.

Yes, I will take up all their time.

Thank you very much.

Available on the Crozet Trails crew website is a link to a helmet cam video of someone riding their e-bike on the Crozet Connector Trail and it was absolutely delightful to watch so I would invite others to do that as a way to get inspired to go and walk on the trail.

There's a WaterSense report out at EPA and both the links to these will be available at the Clerk

talking about the WaterSense products have saved more than 1.1 trillion gallons of water in 2022 alone.

Since the launch of this program, consumers and businesses have saved 7.5 trillion gallons of water by using water-saving plumbing and irrigation products, 880 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, and eliminated 377 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by using

more efficient products.

So we have come a long way in that one instance and it's helping to balance out things.

On the other side, Virginia is having a really big drought problem and yes it's raining today but we are still many inches down compared to when you take the eight inches down from last year plus the deductions for this year.

Our groundwater levels and monitoring wells have continued to decline maybe not so much right here right now but all the counties around us are in drought watch.

Soil moisture

is very, very low as you walk across your yard.

You may notice dust coming up amongst your angles as you are walking along.

This is a really dangerous level and we'd have to be super, super careful about that.

DEQ is monitoring.

There are maps on their website where people can find out a little more detail.

Now, on to parades because White Hall District is a celebratory place and we have three parades.

for Independence Weekend.

The first is in Crozet, July 1st.

That is Saturday at 5 p.m.

Line up is at 4 p.m.

at the Crozet Elementary School.

It goes through town into Crozet Park where they'll be followed by food, music, and fireworks.

For Union is the Quiet Village Parade.

It is Sunday, July 2nd.

Line up at 3.30 and leaving the Church of the Brethren at 4.

It goes through town to the Baptist Church at the other side.

a very different flavor but wonderful.

And then on July 4th at 10 a.m.

with lineup at 930 is the Earliesville Area Residence League parade and this is our 27th year lining up on Earliesville Forest Drive at 930 and parading for a mile to the Union Church on the other end of the village.

And we hope that people will come and walk with us and celebrate.

Yes, thank you.

First I want to just thank Bill Moyer from the Rivanna Waters and Sewer Authority and Greg Harper from Albemarle County for presenting to my hydraulic CAC updates and I referred to it and called it the water meeting.

But it was informative and I think the members of the CAC really appreciated an update on the pipeline, you know, the water pipeline as well as

Greg talked about the mapping that our staff has been doing around the water infrastructure in the urban ring, which of course lots of those folks live in that area.

So a big shout out for that.

And then I just want to let you all know that I attended right after our last meeting, so the Thursday after our meeting, Greer Elementary School's fifth grade promotional ceremony.

And I attend this every year because I present two awards to the fifth graders at Greer.

One, a good citizenship award, but the other award that I present is the American History Award.

And I just thought it was really fascinating and really encouraging that I presented it this year to a fifth grader who grew up in Sudan.

And she won the American History Award for her hard work and some of her writings and studies about American history.

Really very cool.

Thank you.

Just a quick mention that tomorrow is the official grand opening of the Southern Convenience Center which we'll hear more about in terms of our own potentially meeting there I guess for the celebration but it's open.

and that's exciting news.

And I don't think today should go by without mentioning gratitude for everyone who worked on an election over the past few months, who participated by voting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'd like to follow up a little bit, Supervisor Mallek, with regard to the water level, and I think we can all be appreciative of the work that Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority does to increase the capacity for our water here.

I did not live here during the drought in the early 2000s, but that affected the entire south, and so it is important that we do prepare for that.

One of the things that we get as supervisors are a lot of applications to review.

We don't always get the opportunity to see the end result.

And last week I had an opportunity to go and see the homestay across from Mickey Tavern, Sun Sac.

And it's really nice to be invited to see the end product of the developments that take place here.

Tied in with the comments I made a moment ago about, you know, our police officers and the danger that they put themselves in.

Yesterday I attended a burial service at Arlington National for a ship made of

I met on my flight to my first duty station in the Philippines during the Iranian hostage crisis.

And in his two-year tour of 104 weeks, he spent 101 at sea.

Not on sea duty, but literally at sea.

He was able to take a little bit over a week off to come home when their baby was born.

But basically, the baby was almost a year and a half when he next saw their child.

And because we don't have a base here, we do have an installation, sometimes it's easy to forget the sacrifices that those

whether they be police and fire here locally or in the military that they do to protect us in various ways.

And so I just, it was nice to be reminded of that even though it was that situation.

And then shortly before our meeting today as I was myself heading to the restroom there was a young man

getting ready to head into the men's room, and I noticed he had a shirt that looked like it had some military reference on it.

And I didn't get his last name.

His first name is Devon.

I think one of the officers here today told me the last name may be Davis, but he's a former Marine.

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

Did diplomatic security at embassies around the world, and we all know our embassies are frequently the targets of attack.

And now he's going to be one of our police officers here in Albemarle County, continuing to serve.

So, you know, I kind of get goosebumps when I think about that.

And there are many ways to serve, that's one of them.

Today, the Batteau Festival is supposed to arrive in Scottsville.

Hopefully the water levels have risen a little bit.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to get there because we have a board meeting.

But for those who may be watching, if you didn't have it on your calendar, head down to Scottsville and enjoy that.

And if the weather permits, I guess we will have the grand opening of the Southern Convenience Center tomorrow.

I have my recycling and my $2.00 tag of bags ready to drop off tomorrow morning.

I'm really looking forward to that, although I will miss the 40 minute drive to Ivy.

which I have been doing.

So I don't have anything else, anything by any other supervisors.

No?

It reminded me of something I did neglect to say last week.

Several of us were able to attend the AP Bio class presentations at Albemarle High School, Melissa Brown's class.

As this is I think the third or fourth, fifth year that we've done this it is absolutely great to see these kids who think of the idea themselves, do all the research themselves, present their wonderful ideas and over the years so many of their ideas have been

adopted by the school management, putting in water fillers and not using plastic bottles, so many different things that have been impactful, and I'm very, very proud of them.

I just want to say that.

Just to follow up on that, the principal at Albemarle High School, DeRavana attended with Ann, and he was very inquisitive about a couple of the presentations and said they would be looking at implementing some of what they were recommending this year.

We'll now move to our next item, number six, proclamations and recognitions.

I will ask that any who are present in the auditorium

I'm happy to read this proclamation in the form of a motion.

Proclamation celebrating Independence Day, the 4th of July, whereas June 2023 marks the 247th anniversary of the motion to declare independence for 13 American colonies from the British Empire proposed by Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee, and whereas July 4th, 2023 marks the 247th anniversary by which the Declaration of Independence was officially adopted,

Making America a Free Nation, and whereas the Declaration of Independence, notably authored by Thomas Jefferson, professes core values that our nation and its citizens are created equal and possess unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and whereas July 4, 2023, marks the 171st anniversary of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass' speech

what to the slave is the Fourth of July, a call to action for total inclusion in the values of freedom and independence for all law abiding citizens and whereas through naturalization new citizens are afforded the opportunity to embark upon the freedom and independence that our nation advocates and preserves.

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors,

to hereby recognize and celebrate the 4th of July as Independence Day and reaffirm our commitment to create a more inclusive and equitable future for all.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor Galloway and a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right, thank you.

And we do have an individual to receive the proclamation.

Mr. Hallock, good afternoon and welcome.

Thank you all.

These values have attracted immigration to the United States for centuries, and Monticello is proud of its role in welcoming new citizens to our nation from around the world.

Every 4th of July, under the West Portico of Monticello, federal court convenes to naturalize our country's newest citizens.

Since 1963, more than 3,800 people have taken the oath of citizenship on the steps of Thomas Jefferson's iconic home.

Monticello is a fitting location that is the only presidential home in America designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On the west lawn, we celebrate with the new citizens and experience the true meaning of American citizenships and the values that unite us.

Thomas Jefferson never celebrated his own birthday.

Instead, he preferred to celebrate July 4th as what he called the great birthday of our republic.

It was the anniversary of the adoption of the revolutionary document he penned at the age of 33.

That document, the Declaration of Independence, is innately hopeful.

It reflects Jefferson's faith in the capacity of the American people to not only tackle big challenges, but also to protect, improve, and expand on the nation's founding promise.

Keynote speakers on the 4th of July have included presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, as well as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, UVA President John Castine III, architect I.M.

Pei, musician and local hometown favorite, one of my own favorites, Dave Matthews, historian David McCullough, and this year we are delighted that UVA President Jim Ryan will be with us.

Thank you all again and we'd be honored to have you come to Monticello on the fourth.

All right, thank you Mr. Hallett.

Before you go, I know that we as the members of the board would also like to make some comments so we will go through our order.

Well, I'm up first today.

Well, I'm glad you got the proclamation.

Sorry to interrupt while you were speaking.

I think it was nice that in our proclamation, we did speak to the speech, what is the 4th of July to a slave?

At our last meeting, we recognized Juneteenth and that celebration.

And it gave me the opportunity to read the conclusion of Amanda Gorman's poem, The Hill We Climb.

which is banned in certain spots from certain grade levels.

And I think it only appropriate during the 4th of July as we celebrate independence to say that we are still fighting for that independence and full freedom for everybody as and we should call that out.

That's what a democracy is about and we should not stop calling that out until we get there.

So in the spirit of hoping that someday Florida students will be listening to an Albemarle County Board of Supervisors meeting,

The end of her poem says, when day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.

The new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it.

And I look forward to that day.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And it was a real it's a real honor to be able to present that proclamation to you.

And I did want to say that as the daughter of my mother was an immigrant.

and my grandparents on my dad's side were both immigrants.

So I'm very pro immigrants because they add a lot.

Everyone adds a lot.

Those that were brought here because they wanted to be here are those who were brought here against their will.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Growing up here, it is almost as if we were living in the history.

When I was welcoming the Journey Through Hallard Ground Conference many years ago over at Darden, I talked about how children my age in the 50s, we knew the name of Jack Jouett's horse.

I mean, that was the sort of granular level of the information that we could provide, and that we really wanted to share that level of engagement with so many others.

But as an adult, I have learned so much more that I was never taught.

or offered in high school in the 60s when we were all old enough and brave enough to hear it.

It's just it was not offered.

So it is a continual learning.

We are all as a nation and individually and here in local government, a work in progress.

And it is important that we learn from the people we represent as not just have an idea 20 years ago and never change it, because I can testify that I have learned a lot from people on this very wide spectrum of opinion that we have here in Albemarle County.

and I hope that we will succeed and as the descendant of English, Irish, Swedish and German people who have come here since 1885 of various times, many more recently, I really appreciate what we have gained here in our country and I'm willing to fight for it.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

The history that we have in this community, we're really lucky that as Monticello has updated their history, we have history in our local community being updated as well, which is really important to recognize the true history.

And I, like Ned, had made a note to point out that we just passed a proclamation at our last meeting about Juneteenth.

which is really another Independence Day for African Americans.

So for me, we have two Independence Days in this country and we're lucky that we can celebrate both of them and recognize all of the folks in our country who have made it strong, whether it's immigrants or African Americans.

Thank you.

I basically go right along with the remarks previously made.

I do think it's telling that we not only did the Juneteenth previously, but that we've had in this past few months.

I just tried to look up and I can't find the name of Jack Jouett's horse because we do have some sibling rivalry here among the supervisors it is you know my distinct honor to be the supervisor that represents the magisterial district in which Monticello the crown jewel

of our area is located.

Other than that, I really concur with what the other supervisors have said.

We've come a long way but we've got a ways still to go.

But we are so blessed to have, you know, the Monticello, the foundation here to help educate so many people in America about the reality, our real history.

And we thank you for being here and giving us the opportunity to help recognize the work that y'all do.

Thank you all.

We'll move to our next proclamation.

Yes.

And I'm going to read this in the form of a motion.

Proclamation honoring John Henry James Day.

Whereas, Almar County Board of Supervisors, as part of their community remembrance project, have committed to sharing an inclusive history of our country, including the stories that have been traditionally left out of the dominant narrative.

