Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   11/1/2023

Good afternoon everyone and welcome.

It's my pleasure to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors at 1 o'clock p.m.

on November the 1st, 2023 in Lane Auditorium.

The supervisors who are present are Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District,

Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District.

I'd also like to welcome and mention that we have present on the dais with us today our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg, the Clerk for the Board, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Let me also welcome a number of police officers who are here today, but the two in particular who are on duty for us at the meeting are Officer Andy Muncy and Lieutenant Angela Jamerson, not only to the two of you but to all the members of the force.

I would now ask that you rise as you are able and join in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not aware of any requests by any supervisor to make any withdrawals or amendments to either the consent or the regular agenda.

I just had some questions.

Thank you.

So moved.

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

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

We'll move to item number five, brief announcements by board members.

Yes, I just wanted to say that I joined some of my fellow colleagues with the MicroCAD opening, which is very successful, and I know they will talk about it more in depth.

Also, the Stony Point Fire Rescue Department had its annual meeting, which I attended with Chief Eggleston.

and the parks foundation.

The Albemarle County Parks Foundation is almost ready to launch.

There was a first meeting to decide on the times and when they would meet and to finalize the MOA and the bylaws.

Alright, thank you.

Yes, I also was there at the MicroCat launch and was very pleased to see the crowd and the enthusiasm in the press afterwards.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, just a couple of comments and notes.

I just want to remind folks something to think about as you're in our meeting today, that the leading cause of death in Americans' children is now death by gun violence.

Just let that sit for a few minutes on how really sad that is.

And I'd also like to make a note about Albemarle County.

We have had our triple, AAA, credit rating confirmed by Moody's, S&P, Global, and Fitch, which is really good news for Albemarle County citizens and residents.

and I want to just take the time to thank our hardworking staff, Jeff, for making this presentation to the powers that be and for all their work and for helping us maintain this really important credit rating for our community.

I guess I would just add that yes, in fact, we had a great kickoff yesterday for MicroCat and that is, of course, an Uber-like service for citizens in the Pantops area and the 29 North area from the city limits out in certain ways to have free on-demand transport.

So download the app.

And there is a number that you can call if you want the service if you don't use apps.

So for those of us like me that are not really great app users, there is a number.

But it was a great kickoff and we're hoping that it will be very successful in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

If one doesn't want to cart your pumpkins down to the smash, if you have a place for a compost pile, all the little wild creatures will love to eat every scrap of the inside meat of that pumpkin.

So it's great food for all the little creatures getting ready for winter.

It has been a very successful apple butter season and we had a really great turnout out in the White Hall Village on Friday and Saturday.

Completely sold out of all of the beautiful, golden delicious apple butter this time.

Made a little bit lighter in color and I can't wait to eat some.

So that was great fun.

I would like to take a minute to read the ninth anniversary recognition for the Earliesville Exchange.

because they have just done a wonderful job.

In honor of your ninth anniversary to the Earliesville Exchange, I can't believe those planning meetings were 11 years ago.

Congratulations to all citizens supporting the great success of the Earliesville Exchange over the last nine years.

You have raised in return more than $210,000 to the community to date.

The goal for this year, 2023, is $20,000.

The exchange is the perfect example of the power of one.

One person with an idea.

Benny Clark, who brought this idea here from Colorado.

One family to support that person.

One neighborhood and one congregation to take on the challenge.

And one community who bands together to strengthen the whole and to help individuals.

Many more than one are also involved.

Many other neighborhoods and congregations who joined in this effort.

Many families who have been restored and equipped following a fire or disaster.

Individuals who have found friendship and connections here.

Individuals who have found job training and employment here.

For many successful days and years ahead, we all thank you.

and they had a volunteer's luncheon on Saturday.

It was great fun.

So anyway, that's the really good news from the White Hall District and I'm excited to see what comes next.

And everybody please get some green light bulbs and hang them on your fences in honor of our veterans.

Starting anytime soon.

Alright, thank you.

I'm going to follow up a little bit also on the

The MicroCat and in preparation for yesterday's launch, doing some research, most effective public transportation does not become viable until you have about 10,000 people per square mile.

The city of Charlottesville, roughly 10 square miles, has about 50,000 people, so they're at about half what you normally need for a really strong public transit system.

For those of us in Albemarle County, we have about 50,000 of our population that lives in about 30 square miles of what we call the urban ring.

So fixed route transportation just is not going to be sustainable for that area.

And that means that a lot of people in our urban ring have forgotten about the availability of public transit.

But now, 29 North and Pan Tops with this on-demand microcad, you now can be connected and you can have interconnection.

And so it's really important that people change that mindset.

This is a game changer for our community.

and we really need people to download the app or as Supervisor McKeel said, call in to the number and start using this wonderful service.

I downloaded the app.

I don't live in that area, but when I'm going to find myself over there, I'm looking to do micro CAT and I hope other people will as well.

And I really want to give a shout out to Garland Williams, the director of CAT, because he's operating a very efficient system on basically about half the density of population that you really need for a fixed route system.

You know that triple AAA bond rating that was also mentioned by Supervisor McKeel, there are about 3400 counties in the United States, fewer than 50 have a triple AAA bond rating.

That's like having the highest credit score

for all three of the ratings for your personal credit.

And talking with Mr. Richardson, we are extremely blessed here because it's very difficult for a medium-sized county to achieve that type of a bond rating because we don't have that really expansive economy that, say, a Fairfax County will have.

So Mr. Richardson, Mr. Sumner, everyone in the budget and finance team, frankly everyone who works for the county, the work that you have done to give us that financial stability to keep that bond rating is critical for our ability to continue to fund the things that we need to achieve here in the county.

So Mr. Richardson, thank you very much for your team for what you've done.

Between now and our next board meeting is the annual VACO conference and many of us here will be able to go there for that.

It's an important opportunity for us to interact with members of the boards of supervisors and the executive teams from both counties as well as the planning district commissions and it's really an important time for us to learn and to share the things that we have learned.

So that'll be the 12th through the 14th.

And as you may have noticed, in Virginia, when it comes to novelty earrings, the vote one is the one you get to wear all the time, because we have elections all the time in Virginia.

And if you haven't voted early, you still have a few days.

And if you don't want to vote early, election is next week.

It's an important election, and I really want to encourage everyone to get out and vote.

Do your civic duty.

Government works best when more people participate.

The last thing that I have, and by no means the least, it's another significant accomplishment by employees here, members of the team at Albemarle County.

And our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, has just earned his Master Municipal Clerk Certification.

It's one of the two professional designations granted by the International Association of Municipal Clerks.

To qualify for this designation, you must first earn the Certified Municipal Clerk designation, the CMC, and commit to lifelong learning by attending extensive advanced education programs.

Those that achieved the MMC designation have demonstrated they have actively pursued educational and professional activities and have remained informed of current socio-political, cultural, and economic issues

that affect local governments and municipalities in today's day.

And I have to say perhaps the most important, but not stated in that summary,

is the integrity that these individuals bring to government service.

Mr. Richardson, I know you and members of your senior staff have achieved comparable, and I just want to applaud Mr. Morris for the work that he has committed over the years.

Mr. Morris, I know you don't like this, but I'm going to ask you to stand up for just a moment and get a little public acknowledgement for the dedicated work that you have done.

And I don't get many more opportunities.

This may be the last one, but I'm going to claim the privilege of the chair to make a motion to have a proclamation recognizing Veterans Day.

and if you'll give me just a second, I also have some audio visual to go with this.

Commander Henry, I actually got this for Seize the Day and then I was out of town and I wasn't able to wear it, so I'm going to wear it today.

It's my pleasure to move as a motion a proclamation recognizing Veterans Day.

