Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   9/20/2023

Good afternoon.

I'm pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on this 20th of September, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I note the presence of a quorum, but also you'll notice that I am not the usual chair for these meetings, and Chair Price is unable to attend due to illness, but I believe is asking to attend remotely.

So we'll begin by considering admitting Chair Price to participate remotely.

Chair Price, you're there, I see.

Good afternoon.

Due to your personal condition in accordance with section 2.2-3708.3 of the Code of Virginia,

and if we could verify for the record the purpose or the reason for her request for remote participation.

Thank you.

So if there's a supervisor present would be willing to make a motion to allow Chair Price to participate remotely.

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

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Welcome, Chair Price.

I'd like to note, then, that we have at the dais Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

Chair Price, representing the Scottsville District, is participating remotely.

We're also joined here by the County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, and the Deputy County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgeson.

Also, please welcome, let me welcome Albemarle County Police Officers present, Officer Andy Munsee and Officer Dana Reeves.

Thank you.

Our next item is the adoption of the final agenda.

Okay, thank you.

Anything else?

I move.

I heard a motion from Supervisor McKeel and second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

I will note that Ms.

Price has held up a sign saying aye.

Yes.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

We will now move to item number five, brief announcements from board members.

Oh yes, I do have one.

Well, let me just start my announcements by saying that it's wonderful to be back in the United States.

I had the opportunity to travel to Spain and Portugal, and it's always lovely to see other cultures and some of the work of other nations and what they're doing, but it's always great to get home.

So with that I want to remind the board because we've talked about this before and just to let everyone else know that the chamber is sponsoring eggs and issues legislative breakfast and that breakfast will be Wednesday September the 27th from 8 to 10 30 and it's going to be held at the center at Belvedere the keynote speaker

is Dr. Bob Holsworth, who I think many folks are probably familiar with, who is a political analysis in Virginia.

And then we have other speakers that are keynotes that are more local.

But it will be a great breakfast, so anybody that can take the time to

Sign up and attend would be great, and I think it will be very informative.

Thank you.

Yes, I have several things to announce.

First of all, I attended the September 10th tribute

for those firefighters, personnel who were lost in 9-11.

It was a very moving event.

In fact, it was attended by myself and Chair Price.

That's where all the firefighters went, climbed 70 flights of steps with gear and to honor those that were lost.

excuse me, Chair Price, actually was the first one, of course she didn't have gear on, but she was the first one to finish the 70 flights and ring the bell.

So it was a moment of pride there.

I did 35.

And we can't all be, you know, good.

But it was a very wonderful event and it was really great seeing Abby was there and her sister and then Abby Stumpf and her sister, little sister, right?

and they did the 70 flights, so quite a few people showing other people up.

Anyway, it was really very, very moving and to see how fit the firefighters were also.

Last Saturday, another moment of pride, we, there were Seas of the Day, that happened on Saturday.

This is an event that takes place every year in honor of our military veterans, so we had Army,

Navy, Marines, Air Force.

They were all out there.

Their families.

It took place at Walnut Park.

And we had our very own Trevor Henry there, who was the keynote speaker.

And he did a very heartfelt speech.

And if you ever go into his office, please ask him about the picture that is hanging on his wall.

You'll see three handsome young men from World War II.

No, five.

Six handsome men from World War II, and they're all siblings, and he'll tell you the story about that.

It's very, very moving.

Also on Saturday was the Pride event that took place in Charlottesville, attended by hundreds of people.

It was a very fun event for everybody.

This, one other thing, there is another business that is opening up on September 30th, and it's going to be a soft opening for the Southwest Mountain Vineyard.

So, delicious food, already tried it, and good wine, so that's coming too.

And the big thing will be the Loop Deville.

The Loop Deville Trail will take place on Saturday, starting at 830 from the Rivanna River Company.

and it's a very nice 20-mile loop around the city of Charlottesville.

And we depart, or those who are going, will depart from the Rivanna River Company on Saturday at 8.30.

Then there will be a fun party afterwards at the Rivanna River Company.

So please, if you can attend, do it.

You can find out more information at loopdeville.org.

on their website.

That's all I have.

Pardon?

We can't forget the Coast Guard.

And Coast Guard, that's what I meant to say.

Okay, thank you.

I went to college across the street from the Academy, so I have lots of lifelong friends there.

This afternoon, the Comprehensive Planning staff of Amal County is available in the lobby right outside for the next several hours to receive any comments and answer questions from anybody in attendance here about the next round of work on the AC44 Comprehensive Plan

Review.

So that's just a public service announcement that I'm making.

And in reporting on what's been going on with me, this past Monday was the ribbon cutting at the new workforce campus, the Career Innovation Campus, which is 943 and 944 Glenwood Station.

We had representatives of state administration as well as all the partner agencies who work together seamlessly to assist job seekers and people

wanting to have a new career, different career, improve their job skills in a current career, as well as working with businesses who need to upskill their own current employees or expand.

And so that was very successful, large turnout for that gathering and tours of the new facilities as well.

One of the people there at the tables outside were members from the USDA Research Project, who is

who are working on gathering information about discrimination against minority farmers which occurred by the USDA over the last 80 years and this is something that I've begun to learn a lot about about 10 years ago and there's a lot of information to be learned and gathered and try to figure out how to move forward on that.

There are Lunch and Learns every Wednesday.

I'm going to

Leave this information with the clerk so that people can contact her or people can contact me and I will be glad to get information to you by email or phone.

Also, tomorrow afternoon from five to seven is the second edition of the public hearing for the BDOT bundle number two which has five different roundabout and traffic improvement projects in Albemarle County.

There was a very well attended first edition of the meeting yesterday afternoon at the Armory.

And so I encourage everybody to come out and look at all the maps.

There are many, many things about which VDOT needs information, input from neighbors, and also in order to stage some of the work, especially at the one in Crozet, there are lots of technical things that need to be ironed out and they're looking for information that will help them do that.

Next, Exit 107, Park and Ride.

is one of the smart scale projects which was recently approved and there will be coming in the newspaper soon information about how to submit comment on that.

It's a little cumbersome process so I would say if people would like to find out more please contact me because this letter is all I have so far but we will be gathering information about the possibility of how to submit comments

and the possibility of a public meeting.

It's not a guaranteed public meeting but only if there is sufficient interest and concern.

I think the grand majority of folks who have learned about this project are really excited to have it happen so they can leave their car at 107 and jump on either the Afton Express to get downtown or to have a ride share carpool to be able to help getting downtown.

So, at the last Veterans Affairs Committee meeting with NACo, National Association of Counties, a representative of the Veterans Association talked about new eligibility criteria for

people who were damaged with the toxic burn pins.

It's called the PACT Act.

It took two years, unfortunately, two years too long to get it passed through Congress, but it is now in full swing and there are many different eligibility requirements.

Even if people did not qualify originally, they are asked to please go back to the VA and submit again because there is a whole new outreach

and describing which areas are being added to the list of presumptive and also non-presumptive exposure stations.

So it's, I think, very technical but the most important thing that people need to understand is to reach out to the VA and sign up again and don't miss this opportunity to be able to get retroactive coverage for at least a year if one is able to act on this in the next couple of months.

Okay, got that.

and yesterday at the Climate Committee for the Local Government Advisory Committee for the EPA, there was a wonderful presentation from Fort Collins, Colorado about what their climate program is all about.

And the one takeaway I will share is they came to the realization that climate is not a math problem, it's a people problem.

and we, I think many jurisdictions and perhaps ours in some ways, have spent a lot of time talking about the structure and how to weatherize the structure and fix the transit but need to perhaps have a better focus on the people who live in the house because it really will help to bring more people into the program.

And that's all the news I have.

Thank you.

The only thing I'd mention is that, just as a reminder, today is when the Commonwealth Transportation Board is meeting with their workshop on the smart scale items we've received

A presentation on that at the last meeting.

I would certainly advise all of us and staff, I would imagine it's already on their radar, once the video posts, because obviously we can't listen in, I was not listening in this morning, to go back and just review what they're talking about relative to the smart scale items.

I don't think they're taking action today.

I believe it was just a workshop or a work session on the smart scale, so action will probably come later.

But just in the effort to stay ahead of

Next in our order is Supervisor Price.

She has sent some announcements and she's here, so I'm going to read these and she'll nod along.

I hope that's okay.

I see that there is a well-aware reception at Yancey Community Center tomorrow morning, 9 to 11 a.m.

And then Chair Price will be meeting later with Scottsville town representatives and VDOT on September 26th.

As mentioned earlier, the Chamber of Commerce event on the 27th Eggs and Issues at the center.

There's a River Basin, Rivanna River Basin meeting on the 28th in Lane Auditorium from 9 till noon, and the Chamber of Commerce meeting in Scottsville on the 28th from 5.30 to 7.30.

And those are what I have.

Anant, good, thank you.

Acknowledgement from Chair Price.

And then just adding mine, I appreciate the mention of the VDOT design public hearings with the second again tomorrow at the center from five to seven.

And then

I just want to acknowledge, and I think we'll hear more about it later, that Engage Albemarle has opened up a review and comments on the draft environmental stewardship goals and objectives.

Some of that's going to be, I guess, in the hallway later in this afternoon, as well as for Parks and Recreation and Historic Scenic and Cultural Resources.

More information, of course, can be found at engage.albemarle.org.

Also, I understand that Resilient Together, a collaboration of UVA, Charlottesville, and Albemarle County is underway.

because climate change does not know geographic or political boundaries, does not recognize political boundaries.

There will be an open house at the Carver Recreation Center on Tuesday, September 26th from 4 to 7 p.m.

And of course, upcoming this September 30th from 2 to 5 p.m.

is Community Day at Simpson Park across from the ANSI Community Center in Esmont.

and the hazardous waste collection at Ivy is continuing.

This is the time of year for this Friday and Saturday with household hazardous waste followed by mattresses and furniture on 930, appliances on October 7th and tires on October 14th.

So it's a chance to do a little fall cleaning.

and I guess I should mention early voting starts this Friday and continues weekdays and Saturdays through November 4th followed by the regular action of course on November 7th.

That we are, the vast majority of Albemarle County right now is in a drought, is designated as a drought.

Thank you.

So, thank you, Board.

The next item, number six, is Proclamations and Recognition.

I understand that we have a recognition to note today, recognizing Albemarle County's Achievement Award by the Virginia Association of Counties.

I believe Mr. Gage Harter is here to present the award.

Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, Chair Price, member of the board.

My name is Gage Harter.

I'm with the Virginia Association of Counties.

For the benefit of those who don't know us, we've existed since 1934.

Not me, the association.

to serve and support your efforts as county officials and staff.

We support you in numerous ways.

First and foremost is through our advocacy efforts and you know our lobbyist team and what a top notch group they are.

Also we support you through education, membership services, and help you with your communications efforts.

In 2003, we established our Achievement Award program that recognizes counties who have adopted innovative approaches to challenges.

Today I'm proud to present Albemarle County with an Achievement Award.

Just a few notes about the Achievement Award program this year.