And whereas, following Reconstruction, the crime of lynching succeeded slavery in the United States as an expression

of Racism and an Upholder of White Supremacy until the middle of the 20th century, and whereas

The lynching of Mr. John Henry James on July 12, 1898, was determined to have taken place in the county of Albemarle.

His body shot dozens of times and his corpse hanging for hours.

And whereas 99 percent of all perpetrators, including those who murdered Mr. James, escaped punishment by state or local officials.

And whereas the Board of Supervisors recognizes that a history of racial injustice

must be acknowledged, recognized, and most especially remembered before a community may heal.

And the July 12, 2023 marks the 125th anniversary of the lynching of Mr. John Henry James.

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize this tragic anniversary

and declared July 12, 2023 as John Henry James Day in remembrance of our shared community history and as a demonstration of our commitment that this tragedy will neither be forgotten nor repeated.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, a second from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon everyone.

I'd like to share some comments recognizing, and I thank you all for recognizing John Henry James Day.

I think it's appropriate that these are coupled together because it implies the balance, right?

Recognizing the successes of our nation and our county and the values that we uphold, but also recognizing when we have fell short.

And particularly in recognizing John Henry James

the wrongful and unjust and heinous acts that were done against him without him being able to exercise his rights as a citizen to due process.

I think it is a very telling point that we must recognize within our history and have an opportunity to reconcile.

As they call it,

not only recognizing John Henry James, but the many victims that fell to that unwritten law, as Ida B. Wells would have acknowledged it.

So I think this is a day, July 12th is a day of remembrance for us to understand our history, both the good and the bad, celebrate how far we've come, but also to recognize how far we must continue to go.

And I'll just conclude by saying

Without equity, really, justice cannot be recognized and without inclusion, intolerance is inevitable.

Thank you, Mr. Brookings.

As you know, the board will have some comments.

Thank you, Mr. Brookings.

I think when we did this marker and then the trip that we took, the different Montgomery, the different folks participated in,

But when this comes before us, you know, in our proclamation it says, you know, the perpetrators, including those who murdered, escaped punishment by state or local officials.

It makes it sound like the state and local officials weren't complicit.

And the state and local officials were complicit.

They were there.

That unwritten law that you just mentioned, they created this new law that would happen.

And as the current elected officials of the body of the jurisdiction and where that occurred, it's important for the official government elected officials to acknowledge

that those elected officials were complicit in that crime and to take responsibility for that and to hopefully do the things that are going to rectify it to make things improved as we go down the road or to come out of the shade as Amanda Gorman says.

So, you know, I don't want to, this supervisor does not want to let it be known that state, local, law enforcement officials back then were somehow, oh, this happened behind their back.

That is not what occurred and it's important for us to recognize that moving forward if we're going to make things better.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Thank you, Mr. Brookings, and your words were very poignant and heartfelt and I thank you for that.

I agree with Supervisor Galloway.

What was done back then was completely, was unjust and unfortunately that took place for another almost hundred years afterwards, continued to take place and it has to be, it has to end because we have to all realize we're all Americans, we're all people, we all love, hurt and families are very important to us.

So there are a lot of people with blood on their hands, frankly, from the past and hopefully not in the future, but I'm hoping it diminishes because we do have people still with blood on their hands.

So I'm hoping through time

this will ameliorate itself and we all respect each other as human beings and live together in harmony.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is part of that missing gap in learning that I was referring to also.

And a method of terror is what I took away from what I have learned in the last twenty years.

Mob, justice, mob, judge and jury, just the worst

example of how we had failed citizens.

So I appreciate what you said about appreciating the small bits of progress we have made and also knowing that we have lots of work to do.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Jessie.

Your words are always beautiful and just hit the right note for all of us and we really appreciate your work.

Certainly, this horrendous action in Albemarle County at Woods, I believe it was called, the location was Woods Crossing, I believe.

We really need to pay attention to it and learn from it and acknowledge it.

I do want to recognize that James Hengele, our Commonwealth's attorney, will be presenting on Wednesday, July the 12th at 4 o'clock at the Albemarle County Circuit Court a proclamation to seek the dismissal of an indictment that was returned against

John Henry James, and I'm sure the public is welcome to be there, but this is an important step forward I think in recognizing that he was, John Henry James was pretty much

He never had a trial.

He was convicted before he ever had any ability to represent himself or to have anyone present for him.

So that again is Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 4 o'clock at the Albemarle County Circuit Court and Jim Hengele will be presenting a proclamation to dismiss the indictment that was returned against John Henry James

and after he was deceased.

They indicted him and declared him guilty after he was deceased.

So thank you very much.

I did note that Washington Post article paraphrasing commemoration of this in 2018

used the words, approximately, remembering this earlier act of racial violence reminds the nation that the history of hatred is deep in its bones and seeped in its soil.

Ignoring it has not made it go away.

Only by exhuming it and addressing it can America address its perpetual crisis of race.

Thank you.

Lynching was a particularly directed attack at black people living in America.

It was a method of intimidation and force of violence in order to maintain a power by one group, the white Americans, against another group, black Americans.

It is a stain on the soul of our country and it cannot be undone, but it can be prevented.

As other supervisors have mentioned, I believe we've been fortunate over the last several board meetings to have a confluence of a series of related proclamations that we've been able to connect together at each of those meetings.

I've been watching a series of different documentaries over the last several months dealing with colonialization, wars, our inhumanity to each other,

When you dehumanize a group, it becomes easy for that group to become subject to violence.

And while we can say we appear to have been able to put the lynching of black individuals behind us, the actions to dehumanize people in our country has not ceased.

As a member of the LGBTQ community, I am constantly

inundated with social media and news reports of those who speak openly of killing me and others in my community by dehumanizing us.

As residents of this local community, we need think no further back than August the 12th, 2017.

We need not think further back than January the 6th, 2021, those who would use force of power over the rule of law.

and it is incumbent upon us as these supervisors have mentioned that we both acknowledge the culpability of those who acted under the color of law and take actions to ensure it does not recur here and we thank you for giving us the opportunity to acknowledge that and to recognize the harm that was specifically inflicted upon John Henry James and do our best to try and make amends for that.

All right, board, we'll move to item number seven from the public, matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

Yes, we have just in person.

So 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.

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.

Board requests that you adhere to the following guidelines when addressing the board.

State your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district.

Please address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

If representing a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands in their 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 as all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

And our speaker is Faith Schweikert.

Good afternoon.

Hi, my name is Faye Schweikert.

I'm from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

The Piedmont Environmental Council is pleased to announce the publication of our Buy Fresh, Buy Local guides, which offer a physical and a digital source to connect consumers in the region to fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy, meat, and more by way of local farmers markets and farmers.

The three guides for Northern Piedmont, Loudoun County, and Charlottesville area were recently mailed out to over 310,000 households in the counties that we operate in, including 83,000 households in Albemarle and the Charlottesville region.

Each guide showcases about 200 area-specific farms, markets, and retailers, provides a travel map, a seasonal availability calendar, and information about the importance of soil health, as well as a handful of local farm features.

The guide had Cultivate Charlottesville and Little Hat Creek Farm featured in this edition, but there were a variety of farms to choose from, as you would know.

Thank you.

And if you'd like to leave those with the clerk, she'll pass them out to us.

All right, board, we move to our next item, number eight, the consent agenda.

The floor is open to adopt the consent agenda as amended with the removal of the two agenda meeting notes that Supervisor Galloway mentioned.

Motion from Supervisor Mallek, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right.

We'll move to item number nine, an action item, SC2023-00009-8690, Little York Heights Homestay.

Ms.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

So thank you for your time this afternoon.

My name is Leah Brumfield, Senior Planner 2 in Zoning.

I am bringing a special exception for a homestay at 8688 Little York Heights in Greenwood, Virginia on a 1.5 acre rural area parcel near the intersection of I-64 and Rockfish Gap Turnpike near the Nelson County border.

The applicants are requesting a special exception to use an accessory structure for a homestay.

So as this is a rural area parcel of less than five acres, the parcel is permitted to rent out to guest sleeping spaces within a single family dwelling that meets primary structure setbacks.

No unhosted stays are permitted.

And as this request is for a home stay with only one guest sleeping space that will meet primary structure setbacks, also has screening that meets requirements and the parcel is owner occupied.

This request is only for the use of the detached accessory structure which was going to be intended for use as a homestay as well as private family use and the owner's floral business.

If the special exception is approved, the owners of the property will at that point apply for a homestay zoning clearance and during that process

Those structures used for the homestay would be inspected for building and fire safety for homestay regulations.

The owners would send a notice to their neighbors providing contact information for a responsible agent.

And they would designate guest parking spaces on site at a rate of one standard parking space per guest sleeping space.

Per the homestay regulations in 5148 of the zoning ordinance,

The Board may consider whether for the permission of the use of an accessory structure for a homestay, there would be any adverse impacts to the surrounding neighborhood, any adverse impacts to the public health, safety, or welfare, whether the proposed special exception would be consistent with the comprehensive plan and any applicable master or small area plans, and whether the proposed special exception would be consistent in size and scale with the surrounding neighborhood.

So here I have an aerial of the parcel.

It is a double lot parcel surrounded by largely undeveloped lots.

There are a few single family homes and farm buildings on surrounding parcels, which are also forested fairly heavily.

One of the abutting parcels are owned by a single owner who also operates the farm on the abutting parcel.

The structure is not yet completed,

It is a by-right structure for use for the applicant's personal use and they are requesting use for the building as well for a homestay in the upstairs finish space.

However, I have shown the building location on this aerial.

The location is surrounded on both the north and east by dense screening vegetation and the nearest dwelling is over 300 feet from the proposed structure.

So as the structure is currently under construction, but it is a by right use, the structure meets all their homestay requirements and has a very heavy amount of vegetative screening.

Staff does not believe the homestay in this accessory structure will have a negative impact on abutting properties.

All right.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Any questions?

Supervisor Galloway?

I did not have any questions.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The only question I have is the garage, it was not built before the adoption of the ordinance.

Is that relevant at all anymore?

Because our original adoption was for use of existing structures, so I know that may have evolved.

So I just wanted to get a little clarification about that.

Otherwise, I mean, it's a great location, obviously.

It meets all the requirements.

Sure.

So I can't speak for the board, but I know that some of the reasoning that we had when that was originally adopted was so that structures were not built solely for use as homestay structures to provide for fewer, less development, less erosion, less disruption in the rural area if it's not already in use for the residents or for a other accessory structure for the residents.

I don't have any problems with this.

I'm just trying to orient myself with the map that was in our packet to the what I see is a real picture on the screen.

Sure.

So I also, I have, I can pull up the one that's in your packet as well if you need that.

But this does just show the structure at the bottom is the house.

and the red lines are the parcel boundaries.

Yes.

Okay, and I saw this red little square down here and I wasn't sure what that was.

Yeah, I'm not sure what the two are for, but the primary one does come in.

Just curious.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

No further questions.

Thank you.

And I have no questions.

So are there any comments that any supervisor would like to make?

I mean, I think the location and the use here is fine.

If they wanted to do something beyond this, they'd have to come back.

Plus, they have to go through the clearances that are the next step if this is approved.

So, the location and seeing the screening around it just makes that even more acceptable in my view.

Thank you.

Did you have questions?

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no further comments.

Thank you.

No, I'm fine.

Thank you.

I am also fine.

Thank you.

I am fine.

I have no comments.

Madam Chair, if I can suggest that a more simplified motion for the board's consideration and that would be to

Very good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg, our County Attorney.

I move adoption of the SE-2023-9

All right.

We have a motion from Supervisor Mallek and a second from Supervisor McKeel.

There doesn't appear to be the need for further discussion.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Bea Stokerley?

We'll move to our next item, number 10, SE-2023-00004, 640 Rocky Hollow Road Homestay.

Good afternoon, Ms.

It's been so long since I've been up here.