Whereas throughout our nation's history,

The United States of America has called on its citizens in uniform to serve and protect our national security.

And whereas at home and abroad, generations of American patriots have defended the freedoms and American values of equality, democracy and justice for all.

and whereas November 11, 2023 marks the 85th anniversary of Veterans Day being recognized as a national holiday, on this day and every day, we remember the millions of patriots who have served and sacrificed for the betterment of our nation.

and whereas many veterans continue to serve their country in public schools and government as public officials, teachers, police officers, fire, rescue and other professions providing services to all community members and whereas with a profound debt of gratitude we recognize the veterans employed by Albemarle County Public Schools and local government for their continued service

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize November 11, 2023 as Veterans Day and celebrate all who have served our country around the world

and continue to serve as veterans employed by Albemarle County local government and public schools.

Proudly signed this first day of November 2023 by Donna Price, Chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and adding

Editorially, Captain, Judge Advocate, General's Corps, United States Navy, retired.

Oh, I'm so excited about the proclamation.

My hat got me carried away.

All right, so I make the motion.

And we have a second by Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

And thank you board for reminding me of the formal part of this.

Captain Price, members of the board, Deputy County Executive Lieutenant Commander Henry here.

Thank you for honoring veterans as you do annually for both our community and for those of us that are employed as public servants.

Also thank you for sponsoring

this facility on Veterans Day for what is a just wonderful ceremony celebrating that day.

It'll be this two Saturdays, November the 11th at 11 a.m.

So encourage all to come and attend.

We in local government and schools, we believe we have well over 200 employees that in a prior life raised their right hand

to support and defend our Constitution.

And when their period of service ended via either retirement or obligation, they also found their way to our organization.

Didn't have to raise their right hand.

Well, public safety did.

But for the most part, they chose to have a second career as public servants.

And so it's very, very meaningful to have that.

that community within our community.

And I'm just grateful for all that have chosen to pursue public service as part of their career.

And so with that, I'd like to introduce and I'm going to read bios of three employees, two for local government, one for schools that are just representative of the employees.

There are several in the room today that also have formally served.

as well, but I'd like to call out specifically three and if the gentleman would come up, they may want to offer a few remarks or not.

No pressure on them, but the first is Sergeant Dale Shoup.

Dale served in the United States Army from 1983 to 1986.

He was stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Highlights of his career included Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland testing the advanced infantry anti-tank weaponry system for ballistics and mobility, airborne school, and then multiple live patrols in Nicaragua.

In addition, Dale served in Korea attached to the headquarters company First and 31st, aka Head Hunters, as an armorer.

During this hardship tour, Dale

was attached to the warrior base for 120 days on the 38th parallel, conducted 13 combat patrols on the DMZ, and earned the infamous engine warrior status.

Other awards include the good conduct service medal, expert infantry badge, overseas medal, expert shooter, anti-tank weaponry, and grenadier.

Dell currently works in the community development department as a commercial combination inspector.

Sergeant Roger Snodgrass.

Roger enlisted in the U.S.

Coast Guard in 2002, served on active duty as a gunner's mate specializing in maritime law enforcement, interdiction, and small arms instruction.

He left the Coast Guard in 2007 and then joined the U.S.

Army active duty with the 19th Delta Cavalry Scout

with various roles as squad leaders, section sergeant, senior scout, and master gunner.

During Roger's time in the military, he forward deployed several rotations to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom.

He left active duty in 2014 to relocate back home and continue to serve his community.

Sergeant Snodgrass joined Almore County

as a police officer in 2014 and currently holds the rank of sergeant on evening shift patrol.

And then finally, Renato Ovale,

or Ray, enlisted in the U.S.

Army Reserve as a bridge crew member.

July 28, 1995, served with the 299th Engineer Company Multiple World Bridge out of Fort Belvoir.

He spent three weeks in Guatemala for humanitarian efforts, deployed to Kuwait and Iraq from 2002 to 2003, served in Iraq in 2010 and 2011,

During the first deployment to Iraq, they placed two bridges over the Euphrates River for combat operations.

The second time, his unit was responsible for maintaining the bridges, training Iraqi engineers.

and are responsible for removing six bridges for retrograde operations.

He spent two years with the training battalion as an SSG training ROTC cadets, served multiple roles as an assistant squad leader up to platoon sergeant and recon sergeant.

He retired as an SFC in November of 2015.

Ray joined our Albemarle County School Department building services in August of 2006.

and is an HVAC mechanic, currently holds a position of Senior Energy Management Technician.

Good afternoon and welcome.

Well, thank you for this opportunity.

I'd like to thank the board, the executive team, and our department head for the email communication and a little bit of indirect prodding to get me to participate today.

Heartfelt acknowledgement to my great-grandfather, my grandfather and my uncle for serving in the Royal Air Force, Royal Army and Royal Navy of Great Britain and England.

And thank you to my father who served in the United States Army and my son who served in the United States Army and continues to serve in the intelligence sector.

Good afternoon, my name is Sergeant Snodgrass.

I do not have a speech, but I would like to take a minute to thank Albemarle County as an organization.

As an individual who has multiple friends and family members in other local government, I do have the opportunity to say that this is a high performance organization.

with our border supervisors, our county executive's office, and our command staff with Albemarle County Police Department.

They allow us to be able to provide outstanding customer service day in and day out.

And it does show.

And so I'm thankful for this opportunity.

Good afternoon.

I'm Ray Ovaye.

I just want to say thank you for honoring veterans.

If there are any other veterans in the auditorium, if you would please be so kind as to stand so we can also acknowledge your service.

And we will have comments by the other supervisors, so we'll go through our order.

I am so proud of all of you that have served in the military in any capacity.

I am also from a military family, but I was not in the military myself, just when I was younger, being raised in the military.

It is something that you all do for us to keep our democracy safe,

to keep all of us safe.

It is a solemn oath that you take to protect all of us, and please be aware that all of us really appreciate it.

I think all of America really appreciates your service.

and that's something I hold near and dear to my heart, your service and your commitment to our country.

Thank you.

I just want to echo my gratitude for your service and thank Mr. Henry for highlighting and sharing the, reminding us of the amount of service, veteran service there is within this organization.

It does us proud.

Thank you.

A few weekends ago, I was able to travel back to my hometown to honor the final wishes of my parents.

And part of that was to clear out their home.

And we found my dad's formal dress uniform, which I had never seen in my life.

My brother-in-law, who also served, was navigating me around the different patches and such, telling me, informing me what those were.

and then we also found in a trunk a bunch of letters that my grandfather sent my grandmother during the war but we found the official communication that announced he was MIA before he was a prisoner of war and he thankfully was able to return at the end of World War II and he became a police officer and then we found his cuffs and back then they had a blackjack that I learned was the precursor to mace

It was, we were learning about the blackjack was used to subdue folks.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you and certainly I agree with everything that the other supervisors have said.

I just wanted to share some information.

I thought this was an appropriate time to share some information from Region 10.

our local region 10 organization and so I'm quoting some information from them but the Commonwealth of Virginia is home to more than 780,000 veterans with Gulf War veterans mean Virginia's largest veteran demographic.

as Veterans Day was approaching, Region 10 is sharing information about different resources.

And I'll be honest with you, I wasn't aware of some of these resources, so I'm using this as an opportunity.

Region 10 currently has a partnership with Virginia Lock and Talk.

with resources available for all individuals, including veterans, to receive medical lockboxes and bags as well as trigger locks for firearms to assist individuals and families in locking up lethal means.

Virginia Veterans Service Foundation also has a Homeless Veterans Fund and has been able to provide one-time assistance to homeless veterans to support rent, utility, and rental deposits.

In recent years, and I was not aware of this, Region 10 has hired a veteran peer engagement specialist, Alfredo Garcia Rodriguez, to help bridge the gap between behavioral health services that are specialized to the veteran population.