This is the 21st year, so it started in 2003.

We received 135 entries.

That's a lot.

33 winners were selected out of the 135, so it was truly competitive.

Only 25% took home

This beautiful plaque.

And you were one of them.

So congratulations.

This is your eighth Achievement Award since 2003.

You've been pretty successful the last few years, 2016, 18, 21, and now 23.

So half of yours have come since 2016.

So I urge you to continue the good work.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

I'm Serena Greer.

I'm the public engagement coordinator here at the county.

First, I'd like to say thank you to my team who's here with me and my parents who have a camera right there.

These days when we think about engagement, sometimes we think about views, clicks, and shares.

But at the heart of engagement is a relationship.

When we host pop-ups, I often write, let's get engaged, on a big sign inviting people to stop by.

Inevitably, people smile or laugh, and then they take a step closer to find out what that means.

That step is really important.

That step brings more people into a conversation, into learning about what local government is and does, and into a relationship.

They get engaged.

Thank you to VACO for awarding the innovation, creativity, and design of this project.

I believe it is particularly important to acknowledge creativity and design within the local government realm because it shines a light on the depth of talent that bureaucracy is not always acknowledged for.

Albemarle County local government is innovative and creative.

Thank you to our organizational leadership, particularly Emily Kilroy, for opening the opportunity to have big ideas.

During the pandemic, I would load up my minivan with tables, chairs, information kits, and boxes of masks and sanitizer, and post up in parking lots around the county.

We knew that some people weren't receiving information about the latest guidance, services, and support.

And so we brought it out into the community.

One day, Emily asked me if the sky was the limit, what could I do to think of how ways to expand our engagement efforts.

Now, we know the sky is not the limit, but it is a great starting point for creative ideas.

Here's where I get to thank the unsung heroes of this project.

Being an innovative project, the Let's Talk Van was a square peg trying to fit into a matrix of round holes.

I relied on Lachlan Lee, Tonya Johnson, Lindsey Hough, Cheryl Skeen, Ali McNally, Melissa Gardner, Damon Pettit, Kim Gardner, and Laura Van Sant, who worked with me to bring the van home to Albemarle County.

Now we're a couple of years into this project.

We've been to parks and parking lots, festivals and farmers markets, country stores and county schools.

We've met thousands of people and have had hundreds of conversations.

The big idea of creating more opportunities for our community to participate in local government has led to more organizational collaboration, more partnerships and, dare I say, more fun.

I'd like to say come for the bubbles, buttons, and snow cones and stay for the conversations, learning, and community.

Speaking of which, we've referred to it a little bit today, but I'd like to invite everyone to this Sunday's pop-up at the Loop Deville event at Willen Mills.

We'll have the AC44 team and the Resilient Together team on site to share information about those two local, very important community projects.

Local government is for everyone.

Thank you.

Yes, we want to present the plaque and my understanding is, well, should we do our comments or do the presentation?

Do the comments first.

So this isn't an action item, but I'm sure everyone, before you go away, please stay out.

Everyone will want to congratulate you personally, so we'll go through our order.

Just want to thank the whole team.

This was a great idea.

We're all aware of how big we are in Elmore County.

754-56 square miles.

This was really a way to get to the community and in those locations that we often don't touch.

So I think I read somewhere 50 pop-ups in 30 locations.

That is really incredible over the last period of time.

So thank you very much for your teamwork and your work to make this happen.

Thanks.

Also thank you to you and your team.

and they were there at seize the day.

So that was really nice and giving out snow cones.

It was very impressive because it seems like you cover so many locations and that's one way to communicate with people.

It's in a friendly manner where people feel comfortable making comments and talking and asking questions.

So I commend you all for that.

This is a whole new world that you all have been nimble and created new ways to find people because even five and ten years ago, Thursdays in the Square, I would have people coming by and seeing me all the time and now people are much more busy and working three jobs, some of them are much more able to interact online and therefore get their information that way.

Having those face-to-face conversations is so incredibly important to be able to make real connections with folks and have them feel valued in what they're saying.

So I am so grateful that these big ideas were allowed to be launched and there's so many micro communities in our 750 square miles and most of those folks had never come down here to a meeting.

I agree with everything that's been said.

Congratulations.

All the effort to help bring some positive attention to Albemarle.

I have to say it was about a year ago I believe I came, happened upon one of the pop-ups, but it was right when everything was breaking up.

So all the people that were manning the pop-up were all kind of starting to scatter.

and the thing that I remember, and I think I ran into, I remember talking to Emily at this one afterwards, but the staff, like you said, well, dare I say fun?

Well, I don't think just fun for those, the public, it seemed to be fun for the staff because everybody was kind of doing the, all right, everybody was leaving.

It wasn't like, well, that's over and we checked the, I mean, it was, staff had a good time interacting with people.

So, you know, in your day-to-day world and having to, you know, whatever your responsibility is, different levels with the public.

But to be able to get out there and do that, it's just as important and nice for our staff to be able to engage that way to kind of change things up from what your day-to-day operations are.

And I'll add my congratulations.

I mean, I love the Let's Talk Albemarle van.

It's highly visible.

It's ubiquitous, interactive, people riding on the side of the van, hopefully not permanent marker.

And I've always felt like it's staffed by people who are really engaged in the work.

So it's not as if it's just a little PR team out there.

These are the staff who are doing things every day for us.

So I really appreciate it.

And the snow cones.

I want to stay out of the board's way because you do so well with your recognition, but there's a ton of positive energy that comes from this team and Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley talked about the friendliness of how they outreach and it's a

It's a labor of love.

These folks work really hard.

I see them at events on nights and weekends a lot.

And there's a common thread with these folks.

They have families.

and they've got small kids and so somebody pointed out the fact that Abby had a sister with her and different staff members will bring their kids and they do have fun, Supervisor Galloway and I'm really proud of what they do.

They're a real important part of our strategic plan and talking to people out in our communities as Ms.

Malek says, we're a big county and there's lots of little communities and so thank you for your leadership.

Really appreciate that and really says something about the quality of our team when moms and dads come, doesn't it?

So thank you folks.

I really appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

And my understanding is that we're going to take a brief moment to take a photo with all of us in front.

Jeff, I'm impressed with you.

Yes, I've given them to you.

In person as well?

We'll move on now to item seven, matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

And my understanding is we have both online and in-person speakers today and Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley will read the rules for in-person and online speakers.

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 three minutes to speak per public hearing.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the Clerk's Office.

Up to ten persons may speak during matters from the public session, which will

be evenly divided between in-person and online speakers.

Community members physically present for the meeting will speak first, and then those who are attending the meeting electronically will speak.

For those attending in-person, the chair will announce the speaker, and for those participating electronically, the clerk will announce each speaker before it is their turn to speak.

For in-person speakers, timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system.

at the podium.

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

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

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

Address comments directly to the Board as a whole.

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

If making comments through Zoom, you may upload written comments through the e-comment portal or email your comments to the Clerk.

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

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

If participating by phone, press star 9 to let us know you want to speak.

Then press star 6 from a landline to unmute.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is correct.

I will be announcing that.

All speakers, please feel free to adjust the microphone so that you can be heard.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, board, staff and members of the public.

I'm Peter Krebs from the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I just have a couple of short matters to

to get to today.

First of all, PC is very excited about the microtransit program and we're going to learn more about that today and if you're willing, we'd like to help get the word out about that once all the information is available.

Secondly, I'd like to just quickly mention that I received a copy of a letter that Mr. Richardson sent to the Gene Ann Foundation about their support for our efforts to connect Biscuit Run to Southwood Hickory Street and the surrounding neighborhoods.

acknowledging their support but also being really strong in the commitment from the county to work on that effort and indeed I have been hearing that FES and parks and the necessary parties are actually working with some enthusiasm about this so this is great news and thank you Albemarle County for this and then lastly just I wanted to sort of echo what Bea said about the loop de ville

Trail Fest, which is happening this weekend.

It's actually a two-day event.

The Saturday events are kicking off from the Rivanna River Company.

I'll be leading a walk around the full Rivanna Trail Loop starting at 830, so come join for that.

We are watching the weather forecast very carefully.

and it may come down to a morning of decision that will factor in safety and also our steadfast commitment to protect the trail from its users.

So if the trail is incredibly muddy, we don't want people walking on that and we'll make a determination Saturday morning.

The Sunday events are happening really all morning from the Wolf Factory and those are going to happen pretty much rain or shine and there'll be some shorter walks.

We heard about the Engage Albemarle van being there but also there's going to be a series of what we're calling Lightning Trail Talks which will be about 20 different speakers including both city and county staff.

talking about the many cool things that are happening in the community and specifically ways that residents can get involved.

One of the things we're doing really well in the community is working together as governments and organizations and even businesses.

and most especially it's all fueled by resident energy, sweat equity, and passion.

So hope to see everybody there.

www.loopdeville, all one word, .org.

Yes, good afternoon.

Thank you.

My name is Joe Fore.

I'm a White Hall resident and the current chair of the Crozet Community Advisory Committee.

I'm here today just to urge county staff and the Board of Supervisors to include some critical Crozet area infrastructure projects in the upcoming budget and capital plan.

At our community meetings for the CCAC, we regularly hear neighbors' concerns about the rapid pace of development in crozet.

And I know it might be tempting to dismiss some of those crozetians' concerns about new development as mere nimbyism.

And sure, like other parts of the county, we do have our fair share of NIMBYs, maybe more than our fair share.

But there is a broader context for their concerns.

Crozet has grown more and faster than any other part of the county over the past decade.

And all of that without many of the critical infrastructure investments that have been promised in multiple master plans.

There's the Eastern Avenue Connector, a project that's been in the works for decades, which has once again been postponed due to growing costs.

There are busy roads surrounding Crozet Park, which still lack sidewalks or shared use paths, which leads families to choose between driving just a few hundred yards to go to baseball practice or taking their chances by walking in the busy street.

And there's the faded sign along Old Trail Avenue

proclaims the area as the future site of an Albemarle community park, just like it's done for the past 15 years.

So to help correct these gaps, the new capital budget should address four critical priorities from the Crozet Master Plan.

First, finding a solution to the Eastern Avenue budget shortfall or funding a viable alternative, such as the possible Dunvegan Lane connection from Park Road to Crozet Avenue or another alternative that could alleviate traffic.

Second, funding key sidewalk priority projects near and around Crozet Park, especially those along the heavily used roads of Park Road and Hilltop that are critical for neighbors to try and get into the park.

Third, building the shared use path along Three Notch Road, which will help connect the eastern neighborhoods into the more

Pedestrian-friendly areas along Park Ridge Road.

And finally, fully developing phase one of Western Park.

By funding these key projects, the county can help support the current and future residents of the Crozet growth area just as the master plan in divisions.

Thank you.

And that is all.

Okay, thank you.

I believe that all of our speakers, we

Only amendment I'm aware of is the minutes.

I move we adopt the consent agenda as amended.

I hear a motion from Supervisor Malek and a second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Malek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

I see a sign saying Ms.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Yes.