So for our second special exception of the day, we have a request for a resident manager for a homestay at 638 Rocky Hollow Road, which is located on a 47-acre rural area parcel in the Rivanna district just north of Pantops.

The applicant who does not live on the property is requesting a special exception to permit her long-term renter on the property to serve as a resident manager for a homestay.

This is a rural area parcel of over five acres, so a little different from the last one.

It has up to five guest rooms used for sleeping.

It is permitted for homestay use in single-family dwellings or in accessory structures built before August 7, 2019.

And unhosted stays are permitted for up to seven days a month, up to 45 days per year by right.

This parcel does contain two dwellings, full dwellings on acreage sufficient for far more than two dwellings with remaining development rights as well.

And the proposed homestay is to be located in a two bedroom house at 638 Rocky Hollow Road.

So this request is only for the use of a resident manager to fulfill the homestay occupancy requirements.

All other regulations for homestays are met.

and otherwise the homestay is by right.

So as noted in the staff report, Mr. Birdsey resides on the larger dwelling of the parcel 640 Rocky Hollow Road and the smaller dwelling 638 is proposed for use as a homestay.

Residency verifications, fire safety addressing, parking, all of the requirements will be verified during the homestay zoning clearance process, which again follows the special exception.

So here you can see this is an aerial of the parcel itself.

The yellow star marks the location of the proposed homestay at 638 Rocky Hollow Road.

Along the interior of the property, the dwelling at 640 Rocky Hollow Road, marked with a green star, would be the resident manager's dwelling and is the long-term residence of the proposed resident manager, Mr. Bertzi.

In correspondence with the owner,

We did learn that the resident manager has been a tenant of this location since 2016.

and since the residence is already in existence, it was built in 2017, the property is very well shielded from neighboring parcels and the resident manager is a long-term resident of the parcel who would be available to immediately address any potential issues.

We do recommend approval of the special exception with the following recommended action.

Following discussion on this, I do have a quick question for the board on scheduling.

Alright, thank you.

We'll go through our order for any questions.

Supervisor Galloway?

No questions for me.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I do have a question and it's probably more a process question.

Maybe it was here and I just didn't see it.

If so, I apologize, but long-term person who's been living on the property will now be the property.

How do we handle, what happens if that person decides in a year or in six months or three years to move and to leave and what's the notification and how?

Sure, so that is part of the zoning clearance process and since we do have the short-term rental registry, the property owner who is the one in charge of the homestay because they are liable for it as the property owner, they need to complete and update a contact information for a responsible agent every year and send that notification

to neighbors if that changes.

They do need to get a fire inspection as well as part of that process.

And that's the trigger for filling out and completing the new form if it changes is when they are reached out to say, hey, you need another fire inspection.

It's been a year.

Then we also ask them if they need to fill out new information for a resident manager or contact information for the responsible agent.

Yeah, but the change in the person that is responsible is not based on a complaint from a neighbor who wouldn't necessarily know that.

All right, thank you.

Usually it would be, but if for example there was a third party service who was answering calls and running the booking for the site, they could be the responsible agent.

They are still required to be on call 24 hours a day in order to do that.

The resident manager is just to establish residency.

Okay, yes, now I understand the question.

We do not approve individual resident managers.

That is the permission to have a resident manager is what the special exception approves.

We don't necessarily have a lease saying who the resident manager is with that person.

Generally, they are because they're there and it's easier for the property owner, but that is not necessary.

The responsible agent is to establish occupancy so that this is not a parcel that is solely a commercial enterprise.

I'm sorry, follow up one more time.

And so is there, there's a process through zoning to designate a new, or to recognize that there's a different person or new person living there.

We don't have that unless that would be through a complaint system.

I obviously was not asking it correctly.

I'm trying to figure this out because we're in an area that there are not very many people around

I'm just trying to figure out what the trigger would be.

No, ma'am.

Mr. Brumfield is correct.

We probably won't find the manager right away, but as part of our annual re-up, as part of that registry, we will confirm residency and who's there and number of bedrooms and the fire safety inspection.

So as part of that is when we would actually catch it.

So probably not right away, but eventually at that annual inspection.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's like a periodic reinvestigation of a security clearance rather than continual evaluation.

Ms.

Brumfield.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Are you finished?

Before asking my question slash making my comment, I recognize there's a difference between an address and a building or a structure that may be there.

but can you help clarify, the applicant says that Jonathan Birdsey has been living at this address since 2016 but they also say that the buildings were not built until 2017 so I'm presuming that there was a previous residence there at that address where Mr. Birdsey lived as the, who would now be the resident manager and that would explain the discrepancy between

I think that, and this is pure speculation on my part, but building permits take about a year to finish.

And sometimes they're not issued after, until after they are actually completed.

That would be my primary guess.

Okay, I prefer not guesses, but they actually say he's been living at this address since 2016.

but says the structures were not built until 2017.

I'm basing that off of what our county real estate records say is they say that they were completed in 2017.

Which residents are you referring to?

Yeah, and they say that both of them were built in 2017.

In their materials, it says both houses located on the parcel were built in 2017.

and the applicant says that the person they've identified as the resident manager has been living at this address since 2016.

Without going back into the records to see if they did an alteration on an existing structure.

It is not common practice, but also not a surprise on occasion when folks occupy a building earlier than when we would consider the building complete, which is based on what the real estate records say.

So there's an area in there that someone could have been occupying that structure prior to their CO, but we'd have to do some additional research to figure that out.

Brumfield made about the manager is to establish residency.

I mean that's not owner living there and very different in description from what we have heard from other places where you have an LLC but the person, the beneficiary actually lives on the site and is the manager.

I get that completely but now we have

a commercial rental operation where there is no owner there.

We don't know anything about if the owner is even here.

That was the whole point I understood and based on the answer to my earlier question of using the established businesses.

Now we've built two buildings, both of which are rented, one short-term and one long-term.

How is that really

carrying forward with, I mean, it's a great location and all that, but now that we have, we're down in the weeds even more than we were when we started, I don't have an answer to my question about how this really complies.

Because it sounds like we're now establishing that it's okay for somebody who lives somewhere else to then park a tenant in one building and then have homestays.

Which was not what we were going for when we adopted this.

So I can speak strictly to the use part.

We have a single family house on the parcel and the homestay is accessory to that single family.

Some guidance by the county attorney's office, they can jump in here where I get this wrong, a number of months back indicated that

whether the LLC owns it or the resident owns it or whether they lived on site was not part of the equation as it is whether or not we have a primary use which is the single-family house and whether or not that accessory use is there and I know as part of our conversations when we first adopted that we had a different mindset in when we talked about people living the owners living on the parcel

and conducting these homestays.

So Supervisor Mallek's memory is correct in that I believe the conversations we had originally when we talked about homestays was all about owners occupying those parcels.

What is this an LLC?

Is there any real established LLC that would follow the other ones we've done more recently?

I don't remember, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't remember this change of interpretation coming back to the board because this was the really big deal that we spent a lot of time talking about years ago.

I think any of us who meet with people in other counties, hear from them that they are overrun with

remote owners taking over properties and using them for short-term rentals.

All the counties surrounding the Shenandoah National Park are being destroyed by this

People can't find places for employees at Shenandoah Park to live because every little place where they used to live for the summer or the nine month or whatever is now being used on the weekends for Homestay.

So it sounds like we are giving up the high ground that we had and allowing ourselves to now be sucked into this.

And this just happens to be the example that has brought this new reality out.

I may not be the only one who remembers it this way, so I'm very, very concerned, as I said, not about this necessarily because of its location, etc., but the fact that this technicality has now taken over.

Alright.

Yes, I've been out to this residence at five

638, and I did not go to 640 because of the fact that that was further up a road that's in private, you know, no entry type thing.

However, I understand what you're, and these are two remote properties, so this is not something that would lend itself frankly to a rental for a family because it's way out in the middle of nowhere.

it is the driveway is very long someone would have to have a car there is no transportation or anything but I think we have been looking at what do we do because this is not a cookie cutter approach we do have areas where people like in this case this is part of a trust that's my understanding it's part of a trust so it's a family-owned and then they have they do have this long-term residence

Manager, and then they have this other smaller two bedroom place that they want to be able to rent out.

We're also facing this with a large lot of acreage.

We're also facing this in larger properties where people inherit things as part of a trust.

They inherit it and not coming out from another country, not coming out from another state to buy up properties that I agree with you.

but that they inherit properties and they want to be able to maintain those properties.

We have large estates where they have a hard time maintaining the properties that they inherit because of, you know, if they were able to have home stays, they could then rent the places out and keep up the large estates.

It's something that we said that we would look into when we pass this, which is what, a year, over a year ago?

so we're overdue to actually look at everything because we never even took into consideration larger pieces of property.

It was always like five acres.

I don't see anywhere where we have an affirmation, affidavit, of what the intent is.

It was not clear to me, certainly in the packet, that this was an LLC-type presentation similar to the one we had six months ago or sometime.

It sounds like, and I'm not a lawyer, but my concern is that we're creating a different category of consideration for somebody with an LLC versus somebody who is just buying up commercial property.

Rental properties, I think, are considered commercial.

If there's nobody living there, that's the owner.

It's not an owner-occupied thing, which is then allowing them to stay and pay their taxes by renting out some rooms.

I mean, this is where we were.

So I guess the county attorney will have to advise about whether we are somehow de facto establishing different approaches, which is not equal enforcement of our ordinances.

or Application.

I just see the very next thing coming in is, you know, there could be five different lots at the previous application, all those little tiny lots there saying, okay, we're all going to do this and this one resident manager is going to manage 15 other homestays right there on quarter-acre lots, very similar to Nags Head where they were selling 50 years ago little quarter-acre things, each with a well and septic.

I'm sorry, I just want to make sure, do we have any questions of staff before we get to comments?

I'm sort of asking this question as follow-up to try to address

We have those two terms.

The resident manager is the person on site.

The other responsible agent is the term we used when we talked about that whole house rental that was allowed for a period of time on the larger parcels.

So we sometimes get those confused a little bit, but the resident manager fulfills the residency requirement that makes the single family house a single family house.

that allows the accessory use.

Whether it's an LLC, whether I live there or whether I own it and my brother lives there for me and I live next door or 10 miles down the road, the county attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but those are kind of interchangeable at this point in time.

So the ownership, whether I own it personally or whether I own it through an LLC,

that's just a protection mechanism the way we review this the impact for zoning and planning purposes is the same now for housing stock that may be different but for the impacts on traffic and noise and those sorts of things those are kind of equivalent under those that ownership is or isn't so as we move forward one of the things we may want to think about not for this application but in the future is

whether or not we want to approve or have a better guidance on size of parcel or area.

So the example that Supervisor Mallek gave of all the little parcels in a row where somebody comes in as an LLC, it's not required that we approve the Resident Manager.

So at that point we can say, no, that's too much.

That particular example may be too much if it came before us.

So that's part of the

scrutiny that we give the applications in part of that review.

So I want to be clear that we also don't want to promote kind of rubber stamping that we are looking at these individually and making sure that it meets all the criteria, you know, and that the impacts are what we expect they are.

So we approve a lot of them.

Thank you.

Ms.

I did.

I actually wanted to bring the board to mind to a special exception we actually had last year which was almost exactly the same situation which was the 3948 Lonesome Mountain Road and I can show that on our GIS that might help bring everybody's memory up where the actual property, the resident manager is a tenant

who lives in a cottage at this side of the parcel and the rental which is a full-time vacation type rental is on this side of the property.

This was a long-term tenant of the property who did in this case serve as I believe the resident manager as well as the responsible agent but

This was the kind of situation that we have seen before where property owner has had this in her family for some time and she uses the property for her own vacations as well as renting it out.

If you want to see, that may also help the visual.

I'm much more of a visual person.

This was the cottage, I think, that

Thank you.