One simple way that he supports veterans is at Region 10 by sharing a list of local places that offer discounts for service members.

There are quite a few organizations that do this as well as free admissions to venues.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I was fortunate to go to college across the street from the Coast Guard Academy, so wherever you went, Captain Stongrass, it was a great experience there.

I am honored to represent many constituents active in public service and also in leadership with VFW posts such as 2044 out in Earliesville and the American Legion Post 74 in Shadwell.

These organizations take care of their own.

They raised funds most recently to buy a new medical transport van to help their fellows get to remote medical services all the way at Maguire and post-Greg Adams, south of Richmond.

And this brought to mind, at a recent discussion about what might happen out near Rivanna Station, the need for a medical clinic closer who could provide

these kinds of services that people already have to drive 90 miles one way to get regular preventive dental care and things like that.

Also I always use any opportunity I can to ask family members or veterans themselves or neighbors to please

Ask your veteran friends to reapply if you have been denied for benefits under the PACT Act, the TOXICS Act.

Because the eligibility criteria have changed in August and just because one didn't qualify before because you didn't serve in a particular location, now the designation is more having to do with what your job is or was rather than the location in which you served.

So please do not miss that opportunity.

Benefits, if approved, would be retroactive to the date of application, so it is really important not to wait.

I also want to recognize the families of those who served today and who served before, because when you are deployed, your family has to hold it all together until you come home.

And that is an adjustment for the family members, both children and spouses and grandparents, too, that we need to also recognize.

and to help all of those there are many support organizations in our area from Roll Call that Mike Rickard put together to bring all the different service agencies together to make it easier for service people to find what they're looking for from trout fishing lessons to recreational activities.

and Living Free Together is one of those which is offering early Veterans Day, Ruck the Ridge activity at Blue Ridge School, which is a family gathering, all different levels of trail hikes one can choose to enjoy.

So if you need more information about that, please let me know and I'll be glad to connect you.

Supervisor Galloway, I'll have to check with Chief Reeves, but I've heard that the blackjack is now referred to as a low-tech taser.

And Supervisor Malek, I appreciate your comments because it is important that we recognize that military service includes not just those who serve in the military, but those who serve with the military and those who accompany the military.

and so that takes your uniform, your civilian, your contractors as well as family members and I was the service member in my family and frankly found that it was easier to be the person who was on the road out accomplishing the mission

rather than the one left at home having to take care of the family when the car broke, the refrigerator broke, you know, all of those things.

And it is important to recognize how much other service member families help those

who are in a similar

Major in the Marine Corps, myself with my own service you find that that frequently is the case much as public service is the case and you'll find that people who work with or serve the county often have other family members who similarly provides public service so I want to acknowledge all of those who serve the public but today we do recognize in particular military members and so

Thank you, Commander Henry.

All right, Board, with that we can move to item number seven from the public.

Matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the Board or matters pending before the Board.

Yes, thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

The red light indicates your time has expired, and you'll be asked to end your comments.

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

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

Please address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Please do not speak from your seat or out of turn as all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

Good afternoon and please bring that microphone down pointed towards your mouth.

My name is Sally James from the White Hall District.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk today.

I've spoken here previously and now today about the need for improvement for the real estate tax relief program for low-income elderly and disabled homeowners.

Specifically, I am requesting the elimination of the net worth criteria.

Since the BOS meeting in April,

I have spoken with many, many people about their individual situations.

So as I talk to you about my own circumstances, please know I'm representing literally hundreds of people from all areas of our county who are in similar situations.

My husband and I live on two acres north of White Hall in a home that, in part, I designed and built myself with some help when I was still a single parent.

We have made gardens and kept up our simple homestead with pride and I have always intended to stay in this home as long as I live.

I have been self-employed nearly all my life and my little business has had success enough to keep our bills paid.

This month I am finally, at age 71, winding down my work and hoping to have some healthy years to do the many things that I enjoy.

Having been self-employed, I do not have a pension, just a small IRA and my Social Security income.

I have diligently saved enough money to cover normal expenses, but here's the rub.

In the last two years, our real estate taxes are no longer normal.

They have increased for us 37% in those two years.

Quite timely, we received our real estate tax bill this Monday, which confirms this hike.

It will now cost me all of three and a half months of my Social Security check to pay the year's real estate.

taxes.

That's nearly a third of that income.

That is not a sustainable budget.

If the net worth requirement is eliminated from the tax relief program, then people like me who have tried to save enough to live out their lives would not be penalized by having to spend that savings to pay real estate tax.

Raising the limit last year from $200,000 to $250,000 was really no practical help.

As has been said before, continuing to raise real estate taxes will continue to drive many people especially lower income seniors out of this county.

There will be a loss of these capable people with time and experience who can volunteer,

I'm John Hall from the Fry Spring neighborhood in Greater Charlottesville, or as I like to refer to it, QCC, Queen Charlotte City.

What I came to talk about today is the Strategic Underground Program.

I have a poster here that shows a solar shelter at the bottom right and you can see that Dominion Energy has this program called Strategic Underground

and what that's for is for outages where you have overhead transformers and in this other poster that I have I call it the street walk of tomorrow you see the situation now where we have overhead lines, power lines, and media

is also overhead.

And these telephone poles are in sidewalks, as we all know, along with a lot of fire hydrants and other impediments that get in the way of our pedestrian travel.

So what we need to do is

have this strategic undergrounding.

I have a simple schematic here.

I had occasion to visit Hollywood, California recently and what they do with their media, they have these underground tunnels

and holding this right side up, here's the street, here's the sidewalk and you have manholes that go to these underground tunnels.

On one side is the media, the other side is the power lines in these underground tunnels and they're very neat and organized so that you have what you see in Hollywood, California.

is also used in other big cities like Los Angeles and New York City.

So if we can kind of think in terms of looking into the future, if we can have this kind of approach patented, you know, this would be one of my patents.

Thank you.

We have no other speakers signed up, I believe.

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

So moved.

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

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right.

We can move to item number nine, a discussion item, a transit governance study.

And Ms.

Good afternoon, Chair Price, members of the board.

My name is Sandy Shackelford, and I'm the director of planning and transportation for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

I am pleased to be here this afternoon for the discussion of the regional transit governance study that the TJPDC has been working on.

I want to mention a couple of colleagues in the audience today that have been contributing substantially to this project.

First of all, Lucinda Shannon is in the office.

She has been the project manager.

And Christine Jacobs and David Blunt are also

in the audience today.

And then joining me today for the presentation is Dr. Amonine Yanksen.

She is the project manager from our AECOM team.

I'm not sure what is happening right now.

Oh, oh, gotcha.

Gotcha.

OK.

I'll let the AV experts handle that part of it.

But I'm joined today by Dr. Monine Yankson.

She is the project manager for our AECOM consulting team and she is going to do the bulk of the presenting today.

The Regional Transit Governance Study was initiated as a follow-up to the Regional Transit Vision Plan that the TJPDC completed about this time last year.

The Regional Transit Vision Plan established a unified vision for transit service throughout our region and the intention of the governance study is to help us identify opportunities to more formally coordinate regional transit services and dedicate funding to support the realization of transit operations identified in the vision plan.

I want to thank you at Albemarle County as well as the City of Charlottesville and the Department of Rail and Public Transportation for their financial support of this initiative.

You all have given us the opportunity to continue to advance the achievement of regional transit priorities in our area.

I also want to take just a moment to acknowledge that there's another transit presentation later on the agenda today.

And Albemarle County staff will be providing additional clarification on the specific purpose, goals, and findings from that locally initiated transit analysis during their presentation.

Good afternoon.

Can you adjust your mic?

Okay.