We'll move on to item number nine, SE-2022-00024 Stockton Road Homestay, which I understand will be presented by Ms.

Leah Brumfield, Senior Planner.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Good afternoon members of the board.

Let me get this pulled up for you.

My name is Leah Brumfield.

I am Senior Planner 2 in zoning and the special exception today is at 3585 Stockton Road, east of Batesville off of Taylors Gap Road.

The parcel is 2.01 acres, is located in a small rural neighborhood.

The applicant is requesting a special exception to increase the number of guest sleeping spaces from two to three for a homestay use.

So as this parcel is a rural area's parcel less than five acres in size, it's permitted by right to rent out up to two guests' sleeping spaces within the single-family dwelling that meets primary structure setbacks and it does not permit unhosted stays.

So if this special exception is approved, the owner of the property would then apply for a homestay zoning clearance.

During that process, the dwelling used for the homestay would be inspected for building and fire safety and the owners would send a notice to their neighbors providing contact information for their responsible agent who would be contacted in case of any disturbance or any emergencies related to the homestays.

Additionally, the homestay is also required to provide parking on site at a rate of one parking space per guest bedroom.

So here is an aerial of the property showing the parking to the left of the building.

And I did want to note that we did receive a letter from the abutting northern neighbor whose home is located approximately 160, 170 feet from the applicant's dwelling, although there is fairly dense vegetation between the two dwellings.

The letter did express concern about the homestay and asserted that the owner who is currently doing unpermitted homestays does not currently remain on site during the rentals of the property.

So during the staff site visit we did note that the home is currently only set up with three sleeping spaces which would not provide additional sleeping space for the owner if they are renting three bedrooms at that time.

and if you look at this photo of the house you can see the dwelling is a split level.

The intended plan for the homestay as expressed to us was that the three bedrooms on the top floor

would be used for the homestay and the basement bedroom would be used for the owner's use.

Currently, when we visited, all three bedrooms on the top floor were not set up for sleeping.

Only two were set up for sleeping.

The third was used as a closet and dressing room.

But the owner has asserted that she will be on site and will set up the third bedroom on top floor for guests.

So one thing that I did want to bring to our attention was that the setup of the house does not currently need to meet home stay regulations.

We have previously approved home stay special exceptions for buildings that are not even built yet.

So those are obviously not in compliance if they're not even built yet.

The home would need to come into compliance with all of the guest bedrooms and advertising as a hosted listing at the time of the zoning home state clearance approval.

At that point we would either approve it based on it coming into compliance or deny it based on it not being in compliance.

and also like any homestay I did want to just quickly go over the complaint process for the short-term rental registry which is that if we receive a complaint after the zoning clearance is approved our code compliance officers launch an investigation

and if the applicant is found to be in violation of the regulations, they will receive a strike on the short-term rental registry.

If there are three strikes on the registry, then the property owner is removed from the registry and is no longer eligible for any home stay rentals at this location.

The registry does not apply until the home stay clearance is approved.

and as such we'll note the factors to be considered for a special exception.

Due to the nature of a special exceptions, which are the land, we have analyzed the use based on the property itself and the use in the greater context of the neighborhood.

So as such we are reviewing it as a land use decision and the general use of a three guest room homestay with adequate parking on site is

does not propose any adverse impacts to the surrounding neighborhood, public health, safety, or welfare, and the special exception is consistent in size and in use with the comprehensive plan and the surrounding neighborhood.

As such, staff does currently recommend approval of the Homestay special exception, SC-202324 at 3585 Stockton Road.

Thank you.

I believe at this point we'll look for questions from the board.

Sorry?

Yes, we'll go through our order.

Sure.

Would you go back to the... I should have looked at the page number.

I'm sorry.

It was the picture of the house with the parking?

There you go.

Thank you.

What I'm trying to do is see the parking.

Just trying to figure out what it looked like to me.

So when we staff visited, we pulled into that and we backed into the driveway in front of the house.

So we did like a

a V kind of turnaround.

Thank you.

Okay, so it would take some kind of action to get in and out there.

It's not really set up for potentially three or four cars, correct?

And I do note that

I have a concern because given the neighbors' concerns, I know that staff had concerns regarding future compliance.

So it seems to me that this is something that might be problematic.

But for right now, I don't have any other.

No, go to the picture of the actual building and I guess the basement, is that located on the lower right?

And it's a split level house.

Split level house, okay.

So there's three bedrooms, there are two bedrooms and a closet on the first floor and then the basement, how is that equipped?

And just for clarification, the three bedrooms on the top floor, they are all legal bedroom sizes.

One is just smaller than the others.

Thank you.

I'm having difficulty wrapping my brain around how the fact that this has been an unauthorized use does not interact with our

compliance process.

So we currently have, because it is not on the registry, it's a normal notice of violation, which is how this process was started.

It's a normal zoning violation.

The process is started and then we issue them letters saying to come into compliance.

We require them to submit the applications.

But the short-term rental registry, which has the three strikes,

You don't get a strike ahead of time for operating without a license and not being on the registry.

But it's not that it's not a violation.

Lisa Green, Manager of Code Compliance.

I don't have much more to say other than what Mr. Herrick said is that this is in violation just of a different section of the ordinance, which we are pursuing at this time.

But if the special use or the special exception were granted, that would

So one follow-up question, please.

They can certainly apply for join the registry and do their application for the two bedrooms they have the ability to do by right.

That is correct.

And that has not happened either?

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I think my questions are mainly, well, I'll start with one that's probably from Ms.

Kremenfeld.

So the previous, just to clear up my understanding, so the previous, I saw something in a letter where they were advertising events up to 99 people.

Yeah, I think that was

Yeah, there are no events.

That's one of the things that we would be reviewing during the zoning clearance process is your listing, advertising what is actually permitted.

And what is permitted is no events, only three bedrooms.

On-site hosted stays.

Thank you.

I'll just put this out there and then we'll see if it's Ms.

Brumfield or Mr. Herrick.

So when the three strikes, let's presume we have a legal homestay use and they hit the three strikes, does that eliminate just that owner?

Because when we approve these, then the property gets the use.

Yes, that's correct.

I think that that would not be consistent with what the state law provides regarding the rental registry.

The state law provides for three strikes and so if there are problems with the special exception or if there are problems with complying with the special exception that will be up to Ms.

Thank you.

Next is Chair Price.

Is she available?

I have some questions that she has asked through me, but I want her to be present to acknowledge.

Sure, I can pull that up real quick.

So the zoning violation was logged on August 15th and that was the point at which we reached out to the applicant on that date.

and then we shortly, let's see, when did we receive the application?

Oh, actually we received the application in May and then we checked on it in August as part of the review process because we hadn't heard from the applicant and then that was when we reached out and said their application is still pending.

So the applicant, it looks like, submitted the application without us reaching out to them.

Issues were identified after the application came in.

Lisa Green.

We identified this property in our search as part of the Homestay program and then reached out to the applicant and saw that they were advertising without proper zoning approval, which is not uncommon for

Thank you.

And the consequences of any violations to date are still yet to be determined?

As typical with some of our violations or many of our violations compliance is our goal and so we work property owners and for the most part this has been a responsive applicant it's just about getting applications in and permits and at one point

The applicant was unsure if they were going to have three rooms or not.

They were waiting on their son to move to college so they could stay in the basement apartment while the rentals were happening.

But I do think they had rentals at one point.

Thank you.

Without an approved permit?

Yes.

I don't have that information.

I appreciate county staff focusing on compliance, not punishment, but I remain concerned about there not appearing to be much consequence

I want to make sure I understand that what we're dealing with now is a request for three bedrooms as opposed to a bi-right application for two bedrooms.

I also understand your comment that it is not uncommon for an application to come in that's not in compliance because it's not yet in operation.

I see this as slightly different because it is in operation, but not in compliance.

Currently, as far as we know, even with the rules for buy right, there are three being opened up for rent.

I don't think I have any further questions.

I do have a follow-up question.

It would have to be within a year.

There'd be a one-year waiting period for substantially the same proposal.

And Supervisor Galloway, if I might, let me just supplement my response to your earlier question.

Even though there's not the ability to put a condition on allowing for an automatic revocation upon one strike, the Board does have the ability after a public hearing to revoke a special exception.

There'd need to be a public hearing and there need to be a finding that there was a violation of the existing conditions.

Okay, thank you.

My comment would be that we have an existing ordinance around and they have the ability by our regulations now to rent out two rooms.

I am not persuaded that three rooms are necessary in this particular situation.

Thank you.

I agree with Supervisor McKeel.

I think by right two bedrooms would be applicable in this situation.

It very much concerns me that they said that they would be living in the basement.

That has no kitchen.

So if you're renting it out for a week and you're living down there without a kitchen, that tells me that they probably, you know, may or may not be there.

I don't know.

I do not support expanding the room numbers because to me by right means that you don't necessarily have to have special permission but you still have to follow all the regulations that exist so I think that I would support the SC being denied and perhaps if they have a clean slate for a year operating then they could come back when the time expires and try again but it's up to them to exhibit

the right kind of cooperation and following the rules.

Yeah, I think the just bare specific question of whether or not impact wise having three bedrooms on this location would be okay.

I'm comfortable with that.

But the issue is that

you know this homestay ordinance has been in place long enough with the advertisement and us putting out that you know this is this isn't like it's six months after we voted on the homestay ordinance so people should know that this is part of it so that that is what gives me pause here so my questions were really lined up with okay well if there's a

Way to mitigate that if there is a violation, you lose the ability.

But it sounds to me like to be able to get in compliance and prove yourself for the year under the current two bedrooms is the way to go.

And then if compliance is there, then the special use permit may have a better shot down the road.

OK.

May I follow up one question?

So this is a special exception.

OK, I just want to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Thank you.

And as do I at this point.

So I'm not sure how we would proceed.

I don't see support for this motion.

I see.

So I guess as a supervisor for Samuel Miller District, I would like to move that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors deny the special exception as shown in the staff report.

Second.

So I made the motion.

So a yes vote on this motion would be a motion for denial and a no vote would be a motion not to deny this.

Just to clarify.

Thank you.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

And Ms.

Price has held up a sign.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

I hope that it's, I'm sorry to just jump out there, but I hope, I don't know where this would come from, maybe I'll direct this to Mr. Richardson, that the comment about being far enough along with the homestay ordinance in place, that folks understand that

You've got to get your act together that non-compliance, the history of compliance prior to your application if you're out there just running roughshod is going to influence how folks vote.

I think it's important for me to say that because I'm often in favor of a home stay special exception.

So people just can't be going willy-nilly and expect that we're just going to give a blind eye to that.

Well, and just to clarify, so the applicant at this point can still apply for zoning clearance for a two-bedroom homestay at this point.

And the registry and everything else.

Oh, blast.

Okay, if there are no further comments or clarification, we'll move on to item number 10, which is a thank you presentation on the Albemarle Microtransit Program, teed off by our Deputy County Executive, Mr. Trevor Henry, and the Director of Charlottesville Area Transit, Mr. Garland Williams.