Well, I think that the struggle that you all are encountering is there's no basis to distinguish under the county code between a limited liability company that is established by

a property owner for personal financial planning purposes, somebody who lives in a primary dwelling but chooses to title their property in the name of a limited liability company for tax or estate planning purposes on the one hand.

another party who forms a limited liability company and acquires a property for investment purposes and then makes it available as a homestay through any one of these platforms you know like Airbnb or VRBO and our office's opinion has been and

Let me back up.

That is the case.

There's no basis to distinguish under the county code.

And the zoning ordinance targets uses of property.

So if there are adverse uses of the property that need to be addressed,

Question, Supervisor Mallek?

Definition question.

Is an owner-occupied house would be that category you just described, as the use of the property by its owner, as opposed to the one we're not allowed to do?

No, no, you said we couldn't distinguish between types of ownership.

So that's one category.

Well, what you're requiring presently is that the owner reside on the property.

unless there is a special exception granted.

And that's why this matter is before you because it is not legally possible for a business entity such as a limited liability company to occupy property.

Only a natural person can occupy property.

So in order to

allow the consideration of a homestay where the property is owned by a limited liability company, the ordinance permits the board to grant a special exception to permit an individual to function in that capacity so that

And the distinction is that the beneficiary has lived there, beneficiary of the LLC has been on the property in the other cases.

So that's the change that could be made if we, when we come back around to look at this next time, is that we could

established that yes you may be the beneficiary of the LLC and therefore you are and you're on the property that makes sense but when it's two commercially listed houses one bigger one more than 30 days and the other younger I mean it could be a whole year before we someone finds out at the renewal time that they've both been used for short-term rental for 364 days we have no process for that so I this

I'm just, as I said, I hear the really terrible things that are happening in other places, and I'm reluctant to have us relinquish the good start we have made.

Any other questions of staff?

Then let's go through comments, some of which have already been made, but I want to make sure every supervisor has an opportunity to make comments.

I guess my comment would be that as these special exceptions come before us, we cannot keep having debates about the ordinance during the application.

If we're going to have debate and conversation about the ordinance clarity, changing what's in there, understanding whatever, then that needs to be an agenda item and we need to dig into it.

But each of these special, well not each, but many of these applications that have come before us, we are getting into debates about bigger items that are ordinance level and not application specific.

Now the application details are leading us to that conversation, but it's not fair to the applicants to have us debate the ordinance when there are applications before us.

So all of these things I don't

We will have varying opinions on these things, I am sure.

It's just not the place to do it when the special applications in front of us.

My understanding is that if we had denied this, then the property owner could then do to long-term rentals.

Is there anything to prevent that from happening?

That's allowed.

So the whole point, I thought, of the resident manager was that the primary use of the property was to be for long-term residency.

and that that had to be established to allow accessory use.

The homestay is simply saying that we are saying that a resident manager qualifies by ordinance to allow the accessory use to happen.

None of this responsible agent, resident managers, none of this matters under long-term rentals.

So you know, who's the responsible agent in my neighborhood as my homeowner if my dogs are barking too much?

Well, I'm one of the owners.

I guess I'm responsible.

That doesn't mean I'm the responsible agent when people call and complain.

You know what I mean?

So it's a matter of saying when we have the home stays, we can identify the person that's going to resolve the problem within 60 minutes.

As long as that's there, frankly, I'm not too concerned about whether that's the person living there or not.

I want the issue resolved quickly.

That's the whole, my support behind the responsible agent piece.

So I'm fine with this application.

It was stated in the materials who the owner was and that this was a trust.

So that was in the packet.

And I believe that was changing because we were just getting the trust names before but because of these past conversations we wanted to know who the individual was that was behind it.

So I'm acknowledging that that was in the packet today.

Thank you.

I agree with what Supervisor Galloway said.

I like to have flexibility in these issues.

Oftentimes, people will have an LLC.

Individuals, yes, it could be commercial, but it could also be a lot of individuals have an LLC.

That's for insurance, tax protection, especially for insurance protection of the property and what they do.

I don't have a problem with this one because, like we've done before, you have a responsible party.

If they were to just be renting both of them,

There would be no responsible party.

There would be no one that you could actually call and complain to because the owner resides in Florida and then comes to Virginia on business also.

So there's no one to complain to.

If you have a resident manager

a responsible party, that person's responsible for the homestay and what happens there.

So I think that's actually safer for the neighbors and as far as, I mean I don't want to what if it like, well how do we know how long they're going to stay there?

They've been there since 2016 and once again we have policy in place that ensures

So thank you very much.

Home occupancy, owner occupancy is what I meant to say.

Thank you.

Yeah, I am ready to support this application.

I think the location is fine and lots of factors favor into it.

I do think though that we do continue, as Ned said, to come back to this and we'll need to schedule something on our agenda in the future to sort of

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm also supportive but also looking at this again in the future.

I guess my one bug has been the use of the word manager because, well, I think it's very important to have a responsible agent.

I see the word manager and I think that they're doing something more than what is actually required under the ordinance.

Thank you.

I'm going to make one brief comment of a general type before getting to the specific.

The ownership doesn't matter if it's an individual, an LLC, which could be an individual who owns the LLC or a group of individuals who own the LLC.

or in this case a trust.

If I purchase a home, I can purchase it in my name, I can form an LLC or I can put it in the name of a trust.

So I concur we really can't get bogged down in that.

What I'm left with is I'm not satisfied with the ordinance, but based upon the way this ordinance is currently written, I will end up supporting this application.

All right, any further comments?

Supervisor, I mean, Mr. Rosenberg.

All right, so the floor is open if a supervisor desires to make a motion.

I move that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approve a special exception as shown in attachment F of the staff report for SE-2023-04638 Rocky Hollow Road, homestay recommended.

Second.

All right.

Motion by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, second by Supervisor Andrews.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right.

Thank you, Board.

And so we are scheduled now for a recess would ask that we try to be back by 2 40 Take a 10-minute recess since we are running just a little late Thank you

Good afternoon.

We'll call the board back to order.

Just for the record, we'll point out Supervisor Galloway has not yet returned to the dais.

I'll annotate when he comes in.

Yes, just briefly, Madam Chair, on the Rocky Hollow Road homestay application on which the board just acted, I want to clarify my comments.

I was under the mistaken impression that the applicant was a limited liability company.

I understand it is not.

It is a trust.

The property record title to the property is held by a trust, but the analysis is the same.

The county code requires owner occupancy to have a homestay.

unless the board approves a special exception and you know neither a trust nor a limited liability company nor a corporation nor any other sort of business entity is capable of occupying the property itself which is why the county code is drafted in such a way that allows

a resident agent with the approval of the board by special exception.

So I just wanted to clarify that I was under the impression mistaken that this property was owned by

a limited liability company.

It is not.

Right.

Thank you.

So it doesn't matter if it's an individual, an LLC, or it's a trust.

Well, I guess an LLC or it's a trust.

Right.

Correct.

Thank you, Mr. Rosenberg.

And we have all supervisors present.

And we're now ready to proceed to the item for the review of the legislative priorities.

Very good.

Thank you.

So Steve Rosenberg.

with the County Attorney's Office.

We have a team presentation for you this afternoon.

I'll be joined by David Blount, who's the Deputy Director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, Emily Kilroy,

who is the assistant to the county executive and me.

And so we're gonna cover three areas for the board this afternoon.

One is to provide a brief review of the 2023 priorities adopted by the board and how they fared during the legislative session.

and then following that Mr. Blunt will look ahead to 2024.

What does the landscape look like for the General Assembly session next year, especially, you know, very timely in light of the results of yesterday's election as well as the changing landscape

more broadly in the General Assembly.

And then finally, Ms.

Kilroy taking account of that changing landscape will propose to the board for its consideration a strategy that is somewhat different than that which has been employed in the past as the 2024 session approaches.

So what I'd like to do is to offer a brief review of the outcome of the 2023 General Assembly session from the county's perspective.

Last fall, as you'll recall, the board approved seven legislative priorities for the session.

And of those, most were initiatives that were carried forward from the 2022 session.

And just to be clear,

I'm candid about it, the county did not meet with much success with only one bill enacted and improved by the governor of Virginia and even that bill only partially addressed the particular issues of importance to the county and I'm not going to run through the detail of every one of these I'll go into a little bit more depth where the county enjoyed some traction but

Just to run through those that did not meet with success, there was a bill seeking authority to impose civil penalties in lieu of criminal punishment for violations of local ordinance.

One, to expand the authority to use photo speed monitoring devices beyond the authority that the county already has to use those devices in school zones.

Another bill to allow public bodies to hold all virtual public meetings without any of the restrictions that are currently in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Another piece of legislation to allow the board to impose conditions on special exceptions like ownership conditions or time restrictions.

Another bill to allow the board to impose an additional sales tax to finance school division capital projects.

So all of those met with no success.

Two of the bills had some success.

The one concerning the Virginia Business Ready Sites program

was actually enacted by the General Assembly and then the governor recommended substitutions that were rejected by the Senate of Virginia and so that bill would have reduced from 100 to 50 acres the eligible, the required acreage of a site eligible for a site development grant and

As I said, this initially passed both houses of the General Assembly, both chambers of the General Assembly, and then the Senate ultimately rejected the governor's recommended substitutions and subsequent to that the governor vetoed the original bill as enacted by the General Assembly.

And so this particular bill

I understand from Mr. Blunt continues to remain in play and interestingly Augusta County was separately pursuing similar legislation and so I think it's that locality's intention to continue to work with the governor's office in between the sessions to see whether there can be some

agreement reached on moving forward on legislation that would implement that change in the 2024 session.

But for now, it was not enacted into law.

So the one piece of legislation that's a part of

it was a part of the board's legislative priorities and that was enacted and approved by the governor concerned a requirement for agricultural buildings used by the public to be subject to minimum safety standards and you'll recall that there was legislation enacted in 2022 that required several measures in this area

and there were requirements for outward swinging doors with panic hardware, emergency lights and exit signs on designated emergency exits, emergency vehicle access, at least one restroom with hand washing facilities, portable fire extinguishers, a manual unmonitored fire alarm system with pull stations and a fire

evacuation plan and the legislation also in 2022 established an Agritourism Event Structure and Technical Advisory Committee that convened and met on a couple of occasions subsequent to the 2022 session and there was an uncodified provision of that 2022 legislation that required reenactment in the 2023 session

of those portions of the legislation that imposed those requirements that I just detailed.

And so as it went through the legislative process in 2023, what emerged is significantly different and more limited in scope in terms of the requirements that are imposed.

So there are now only three requirements, not the longer list that I just recited for you,

Those three requirements are portable fire extinguishers for the purpose of fire suppression, a simple written plan in case of an emergency, but it's not an evacuation plan, which is something specifically required generally of commercial structures under the Uniform Statewide Building Code, and then finally the third requirement is a warning sign

that's prominently displayed that states, this building is exempt from the uniform statewide building code.

Be alert to exits in the event of a fire or other emergencies.

So that's how it was reenacted.

Those are the three requirements that now apply as of July 1st.

and it's expressly provided that the Technical Advisory Committee continues to exist and is mandated to meet four times before the 2024 session to continue its consideration of these issues and to report its findings and recommendations to the Board of Housing and Community Development by November 1st of 2023.

So that is

That's what resulted from your seven legislative priorities was the reenactment of this one piece of legislation with fewer requirements than had been the case in 2022 and so you can see that despite considerable effort the county enjoyed limited success

in the achievement of its initiatives in the 2023 session.

And that reality, combined with the coming changes in the composition of the General Assembly that David Blount will describe next, informs the recommended strategy for the 2024 session that Emily Kilroy will share to complete our presentation.

And I can either take questions from you now about what occurred, or we can wait

I don't see a flurry of hands at this time, Mr. Rosenberg, so let's go to the next step and then we will see if we have questions.

Good afternoon Chair Price, members of the board, it's a pleasure to be with you this afternoon and as Steve said I wanted to just kind of really give you a view of the landscape that we're going to be looking at with the 2024 General Assembly session.

The winds of change, they are blowing and I guess coupled with the announcement of various retirements over the past four or five years by legislators

We saw the change accelerate more yesterday with the primary elections.