Towards your mouth.

Hello.

Excellent.

So thank you again for having us here to present in this study.

The purpose of today's meeting, sorry.

Yes, okay.

Okay.

The purpose of today's meeting is to provide the board with an overview of the study and our current progress and the bulk of the time we want to use to receive feedback from you on the topics of the transit governance we are going to discuss and discuss any other priorities or concerns that you have as we move forward.

Now as Sandy mentioned, this study came out of the Transit Vision Plan.

Now this was a Region 10 initiative funded by the TJPDC and it was a collaborative effort.

The purpose was to create a collaborative vision for transit that could be supported by the entire region.

And so certain visions were put forward.

One was to create a region that could work in a collaborative manner, in an inclusive manner, and using an equitable process to provide a transit system that represents both urban and rural needs.

And so there were certain pillars that guided this transit vision plan.

Now out of this transit vision plan came the governance study.

Part of the outcomes were two networks that were designed.

and one of the networks which we call the constrain network was based on the assumption that a regional entity that could generate additional revenue for transit purposes could be developed here in the Charlottesville region.

And so what this network would go to support is increasing the amount of service both within the urban core and the rural areas.

what it would look like in the urban network would be increasing the days of service all the service would run seven days a week reducing the headways making you have to wait only about 20 to 30 minutes each for

for a bus, also providing specific types of other services to specific jurisdictions.

Now, this increase in service would represent increasing CATS current service by about 113%.

So that's a substantial increase.

For the rural network, what we are looking at is more hours of service in a day, meaning you have to wait around less for a bus to come.

having more service throughout the week as well as additional routes to increase the accessibility of the jurisdiction, the jurisdictions.

This would represent about a 154% increase in John's current service and the estimated operational price tag on this was about 35 million dollars.

So the goal really of this study is to begin the process of looking at an entity, a regional body that could one, identify areas where we could increase revenue dedicated to transit investment and then setting up a governance structure to oversee that funding mechanism and also serve as a regional planning body.

So now, just going through a little overview of the base.

Before I go into the details of the governing structure, we have some check-in questions.

And we're hoping that this will be a time for feedback from you all.

And so just in the first question, what are your thoughts on adopting a regional approach to governing transit?

OK.

Any supervisors?

How many comments you'd like to make on that?

Well, I will just throw out one is to have decision-making and funding all linked together so that everybody's involved in the decision-making and planning, all the various stakeholders.

And I would concur with that coordinated approach.

I lived in the Virginia, well you don't know, but I lived in the Virginia Beach area for 18 years and we kind of called it the Seven Sisters, the Seven Cities down there.

Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Chesapeake, Hampton, whatever.

And they really did not talk with each other from the regional approach.

They were more focused on their own individual locale, which meant you did not have the interconnection between the different areas.

and so I definitely believe that a regional approach would be much better for us here locally.

I also believe a regional approach will work because we don't have the population in Albemarle County or in Charlottesville but together and with some of these other areas we do have the population that we'll be able to

make this work.

And I think that's extremely important to have.

I would agree with the regional approach and when we're, just for clarity for maybe folks that might be listening, the regional approach

So yes, my concern, of course, is going to be that we represent very different densities.

And so recognizing that there are different kinds of needs because of those different densities, but also recognizing that we share a problem and that the number of people who have to commute from long distances are to work in the city and in the county.

And I concur with that.

I think Albemarle County is probably the perfect example of those different needs and interests because we do have the more densely populated urban ring and the very sparsely populated rural areas.

So just within our county we face many of the issues that in combination the TJPDC or local governments face.

I agree with both comments.

The fact that we can have something like micro transit, maybe for the rural areas, be able to expand something like that, but then to have fixed routes going into the other counties, which would bring the residents from those counties into the places of employment in Albemarle, which would lessen trips also.

I would just comment that to provide service hourly, what we think about as fixed route service for the rural area could very well be very expensive.

And so we need to really think out of the box.

We're just starting a pilot for microtransit, which is what Bea's referring to, and thinking about this through the lens of how can we afford and provide transit for the rural areas in the most effective but cost-efficient way.

And microtransit could very well be a part of that in the rural areas, as opposed to just providing more and more fixed route, which would

In my opinion, you'd end up with a lot of empty buses.

I'm just saying, right?

But we need to serve the urban and the rural, and the rural communities certainly need it, whether it's Greene or Nelson or just rural Albemarle County.

But just to put in fixed routes in those areas is probably not going to be the solution.

The only thing I would add is we are fortunate to have had our paratransit partners who do provide absolutely essential transport.

They have to arrange it ahead of time at the moment until this new service came along.

But to be able to get people who are eager to work and able to work but cannot drive.

and for them to be able to participate in the economy at all, having the John available to come to their house at Earliesville or wherever it is and help them get to work has been very, very important.

So expanding on that baseline to see how we can improve that even more will be great.

I just wanted to say that for the other counties, surrounding counties, a park and rides in those counties with a point with the

established area where they could then bring in a lot of people into Albemarle.

That's what I was talking about regarding the fixed routes, to be able to go there with parking rides.

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

And this may not be the time to bring this up, but I do think when we think about regional entities and our regional partners, we really need to remember UVA.

UVA has been a participant in the regional transit partnership.

They began as a non-voting member and quickly

I guess I'm just going to add, this sort of comes back to your first question, one of the benefits of adopting a regional approach is to recognize that we need to coordinate all of these different services.

I think it's going to be very important for people to be able to know and rely on public transit to be able to understand how they're going to get from point A to point B regardless of whether they have to go there via one service to get to one part and then another service to get to another part.

Right, and that's what we talk about often, Jim, when we talk about seamless for the receiver, the person who's riding.

We may have different structures within our localities, but for the rider it needs to be seamless.

Right, that point that it's got to be a technology that, much like if you remember early cell phones, you had to have these codes every time you moved to a new region.

and now they can automatically go from tower to tower.

Well, whatever technology is being used needs to automatically transfer you, if necessary, from one provider to another.

Thank you and that's certainly one of the benefits of a regional approach in terms of coordination.

We have different transit providers in the area but having that strategic and collaborative approach can help when different types of technology is being rolled out or even types of marketing campaigns so that to the public everything seems seamless in their connection.

So now I'll move on to the

the characteristics of what we are looking at for establishing a transit authority.

Now the details of how this can be set up or established would depend on what the best approach is as we make more progress and work with legislators, the legislators.

So one could be to create a new

New legislation or to modify an existing legislation that allows for the creation of a transit authority but does not have a funding component.

And so those are the two general ways in which we can look at it.

But in terms of membership, we are looking at the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County being the initial members, but also having the rural localities join

as an option.

We also want to give an opportunity like we mentioned having UV as a partner and so having the opportunity for the university or other entities to also be part of this.

An example would be at the state level could be the DRPT or regional entities like the MPO or the TJPDC to also be at the at the table to help make

decisions for transit.

And representation on the board would be appointed from the governing bodies of the localities.

So looking at elected officials from the board to serve for this authority.

Now, what this would mean is that the transit authority will take on the role of preparing regional

a regional transit plan so it'll take on currently there's no entity that does regional planning for transit and so that'll be the sole role of this entity and once it has a plan

have the authority and the power to implement those services, whether it be by contracting with the existing providers like we have with Jaunt or CAD or some other means.

We also want to make sure that they are able to enter any, have the authority to enter any kind of contracts that are needed for the services that they need to provide.

This is really important because the regional plan becomes

the vision in which that the counties that are participating in the authority would work towards and would fund various projects out of.

This could be additional service like you were saying are the rural localities added on whether it be a microtransit or more on-demand service or for the urban areas increasing the amounts of service reducing headways.