Good afternoon.

Vice Chair Andrews, Chair Price virtually and members of the board, it's an honor to be here today, excited to be here today.

The last time we were in front of the board was in January talking about our procurement process for this work and I'm really happy to be teaming this up today.

The agenda really is to, it's a presentation by our Charlottesville area transit

partner and their turnkey operator for our microtransit partner, Bea.

Garland will be introduced here in a minute.

He'll talk a little bit about Bea and then we'll hand over to them.

And the goal really today is to bring the board up to speed on where we are in the implementation, how we will be marketing this, and then key dates and the roadmap for launch.

So really excited that we are on the cusp of bringing this service to the community.

Some pictures are on the screen.

Of course you know me.

Garland Williams is the director of our Charlottesville area transit and has been a great partner to the county.

Abby Stumpf and Kevin McDermott have been very involved in this process from the original study through our procurement process.

And then we'll have our VIA team here today, Jake Bortz and Alejandro Miranda that will be doing part of the presentation.

Just before I step out of the way to get to the meat of it, I wanted to just remind the board that the county funded a study several years ago in partnership with CAT and TJPDC around microtransit.

We evaluated three areas, including the two that we moved forward with, which are on the screen, but it's US 29 North and the Pantops.

In January 2021,

We presented to the board the results of the study and a recommendation for application to DRPT.

That application was approved for a pilot program of which we have nearly two million dollars.

It's called a demonstration grant.

You know, the county certainly has skin in the game and just under $400,000 as a local match.

All of that work has been funded with Charlottesville Area Transit as our program manager.

to run the program.

Earlier this year in January, we presented to the board the recommendations on how to move this project forward, which included a recommendation that we do a procurement for either a turnkey or a partial turnkey partner that would be wrapped up under and branded through CAT.

The board approved that and we moved forward with a RFP process, a request for proposal process, that resulted in four qualified vendors, three of them nationally, that provided proposals and response.

We had a team between the county and CAT that did multiple reviews.

We interviewed each of the applicants and worked through a really diligent process in my mind to come with a strong recommendation via

The work since the summer has been between CAT and VIA to get the contract executed along with our community engagement folks in CAPE and Kevin out of community development in order to turn this into an executable plan.

And so without further ado, I will hand this over briefly to Garland Williams and I'll stay down here for any questions that the board may have for me.

Good afternoon.

It's a pleasure to be before you saying that we are ready.

We're working in earnest to get your microtransit project up and running.

Procurement process was pretty extensive.

Trevor mentioned that we went through a pretty long and detailed process.

There were four vendors.

Three of them were national, and then one was local.

We have a turnkey that we believe has already added value, and they're going to talk a little bit about that, but I'm going to steal a little bit of their thunder.

There are two areas that were selected, the 29 North corridor and the Pantops corridor.

Bea has come on board and basically looked at it and said that with the available vehicles that they're going to supply, that they believe that they can make connections not just in the two areas, but the two areas will be connected.

So if you're in Pantops, you will be able to travel to the 29 North corridor.

and from the 29 and a quarter to Pantops.

That is an outstanding addition to this model.

It won't cost us any additional.

And with that, I was just going to turn it over to Jake and allow him to talk about the turnkey model that they provide and kind of what their model looks like.

And at the end, we'll have any questions we'll be able to answer.

Hi.

Thank you.

Thank you, Garland.

And thank you to all of the supervisors here for giving us a chance to present today.

On behalf of myself, my colleague Alejandro, and the rest of the VIA team, we are very, very excited about the microtransit service launch in Albemarle County.

And I'm excited to tell you a little bit more about it today and then afterwards answer any questions you might have on our presentation or what the service might look like or VIA as a company.

So as you can see on the slide that you've been staring at for the past couple minutes, we are a global company.

This is highlighting the majority of our services which are in the United States.

And you can see a few highlighted pop-outs.

Each of these little dots is another service that we've launched and continue to either operate ourselves or provide software for an agency or community to operate themselves.

And on the next slide, you'll see some of our

Presidents in the state of Virginia and the Commonwealth.

So we have six services on the slide here.

These consist of services where we provide software and the cities or agencies operate the services themselves.

That includes microtransit, so similar to what we're doing with CAT and in Albemarle County, and also paratransit services to provide rides and technology for folks who are ADA eligible.

We also have a service starting with Greater Richmond Transit in Richmond and also of course hopefully in a little less than a month or so we will have Cat up here as well.

And so just a little bit of a primer on microtransit.

I think it could be a buzzy word and a buzzy term.

and a lot of different companies and agencies see the usage in different ways.

So I wanted to share a little bit about how we see it at VIA and specifically for the residents of Albemarle County how this can be a really successful program and increase mobility for all the residents living in and around the service corridors.

And so the number one way that we see microtransit bringing value to Albemarle County is filling gaps where the fixed route network doesn't reach.

So you have an extensive fixed route network,

There are still areas where folks live far away from the closest bus station and could use a way to get to that bus station or to the train station, et cetera, to kind of make those longer haul trips.

The next piece is complement those fixed route with first and last mile solutions.

So in addition to providing transit to and from those bus stops, also provide full trips for people that are going to areas that aren't well served by existing transit.

Third piece, and sometimes this is not what we're doing with CAT,

Oftentimes we'll see there are fixed routes that just don't have a lot of ridership, aren't going to places where we use it, aren't serving a need for the community, and sometimes we see microtransit can actually be a more efficient usage for public transit.

And then lastly, increased mobility for all folks in and around the service zones that we cover.

Oftentimes these are older adults that don't drive, folks with disabilities, people that are lower income and don't have a vehicle or prefer not to use one.

And so for all of these use cases and

Building off of the study that Trevor mentioned, we feel that this is a very, very successful proposal for Charlottesville and the people of Albemarle County and will really improve mobility for all folks in the county.

So I wanted to show you a little preview of what you would actually be getting with the Turnkey solution.

I think Turnkey can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

With the VIA solution and what we're providing to CAT and the county, you will be receiving our microtransit software,

and also all of our operational expertise and guidance.

So you can see a mock-up on the left there.

This would be our rider app.

So on the left, where it says MicroCat, that would be the rider-facing application, which we'll go into a little bit later.

There will also be a driver app for all drivers to see where they're picking folks up and be directed to the nearest pick-up and drop-off space.

You also have an administrative console where you'll get all of your data and reporting capabilities to improve and analyze the service over time.

In addition to the software,

our operational expertise which comes from operating over 50 services all across the world and over 40 in the U.S.

comes with our marketing team expertise.

Marketing has been a big focus.

We know that there can be a challenge in starting a new service under the same brand of a transit agency and so we've worked in concert with CAT and the county to develop a really strong marketing, branding, and PR plan in order to really bring this to light as soon as possible and make sure that from launch ongoing people know

about the service, know how to use it, and most importantly, know exactly what use cases it will serve.

So in addition to that, we will bring in the drivers, the vehicles.

We're actually completing driver registration for the service in the coming weeks.

And then we will conduct driver onboarding to make sure that drivers understand the lay of the land in the county, know their way around, and are fully qualified and ready to go on launch day.

We will also include a dispatch and customer service on behalf of riders in the county.

So if anyone has any issues or complaints or concerns, we will always be on hand to answer those and deal with them in a timely manner.

So we talked quite a bit about the actual service zones or corridors.

We're serving, of course, the US 29 North zone and the Pantop zone.

So we can definitely take any questions on these zones further on.

But these are the two zones we're starting on.

Study put together by the TJPDC in concert with Foursquare Planning Company.

There was another zone called Monticello, which of course you all are familiar with, and that is a potential area for expansion if the service is deemed successful and there is demand for folks in that area as well.

So before I hand it off to my colleague Alejandro to take you through our marketing plan and how exactly we're going to get the service up and running in just a little bit over a month from now,

I wanted to show you exactly what the rider experience would look like when you're booking a ride and if it looks rather simple to you that is certainly by design so we want to make the booking experience and tracking as easy and seamless as possible for all riders so it might look somewhat similar to an Uber or a Lyft app that you may have used previously and then again is by design we know folks are familiar with that type of interface and so what you would do is you would either tap on the screen or put in your pickup address

or it can take your current location and automatically input that, select where you want to go, assuming that's in the zone or in the other zone and a ride that we would want to serve, you will receive a proposal, you can accept the proposal, which of course will be fare free at the launch of the program with flexibility later down the line to introduce a fare if and as needed.

And then of course it will give you the vehicle, what your ETA is, it'll show you the vehicle coming towards you,

and exactly where to look for the vehicle, what color the vehicle is, the name of the driver, et cetera, just to make sure that you are, in fact, getting in the right car.

And so without further ado, I will pass it on to Alejandro to take you through a little bit of the operational aspect and how we're actually going to get the service up and running.

Jake Bortz from Bea.

And this is Alejandro.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Well, first of all, good afternoon to the chair and

I want to first off just start with a quick introduction of myself and my team.

My name is Alejandro and I've been at Bea for close to four years already.

I've worked personally on around 40 deployments of VS technology across the United States.

My involvement in this project is that I will be the project manager from now until the launch of the service and then I will be transitioning over the service to an operating team who will be managing the service in perpetuity.

And then just before we begin on this slide, this next slide, I wanted to say that just on behalf of myself and my team, we are very excited to put another dot on the map in Virginia.

And, you know, I think this is a start of a long relationship between

via the county and CAT.

So without further ado, I will start discussing in a little bit more detail how we're going to approach the marketing of the service.

We will adhere to four main marketing principles as we communicate the service to county residents.

The first one is going to be convenient

The MicroCat service is a convenient service that makes it easier to travel within the zones but also and most importantly to connect to the existing public transit system in the county and in both the Pantops and the US 29 corridor It's also an accessible service that helps people get to and from work shopping appointments errands and really gives people flexibility to use the service for whatever they need within the zones and also as we as we shared some news before also to travel across both of the zones

It's an affordable service residents can afford sorry residents can enjoy zero fare service around these two service zones at least for the beginning of the service and we have remained and we will remain a little bit flexible in terms of introducing fares in the future and then lastly like Jake showed you in the last slide it's it's a very easy to use app and for residents who do not have a smartphone and cannot use the app they can also call in and every single functionality that you can perform in the app can also be performed with one of our support agents

and they are more than happy to help anybody create an account book rights and pretty much do whatever you can do on the app through a phone call.

Awesome, so continuing on the topic of marketing, these are the four main channels of marketing that we want to work with very closely with both CAT and the county on.

Number one is that we're going to launch a thorough and broad awareness campaign through paid social advertisements.

We're going to advertise mainly on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms.

Then we're going to continuously drive optimization of engagement through a website that we're going to create for the county and that's going to be one of the main four pillars of how to put the word out there.

The second and perhaps in my opinion most important one is that we're going to work really closely with community centers and local community organizers to really get the word out for the communities that need the service the most.