I think there were about 40 primary elections across the state.

But I want to just kind of give you, it's kind of where things stand with what the General Assembly might look like.

You're following those primaries, of course with the November elections still to come.

All in all, the House and Senate probably each will have about a third of their membership turn over from 23 to 24.

specifically for the Senate a little more than a third.

15 of the 40 seats are going to be changing hands.

We had 10 senators that had announced their retirements heading into the spring and then another five incumbents who were on the ballot yesterday were defeated.

So 15 of the 40 senators will be new.

and again about another third on the House side.

You had a little over 30 of the current members that were retiring, a number of the delegates that were running for seats in the Senate.

You did have one incumbent House member who was defeated yesterday.

So much different look to the General Assembly next year.

I think one of the things that will be similar though is as we've seen in recent years, I think that there will continue to be just a low percentage of folks serving in the legislature that have had some local government experience and served in local elective office.

So what is the impact of some of this change?

I think first and foremost for me, probably first, last, and everything in between is the loss of institutional knowledge, institutional memory.

I've been using one statistic recently in some presentations and I'll give you some others as well.

Just as I started looking with this wave of retirements that we were hearing about in the spring on the Senate side, you had six of the top ten senators in terms of seniority.

In fact, I think it was six out of the top seven.

who announced their retirement and collectively they had served about 190 years in the General Assembly.

With the rest of the retirements and the losses yesterday and if you throw in Senator McClelland's service in the Senate before she went on to Congress, you have 16 folks and you can double that number to about 380 years of service.

Over on the House side, about 30 seats.

They're losing their most senior member, several others in the top 10 in seniority, about 250 years of service.

So take the two together, that's over 600 years of institutional knowledge.

And it scares the heck out of me.

I'll tell you that right now as someone who's been around this process for several decades.

It's always good to have that balance and I have never in my time seen this type of sea change that we're going to be seeing now.

I think that if you look at the profiles of the folks who are going to be coming on board,

It's likely that the Republicans will be more conservative and the Democrats will be more liberal, so that makes things perhaps more challenging to get to the middle.

And then again, kind of building on that low percentage of folks having local elected experience, just that lack of knowledge about what is the impact of state actions on local government.

I think that though does present us with some opportunity though, and that is an opportunity to begin to reach out to these folks, to develop a relationship with them, to get to know them, to inform them, to educate them, to tell them what you do in Albemarle County in the government, to invite them to your facilities.

I think there's just so many opportunities there to talk about

the state and local partnership and relationship.

And I listed there some of the areas, and you all know these, where there's just that close tie between the state and the local governments.

Local governments are the state's service provider, whether it's education, public safety, environmental elections, etc., etc., etc.

And with that, billions and billions of dollars flow in state general fund revenues back to localities and to other local service providers.

So a lot of key critical issues and certainly budget is right there at the top as well.

Again, I see an opportunity both for TJPDC and myself.

I'm going to be reaching out to those candidates for these offices across the region that I do not know, do not have a relationship with, and start to get to know them, talk to them about

you know, the local governments in the region talk to them about what the local governments do through TJPDC regionally.

And would hope that at the local government level, individually, collectively, at the staff level, at the board level, that you all would do likewise.

And I'm certainly glad to have discussion with you all about some options

to do that and what that might look like in terms of reach out and what we may want to do again to try to develop a relationship and inform these folks.

So I guess the big gold arrow is kind of my recommendation to you all as I finish my remarks.

And that is, I guess, just in one word, to focus.

I think in the short term to focus on what I've just said, getting to know folks that you don't know, building a relationship with them, talking to them about what you do, and that state and local government partnership.

But then also I guess a little bit farther down the road as we're getting closer to the 2024 session, to focus on what's really important and what you want to do from a legislative initiative standpoint.

And maybe that's one thing.

What is one thing that's most important?

Because I think there's a lot of unknowns.

We don't know with the sea change of folks who's going to be in charge.

We've got November elections to go through yet.

We don't know who's going to control the House and who's going to control the Senate.

We don't know what legislative leadership might look like, both as a whole and in committees.

We've got a new building.

I keep telling people we're going to spend the first week just trying to find where everything is.

It's going to be a lot to navigate, so I think it's probably going to be a good year to kind of slow down, really focus, be deliberate, be strategic about what we do.

Hopefully that has set a good scene for drilling down a little bit deeper.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Good afternoon, Chair Price, members of the board.

And I'm supposed to go to the next slide, but I'm going to stay here.

Emily Kilroy, assistant to the county executive.

With beginning developing relationships and educating, and I'm going to stop there, David Blount has been an amazing leader in helping the county think through and reflect on the legislative session from 2023.

And so I just want to thank him for the time that he's invested in us, because I think it's put us in a really good position.

And then looking ahead to 2024, this is sort of a depiction of a strategy for 2024 that has four different work streams.

And the idea is that we would think about the recommendations from David to grow our relationships with our local delegation and also really focus our legislative initiatives in order to hopefully be really effective in 2024.

and also in a year of change at the General Assembly lay some really good groundwork for future years.

While we've got sort of the global changes happening in the General Assembly, there's also a really great opportunity for Albemarle County because the way that the new districts lines line up

there are fewer individuals representing Albemarle County and the county itself makes up a much larger percentage of their district and so again we think that building those relationships this year could be a really good use of our time and while this pie chart has four areas and they're all the same size

Really just want to set up that the number one focus is, as you might imagine, Rivanna Station Futures.

This is the area where we feel like we could have some really big impact for 24.

We believe that in the first year of the Rivanna Station Futures project, setting up some relationships at the state level will help us build some really positive momentum that will sustain the success of the project in future years, knowing that this is a multi-year project before us.

So the recommendation here is really to focus the bulk of our work on Rivanna Station Futures by developing partnerships and also exploring funding possibilities.

So the contract for the acquisition of that land is one cost.

We also know that there's going to be funding needs for infrastructure and site readiness.

And we think the state can and is very willing to be a big partner there.

And we think we will be really successful if we're able to build a really broad-based network of support at the state level.

The next area is regional opportunities, and we have a number of important initiatives that are underway through our regional partnerships, most of them with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

The regional housing partnership, the transit governance study that's currently underway, there's a comprehensive economic development strategy that are under development right now.

There's not recommendations, but we know that those are coming.

And there's an opportunity to work with our neighbors on

advancing some work with the local delegations that represent all of us to be able to garner state support for some of the things that we might need, whether that's funding or whether that's enabling authority to get some of the tools in our toolbox that we need to be really effective in those areas.

I think we could really leverage the support of the entire region if we were to focus there.

So not take a leap now by trying to introduce legislation in any of these areas, but really carve out space, reserve some capacity,

for as these initiatives that are underway get framed out into recommendations that we have some capacity to work together through Mr. Blunt and the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to get some regional local support.

The next area are topical opportunities.

These are areas where support doesn't necessarily have to be from our geographic neighbors, but these could be issues that face communities across the Commonwealth that look like us for a variety of different ways.

So one example is town gown communities.

So perhaps Roanoke or Harrisonburg have things that are on their mind that we become aware of that we say

That would actually be great for Albemarle, too, when we think about our town-gown relationship with the University of Virginia.

And so these are areas where, again, we wouldn't necessarily have to lead, but we could certainly take the lead of others and join their opportunities for support or opposition to legislation that would be of shared interest to us.

Another example of this would be Augusta County.

Mr. Rosenberg and Mr. Blunt reference that Augusta County is interested in pursuing again next year the minimum acreage to the Virginia Business Ready Sites program and that's something where we could sort of follow their lead instead of investing a lot of our own capacity on trying to advance that work.

And then the final one is the positions and policy statements.

This was attachment B in your executive summary and this is an item that we don't typically spend a lot of time in these legislative priority work sessions on but are actually very important when we actually get into the General Assembly legislative session.

You may or may not know that it's fairly commonplace during the session for

a delegate to reach out at 4.30 in the afternoon and ask for the county's position on a draft legislation by 7.30 tomorrow morning.

And it can be a challenge to sort of navigate what the county's opinion of that legislation might be if it's something that we hadn't formally considered with the board.

and that turnaround time doesn't lend itself very well to polling the board on that.

And so what staff does is we use those positions and policy statements that the board adopts each year to help sort of guide a response of here's some of the strengths that we would see for that and here's some of the challenges that we might see from that.

One example of that is that in your current positions and policy statements, there's an articulation that the board does not support unfunded mandates from the state.

And that one has been helpful for us as we sort of try to flesh out or explore if a draft legislation would be something that the board would support or not.

And so we think that we could spend some time continuing to build those out because that's a really important tool for staff as we navigate what can be, again, a very short turnaround during the legislative session.

And it's an area where we can really support the work and the energy of the local delegates

in the areas that they have a lot of interests and it would be helpful for them to have locals to sort of understand what the local impact would be and if the county is supportive to have the county support for that as sort of as in their toolbox as they try to get their colleagues to see why this would be a valuable piece of legislation to pass.

So that is you know I'm realizing I'm missing a slide.

So that is the end of what we were going to present today and what we wanted to do was allow you to ask questions at this point and then also sort of get direction from you all on

on this strategy.

This is a departure as Mr. Rosenberg set up at the beginning from how we normally would sort of proceed into the legislative work that the board does through the summer and if you feel like that is appropriate if that's something that you'd like to change a little bit and then thinking about those positions and policy statements document are there opportunities that you see for us to

Add, remove, or areas that you'd like to sort of flesh out a little bit further from what we have in the past.

All right.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Does, this might be for Mr. Blount, I'm still trying to understand what the governor's change to the readiness, site readiness actually meant.

I mean it sounds like, what?

And then the Senate said no.

So I don't know, can you clear that up?

Yeah, I think bottom line in his veto message was I guess expressing some concern about

The President

His recommended change, I'll ask Mr. Rosenberg to help if I misspeak, but I believe that he, as opposed to the language that was in the approved bill to change the 100 to 50, he would set in localities that do not have a 100-acre site, then you could use 50 as eligible for consideration by VEDP for a site

for a site development grant.

And Steve Rosenberg, county attorney's office, not only who makes that determination whether a locality doesn't have a 100-acre site, but on what criteria is that determination based

and suppose you have one but it's under development, does that mean that you do have one or that you don't have one?

There was a lot of ambiguity we felt about the language that was proposed by the governor and how it would actually be applied in comparison to the proposal that was made on behalf of the county which was simply to say that

I get it, with what I read I couldn't understand what the hell was going on.

I would imagine Augusta is in a very similar situation to us.

I don't think, I guess whether or not you're currently developing or not, once Rivanna, the property we are going to acquire, puts us in a different category than when we started this.

So I don't know what that means because if it's already, then that should qualify for whatever is currently in place and you don't need the 50 acre thing.

I think we still need the 50 acre thing.

So I want to try to understand.

For me, one of my items would be I'd like to continue on this.

It sounds like there's some leverage there to pair up or partner with Augusta, especially since they're a neighboring PDC, that there could be something there and maybe bring on some other like counties that are in a similar situation.

So that would be one of mine that I would say it's probably worth exploring more.

It just doesn't, I mean this is one that why party politics would get in the way of this one is baffling but there's obviously stuff there that we don't, well we do know but we don't think should be there.

I think the other area that's not currently on our, it's on our list or it's on our radar but I think it's worth maybe having discussion or exploring is how we

How we can get the state to help us as we're considering developer incentives for affordable housing, of how to tackle that in a way that's appropriate, legal, but then also can jive with our normal land use procedures.

It's not that I have very specific ideas yet.

I think as we go through in the developer incentives program that we come up with,

Hopefully we'll illuminate areas that we see as roadblocks that may be state-enabling authority roadblocks.

So that's what I'm kind of honing in on.

What are things that probably are very reasonable, probably are happening by some special grant of authority or something like that, that should just be allowed to be done and that local governments can do that or access that.