We also want the authority to have the power to provide general oversight of any area programs when it comes to transit and also take on the responsibility of long-range transit planning as well as apply for any kinds of grants, coordination with the Commonwealth Transportation Board and generally advocate for transit needs for the whole region.

Now part of this authority, how to make sure that we have some accountability to the local governments or the taxpayers is to make sure that we put in place some indicators of accountability.

Now there are different ways in which this can be seen.

One is looking at representation by board membership from the various local governments, having the elected officials, meaning that it represents the people that elected them.

We can also have members from the state appointed by DRPT or even from the legislative bodies.

We also recommend that there be a technical advisory committee of staff members and representatives from the transit operators that we currently have to provide direction and guidance

on planning for transit services.

Another factor is creating or coming to agreement on certain decision-making criteria.

These will be the guiding principles for regional investment.

So an example could be equity, economic impact, multimodality.

And that is what projects would be weighed against, whether they can be implemented or not, also for the planning phase.

We also ask that there be financial reporting and funding oversight.

Now these are all checks and balances to ensure that the entity is accountable.

So I gave a very high level overview.

We didn't go into the details.

But before we go into the next section, which is looking at the revenue generation, I want to ask a general question of an overview of the regional transit authority.

All right, let's start on this side over here.

Yeah, I would say a general understanding is what I have at this point.

Sure.

Just for clarity, what we're discussing at this point with transit in our community is moving away from

the partnership towards an authority.

And when we began the partnership as an advisory partnership that was always the goal.

We were clear about the fact that we were going to come together and talk about the challenges of transit in our region.

and looking towards the future of the possibility of an authority.

And I think much of the work that we've done over the last few years is gaining trust among the localities and showing that we can in fact play in the same sandbox.

And we have really done a good job, I believe, with that at the partnership level.

And I'm excited about the idea of moving now towards an authority.

Now that means lots of things to different people, right?

And so that's where the rubber's going to meet the road as to how we work this out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That was a very good explanation.

I appreciate it, but I'm good right now.

Excuse me, thank you.

I think I'm okay at the moment, but one question I will leave and you can answer it at the appropriate time.

There are two chunks.

We're looking at the governance side and the funding side.

So can, is there authority, and I'm talking about authority from the General Assembly, implied in our ability to set up the authority, that we could have the governance structure done in advance of figuring out the funding so that it could be upstanding and agreed to.

That's correct.

It just sounds like we might do better with the legislative part if we prove it that we can do the governance part.

And I support moving towards a transit authority from a partnership and I believe I have a good understanding of the role

So now what we want to do is give a brief overview of some of the revenue generation options.

What we did as part of this study was to look at different types of options where we could generate additional funding to fund these services.

And so we did a high level estimate of looking at what the current funding structure is with our providers CAD and Jaunt.

and look at the increase in service as well as potential revenue that can come.

And so I'd want to point out what you're looking at here is the 2021 operating revenues for Cadence Johns.

The abnormality you see in federal assistance from Johns is through

because of the COVID relief funds.

But generally the federal funding is consistent throughout the years.

And so we looked at the state of the current funding and looked at some of the operating, the cost estimates that we have.

Assuming that the federal contribution right now would remain pretty much the same, we saw a potential increase in the state contribution.

but that would leave us with a deficit of about 19 million to full operating purposes only so this doesn't include the ADA associated service or any capital that would be needed but as a high level estimate to start looking at the constrained network if we

We're trying to find ways to fund services for operating costs up to this amount.

And so what we did then was review different types of funding from the different authorities in the Commonwealth.

We looked at NVTA which is the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.

the HRTAC in the Hampton Roads and CVTA which is the newest of them in Central Virginia the Richmond region and what we saw on the left side is a list of the different sources of transit of revenue that go towards their transportation funding

Now based on this and several discussions with representatives from some of these authorities as well as VDOT, we narrowed down to exploratory options for the Charlottesville region to these four, exploring what those could look like and how much they could potentially generate.

So we looked at the sales and use tax,

A transient occupancy property or real estate tax.

Now it could be one of these, it could be some other.

We can be flexible depending on what the guidance the legislature gives.

But for our analysis we wanted some options to look at as a starting point.

Also, I would want to say that the numbers that we provide are based on the percentages from these other authorities.

MVTA, HR tax, CVTA.

And so those were just starting points to look at.

So looking at estimated revenues from additional sources, looking at sales and use, we separated them into Albemarle and the city and grouped their rural counties together.

We have a rough projection of a five-year outlook on how much could be generated on sales, on personal property, on lodging and real estate tax.

Now the percentages again can be reduced or increased based on

what is agreed upon by the localities.

But this is to show that with the authority from the legislature, it can actually be done in terms of generating enough funding to fund additional services in the region and have this governance body

to oversee how this funding is used.

So that's a very high level overview.

We have three different technical memos on each of the stages and we have a fourth and a final report that will come out that provide more details to everything that we've discussed today.

And so our last set of questions that I have for you today are just

your thoughts on some of the revenue sources identified the four which we've been we we provided estimates for and any allocation priorities that you may have that could make this challenging

I also want to know if there are any issues in your opinion, any structure in terms of the governance that would make you support this.

Oh, that could be a challenge.

And then last would be your thoughts on the immediate next steps.

So we'll start with the first one.

Alright, we're going to start again from the far side because Supervisor Galloway had to miss part of the presentation to give him a little time to catch up a little bit.

So regarding what I would support, you mentioned that

Okay, so that's a roadblock right there depending on what happens.

So I really can't comment, yes, let's do that because of the fact that if we have to go to the legislature and they have to give us permission then that's problematic at best.

But otherwise, I mean, and I'm not prepared to say exactly which allocations if it's

the transit, the lodging tax or some of the other taxes that I would support because I'd want to get a little bit more in depth.

But I mean, those are all definitely good ideas.

No, okay.

So I mean, personally, I would just like to see that raised, but I think we have to go to the legislature for that too, I think.

Maybe?

Alright.

Okay, so those are my comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just looking at your series of questions, my views on the funding sources identified, those are pretty obvious ones and the ones that the other localities have used.

I don't have enough information to really identify.

I think that would be part of the work.

of the governance, the authority as we set it up because they will be able to actually determine and there may be other options.

The other point that I want to make to folks is we have this constrained and unconstrained and the numbers look huge.

Those numbers mean that all of the localities join in, which may not necessarily be the way this authority starts.

If it starts with fewer localities,

then those numbers that are needed would go down.

I'm just saying, right?

and between the constrained and unconstrained, there's options in the middle.

This is not a you have to choose this one or you have to choose that one.

We can do things that would change those amounts.

I think that's really important because we're not necessarily going to have to choose between those two.

that could make this challenging?

Well, I think I just named a couple.

In your opinion, what government's decision-making structure would you support?

You were talking about the elected officials, and I'm supportive of what you recommended as far as for the authority having elected officials as well as representation from, say,

I think all of, so I think your recommendations were fine.

What are your thoughts on immediate next steps?

I would, while legislation, I think we have to have a parallel process.

And I would love for us to get to the authority recognizing that we're not going to have a funding structure then.

But if we can get to the authority, then we can determine a funding structure.

In the meantime,

working with our legislators writing the legislation that we need.

So I kind of think about this as a parallel process.

And I think there is concern, I will just say this, there is concern this year with the legislature that we have so many new folks in the General Assembly this year.

but that, so rushing into something in this current upcoming legislative session is probably not practical but that's okay because we can have a parallel process going on looking towards with an authority the next legislative session after some of our new folks have been able to get solidly on their feet.

some issues with the sort of projections that came out of the study for different percentages of taxes and I'm not sure I fully understand where all those are coming from.

I recognize that these are potential sources of funding.

I appreciate that.