We're also more than happy to work with community action committees that the county oversees and try to get to senior centers, the hospital, and other locations that we think the service is going to benefit residents the most.

We're also going to take advantage of the existing methods of communication that the county and CAT already have.

Email newsletters, print locations where we can put posters out in

in the mall, for example, which is a big transit location on the US 29 corridor and other places where there is an existing website, an existing set of communications that we can take advantage of and communicate this new service.

And then last but not least, we're going to, and we actually started today, but we're going to do some outreach to local press, make sure that we, in both print and digital, we are getting covered at lunch and then after lunch.

This next slide really covers what the launch process is like from now until October the 30th which is our planned launch date On the left you'll see the different work streams that our team is working on and then at the top you'll see the four different stages of the launch process and this is as much as it is to give you visibility it's also kind of a quick update for all of you and let you know where we stand on the project itself

We actually have finished the kickoff stage where we aligned with both Kat and the county on the service design and tech setup.

We're already actually working on the environment, the technological environment that is going to power the app that you saw.

We're also kind of aligned on the brand, which we're going to show you on the last slide and the next slide of this presentation.

And then from an operating standpoint, we have sourced Toyota hybrid Siennas, both wheelchair accessible and non-wheelchair accessible that are going to be used in the service.

And then also, we actually have started in the process of finalizing driver acquisition.

The next stage, which is implementation, is going to be when we actually create the Rider app and our backend technology to support the program and finalize all of that.

We are going to work on not only building the brand, which is actually finalized, but also, and most importantly, starting to work on the execution of the marketing strategy, as we discussed.

And then lastly, we're going to finalize the driver acquisition process and procure and inflate the vehicles.

The third stage, which is going to finish on October the 20th, is perhaps the most important stage.

It's the testing phase.

It's when we make sure that we're doing quality assurance and that the launch that we're about to put out to the community is in perfect shape before it goes live.

On all three verticals we're going to do a lot of

testing specifically on the technology, but also make sure that our operations are buttoned up before we go live.

And then the last phase, but if you'd like to think about it, it's also the first stage.

It's the launch of the service on the 30th.

This is really when the service begins.

We are not only going to make sure that the service is at 100% when we launch on the 30th, but we're also going to work very closely with both the county and CAT to make sure that we are analyzing data, making improvements, and being as flexible as possible to adjustments and the needs of the community to make sure that we are

Lastly, I want to show you our last slide, which is hopefully the most exciting one.

This is the brand that our team

the county's team and also the CATS team have been working really hard on.

On the top left you can see the service logo and the service name which is going to be MicroCAT.

This is an illustrative image of the Toyota vehicle with a vehicle wrap and then the app is both on the right and also kind of behind the vehicle.

You can see kind of the look and feel of the application.

and then finally behind the car, that is going to be an example of one of the posters and one of the marketing collateral that we're going to create for the county that we're also going to help distribute.

Awesome.

So we are open to questions.

If you have any, I'll call Jake and Garland up to the stage again.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Supervisor McKeel.

First of all, let me just thank you for being here.

And I'm sure we all have questions for clarity, but I certainly am very supportive of this project.

Just one quick point.

We have a school in this community called VIA.

You all are VIA?

So I have to wrap my head around saying Via.

It's kind of like Rio and Rio in some places, you know, but don't be surprised if you are confused a little bit at first with the school via.

Having said that, you all are, so the way that this works, just so I'm clear and maybe people that are listening, so the interface is going to be an app.

but there is the opportunity for people to call in.

So you don't have to have a phone with an app.

You can actually make a phone call.

And that phone call will be answered by someone here and not in Shanghai or Bangladesh.

I'm just asking because we make all these phone calls all the time and there are people that are not local.

No, absolutely, and a very fair question.

You would not be the first one to call us via, so no worries there.

Yes, so there would always be a call center open and ready for any rider to call in.

The call center, our folks, our employees of Via are fully trained in the micro CAT service, so they know your service zone.

They know the locations people will be asking about.

They're also trained for sensitivity trained to communicate with elderly individuals, folks with disabilities, relay trained for folks who are hard of hearing, and they are located in the US.

So we have a US-based call center, not in Charlottesville.

Okay, so that's a clarity that's good to know.

Tell me about your drivers.

So we are hiring locally.

I'm not sure if you have seen the advertisements that we have already been running.

Yeah, that's great.

Garland's nodding his head.

So that's comforting.

Yeah, I wanted to take the advantage to say that we're also more than happy to send a quick description of the role and to anybody here that might want to share that around.

I think we get a lot of success from internal job boards that can be shared around.

All of those are an option

Because it's not in the zone.

Correct.

It's not in the zone.

Got it.

Now, that part of the app, though, we're working through.

So we didn't want to slow anything down as we get to the launch.

So in the original, when we launched this service,

all of the micro CAT positions and the Crespi.

You won't be able to do the CAT connection, but we're working through that and we're hoping to have that up within 60 days.

So just for clarity, if somebody lives on Pan Tops, they can request a trip to 29 North somewhere.

So that's an addition that we weren't expecting.

And it's curb to curb.

And first, we're talking about point connections when the service was contemplated, making you walk to a nearest corner.

But our turnkey professional said that they thought it was better and safer for all of our riders that we go to a curb to curb model.

So that was an enhancement that they provided for us.

Because in the beginning, we were trying to make sure that we had the connections and that everybody knew how to use the service, maybe walk to the nearest corner to catch your service.

But in this case, they said it's actually easy because there's not enough

Just saying, right?

Okay, all right.

A couple more quick questions because I know my other supervisors have lots of questions, but if

So I have a Citizens Advisory Committee, as many of us do.

Is there a way that we could request that someone, one of you all, or someone come to those meetings or to a meeting and describe this process for our CACs and what is happening?

Because that's a way to get out the word.

Are those meeting virtual also?

Because we're more than happy to also attend virtual meetings.

No, they're not virtual.

Okay.

What we have done before is we're not based locally and we are generally on the ground here for a few weeks before leading up to lunch and also during lunch.

So if we could schedule those meetings then, that would be great.

Okay, you'll come, Garland.

That's great.

You can do it.

That's good.

All right, because you know it inside and out as well.

I only have one more question, and help me understand how this interfaces with Jaunt.

because John normally in our community is known as providing ADA services and some commuter services like the Buckingham.

So John has a consultant right now and they're looking at some of their service model and they actually have reached out to us about potentially partnering in the future with being able to display in the app all of the locations of our vehicles and their vehicles.

Now, we didn't want to slow this process down.

And as we work through this, there is a possibility probably at the six month mark.

We want to make sure that the citizens and the residents of Albemarle in these zones know about the MicroCat product first and foremost.

So once there is a comfort level that we've worked out the kinks and that we're operating at a high efficiency, I think it's probably the most appropriate time to start having that conversation.

about opening platforms where it's more universal.

But we don't want to make sure that we, you know, someone could open the app based on, you know, rushing through this.

And it looks like we've got 80 micro-capped vehicles out there.

That's not what this is.

So we want to make sure that individuals understand what we're trying to get accomplished in connecting the two zones, first and foremost, get a real,

And that makes sense.

The MicroCat project is specifically for these two zones.

Great.

That's helpful.

And the only other comment I will make is that I know Donna will be very disappointed because she wanted the name to be Kitten.

We looked at a lot of things.

But you know, life is tough, and we don't always get what we want.

Appreciate that.

All right.

Thank you, Jim.

Yes.

I thought kitty cat would be really cute, but that didn't win either.

Thank you very much, and Supervisor McKeel has actually asked a number of questions, so now I don't have to repeat that.

And could you go to page 9?

This one?

Okay, yes, yes.

I just wanted to understand because I see on the left-hand side where it says Holly Mead, but you have a darker green, then you have a light green, so is the dark green and the light green

Yes, so I can see how that could be confusing.

That is just, we have an internal service planning and design tool that we use to kind of help draw the zones and that is the system's version of telling you that Holly Mead is like its own area, but it's just kind of a back shading and that entire zone, so that full, if you can see my mouse,

No, you can't.

So that full outline on the outside is the full zone.

So Holliday is within that.

Anything green?

Anything within that green outline.

OK.

Exactly.

And that top piece at the Penny Mountain, is that how you say it?

OK.

Thank you.

So that is helpful.

So if someone wanted to go, let's say, from their home in Pan Tops,

So, knowing that I can't tell if Fashion Square or even

Another shopping area is inside or outside the green area if it's not within the green area, but if you go from Pantops on your way to 29 North, for example, would they drop you off if Stonefield isn't in the green area?

Would they drop you off at Stonefield or not?

We're really focusing on the zones that were outlined, but we've already made a couple exceptions.

The Fashion Square Mall is technically not in the zone, but we're going to use that as a connection point because it also connects to CAT fixed route services.

So it's already been kind of enhanced and modified a little bit to take advantage of that.

I believe Stonefield is in the zone.

Okay, that's very good.

So I think those are the

questions.

I am extremely excited and I'd like to bring my two CACs, which are 29 North and Pantops, together and maybe anyone else who touches.

It would be great to have one big CAC meeting just to cover this.

and I would offer, you know, we would host it in Pantops if anyone wants to join us.

Maybe we can get together on that.

But that would be very nice.

I'm really excited about this and I know there are a lot of residents also that are going to be very excited and I think this is going to be very successful.

Thank you.

I just have a couple of questions.

Copy something here.

There is just a all CAC meeting here in this building on October 17th, a Tuesday.

Is that confirmed?

Yes.

So there may be a portion of the evening when people could do that, but that's up to Emily and Allison and all those other folks.

And it may be already jammed.

I'm speaking out of turn.

So a couple of quick questions.

One of you made a comment about how you're building the software.

So does that not mean that we're using established software that's already in use in your other 50 sites?

Because I don't want to be the beta.

That's a great question.

We are not building the software.

We're customizing our existing software to meet your mapping requirements, the routing of the city itself, different locations.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

So you have security protocols for your HR department as far as the people you hire for being your drivers.

I think probably a major concern for people in general is whose car are they getting into.

Yes, absolutely.

So drivers are going to go through a couple of checks.

The first one being both a criminal and a driver history background check that is going to meet the TNC requirements from the state of Virginia.

as well as some more strict requirements that we have internally for all the drivers that we have for our services.

In addition to that, we're also going to run FDA compliant drug testing on all drivers.

That is going to be before they start driving for a service but also reasonable suspicion testing in case of an accident.

Thank you.

And last question, I'm a little uncertain about the map, so does the, on the east of 29 in the left hand picture, does that include going up as far as Boulders Road, or is Boulders Road in the brown?

Thank you.

Thank you gentlemen for being here.

So how many vehicles, did I just miss the count?

How many will be in operation?

Six.

wheelchair and non-wheelchair compliant, so we're gonna have two to three wheelchair compliant vehicles and the rest are going to be non-wheelchair compliant.

Got it.

Thank you for that.

Yes, that's a great question.

So I would use

I think there are two main sources of feedback.

Number one is very quantitative.

After everybody finishes a trip on our app, they submit stars, one to five, plus commentary that can be written.