I think Mr. Gallaway that's a great point and that really speaks to the value of the policy and position statements because if the county doesn't have identified a particular need but you know that there are a particular solution but you know of a problem that you're looking to tackle

We can look for other ideas from other places to achieve that and to put more tools in the local toolkit to solve a big issue.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we keep going after this impact

impact fee piece.

And we know the profit situation is probably not going to change.

The impact fee is not going anywhere.

I mean, what was it, 600 years hasn't changed our impact fee conversation of experience.

So maybe the new folks will figure it out.

But the developer incentive piece at least puts it back, the resources potentially back.

And so if we could figure out some flexibility in there, maybe that finally breaks the log jam on that item.

I don't know.

Thank you.

Would you please go back to the pie chart?

So what I'm asking is that are these, instead of coming up with specific items like we have in the past for legislative issues to hit the legislature with, are we looking at

the pie chart and being just looking for support for Rivanna Station futures, regional opportunities, more of a general thing.

Yeah, so the idea is that this past year, we did seven legislative priorities, which we're asking for specific new legislation to be entered on our behalf.

In prior years, it's been, I think it's anywhere from 5 to 10 has been sort of the number that we've done.

And we simply haven't had great success with that.

And so the idea here is if there is one specific legislation that you would be seeking, that that would probably be manageable, and then again,

that staff would be looking for support from the board to really focus on the partnership development work and the funding opportunity development work around the Rivanna Station Futures Project, building relationships with the local delegation and then using some of those other tools, the policy and position statements, topical opportunities and regional opportunities as a way to sort of continue to push in certain areas without specific legislation attached to those.

Or are we looking at this and then maybe in another year when things settle down, maybe, maybe not, then to go after specific legislative items because I personally think that all of our legislative items that we proposed are extremely valuable and really benefit us.

So it kind of bothers me.

We're not going after that.

I do understand what I hear you saying is our chances of getting anything done are nil to none.

The real shift this year is with the new districts locally and the General Assembly landscape being so uncertain.

Tenure is very important in the General Assembly for committee assignments and for sort of

Okay, you answered that, anything specific.

I would say, just to make sure again, and I used the word focused earlier, being strategic about what we do.

I don't know that we want to come back and continue to introduce the same legislation that does not have a track record of having gotten any traction.

In a year such as that that we're looking at so if we can you know focus our energies more on things that are more strategic and maybe have a better chance of giving us a

that check in the win column, I think that would be more fruitful.

That being said, some of these bills, they're going to show up again.

I think somebody will introduce the taxing authority for school facilities bill again.

If there's no change in the power of the General Assembly,

We know what's going to happen to that.

So the idea would be to focus most specifically on Rivanna Station Futures and then looking for opportunities in those other areas, again, to sort of come on board with other folks.

So again, I hear Mr. Gallaway expressing continued interest in reducing the minimum acreage on that Virginia Business Readiness Program.

So we would be in a position to assist those who want to continue to have legislative priorities.

We would assist those who we agree with and can assist those and then this would be our policy.

That's what I'm understanding what you're saying.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Thank you.

OK.

Just a process question first.

Are we today going to go through the current policies, or is that for a future time?

I think for today, we're looking for feedback on the overall approach.

Very good.

Assisting all these bills of others that you just mentioned.

So I mean, is this VACO VML partnerships as we've done in the past or are you planning to have county staff take some parallel role to what the state organizations are doing?

Because I don't know who we is when you talk about that.

So can you help me with that?

I'll stab at that one.

I think the Augusta County one is pretty clear, but it may be dependent on where the legislation is coming from and who's bringing it forward.

I'm going to continue to function in the manner that I've been, being the feet on the ground down there.

You know, winds in my ear all the time of things that are percolating and, you know, if Albemarle County or TJPDC or some other locality wants to be a part of that, we can certainly do that.

That's just throwing it out there.

So, before November, will someone in this tripartite effort provide contacts for all these new candidate, the candidate people?

Because I think it would be wise for us to reach out to them before November.

Yeah, I certainly see the short term opportunity and really task is being that relationship building, you know, through the summer and into the early fall.

You know, they're going to be so overwhelmed between November and January.

enough anyway.

So I think that's something I want to start putting the structure of that into place and what that looks like for, again, for myself and to be able to assist you all in other localities in the region.

I will add, just found out within the last week or so, I think VML is planning to do something on a regional basis across the state, maybe six different workshops that they would be inviting newly elected members to.

But they're not doing that until after the elections in November.

So again, that's why it's important for us to get the ball rolling.

And again, I think Ms.

Kilroy mentioned we're going from two senators to one senator representing Albemarle and from four delegates to two delegates.

OK.

And I'm going down my list here.

So researching the policies and things, that'll be a combined effort.

And right now the county attorney's office tracks almost of the bills that are introduced and sort of maps them to functional areas within the county organization.

And so there's a lot of work that happens each year.

internally that we would again be sort of looking, and we do look when that list comes out of, you know, here's some bills that are of interest to the county.

And so, you know, I think the further step this year would be, you know, is this something that VACO or VML is taking the lead on?

Is this something that another county is taking the lead on and then working to sort of identify, okay, here are the ones that we sort of feel like align really well with

And I would just add too, you know, if there's something that we, the collective we, discover in the coming months that's, you know, I mean it's kind of an emergency type thing that, you know, we feel like we really need to suggest a legislative change this year.

Or this is something that would be unique to Albemarle County and the county executive form of government that, you know, needs to be put in to advance something that you want to do.

So it still is evolving.

Every day is different.

Okay, great.

And I guess

to add on to what others have said about continuing on.

I think that so much work has been done on things that perhaps I would bring back again if I could entreat everybody to get on a committee at BACO for this August meeting.

We will get so much more involvement, make connections with other counties, leaderships that make

all of these possibilities so much easier to do.

And then we also get to hear where those counties are going, you know, who's bringing up the speed camera thing again, because at the VACO board we had a huge discussion about that and there were at least a dozen counties who said, oh, I want to hear what you're doing.

So maybe we didn't make it this time, but the players are now different.

And a lot of communities across the Commonwealth are having very similar issues to what we're having.

People are dying because they're going too fast.

Taxing Authority.

the circular pattern of PFAS and how it gets on the fields and then it washes into the drinking water and groundwater and then we have to treat it at great expense.

So these kinds of things, it's important for us to be ready to pick up on and support David's actions down there with all of these things.

But this is always a really exciting time for me because

It's the way we really enable ourselves to succeed much better even though it feels very painful and it does take many years.

So that's okay.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, David.

I appreciate and as always appreciate your work.

And Emily, I think it's great to think about this through a different lens, at least for this year, right?

And I get that.

And just quickly, I will point out or just simply say that I think we are lucky in this community because our delegates really do at least have local government experience.

Now I recognize that we're working with a lot of folks that don't.

So I appreciate your point, but at least we do have folks that have come out of local government.

I really do agree with the focus on Rivanna Station.

That's critical.

I mean, we need to make sure that that's taken care of.

And I agree, I don't know who said it, maybe David, but I would work with Augusta County on the lead for the economic development site piece.

They're going to have better luck, I think, than we.

It is critical for us, so I agree.

Reaching out to Augusta, asking how we can help, but letting them take the lead, I think, is a great idea.

I would just like to mention a couple of things, because I think everybody's doing that, Donna, so I've lost track of what we were supposed to be doing.

But anyway, I have an email from one of our representatives, one of our delegates, who said to us, or to me, at least in this email, a year ago, VML, VACO, and the local electeds have to come together to advocate for statewide school finance.

So Ann, I guess I'm going with you and what this delegate was saying to us is, or to me in this email, she did not think that those three entities had been working.

The message has not been clear that they are of one voice about school finance, statewide school finance, because we all know anything we get from the state for our schools, regardless of what it is, frees up money in our local budget.

So I'm not sure exactly, but I would suggest that we really try and work with VML, VACO, and our other communities on statewide school finance.

And Ann, you can certainly help us with your piece there with VACO.

But just because these three, or at least these two organizations have a lot of power.

and I would probably add into that state's superintendents group as well, David, for schools, right?

So just to think about how to do that.

The other item that I would just like to mention is that the General Assembly, I guess two years ago,

Ask Jaylark to look at the community service boards because they're obviously, they're not functioning the way they're supposed to function.

And that's Region 10 for us.

I think everybody knows that Region 10 is our CSB.

Mental health issues are huge all over the state.

The General Assembly requested JLARC to look at and make recommendations on how to improve the community service boards.

JLARC released that report just this December.

So it's, what, six months?

But it's fresh.

What I don't want is, I don't want this report to go on a shelf and be forgotten.

So somehow or another, the report is here with the recommendations.

We don't have to come up with the recommendations.

And Jay Lark is pretty well thought of, or at least it used to be, David, in the General Assembly.

I'm assuming it still is.

So if somehow or another we could partner with some folks to say,

You all requested a JLARC study, now let's implement it and not put it on the shelf.

Because this gets to the mental health issues that people are talking about all over the state.

So that would be my only addition.

But Emily, it's something we don't have to do.

Yeah, and again, that's a perfect example of sort of lending support to a study that was done by the General Assembly.

We don't have to create our own path on what that looks like.

And it's simple.

Anybody can understand it.

Underfunded, underpaid, undertrained, and no accountability.

It's not hard to understand.

So if we could look at this, I think it's critical.

And Ann, how you would pull in, perhaps again, going back to our partner agencies, right?

If we need a board member on the education committee to be making this at that group of 15 or 20 or 30 people and somebody on health and human services.

I mean this is all different portfolios.

Well I know but I'm just saying so you can help us because I'm happy to try and push this as well.

But I just think this is something that's already created.

We need to go after it.

And the only other thing I would add is over the last, I have to stop and think, have I been on this board nine years?

Don't correct me if I'm wrong.

Just let me live in my own little world.

But I think I've been on the board nine years.

And I know that we have gone to the General Assembly and asked for permission to do things.

The mother may I?

That we've not implemented.

This might be the year to go back and say, okay, we asked for legislation to, I don't know, make it up, clear sidewalks.

I mean, that comes to mind.

Not that I necessarily am going to want to jump right in, but you know what I'm saying.

We've asked for things, items that we have permission to do that we've never had time as a group to talk about and actually implement.

I know staff is probably thinking that's more on our work plan, but it would be nice to at least start with a list of what we've asked for that we haven't implemented, or maybe a list of what we asked for that we did implement, like the cigarette tax.

I'd like to start there and think about that for the next year if we could, because maybe over the next year there are some things we've asked for that we could go back and actually implement.

That's it.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, may I speak to the CSBs?

And this may be a case where VACO and its influence comes into play.

You said overpaid or underpaid, underfunded, things that are related to funding.

Just as you all do, and your staff knows this well, once you hit July 1, you're starting to work on the following fiscal year's budget.

Same is true at the state level, at the agency level and up through the Department of Planning and Budget.

So at the time, really the time you get to the first part of October, state agencies have made their request to DPB.

They're going all through them.

They've been through the secretariat.

They have to, you know, because they've got to get to the administration so that by the time you get to mid-November, no later than Thanksgiving, there's a state budget that's probably

I say all that to say that things that are of funding nature and you want to get them on the radar through state agency and through the administration for possible inclusion or at least consideration for inclusion

and the governor's introduced budget in December.

That's a short-term thing as well.

Yeah, and David, thank you for making that comment.

And I just want to go on record that while I did say that CSBs have been underfunded,

there's more to this problem than just, right, just putting more money at it, there are, right, there are serious issues within that, the CSBs that needs to be structurally changed, right, but anyway, I appreciate that, yes.

And I guess that was it.

I think I was 3-1.

Thank you.

I just second a lot of what's already been said and I clearly understand the need for the priority with Rivanna Station.

I think that fits with what you said about the fact that people will focus on the budget and issues that matter to the budget.

Positions and policy statements, we've had this whole attachment be, but now what I hear you saying is that we will eventually revisit it.

looking at the legislative priorities that we've had in the past and seeing where they fit into what we've previously called priorities and positions and policies and then look for opportunities for when we can move forward but that means being nimble

Quick being prepared and of course working with as many other groups and other jurisdictions that we can.