When it comes to looking at funding, I think there's got to be

an agreement among those represented on the authority as to how their locality is benefiting and contributing to this and that's going to proceed how we figure out where that's going to come from in particulars.

So I also agree that we kind of have to do both at the same time as far as next steps.

I want to see us work together to form the authority to get some agreement among the different

constituent representatives as to how this could work while hoping that, you know, we can also pursue legislation.

Thank you.

I think I can, oh, Supervisor Galloway.

Was I not next?

I'm sorry.

I jumped again.

And I'm sorry I wasn't here for your introduction.

Just didn't want to start, if I said name, like just pull a name out of there.

Luckily, we had a presentation on this at our MPO meeting, so I'm somewhat caught up, so I apologize that I had to step out.

Funding sources, I think the concern, especially since this is a regional body,

and I'm saying this when it was brought up at the TJPDC commission meeting when you had representatives from all the different counties there.

When you start saying specific amounts to a sales tax or transit occupancy tax or any of that, they feel like they're being locked in that, oh, we have to do that one thing.

And when they do that, that freaks them out, especially some of the surrounding counties that are more adverse to the word tax and taxes and taxing.

than other places.

So, you know, when we think of it regionally, at the end of the day, those constrained and unconstrained things that we're trying to achieve brings value to all the counties in our commission and to the TJPDC and to our planning district commission.

and it really doesn't matter how you raise the funds in your locality, we could choose TOT, they may want to pull it somewhere else.

At the end of the day, you have to go, this is my transit budget, this is our transit budget, and what are we going to spend on that?

What are we going to program to go to that?

And then, you know, if Nelson County wants to fund it in a different way than Albemarle County, that's fine, doesn't matter, they just need the dollars.

The thing that I started to think about after having a couple presentations on this is without the transit authority, we don't realize the funds the transit authority gets us.

So the money that we start giving to this becomes multiplied in a way that is not currently being done.

So that of course we should do and I'm supportive and would want to do that.

So right now in Albemarle, I mean what's our, who knows, what's our budget for transit right now?

Look, I look right at Andy, I found you, I could tell you were sitting there.

I was like, Andy's here somewhere.

And then what's our amount for the unconstrained if we went and whatever it was, sales tax, whatever, 16 for us?

So $12 million could be the rest if we wanted to realize the vision of the constrained budget.

So that extra $4 million says we get all these other services.

If we wanted to spend $12 million in Albemarle to realize this constrained wish list, then it comes down to a budget decision.

Yeah, we should be having that conversation.

That's my view on that.

So I'm not as concerned as saying well that's going to come from sales tax or TOT or this.

It's all going into the bucket and all this stuff's going out of the bucket and it's just a matter of how much we want to send out of the bucket to transit.

But as a region we have to understand that we cannot realize extra dollars to make a regional transit system work without creating the authority.

So the authority is critical for that.

What are some budget allocation priorities that could make this challenging?

Everything else in the budget.

In your opinion, what governance decision-making structure would you support?

I've been on the record multiple times saying we need a regional transit authority.

It was interesting at the MPO meeting, the conversation quickly turned into Charlottesville Albemarle UVA.

And we talked about, well, wait a minute.

If you have these other counties involved, it maybe puts a different pressure on UVA to realize, well, wait, this isn't just about the three entities.

There's a lot of employees that live in those surrounding counties that they could be a willing participant from a funding perspective, too, if all these other counties start to participate in it.

So we don't get there without a regional transit authority.

And it can't just be Albemarle, Charlottesville, and UVA.

It has to be broader and bigger than that.

and then your thoughts on immediate next steps while legislative actions, well just I would encourage and I think the TJPDC staff is doing this continually talking to the staff, the staffs in each county about what, how a regional system could, should work using things like the Afton Express to show how regional systems improve things for everybody

So that by the time the conversation comes up, this is your price tag.

And do you think there's value for paying that?

That they are ready to say yes or yes to 80% of it or whatnot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is every time it's getting a little closer, which is very exciting.

As far as the list of possible funding sources, these are all allocated other places right now, as was mentioned about other parts of the budget.

So I would assume that we're talking about increasing additional or reallocation, and that's something that is a budget discussion for sure.

But another benefit that we might

be able to achieve in the next round of governance is if we can change the level of federal funding significantly by increasing what we get if we can figure out a way to count the UVA riders.

That will put us in a whole different funding strategy for the federal level, which then helps the locality as well.

And we'll use the Penn State example for that.

and getting the authority in place, which I think is the priority right now that's sort of out of order, would then allow that transfer of our existing transit money into the authority pot, which then sweetens, you know, gets it ready to then receive others.

Thank you.

Bullet number one, any, all others?

and I think the other comments from the supervisors have covered it.

Number two, I don't have any additional comments.

Number three, the governance decision-making structure.

One of the challenges here for a regional transportation authority are things that include, among others, Albemarle County's population is ten times that of one of the other counties in the

in the planning district, six times that of another county, two and a half times that of Charlottesville.

In addition to varying population numbers, we have disparate population densities.

Charlottesville being the most dense, our urban ring being next, and then from there it becomes even more sparsely populated which adds challenges to finding commonality in certain areas of trying to provide the regional transportation.

I'm not really sure exactly how that equates to the structure and I don't have anything further to add to the immediate next steps.

Any further comments?

Supervisors?

Okay, anything further?

No, the next steps would be to finish up with a study and our report will have the details of our recommendations and really as we've talked about the immediate next steps, because we are looking at existing legislation that is already there, the only thing missing is the funding component.

what that the only thing needed for that to be enacted would be for the members or the localities that want to participate in that to pass a resolution at their local governing bodies to set up a board and that's a way to get momentum for the rest of the work that could be done and so we hope that as we provide you with our final report and you get a chance to look through the details we could start some of the actual work to get this started.

I just want to say this is so exciting and I know all of us have been waiting for this and this is really Very exciting for the whole region.

Thank you.

All right, thank you Chair Price and members of the Board of Supervisors, Jessica Hirsch-Ballering, Principal Planner with Admiral County Community Development.

So today I'll be giving an update on the SmartScale program, specifically talking about the SmartScale process review being undertaken by the Office of Intermodal Planning and Investment, VDOT, and DRPT.

Ms.

Sandy Shackelford from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission spoke to this board a couple of months ago about this process review.

I'm going to build off of that presentation focusing on the potential impact of the process reviews proposed changes to Albemarle County.

So this is the agenda for today's presentation.

First, we'll begin with some essential background on SmartScale and the ongoing process review.

Next, we'll talk about the perceived trends and biases in the SmartScale scoring process that are the focus of this process review and the motivation for the proposed changes.

Then we'll discuss the proposed changes.

We'll take a moment to compare all of this to Albemarle County's transportation planning process.

We'll finish with the high-level takeaways regarding how the proposed changes are likely to impact Albemarle County and we'll conclude with next steps or what approaches the Board of Supervisors might take if you support or disagree with the proposed changes.

So while I know that the board is very familiar with SmartScale at this point, I want to highlight a few items that are essential for understanding later points in the presentation.

So first, the SmartScale grant program is the primary method for funding large-scale transportation projects in Virginia.

Also, SmartScale does not require a local match, so we can request the funding for the full cost of the project when we use SmartScale.

Also, SmartScale is a competitive program with funding going to the projects with the highest score.

SmartScale scores are a ratio of the project's benefit versus the project's cost.

To calculate the project's benefit, reviewers consider how the project will impact six factors, which conveniently spell out the word scale with an extra E. Those factors are safety, congestion, accessibility, land use, economic development, and environment.

Lastly, the smart scale process review began many months ago with the first presentation by state level staff to the Commonwealth Transportation Board happening back in February of this year.

And the smart scale process review is expected to conclude with policy adoption at the December 4th Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting.