But also we have prompts that are created.

Like if somebody puts a negative review, they can indicate which of the prompts that we have pre-created.

Why is the review negative?

And then that gets aggregated and then presented to both the county and the city on a monthly basis in the reporting.

Also accessible at a faster cadence, but we can review that later.

In addition to that, we also run surveys from our qualitative research into where else in the city would you like to see the service operate?

What did you like the most about the service?

What did you like the least about the service?

Questions like that that get distributed to the residents and users of the app on kind of a quarterly basis.

And then apart from that, we also rely on just asking questions to our customer support line.

What are the main reasons why people are calling?

That's great.

You must collect and gather trip data so that we can start to go, oh, here are the movement patterns that we're seeing.

Yeah.

That's one of the biggest added benefits is that we're going to provide all of that data accessible to both Kat and the county.

I was thrilled to hear about the curb to curb.

I think that makes this even easier to work for folks, especially when you consider like

I always use Woodbrooke to Kroger as an example of that because that'll be an easy thing to do.

My CAC has been pestering me about when the start date is so I think they'll be happy to participate in the presentation.

They just want to know when it's go time.

So I'm glad we're approaching go time.

And then I think that's it.

Yeah, I'm good.

Thank you.

I'm going to look to Super Chair Price to ask if you have any questions further before.

Good?

Okay.

My only question is, a lot of these questions have already been answered that I had.

I noticed that, you know, with six cars, there had previously been an allocation of four cars to the Rio 29 area, 29 North, and then to the Pan Tops.

With this wonderful ability to go between them, I'm not sure how that's going to affect timing for trips and the difficulty of sort of

keeping the roots open and how much time it takes to get between the two.

I wonder if that affects the numbers and how much have you looked into that at this point?

Absolutely.

It is a great question.

I think our plans are going to be slightly different in the sense that we're going to have one vehicle at all times dedicated to each of the zones.

We're going to keep one vehicle there and

But then the rest of the vehicles, simply because we don't have enough data in terms of what demand patterns are going to look like on each of the zones, are going to be kind of untagged or unregistered to one of the zones and they can just free flow based on demand and requests from riders.

We're going to then use that data, of course, to inform how many vehicles we need on one of the zones at each time of day, how that changes per day of the week, per hour of the day, and then make adjustments as needed.

But the plan for now is that we're going to have at least one

Thank you.

Are there any further questions?

And you probably already do this, but it's just when you were talking about hitting the stars for the rider, I would hope that the drivers will be encouraging them to do so before they leave at the destination.

It's just going to be, hey, this is a pilot program.

Your feedback is very important to us.

Can you go ahead and complete that in the last minute of your trip so that they can get an idea for it?

Because that, I think,

You know, that's going to be incredibly helpful to us down the road to hear from those actual riders.

Thank you.

Yes, that's something we do a lot.

I think we have also identified a few employer destinations that we think are going to be high ridership locations here.

Normally at launch, we just launch a service and then learn from the data.

Soon after that, we're going to start analyzing all of the requests that are coming in from certain employment centers.

And then I think we definitely encourage

Kat and our clients around the country to actually reach out to these locations and share some data with them.

These are the amount of people from your office that are using the service.

Well, it's a good employment retention tool also for them.

Thank you very much.

What we have not said today

is a large area, but I can't see the delineation of streets and the same thing with the large 29 North area.

That would be helpful if that's possible.

Mr. Henry, just to wrap up, thanks for some fantastic questions.

I think there's a great deal of opportunity of engagement.

I think of, you know, North Grumman, Rivanna Station, Airport, North Fork, Sentara.

I mean there's the senior centers, there's a lot of opportunities to get the word out on this.

I think this will be a wildly successful program and so just excited to be where we are finally and can't wait till

we get into October for the launching and also just to compliment the team you know even before the zone to zone enhancement that has been offered up we when we did the RFP through CAT we didn't specify vehicle type specifically

and working with, I say VAIA all the time, these guys are always correcting me, but in working with CAD we, during the RFP process, we thought it was important to have some level of energy efficient vehicles and so

The company offered to use the Toyota Sienna Hybrid as a step for our climate action planning.

And so that's just another indication of the partner that we're developing here.

So really excited about this.

And Trevor and Garland, I'll just suggest that this would make a great agenda item for the Regional Transit Partnership because I think they might be interested in hearing about this.

The other thing that's popped into my brain is having conferences, people come to Darden or SEI or whatever to be able to have them have that flexibility and know about this pilot and program.

For people who are out of town, they really benefit from someone who knows their way around and they don't have to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to get somewhere.

No further questions or comments.

Mr. Richardson, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Okay, thank you.

We're about four minutes ahead of our schedule, so I think the plan is to reconvene at 3.15.

We'll be back in our seats and ready to go.

Beep

Our next item is a work session on legislative priorities and legislative positions and policy statements led by Emily Kilroy, Assistant to the County Executive.

Welcome, Ms.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Vice Chair Andrews, Chair Price, and members of the board.

I am going to walk us through the slides for today's work session on the 2024 legislative priorities and legislative positions and policy statements.

I'm not going to say that again.

I have a lot of folks in the room who will provide support, though.

So I'll run the slides, but we have a deep bench here.

Today's work session is the second of three total for the board's 2024 legislative priorities and policy statements.

I want to thank David Blunt with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, Steve Rosenberg, James Douglas, and Andy Herrick in the County Attorney's Office, and really that whole team for their work to prepare for today's work session.

Andy Herrick and David Blunt are both here to support the Q&A and discussion and again I'll work through the slides.

So today's session is structured as two discussions so we'll pause a little bit through the presentation and then pick up the second topic and it corresponds to the two attachments that are in your packets.

So attachment A is a marked up legislative priorities and attachment B is a marked up positions and policy statements.

Both of these have been updated as a starting place for today's discussion but by no means an endpoint so we can make plenty of changes between now and when we hope to have the adoption of the package in October.

We do hope to receive direction from you all today on both documents and then the County Attorney's Office will begin their work to prepare for the October 18th board meeting.

So before we dig into the work sessions, we wanted to establish some common language.

In different years, the board has used one or both of the tools that we're talking about today, the priorities and the positions and policy statements, a little bit differently.

emphasizing one more than the other in certain years.

And so just so that everyone has a common understanding of what we're talking about, here is just sort of a working definition.

So the legislative priorities document attachment A is focus specific needs requested to be met through legislative action by the General Assembly or the governor.

They're used by the board to communicate with our local delegation about local priorities for legislation and or delegated authority These are what the board communicates with our local delegation as the highest priorities for consideration by the state-level elected officials

They're important because in Virginia, as this board knows, the Dillon Rule means that localities only have the authority that's been expressly delegated by the state.

And the hope is that our local delegation will pick up our legislative priorities and introduce legislation for consideration by the General Assembly or request line funding from the state budget to support those priorities.

So in attachment B, we have the legislative positions and policy statements.

Those are another tool.

These are broad statements regarding direction or support for policy areas, which could be addressed through legislation or other means, including studies undertaken by the Commonwealth or funding.

These are areas where the board has interest, but you don't necessarily have an articulated policy position in mind.

They're used a lot during the legislative session, and it's used to a staff uses

to respond to inquiries from our local delegation to inform their decision making.

So for example, a legislature will call and ask for Albemarle County's position on a bill under consideration in three hours.

And so we'll do our best to look at policy statements that the board has adopted, whether that be this actual document, the comp plan, other positions that the board has taken.

to try to be as supportive as we can, not always with a straight position of support or non-support, but also just articulating some of the positive and negative aspects of what's being considered from the perspective of the Board of Supervisors.

So this is really something that we use to sort of say, you know, if the Board had time to fully consider this, how does this match up to their position as articulated in attachment B?

So we'll move into the work session piece So again, we'll focus first on the legislative priorities Last time we discussed this subject we shared recommendations for how to approach for the 2024 session And we discern during your discussion in June that there are some different thoughts on the best way to proceed this year the board chair initiated a poll to supervisors to understand their level of interest in the 2023 priorities that we brought forward last year and

And we use that to form three approaches that we're teeing up for the board's discussion today.

Again, our hope is to sort of land the approach for 2024 and then we can work out the specifics in time for your meeting on October 18th.

So we did share some of this with you at your last meeting on this topic in June.

Just as a reminder, there were seven legislative priorities that the board move forward in 2023.

All seven were introduced, which is unusual for Albemarle County to have sort of 100%

being introduced as bills.

Five did not proceed out of committee and those are the first five shown on the screen.

The change in eligibility requirements for the Virginia Business Ready Sites program actually passed both the House of Delegates and the Senate, but was ultimately vetoed by the governor.

And then the final one on that list

require minimum safety standards in agricultural buildings used by the public, proceeded with a partial language from what the board was seeking and that one was signed by the governor.

So what we are putting forward as an approach, and you have a handout in front of you, sort of a landscape with three columns,

As one approach for 2024 would be to update the language in the 2023 priorities for just sort of the current state and then making a few adjustments to those seven from last year.

One would be to remove that Virginia Business Ready Sites program item.

Really looking at

how the governor's veto played out and also and probably more acutely that the need for that or the county's interest in seeing that minimum acreage reduced was driven by site availability in Albemarle County and the board's action to go accept a contract for the land adjacent to Rivanna Station really changes the county's position with respect to land available for site readiness projects.

The other suggested change that is reflected in attachment A is to remove further pursuit of the agricultural buildings item.

One because it did enjoy some success, not full success, but it's only just become effective in July and so there hasn't been a lot of time for understanding what that impact would be.

So we're calling this sort of the update and carry forward where we would bring forward five the five that did not have any movement in 2023 and then also adding a sixth which is a state support for Rivanna Futures which would sort of replace that Virginia Business Ready sites item.

This is the approach that the county typically pursues with the General Assembly and is certainly something that we could do

One thing that we would look for the board's consensus around today if you wanted to pursue this approach would be to, you'll note on your handout that the legislative priorities are numbered and that is based on that polling feedback that Chair Price undertook.

So number one would be the one that had the highest ranking.

and that we would bring those numbers into the legislative priorities work in order to sort of establish these are the higher priority items and these these others are lower priority if the updating carry forward approach is the one that the board would like to pursue.

So that's one approach.

The next approach is what we're calling the focus legislative priorities.

This is what we sort of teed up in June, which would pare back the volume of priorities in favor of building relationships with our new delegation and to focus on state partnerships to deliver the vision for Rivanna Futures.

If we pursued this, staff have spent some time fleshing out what that might look like and I'm going to walk through those in just a second here.

I'm going to not touch on positions and policy statements because that'll be the subject of our next discussion.

So first and foremost, we would want to pursue state support for Rivanna Futures.

As you know, it's a substantial project for staff.

We're meeting with potential state, federal, and academic partners to turn the vision into a reality, which is to establish an intelligence and national security innovation hub adjacent to the Rivanna station.

One of the areas that we introduced as a sort of a concept in June is to talk about regional opportunities.