Thank you.

Prior to running for office four years ago, I pretty much paid attention principally as regards the General Assembly to the delegate representing the district in which I lived.

and similarly a delegate who would represent Charlottesville, I don't live in the city of Charlottesville obviously, as well as the senators who might represent the city of Charlottesville and or the area in the county.

So Mr. Blunt, back to your comment, we are going from a 2010 redistricting in which there were four delegates and two senators who collectively covered Albemarle County.

If you are able, kind of just off the top of your head, in the last six years,

How many changes in that representation?

Senator Reeves came in in 2012, but fairly early in the time frame.

Senator Deeds was here, Delegate Bell was here, Delegate

Ferris may have come in in 2010-12.

But basically for the last say six or so years we have had with one exception six, the same six people, four in the House, two in the Senate who have represented us.

We are now going to a situation where

most we would have one of three with prior General Assembly experience.

And I don't want to talk about individuals, parties, or what the outcome in November, but at most we will have one because we already know that the two for the House of Delegates neither has General Assembly experience.

So at most we would have one of our three with experience.

And while

At least from yesterday's primary, two of the nominees have local government experience.

It's limited to school board experience.

And the school board is much more narrowly focused than would the Board of Supervisors and does not have taxing authority.

So we are moving into a situation with virtually, I mean, with essentially very, very low legislative experience that will be representing our county.

So the strategy that you are proposing

of

with Rivanna Station as being where our top priority because if the due diligence goes through and if we ultimately make that purchase and we're able, based upon what we do later today, the different utilization, that is critical to our economic future in both Augusta County and Greene County which recently

set aside 500 acres in conjunction with what we would have.

Rivanna Station Futures in North Fork provides a technology triangle opportunity for our region, so I totally support all of this.

But we really need to remember, we're going into a year

with almost no experience.

So thank you for the thoughts that you've put into this.

Any other comments or questions by supervisors?

Yeah, I'd like to endorse the committee work at the VACO level.

So just to put it out there, I did join the transportation and the community economic and workforce development committee.

So this will be my first year on that.

There are six steering committees.

So it wouldn't even need, you know, there's the education.

So if there are others to get involved, that's a good way to at least understand who else and what other communities are on board with similar issues.

So I would recommend maybe taking a look at that.

I would say that

When we think of the partnerships with other counties, sometimes that relieves us of the responsibility.

I know that it was like Ann's question of who's the we that's going to work on this.

So I would throw out there, like for example, at some point, Augusta is probably going to discuss their legislative priorities and if the Virginia Ready sites or the site readiness thing is a

is a big deal to them, then perhaps we send one of us to their meeting and we make that in-person appearance of support for that will have a different weight than just sending a letter to them or shooting an email, much in the same way like when the RHP goes around to the different place.

It's different when you have people in front of you.

And if they see another elected come from a board to say, hey, this is important to us, et cetera, that could jumpstart or trigger something a little bit different than what we've done in the past, especially with the concerns about the junior nature of new people coming in.

So I would just, if we could, I'd even volunteer to do that one.

So I just ask somebody to note that, because I'll forget in a few ways.

I'll be like, what?

I volunteered for what?

The third thing I would say is I understand the pragmatist in me understands all the concern about the new people coming.

But you know what?

It's the big show.

They were campaigning saying they were ready to play, so get ready to play.

So we don't have time to wait on some of this stuff.

So while I'm all in measuring my expectations, the expectation of the people that are voting them in is that they're there to get stuff done.

You know, get at it.

So I've got faith in the people that are going to be representing us, and if one isn't our longest serving, just iron out a record of getting stuff done.

So, by God, let's use that.

So I mean, there's a certain part of me that understands this approach, but I'm not giving them a pass.

They're elected, and they're two-year terms.

They don't have time to

Time to wait around so let's get after it and so my expectation I want to keep on them that this stuff's important And anything we need to do to help and support is there but I don't want to make it sound like oh, yeah It's a honeymoon period there's no honeymoon period in politics.

When did that happen?

I'll throw in a couple of comments.

I've tried to start with questions before.

I absolutely support the Rivanna Station focus.

That's ideal, but also agree that we can't take any time off.

This has been saying the same thing, unfortunately, to you all these different years.

We're doing too much.

Well, no, because at 11 o'clock at night, David needs all the ammo he can get for all of these different issues, as many pages as they are.

so that he can act quickly on our behalf.

Anything else?

Yes, and I'm going to follow in the footsteps of my colleague, Supervisor Galloway, and volunteer for any

entities or, you know, governments, state governments, county governments, local governments that are looking toward the photo speed cameras.

So I will volunteer myself, because you all know that's a passion of mine, but I will volunteer myself to any of those entities that are going after or want to pursue the photo speed cameras to protect our police.

I will do that.

So thank you, Supervisor Galloway, for prodding you along.

Prodding, yeah.

Not even prodding, but suggesting it.

Thank you.

Encouraging.

And also, there's a VACO committee that deals with police and fire.

Education also has nobody from Albemarle County here.

We always have in the past, and we've always had a staff person on general government, so we can pitch that to Jeff if he can figure that out.

Thank you.

Anything further?

No?

All right.

All right, Board, we can move to item number 12, Community Human Services Needs Assessment and Expanded Agency Budget Review Team Opportunity.

Ms.

Demick?

Good afternoon.

There we go.

Kaki Dimmick, Director of Social Services.

I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to share with you a Human Services Needs Assessment constitutes a review of a lot of data available around community well-being and need in Albemarle County.

and make some recommendations around how to respond to that, talk a little bit about human services needs assessments in general, and then get your feedback specifically around the possibility of using these recommendations to make some investments in the fiscal year 25 budget, particularly in time for us to return for a July 19th discussion on the ABRT process and the budget process in general.

So I just shared with you what I was going to do.

So here we are.

I'll talk a little bit about assumptions that I've made in these recommendations that I think are important to understand and then move to the feedback.

This is well aligned with your fiscal year 24-28 strategic plan.

It shows up in three different goals.

The idea of completing a Human Services Needs Assessment was baked into staff goals as part of our strategic plan for the first quarter of next year.

A human services needs assessment can do many things.

There's very few templates or requirements for using one, and so this is a first stab at one that I hope that the county will then come back to at some degree of regularity.

We can expand it, we can shrink it.

They're generally used to understand needs in the community, to track changes over time, particularly if there's been a particular area in which there's been an investment.

To recognize emerging trends, if you're not looking at data often,

you miss something that's on the way.

They can be very targeted specific and they can also be very broad.

There are human services needs assessments that are done pretty regularly in Canada based on a very broad category of metrics of well-being that include air quality and soil quality and access to the outside and social connection, those kinds of things.

So we can go broad and we can stay specific and focused.

I'll be looking for your feedback around that particular issue at the very end.

In addition, they can be one time only or they can be semi-regularly scheduled.

As the county expands its interest in human services, I would recommend that we do it on a fairly regular basis.

That sort of determines how and when we course correct or invest in a new kind of solution, whether that's staff or whether that's increasing capacity in the community.

Importantly, there's no need to reinvent the wheel here.

We have lots of good data and technicians in our community generating data for us.

It's really a matter of making sense of that data.

What you pay attention to, what you don't.

Including, we have an orange dot report, local equity profiles, particularly the excellent work that Siri Russell did for Albemarle County.

The Alice reports, the United Way does.

Obviously census data, there's a lot of concern about the most recent census data and so I think it's important to know that anything that's based on the most recent census has question marks around it.

The Stepping Stones Report, which is an important one.

Many of you may remember the Commission on Children and Families, which was based in Albemarle County maybe 12 years ago, 10 years ago.

generated a stepping stones report which is really about family and child well-being and positive youth development activities and metrics.

That report has been picked up by the Charlottesville Department of Human Services and just recently came out.

that has a pretty broad capture or a pretty tight capture on positive youth development and early family development, which is an important subcategory.

We had a very competent regional criminal justice planner who produced an incredible amount of data for us around criminogenic issues, data around arrests and jail usage that we can draw on for probably years and years.

I suspect Mr. Goodlow is the only one who knows the full depth of that data.

The Charlottesville Area Alliance continues to collect and study data around the experience of seniors in our community.

The Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless collects data that is reported to HUD that is an important metric for our experience with folks who have housing instability or experiencing homelessness.

and of course we have lots of stakeholders we know that are good friends of ours and including our staff and so they have important experience for us to draw on particularly in DSS to ask about the experience with clients what they're having trouble accessing and what they're having trouble finding resources for in our community

And last but not least, of course, the consumers.

Our community members can share with us information that is important for us to figure out what's missing in our community and what's emerging in our community.

A couple assumptions baked in.

Internal and external providers, you've heard this from me before, continue to express that our consumers have more complex needs than ever before and that the need is at the highest acuity that we have seen.

So when a hundred caseload caseload, a hundred case caseload is really radically different now than it was five years ago or ten years ago.

Combine that with lots of new changes and requirements from the

State, around what constitutes a case and how you manage a case.

Our caseloads are taxing staff in all settings, community-based settings and of course in local government settings.

It also means that our workers here and otherwise are looking for additional community supports in order to solve problems.

And so the idea of having a robust continuum of care in almost every setting is important.

We can't just have sort of one resource or one intervention in any category that responds.

But much like Dr. Pethia's continuum, the continuum of need reflects the need for a continuum of kinds of interventions.

And that's true for every one of these subset of needs.

Need is not distributed evenly throughout our community.

Black and brown community members have higher percentages of need in almost every category that we'll present today.

We've of course the equity profiles already demonstrated that there's differences in life expectancy based on neighborhood in our community which is also based in race and so it's important to know that this is not an evenly distributed sort of burden across our community.

Pandemic era supports have made a difference.

In the report you noticed, I hope that there's been a reduction in the last two years in food insecurity, which is one of those intractable problems that I think we never expect to actually move the needle on.

But actually, food insecurity has gone down in our community in the last two years, largely because of pandemic-era supports coming from the federal government, which are now ending.

And I think it's important to us to be ready for the fact that there'll be an increase or a surge in need across the board for children and families in our community.

Making Ends Meet.

So the sort of broadest, most straightforward way for us to understand need in our community is to look at who's living in poverty in our community.

So we have about 8,000 people in our community who are living in poverty, a poverty rate of about 7.6%.

It has fluctuated between 6% and 8% over the course of the last six or seven years, sometimes up, sometimes down.

It doesn't move a lot in one direction so far.

with a higher percentage of children living in poverty.

So poverty rate for a family of four is $26,500.

So you think about the 8,000 people who are identified here generate less than or have less than $26,500 in income.

Another way of looking at poverty or need is to look at the orange dot report and they define what a sufficient income would be to make ends meet and for them they characterize this as having access to childcare and transportation which would then allow you to have a job.

and they identify that almost 10 years ago at $35,000 a year.

They continue to use that as the baseline for their longevity and comparison purposes but they recognize and acknowledge that today's numbers with inflation would be somewhere between $42,000 and $45,000 a year.

Using that 35,000 number, they've identified 2,614 families that don't have sufficient income.

And then another level is to look at ALIS, which is the United Way designation for families in need, and that's asset limited, income constrained, and employed.

This is a group of folks who have jobs, but they're living so closely to the amount that they're coming in that they cannot survive or be resilient if there is a financial emergency in their lives, like a medical bill that's unexpected or a car that's been crashed.

those kinds of things so that they remain stuck in this sort of churn expectation with very little capacity to save and move outside of that.

So there are families of concern that are hovering above our systems of care, but not in them yet.

and the 2022 ALIS report identified 16,990 households of concern and they identify a household survival budget for our region at 70,788.

So if you look at those sort of three layers of thresholds that these data sets look at.

If you look at the ALIS data by district, I made a mistake in our report.

I looked at total households versus ALIS households.

So if you look by jurisdiction, I've broken it out by individual, both percentage and by number by district.