Before we get into the weeds of what could be a little bit of a technical presentation, I want to lead with the takeaways to help focus everyone on those changes that are likely to have the greatest impact on Albemarle County.

If the proposed changes are to take effect, we can expect to see the following.

Fewer projects funded through SmartScale overall.

Larger projects being more likely to be funded versus smaller projects.

It would become more challenging for the county to receive funding for bicycle and pedestrian focused projects.

And finally, if Albemarle County is successful within the proposed scoring paradigm, funded projects may not be consistent with county planning efforts and resident project requests.

We'll come back to these and add a bit more nuance at the end of the presentation.

So the smart scale process review is really a response to the perceived trends and biases outlined on this slide.

I think that the info on this slide is actually more important than the specific changes being proposed because these perceived trends clarify what state level staff consider to be problematic with the current smart scale program.

So first, there's been a concern that localities, MPOs, and PDCs across the Commonwealth are submitting low quality and incomplete smart scale applications.

So while there's a lot of reasons for that, the main takeaway is that based on the data, that perception is true.

There's also a perceived bias towards smaller projects or those requesting less than $10 million as compared to larger projects.

But what the data shows is a bit more nuanced.

So small projects were funded at a higher rate versus large projects.

And the number of small projects funded is greater than the number of large projects funded.

So in round five, 106 small projects were funded as compared to 46 large projects being funded.

However, small projects received less funding overall in every round versus large projects.

So in round five, small projects received $538 million and large projects received $962 million.

So with all that data, state level staff interpreted the data to say that yes, there is a bias towards small projects.

There's also a perceived bias towards projects for which bike and pedestrian infrastructure is the principal improvement.

But again, the data is nuanced.

Bike and pedestrian projects were funded at a higher rate as compared to highway projects.

So across all five rounds of SmartScale that have happened, bike and pedestrian projects had a 59% success rate, highway projects had a 47% success rate.

However, the number of bike and pedestrian projects and the amount of overall funding that went to bike and pedestrian projects was significantly lower versus highway projects.

So across all five rounds, there were 135 bike and pedestrian projects funded versus 376 highway projects.

and looking at the amount of funding each of those project types received, Bike and Ped projects received $519 million over the course of five rounds as compared to one and a half billion dollars across all five rounds going to highway.

Again, state level staff interpreted this data to say yes, there is a bias towards Bike and Pedestrian projects.

However, I think what we're really seeing is a bias in the success of bike and ped projects, not the number of projects being funded or the proportion of available funding received.

Any changes to address this perceived bias may result in fewer bike and ped projects receiving funding, a reduced success rate for bike and ped projects, and or a reduced proportion of smart scale funding going to bike and ped projects.

Moving on, next there is a perceived bias that one of the six factors determining smart scale scores, land use, has an outsized scoring impact.

This land use factor awards points for projects that provide enhanced multimodal opportunities in areas of high population and employment density, both now and expected in the future.

This means that a bike and pedestrian or a transit project in an area like Rio and 29 is going to score higher than that exact same project being proposed for somewhere far outside of the development area in the factor of land use.

So state level staff determined that this perception of an outsized impact is real.

And their concern is that the land use factor score is more related to project location as opposed to project benefit.

But for Admiral County, any proposed changes to reduce the impact of the land use factor are going to impact our ability to receive funding for projects in the places where we have a lot of residents and jobs.

Next, there is a concern that the congestion factor does not account for the full future project benefits.

This is because the score is currently based off of what congestion looks like right now, even though the project, if it's funded, won't be built for several years and many things can change in the interim.

The way the scoring works right now benefits slower growing communities.

Lastly, there is a concern that the economic development factor score does not meaningfully represent actual economic impact.

Right now, the economic development factor score is largely based on the square footage of proposed development near the transportation project.

The state level staff argue that square footage just isn't a good measure of economic development, such as how many jobs that development will bring to the area.

There were other perceived trends and biases that state level staff reviewed and determined not to be true.

I've chosen not to cover those here in the interest of time.

On to the proposed changes.

So this slide highlights the proposed changes most relevant to Albemarle County.

So first, state-level staff have proposed reducing the number of applications localities, MPOs, and PDCs can submit each round.

So currently, localities like Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville, as well as our MPO and PDC, can submit four applications each for each round, while larger localities can submit ten.

The most recent proposal by state-level staff is that localities between 100,000 and 200,000 residents, like Albemarle County, will be able to continue to submit four applications.

Smaller localities like the City of Charlottesville will go down to three applications.

Larger localities will go down to six.

MPOs and PDCs like the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO and the TJPDC with less than 250,000 residents will also go down to three applications.

This change is intended to address the problem of low quality and incomplete applications being submitted and it's also expected to reduce the number of applications for small projects as localities are expected to focus their limited number of applications on the largest and most pressing priorities.

Second, state level staff want to transform the land use factor from a standalone score to a multiplier of the total score.

This change would also increase the safety and congestion factors or possibly the safety and accessibility factors as a proportion of the total score.

The increase in the impact of these factors is due to the proportion of the total score that had belonged to land use being redistributed to these other factors.

And the reason I have safety and congestion or maybe safety and accessibility is because the Commonwealth Transportation Board is still deciding what it is they want to choose, where they want to redistribute those land use points.

So state-level staff say that this change is intended to prevent land use from being the sole driver of success.

This would reduce the impact of land use and increase the impact of the safety and congestion or accessibility factors.

On its face, this doesn't sound like a completely bad thing.

We want projects to improve safety and reduce congestion or improve accessibility.

The problem comes in with how SmartScale measures safety.

To get points for the safety factor, the project needs to reduce the number and rate of severe and fatal crashes.

First, this is very reactive.

If there isn't a problem yet, there's no way to proactively improve safety.

Further, people currently bike and walk at lower rates than driving, so bike and pedestrian crashes are rarer, and it's difficult to interpret trends from that data in the same way we can from motor vehicle data.

Lastly, it makes it impossible to improve safety by smart-scale definitions by adding bike and pedestrian infrastructure where none currently exists.

Next, state level staff propose limiting the type of projects for which PDCs and MPOs can apply.

So currently PDCs and MPOs are restricted to submitting projects that are on corridors of statewide significance or a regional network.

This change would limit the types of projects PDCs and MPOs could apply for on the county's behalf.

I won't go into detail on this because Sandy covered it pretty well in her presentation.

But suffice it to say there are lots of projects that the MPO and PDC have applied for in the past that they would no longer be eligible to submit with the proposed change.

Next, state level staff propose calculating congestion benefits 10 years into the future instead of the present for the congestion factor.

This is intended to capture the full benefit of the submitted project.

Calculating congestion benefits 10 years on is actually how the congestion factor was scored back in rounds one and two.

It was changed to calculate the congestion benefit in the current year for rounds three, four, and five, so this proposed change just puts us back where we were.

Lastly, state-level staff proposed transforming the economic development factor to focus on major projects that align with the state's economic development goals.

There are also some process changes proposed, such that scoring for the economic development factor would rely heavily on economic development sites being entered into VEDP's Virginia Scan database for verification.

Overall, we don't know how this change will impact Albemarle County because we don't know if economic development sites that had previously contributed to our economic development score will be eligible within Virginia Scan.

It's just information we don't have right now.

What we do know is that an analysis by the state level staff shows that this change, as proposed, would have the greatest positive impact on large highway projects and a slight negative impact on bike and pedestrian projects when they applied the change to round five submitted projects.

Lastly, I want to put these proposed changes in the context of Admiral County's transportation planning process.

Broadly, Admiral County Transportation Planning prioritizes mixed-use development that reduces the need for vehicular trips through safe and comfortable pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure.

This position is informed by a number of county plans such as the Comprehensive Plan and the Climate Action Plan.