So opportunities to partner with neighboring jurisdictions in areas that would have a mutual benefit or lend support to a priority that would be meaningful to a neighboring jurisdiction.

The first one here

was the highest ranking item in the polling exercise and that was the taxing authority for school capital projects or as it's been called around the commonwealth the one cent for schools tax and that would enable enacting an additional sales tax penny dedicated to school capital construction.

This one appears to be a priority of the board.

It's also being pursued as a priority by the city of Charlottesville.

And it's also got a lot of support from localities across the Commonwealth.

So this is one where there really is a broad coalition of support that is starting to come together.

The other item that you could consider under the header of regional priorities is to extend line of duty benefits to private police departments.

Sadly, this is a priority for Nelson County because of the tragedy over the summer when Officer Chris Wagner was killed in the line of duty responding to a call for service this past June.

Shortly after his death, the family learned that officers of private police departments are not covered by line of duty benefits.

and Officer Wagner was an officer with the private Wintergreen Police Department.

The Nelson County Board of Supervisors is seeking support

for state authority to allow private police departments to offer line of duty benefits which is paid by the private police department into a program much like an insurance type program.

The cost would not be borne by the locality and while Albemarle County does not have a private police department, this is an opportunity for us to lend support to our neighbor in Nelson.

The other area that we spoke about in June was topical opportunities, so not necessarily a neighboring jurisdiction, but other jurisdictions in the Commonwealth having priorities that align with Albemarle.

We looked at this with a lens towards the Board's strategic plan.

What are the priorities articulated there?

One would be to support a recent study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, or JLARC, on the community service boards.

This was a comprehensive report which identified several action areas.

One was funding, and that was at least partially addressed by the state budget that was adopted earlier this month.

But the other were training, performance measures, standard operating procedures, and additional funding.

So this is an area where the board could express support for full implementation of that CSB study as it has good strategic alignment with your plan and again there's support from many localities in the Commonwealth for that as well.

The other area is a forthcoming report.

It's not been published yet, but it's being talked about already.

It's from the Virginia Department of Fire Programs and it is expected to be published October 1st and is expected to identify a growing need for state support for fire and EMS staffing in the wake of growing needs and in many areas of the Commonwealth, a shrinking pool of volunteers that can provide 24-7 service.

When you get across the Commonwealth you have a lot of fire and EMS departments responding cross-jurisdictional lines and so the report is expected to eliminate some opportunities for state support for that area and it's expected that VACO and others will form policy statements around this study and we anticipate that there will be some widespread support for that and we do believe that Albemarle County would be able to appreciate some benefits if a program such as that were to be successful

So this approach altogether would be supplemented by some focused connections with our local delegation as they are elected in November.

And so this is sort of an approach to.

The third approach that is before you on the table is sort of a kind of a blend of the two.

So using the board's polling feedback we've numbered the legislative priorities as I mentioned earlier and

The idea here would be to focus most primarily on the top two priorities, Rivanna, future support

and then the one sent for schools sales tax taxing authority.

And then shifting numbers three through six from legislative priorities into that attachment B, the positions and policy statements document.

That way they're still very much part of how we're speaking with legislators, but we're focusing on the legislative side at least, on the policy side, on those top two priorities.

So those are the three different approaches that we are hoping through a discussion that we'll start now for some direction on.

Again, there's three ways that we could do this that we've put together and certainly you may

through the course of your discussion, identify another way to do it.

We wanted to give you a couple of different things to sort of reflect on as you got into the discussion part.

Yes, and we'll open it up for our order of discussion, so questions.

Emily, thank you all for your work on this.

This is really good work, and I appreciate the options.

I also appreciate you all looking at Approach 3, because that does combine

some of the items that I would be interested in, and I think some of the others as well.

And I guess, is this a question, just a period for questions, Jim?

Just comments.

Questions and comments.

I really appreciate the Community Service Board, because for us, that's Region 10, and it is critical.

The amount of money that was in this year's budget

compared to what the JLARC study was recommending is minuscule, just minuscule.

That JLARC study came out in December, so it is time to pounce on that right now, I think, in this session.

And it could make a real big difference for our Region 10 and our mental health issues.

It's being circulated internally within the state.

And I guess my thought is, while I'm happy to entertain that because you have it on number three and that's fine, I just question whether or not it would be better

Yeah, we certainly could do that.

We wanted to put it forward.

It'll be because it'll be published between this work session and when you finalize on October 18th.

And I'm not against it completely.

I'm just simply saying that

If the study is out, we know actually what we're supporting and might be just something to think about.

The line of duty benefits private police department.

I must admit I read that and didn't know what exactly it referred to.

I do think, I see the real benefit to that and I do think supporting Nelson in that would be a good idea.

So I'm just kind of rambling here I guess, but I really do like the Rivanna Futures absolutely and you have that across the board and that's great.

and the taxing authority I think is great to have that across.

So I'm leaning more towards approach three just to sort of summarize.

But I was looking at these others trying to make sure I understood exactly what they were.

Thank you.

Thank you and I agree with Supervisor McKeel.

I didn't know what some of these were either and

If it didn't harm, which I don't think it would, but for fire EMS study, they know how supportive we are, but if it's more beneficial to wait a year, I could go either way.

I could go either now or later because I think that that study and I think the state finally helping out

the counties and communities because volunteerism is declining and we do need some assistance so I think that's very important.

The timing of it I could go probably either way.

One thing I am questioning now and I'm anxious to hear what my colleagues have to say

is the all virtual meetings.

Is that for supervisors?

Is that for CAC members?

Because I'll be honest with you, when we went virtual, that was great.

When we stopped, I didn't like that.

But now that I'm back, I love it.

As long as you always have the option, like Chair Price, of being able to zoom in because of, you know,

out of the state or illness.

So under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, basically all public bodies in the state can meet all virtually except for five local bodies that have been specifically named, one of which is the Board of Supervisors.

So under state law, CACs can already meet all virtually

It's just that the Board of Supervisors, Planning Commission, School Board, Architectural Review Board, and Board of Equalization cannot meet all virtually.

What the county suggested doing last year was to make it such that all public bodies, including those five local bodies, could meet all virtually.

That was one of the legislative priorities last year.

And just remember that the all virtual meetings of those other bodies that are enabled to do so are limited in number per year and you can't do two in a row.

Okay, now I understand better, so I'm anxious to see what everyone else has to say, but I think there comes a time, especially weather-related or emergency-related, that maybe it would be good to have all virtual meeting, especially since it's actually capped.

The number is capped and the frequency is capped.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you, Emily.

And I am also in favor of approach three because, as you're probably not surprised, I'm not willing to let go of anything.

But anyway, absolutely number one, Rivanna Station, the taxing authority is fine, but I would propose that we bring up the photo speed monitoring as a higher priority than putting it in a bundle.

because there are many jurisdictions already doing this without benefit of state law.

They're all using the Wytheville Common Contract and so I don't know why we feel we have to get more but anyway, I just think that we need to keep that on the front burner because of the impact it would have on public safety and a way to

have some personal accountability that would bring changes in driver behavior that we are not achieving by explaining that you're not the only person in the world and you can't just drive dangerously.

I do think that I would propose that that number three be put back onto the original list.

I would recommend that we keep going and not postpone the EMS study only because there is a certain momentum that is gained by the release of information.

There's been already two years of work, lots of counties interacted.

I mean, our staff already sent in gobs of information to VACO putting together the information on that.

So I would hate to look away at the wrong moment and lose whatever stake we have.

Can I ask a clarification from Ann?

And I'm happy with that because that's fine and they have it here.

Blue Line has contracts all over Virginia.

There are several other companies that do.

When you look at the VMO magazine, they're advertising in there as well.

So I don't have any idea how the different – there must be some technicality of why we don't qualify, but I don't know what it is.

Right.

David's coming up.

Mr. Vice Chair, members of the board, David Blount with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District.

My understanding is that the current authorization for speed zone cameras, speed cameras, which was enacted in 2020 is

Yeah, your legislative priority is focused around enabling authority for secondary roadways.

So there are certain instances where the state code does allow

And hydraulic is a secondary so that drag strip between the Rock Store and the high school that isn't in the school zone would still be, I mean somebody passed me today going 80, literally.

But that school zone will help.

And that was noon, so it's just amazing.

I'm just having flashbacks to learning about our own school zone safety and how watered down the damn state made the thing.

I don't disagree with removing the site readiness item from the packet, I'm fine with that, but I don't think that it necessarily changes our position.

Once Rivanna Futures is full speed ahead, the rest of our sites are still in the state that we had.

So if other people are going to continue to press with that, it's kind of like, well don't

You know, take your ball and go home just because you have this big site now.

It's still pertinent to us.

And when that site's built out, we're going to go back to the pre-existing issue.

So we should still be helpful to the counties and lend support in any way we can to continue to press on that.

I don't know if it makes pragmatic sense, given I still don't understand really the whole veto thing and what the hell happened.

May I jump in for one second because I had that on my list as well.

The all virtual, I'm fine with approach three.

I mean if we want to take the all virtual one off, I was one that was really pushing for that.

I think that just the realist in me knows that somebody's going to continue to press this and as long as we lend our support to the legislators that are, it may free up bandwidth because I tend to remember last year that that's when they kind of, you know,

our legislators like to pick on ones and like get argumentative and we get that out of the way and focus on the other ones then that that might help just strategically thinking.

I think we're going to go that way eventually and we're just going to keep making a little like a you know get two inches every every year towards eventually being all virtual.

I don't I think it may be just in the writing section

I don't know how boilerplate like our legislative positions and policy statements are.

But inside the one for transportation funding.

And I should have re-listened to myself because my memory is not working as well.

But I would encourage perhaps somebody to go back to the Rio 29 CAC meeting on the, what would that have been, August?

This is the last one, August 24th, I think.

We had a long-range transportation plan presentation, and as part of that, they were getting feedback.

They'll probably be to your CACs if they haven't already been.

but the reaction from the folks around the table giving feedback to Sandy from MPO was fascinating to me about how VDOT and how funding occurs and this is not smart scale or getting into those level conversations but really I think good mindset around how going systems like with where we're at and they were using the city and the county combined

and just a systemic approach that they really should be looking at funding in a bigger way than just car travel.

And some of them were teeing off on the smart scale and the potential for multimodal and all that changing where those focuses are.

But I think citizens and how they talk to the hearing citizen feedback come via us or through us on an item like that, I don't think it rises to a priority level.

But it may change the way that we write it in a way that's not just the same writing they've seen in every single packet that they've ever read from every locality they go to.

And it may be a call out.

and I'm going to go back and listen to it myself before then, but it was great for me.

I mean, I was sitting there going, well yeah, on one hand you can, we have to play by the rules to get the money, but you're right, we should be able to be critical of how they're going about it.

So they picked up on the staffing issue that we talked about, about how with SmartScale, they raised the money for the funding, but they didn't raise the staff to deal with the workload.