One of the things that I think is important to recognize is that, again, this idea that these families are not evenly distributed sort of across all demographics.

And so there's a higher percentage of seniors who are experiencing poverty in all three of these categories and a higher percentage of single-family headed households under 25, which

is incidentally one of the highest risk groups for domestic violence, for family dissolution, and for homelessness.

So just thinking about ways to target a potential intervention if you look at layers of concern.

Dr. Pathi also identified what would be, I think she calls it a housing budget.

So what would be, you'd have to end

generate in terms of income in order to be able to afford a two bedroom unit.

I think that was close to $56,000.

So just looking at that range of numbers for what it takes to survive in our community.

Again, our criminal justice planner who's just recently retired generated a huge amount of data.

Some of the most important data I think that we're reconciling with or reckoning with at the moment is that we are experiencing a 20 and in some cases 40 year reduction in crime.

So we've had a 53% reduction in violent crime rate over the last 20 years and a 61% reduction in the property crime rate.

We've had a recent 18 to 22 month spike in violent crime in our region.

Both data is reflected locally, is reflected in the national data that there's been a long-term trend of reduced property crime, reduced violent crime, and a recent short-term spike.

Even with that short-term spike, we are still looking at a graph line that would go way down for a long period of time.

and yet the community does not feel safe.

And I think that's one of the things that folks in the system of care are really trying to reconcile.

What does that mean when we are potentially at one of the safest points in our histories but we don't feel that safe?

The intervention is not so direct or clear when you try to combine those two things.

Part of this spike in violent crime, the police department responded to shots fired, calls just about every other day for the first 60 to 75 days of this year.

Colonel Reeves identifies that they've responded to 90 gun violence incidents since January.

So that demonstrates a particular concern around an increase in gun violence particularly and an increase in juvenile violence.

You can see here that both aggravated assault bookings, general weapons bookings, and gun bookings in the jail have gone up.

We're the blue line.

That line continues if you just looked at the year-to-date data that we have here.

Another area of concern is looking at homelessness.

And so we have an annual point in time data.

There's two pieces of data to look at around homelessness.

One is point in time.

So they go in the third weekend, usually in January, and identify all the people they can find living on the street, living in the woods.

at shelters in any kind of supported housing for the homeless.

They capture that number.

It's a process that's done across the country this one night a year.

They also look at the number of people served over time.

So if you think about the number of people served at the point in time, you see a big spike from 177, I think, to 260.

It's dropped down this most recent one to 200, but it's not a significant drop and If you look at the number of people served over the course of the year for last year while there were 260 people identified in that point in time one day count there were 528 people who were served over the course of the year by the Homelessness System of Care

It's an important distinction because most people experience homelessness in our community for the first time.

And it's surprising, I think, to find that 68% of the people who are served by the homeless system of care identify that as the first time they've experienced homelessness.

The most recent sort of hot off the presses data shows that, in fact, the current number would be 77% of the people experiencing homelessness in our care are experiencing for the first time.

One of the other things, the system of care has been designed really to respond to chronic homelessness in single adults, sometimes with behavioral health needs in addition to their housing needs.

And what we're seeing more recently in the last 24 months is a pretty significant increase in family homelessness.

So families who have lost their housing or have moved or have had some other devastating event and haven't been able to recover based on what the pandemic sort of era economy.

And so that's been a challenge to our system of care because mostly interventions we have in place are for single adults.

Think about housing.

You all know this data inside and out.

You've heard it and seen it many times.

We have 10,000 households in our community that pay more than 30% of their monthly income on housing, which, of course, is the HUD standard.

For the definition of housing burdened, half of those people are severely housing burdened.

They pay more than 50% of their housing, their monthly income on housing.

We need just over 10,000 affordable units in our region to meet the demand by 2040, which is a little bit scary.

And half of those units will be needed for those folks who are at 50% area median income.

So if you think about investments in workforce housing, necessary as they are, don't capture this group.

Finally, not finally, close to finally, on mental health, which is a pretty significant issue in our community and across the country.

Prior to the pandemic, one in ten people would identify they had experienced a mental health condition, sort of very broadly defined.

After the pandemic, that number is four in ten.

That's a significant increase.

The Surgeon General just came out with a very robust report on what they're calling an epidemic of loneliness and social isolation which has really real impacts on life expectancy, on your experience of any kind of chronic condition you have is exacerbated dramatically by an experience of social isolation or loneliness.

They make a really important distinction between loneliness and social isolation.

Isolation being physically isolated from a system of care and loneliness being the objective experience or the subjective experience of wishing you had more contact with people and not being able to.

So your social system doesn't match your social need.

and that has pretty dramatic physical impacts on people.

So it's not surprising that we would be identifying mental health as a pretty significant condition and issue to be addressed in our community and across the country.

Thankfully, we're not the only ones thinking about this.

The Mental Health and Wellness Coalition has identified a number of behavioral health goals which have found their way into our community health improvement plans for both University of Virginia

and Sentara.

And the Public Health Working Group, which is part of President Ryan's working group collection, has identified a number of pretty significant robust behavioral health recommendations for the UVA system as well.

Of particular concern around the subset of mental health data is the mental health data related to teens.

So we see that there's been a pretty significant increase from 2016 with a pretty big spike between 20 and 21 around the number of young people

who are experiencing suicidal ideation.

There's also a pretty significant and steady increase in the number of young people who just identify that they sometimes feel sad and hopeless with a particularly strong focus on the number of young girls who are identifying that.

It's particularly concerning in our community because there's not very many resources for adolescent mental health.

And so while there's lots of work being done on the behavioral health system of care, this particular area around teen mental health is one that we should be all collectively sort of paying some attention to.

The last issue that we identified in this plan or in this assessment is around navigation needs.

And this is an issue that really comes to us from our stakeholder interviews and from our internal conversations with the providers at DSS.

Because of the higher acuity of the need of folks coming in and because of the complexity of that need, our workers are being asked to identify resources and navigate resources and systems that they're unfamiliar with and unable to do.

particularly given that their caseloads are pretty demanding.

So this idea of needing a helping hand, a warm handoff, somebody who can help you explain what a system of care, for example, for seniors looks like or for inpatient mental health and explain and help a family navigate those systems is pretty critical.

They're complex.

Our systems are complex and they're also can be mercurial.

You can't always predict exactly what your experience will be from a Tuesday to a Wednesday that you'll have the same experience in any one of our systems of care, which is not great, but is the fact.

And so if we're asking families to enter into a system to get themselves critical care, we have an interest in helping them actually connect to that care and not just giving them a referral on a piece of paper or

It's also particularly interesting because a number of those calls we get for all kinds of issues but particularly around seniors are seniors who don't meet the definition or the threshold for an Adult Protective Services case for a mandated response.

but they're not also self-sufficient so there's a space between that I think we have an interest in responding to not just because we have a community member who's asking for help but also because that space we could prevent them from entering into that Adult Protective Services threshold.

We could actually provide some resilience for them to get connected to a service that will keep them out of a deeper and costly system of care.

So I've made some recommendations here related to this data review and discussions with our community stakeholders, our important collaborators, and our internal providers to prioritize services for families with children experiencing housing instability and homelessness.

The system of care experts say the best way is to focus on prevention, so keeping people housed where they are as opposed to letting them lose that housing.

Prioritize community-based mental health services for teens.

I'm delighted that Sentara and UVA have partnered together to open up an adolescent mental health clinic any minute now up on 29.

I fear that they will be at full caseloads on day two.

So I'm aware that there will be inundated and people waiting to sort of pounce.

Fund spots for Albemarle County youth to participate in evidence-based positive youth development program at K-YIP, which is an internship program, and Teens Give, which is a pro-social

Again, evidence-based program that is based in community attention.

Continue support of alternative response team hearts and coordination of efforts with Region 10's proposed expansion of the Crisis Receiving Center, which has gotten a big boost by the potential of opioid abatement authority grant money.

Continue to participate in information sharing and strategy development activities with regional partners and prepare to support the community safety working group recommendations.

So you may be aware that

President Ryan and the county and the city leadership collectively have created a community working group on public safety and Colonel Reeves, Stan Eggleston, Chief Eggleston and I represent the county on that and will have some influence over

what potentially gets funded or get some prioritized attention.

This remains unclear what direction we're headed in.

We're still gathering information and studying it as a collective but it's a pretty good group of people who have come together to study this issue.

Support navigation services internally and externally with a priority for seniors that are in need but who do not meet a criteria for an adult protective services case.

So our next steps are we'll return to talk to you all on July 19 to discuss the fiscal year 25 budget process with a focus on the ABRT process.

And guidance from our conversation today may be incorporated into that conversation.

So I have two sets of questions.

The first is around the potential of supporting recommendations made in this report with

including four performance contracts supporting adolescent mental health, family homelessness, community safety, and senior navigation.

I don't assume that the county should be the service provider of record here, so this is really an effort to increase community capacity by investing in community providers.

Up to $100,000 a year per contract, can't assume that we'll know.

Maybe it can be done for $20,000 a year, each one of those things.

The potential for two additional years of funding, of course, contingent on available funds, contingent on future board budget approval will be part of the budget procedure.

You'd have an opportunity to vote on them.

And a contingent upon meeting satisfactory progress, which we would of course define pretty clearly in the performance contract.

We would meet all procurement requirements for this and so it could be a competitive, open competitive grant making process, it could be an RFP or it could be a sole source contract depending on the issue and who expresses an interest with ideas about how to meet the needs that we define.

The second category of questions and feedback is really around the Human Services Needs Assessment.

This is the first time we've prepared one for you.

And so we'd like it to be useful for you and for your being able to track the county's focus on human services.

Be interested in your preferred frequency, if there are additional metrics of well-being you'd like to include or for me to take out, or anything around the presentation style that you would like changed for the future.

Thank you, Ms.

Dimmick.

I'm sure that we will have questions and comments.

Presentation style, too.

Could you stop being so damn clear?

I don't have any recommendations on that.

I mean, this is great.

This breakdown of the assessment, I like the idea of this moving forward and moving.

So I would say that there's things in there that we scorecard and we look at.

So as I'm watching this, I'm going, all right, what's overlap?

What's not overlap?

I don't know the answer.

So I'm just saying, what's the mixture there?

I'm not opposed to any of the recommendations in the report or to this.

In the DSS annual report that we receive, I always call out, one of the goals in there is to be within, what is it, five percent of their spending, to not spend all the money.

And I always call that department out, that that's the department that should spend all of their money.

The reason being is because of everything you just stated in this report and also comes out in that report.

So I think moving forward, you know, I get it.

This stuff's going to come back to us in budget cycles.

We have to determine how much and what.

All of the assessments are there to help us determine if we're putting the right dollar in there.

But really this is a functional area for those in need where, you know, the target that we always want to hit is high impact and high return for the money we put in.

But when you're helping folks in need, high return isn't necessarily always going to be possible, but the impact for even a small amount of resource allocation can be really big.

So I guess as you're thinking about funding on this, when I would be supportive of still going after high impact, and my requirement here for high return, like it would be for some other maybe department areas, is not necessarily the same.

Not to say that you don't get that in this area.

I forgot the program, but the idea of interventions that you can just put everybody in jail or you can find other ways to not put folks in jail, find other interventions because then you save the cost on the beds because to house people in jails is incredibly expensive.

So a high impact, high return would be an intervention like that.

But the bridge a kid who's experiencing homelessness or food instability doesn't take that big of a resource.

So we want to make sure that we keep funds available to help in those type of situations.

This is the one place where I always think like lapse factor gives flexibility here in a way that should be allowed in this department.

So that's accumulating funds that are not being used that once the person is hired Well, those funds are basically go to reserve and get returned There should be a way that maybe a percentage of that money can go to refill your emergency docket or to go to pay for some of this stuff in a way that I think would both be

What's the word I'm looking for?

It's out there.

It's sunshine.

What's the word?

Transparent.

So the board would understand that you have the ability to do that.

The county executive's office has oversight.