So when you got your citizens starting to talk that way,

In my approach, I'm going, well, yeah, if you guys are interested in this, you need to write your legislators who are above, even though the supervisors are handling all the local transportation planning and submitting the applications, the bigger policy picture is up above and this could be an opportunity just in wording and writing to maybe emphasize that and call it out, especially since we have some new folks that we're concerned about.

Next to Chair Price, my understanding is you have some questions, comments?

You're here.

Thank you.

I do have some comments.

Can you?

I do have some comments, which I would like to make.

I support option three.

While I would personally like to see us continue to work towards the Virginia business ready sites at the smaller level, it's pretty clear that the current governor is opposed to that.

And I think we're just beating our head against a wall to try and get that through.

So I think we should keep it on the back burner.

and with the change in administration, which in Virginia does happen every four years, then we can pursue that again.

I remain opposed to elected bodies engaging in all virtual meetings.

My law practice, which is a very niche market, has moved almost exclusively to all virtual meetings.

And they are simply not as effective as when you have the opportunity to appear in person.

And I believe that as elected officials, we have an obligation to be present in front of our constituency.

are the line of duty benefits for private police forces.

I am supportive of that provided, as I believe is required, but I want to ensure that I am articulating that.

Provided that eligibility, employment, training, supervision, and accountability is at a level comparable to governmental police forces.

and I think those are the comments that I have.

Thank you.

This is an approach that I also agree with, approach three works for me.

I do think that with respect to the FHIR EMS study that if it's coming October 1st then we need to see it, but I think that gives us time to respond and to bring this forward because I do think it's a very serious need for the staffing issues that we face in this county.

When the Business Ready Sites comes up, I think I'm in agreement that we can postpone this.

I do recognize that there's competition for funding, and we are now in a situation where we can benefit from the larger program funding.

But in the meantime, I know we have others as well.

I guess my bottom line on a lot of this is the ability to work with others and so I see that as a continuing theme here that we're identifying things in addition to Rivanna where we see that there are synergies that will help us be effective.

I don't want to have us proposing things where we know it's a non-starter with the governor, non-starter with the majority of the legislators.

and we'll know more about that in November.

It's the timing here that's also a little bit confusing to me because the November elections may change the look and feel.

I think our new delegation will want to hear from us and so I'm looking forward to that and building relationships based on these items.

and looking for the coordination with other jurisdictions.

So the fact that you've mentioned Nelson County makes me immediately more receptive to the line of duty benefits.

Vaco and Jaylark, all of this fits with others so that I'm very supportive of that approach.

I also think though that with respect to our legislative priorities, photo speed and others, if there is an interest from others that we can work with then

I want to make sure that we try to get that forward if there's a chance.

That's basically where I'm at on this.

You had said that there was a two-part on this, and I think that Supervisor Galloway may have started on that when he talked about transportation.

I'm going to let you come back to us with that before hitting the positions.

Great.

policy statements.

And allow me to, before we move on to the next section, sort of summarize what we just heard.

So it seems like Approach 3 has strong support from the Board of Supervisors, potentially with a couple of small tweaks.

So I'm hearing that recognition that the VBRSP program eligibility change may not be

may not seem realistic right now but could be and very well may be a priority of the board ongoing and so originally we talked about the way this was sort of put together we would have just eliminated that one we could instead as we're sort of shifting some items from priorities into the positions and policy statements we could come back on October 18th with that item included as a position and policy statement so that again we don't sort of lose

that conversation and that kind of keeps it as part of your materials for if there's a time in the near future when it feels more feasible to achieve.

But I'll put that back to you.

Is there interest in having staff do that for our next time together?

So we had originally thought we would remove that completely.

So what I'm offering is perhaps we should put it into the positions and policy statements.

It's not a priority, but keep it sort of on the list.

OK.

And then the other item that I wanted to, before we move on, to get clarity on is the photo speed monitoring.

I heard some support for maybe

Understood what what you're saying supervisor Malek, but if we remove the all virtual meetings then three through six becomes three items Down there.

You can put it in number three because it is certainly something which will impact and other counties will be working with us on that.

Well, just a point of clarification so I don't introduce confusion.

The three items that are on the screen in approach three, number three,

would be integrated into your positions and policy statements as we're sort of proposing.

Yeah, I have a question regarding, for example, the line of duty benefits private police department.

I support that.

Would that go under number four under the add legislative priorities?

So number four is sort of a mechanism.

Number three are sort of topics.

So we would, it's just we would not be, all of those we would be lending support to other efforts if when the bills get introduced and that list comes out we would be communicating to our representatives that these are items that Albemarle County has an interest in seeing be successful.

Number one, of course, yes.

Number two.

And number two, yes.

Okay, so really, does it matter?

where everything goes.

I mean, it seems like what I'm hearing is some may want the photo speed cameras moved up because they think that that is under number three, a more important position.

And then the line of duty benefits could go into policy, which we definitely would support Nelson.

Positions and policy statements are our issues that we want to press.

I'm sorry, what?

Positions and policies are Albemarle County specific items that we would want to support and press.

If we want to support other localities or do things, that's not necessarily a position or policy statement that we're doing.

So I get what you're saying, number one and number two, we're going to hammer these, we're going to be at a table with legislators, we're going to hammer one, we're going to hammer two.

Then we're going to be able to talk about, look, we've got some regional things here that we think is important to voice, etc.

And then we have these positions and policy statements

Because of bandwidth, is that something the all virtual meetings because it may come up, it may happen like you said eventually on its own or is that something that

That's what I said.

I thought we were agreeing to just take that out.

And positions and policy statements, because we're not asking for patron level support, that can be a thick document.

Again, it's helpful as things sort of come up on the fly.

for us to have.

So if that came up and it was in our policy statements, it would give you all some of the ability to support it.

So I guess I will ask one more time, is there anybody else who would support putting the photo effort as the new number three?

Because it looks like on this sheet, everything that's currently in three will go to four.

And so in order for us to perhaps look for someone who will help to carry it or co-sponsor with somebody else, because I think that's the only way we're going to make any progress on that issue.

is to have it be one of the very few.

I mean, we're not asking for six things.

So anyway, that's my question to the rest of the board.

I don't have a problem doing that, but I'm just saying that we've been asking for that for decades.

And until the flavor of the General Assembly changes, I don't think it's going to happen.

Well, we will know in a while.

And who we'll be asking to carry will be different as well.

Correct.

they'll be very supportive as opposed to.

Sometimes it takes decades to get there.

I will note that Chair Price also indicated a thumbs up.

I'm not sure if any additional comment on that is sufficient.

I also agree that this is something that I would want to

Yeah We'll have new people so they'll have to stake a claim and then back it up and then we'll have one That's not a new person.

That's going to have to explain Why the last one was so watered down and why?

Thank you.

I believe so.

So we'll prepare for October 18th with approach three with the photo speed monitoring devices added as a third priority.

And then what we'll do is the way that we prepared attachment B, the positions and policy statements, as it appears in your packet right now, they're all kind of just there together.

Mr. Blunt suggested that we create sort of a separate header that these are some of the higher priority items that we could put civil penalties, special exceptions for short-term rentals, all virtual meetings, the line of duty benefits, those types of things so that those are sort of called out as areas that the county specifically would like to see some action or some movement as we head into 24.

Does that sound okay?

Great, thank you.

Okay so then the legislative positions and policy statements, again as I said a little earlier there's not really a downside to having this be a longer document because again it's a really powerful tool for staff to be able to be highly responsive to our state level representatives who are often in a hair on fire session where they are making a lot of decisions very quickly.

So staff finds a lot of benefit during that time of year in having this document available.

So it's detailed in attachment B in your packet today.

Again, it's been updated.

The edits here are updates.

And then also adding some topics.

that the staff put forward thinking about your strategic plan.

So what we did was we took the strategic plan goals and looked at the positions and policy statements and looked for areas where there was not representation of topics that would be pretty closely aligned with a strategic plan.

So there are two items around community-based behavioral health services.

Again, those are related to that.

Those are more specific call-outs related to that CSB study that Jay Lark completed.

There's another one around permanent supportive housing support, one for more sustained growing state support, financial support to localities for emergency management and community resilience efforts.

And then we also found some alignment, again, just bringing up that line of duty benefits item as well.

So those are the edits that we put forward in your packet.

Thank you.

We'll go through our order.

Emily, I'm happy with these.

That looks fine to me.

Thank you.

Could you go a little more detail into permanent supportive housing and other supportive housing?

So in my discussion with Ms.

Demick, the Chief of Health and Human Services, supportive housing, permanent supportive housing and other supportive housing would help with individuals experiencing long-term homelessness.

I'm going to call on Ms.

Pepia.

and that would benefit from state, that's a statewide interest that would benefit from state level funding and then that would free up some local resources for the county to address more temporary needs but I'm gonna let Ms.

Good afternoon, Stacey Pathea, Assistant Director of Housing.

It's really looking at permanent supportive housing itself is really targeted towards persons experiencing chronic homelessness.

It is an opportunity to move them directly from the street into housing, which then allows them to get the supportive services they need directly, usually either within the development itself or connected to other community

And then supportive housing can also be used to serve persons with mental or physical disabilities, which allows them to live pretty independently within the community.

Instead of being sent off to an institution somewhere, they're able to live within the community with the supportive services they need.

And the idea behind this priority would be, there's been some talk in the

at the state level about altering the state's low-income housing tax credit, not the federal part, but creating a tax credit program within the state itself, which would be used to provide funding for permanent supportive housing.

Yes, thank you, and having seen the success of the crossings right across the street, which was funded cooperatively with the county and the city a number of years ago, the impact on the residents has been spectacular.

So that's great.

And I very much appreciate all the things which were added and certainly the pipeline credentialing issue.

There will be some support and this perhaps can be folded into an effort that's being pushed by the administration in Richmond now about increasing apprenticeships and those kinds of things in a very organized way.

We had a meeting last week in Richmond about that.

They're pushing very hard to get this spun up.

So we may be able to ride those coattails for that as well.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Supervisor Kelly.

Yeah, I think I'm good with all the additions and I made my comments about the transportation funding prior.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'm good with these and I especially like what you've added in this.

I think it's very appropriate and I hope we find support because these are high priorities.

I noticed in some of the existing priorities with land use that there are some things where we as a county may need to do some work ourselves on land use issues but that's for another discussion.

Thank you.

Have you gotten what you need?

No, I just have one next.

I have summarized as we went, so I'll just go to my final slide, which is just next step.

So again, we'll be back before you, joined by Mr. Rosenberg on October 18th.

The hope there is that we would finalize those legislative priorities and the legislative positions and policy statements.

And so in your packet, we should have another version of attachments A and B based on the discussion today.

and then we are getting started on scheduling that legislative forum, highly dependent on the outcome of the November election.

But we look forward to finalizing on the 18th so that we have a really productive session with our legislators, our new legislators, heading into the winter session.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Board, it's 4.07, according to the official clock, and we are early.

If there is no objection, we could move item 14 from the county executive up to now, if that's acceptable to Mr. Richardson.

Is that right?

Yeah, it works right.

All right, great.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, members of the board.