Further, we hear from residents through the planning process and in email and phone call requests that they want multimodal planning.

On this slide, you'll see two quotes pulled from participants in the Comprehensive Plan update process showing their desire for multimodal planning, especially in mixed-use development areas.

I'll give you a second to look at those.

And back to our takeaways.

If the proposed changes take effect, we can expect to see fewer projects funded through SmartScale overall, larger projects being more likely to be funded versus smaller projects, it becoming more challenging to receive funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects.

And I want to add a little bit of nuance here.

So when we've heard about this, we've also heard, well, there's other opportunities to apply for funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects, specifically revenue sharing and transportation alternatives.

So the alternative funding opportunities for these kinds of projects are limited in a couple different ways.

They're limited by request amount.

So revenue sharing, we can only request up to $10 million per project.

Transportation alternatives, we can only request up to $2 million per project.

They're limited by required local match.

So SmartScale, we had no required local match.

Revenue sharing, we have a 50-50 local match.

And transportation alternatives, we have a 80-20 match with the county providing 20% of the project cost.

There's also administrative challenges to revenue sharing and transportation alternatives that we don't see with SmartScale.

And lastly, if Amarillo County is successful within the proposed scoring paradigm, funded projects may not be consistent with the county planning efforts and resident project requests as outlined on the previous slide.

And that takes us to next steps.

The Board of Supervisors may consider directing staff to submit comments in support of and or against any of the proposed changes.

We do have a timeline on that direction because, as I said before, the smart scale process review is expected to conclude with policy adoption at the December 4th Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting.

We'd want to submit comments ahead of that date.

All right.

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Wow.

That was quite a presentation.

Thank you.

I've got a couple questions.

I know that Charlottesville, they're going to be able to apply for three smart scale.

We're going to be able to apply for four.

Yeah, I know we're looking at a different project, but to do a grade separation, did anybody, I guess if it's too late, fine, but I thought of, while you were talking, I thought what if Charlottesville and Albemarle submitted the same project for that, to do the grade separation.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, just jumping in.

First of all, because there's already a funded project right now, another project at the location would probably not be eligible unless they rescinded the funding that we had already received at that location.

OK.

And I'm glad to see that they're focusing on safety, because I think that's extremely important, focusing on safety.

Other than that, I mean, there was so much information there, but I'll probably get back to you during the week or two.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, yes, there was a lot of information, great presentation, really appreciate it.

I don't know how much this, clearly the train has left the station, this question of whether we're trying to turn the train a little bit here or there.

I was disturbed when I heard your description of land use, but I also, especially the importance of location, but I also get that as a multiplier it could still be used and have some advantages.

and I also appreciate the inclusion of congestion as a possible factor there in that.

So these are possibly beneficial.

I guess I come back to our previous discussion where we looked at all the different transportation projects and one of the things that I thought we came away with is

The need, recognizing the need to parse that list so that we understand which projects work together, how they can be put together in a way that makes them a larger project, if you will, a more impactful project because this is where we're going to get the most bang for our buck and that's what we need to do.

I don't mean to be saying we're gaming the system, but we've got to

played by the rules that come out and I don't know how much we can change them at this point.

I agree that safety is important, but I am disturbed by the excessive concentration on past fatalities and understanding safety from a more nuanced perspective.

Again, this is an excellent presentation and I'm encouraged that we're still at four.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

Supervisor Mallek and I have got the advantage of having this presentation at the MPO, what was it, last week?

So we've had some time to kind of reflect and give some more thought to what I did not know or I guess arrive at conclusions last week.

And this is in no particular order, just the way I've listed them down.

I guess I'd start with, I want to be careful about, we've got into this support-oppose or agree-disagree versus just understanding what the changes are going to be.

and part of that we recognized last week at the MPO was that if you take past projects and said this is what was funded under the prior program and if you take those same projects and put it under the new program this is what will not be funded, that that analysis is not clean because it removes the strategic thinking of how to submit the application under the first program.

So that's important that folks in the community understand that we know it's like we're changing card games, but we're playing with the same deck.

So how we play the game is going to be better, or understanding how to play the game is what's important here.

So it's very difficult for me to get into this, whether I support or oppose or I agree or disagree with some things.

Now I'm going to try to explain the understanding of where they're going with this.

and answer that.

But I think that's, if we get into this, we're just going to go out and try to say don't do this or do this.

We miss understanding what they're doing because they're going to do it.

I mean, they're the funders here.

So I know when we're the funders, we don't sometimes really care about, you know, well, we care, but, you know, if we've decided this is how it's going to fund, then that's the rule that's how it's going to fund.

Big projects versus little projects.

How many little projects have we broken up into little projects that if we would have done them as big projects, they'd be done and out of our way and they wouldn't be sucking the oxygen out of the projects we still have to do.

So that's part of that.

It sounds bad to say we're not going to get smaller projects done or just bigger projects, but it also changes the game in Albemarle because we had some, like Hydraulic 29, if it was just done,

I mean, we've got the bridge as a small project, we've got District Avenue as a small project, we've got the Hillsdale as a small project, there's three projects right there that if it was just all funded as one big project, we'd have all that done and out of the way.

And we could have moved on to other things.

And that frees up funding down the road.

I do, the fact that the staff at, what's their staff called?

I've got some funny name.

Whoever's talking to the CTB, it's whatever, the staff, VDOT staff, they have a name?

But they recommended that change for the population size.

So materially that doesn't change for Albemarle how many projects we go.

So the fact that they recognize that is a good thing.

Now did you mention, I might have just missed it in the presentation, that they also added two that the PDCs, they're recommending anyway, two additional types of projects that the PDC can submit.

Bridges is one of those, and that would allow our ped bridge over Rivanna would qualify for that.

So if that was mentioned, I just missed it.

But that's an important addition that I think staff recognized.

The economic development items that they've suggested I initially last week agreed with and after further thought don't disagree with now.

So the fact that they're approaching it from

you know, adding to gross state product, they're looking at job creation or capital investment.

Those are all things that are sound in what we're going after in our economic development strategic plan, Project Enable.

So that should be a good thing for us.

It just then becomes a matter of if you're worried about other places that have huge sites and well, just because they have huge sites and huge populations, does that mean they score better or not?

But I think in scoring, I don't know if it would necessarily play out that way.

but I understand the concern.

And then it does raise for the economic development piece I think Mr. Richardson for when talking about smart scale we don't often think about our economic development team and strategy in such a way but it would shift moving forward bringing them into the equation because the site readiness and then the tiers of where those sites are at start playing into these

applications in a way that becomes critical to getting the transportation project done.

So it leads me to start asking like the notes at MPO, you know, I was like, all right, well, in terms of Virginia scan, what do we have currently have uploaded?

What's included in there?

What is Albemarle state like?

Let's dust off the tiered state of readiness.

I know we have that information.

I don't know that we've ever had to really look at that before when we've submitted transportation projects.

So it's probably a good idea to get out ahead of that as best we can.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jessica.

You did a great job.

And it is a lot of information and some of us, I grant you, some of us have heard it more often than some of the rest of us, but I will say just from the big picture.

I think it's always good to look at a process or a program after it's been in place for a while.

So I am not resentful that they're going back and

trying to tweak this and make it better, I think that's appropriate.

And from our viewpoint, for me anyway, I'm not so concerned about some of the changes that I see.

I agree with the congestion piece.

I agree with, you know, I'm not so upset about the number because we're not really being hurt too much in that.

I do think that it's going to be really important for us to be this is we're talking about smart scale and it's going to be a really important for us to be smart because one of the things we have to do is figure out how this works best for us right and if packaging makes it better then that's great and it would seem like it might

I don't have a problem with that.

I just think we learned a lot as we went through that process on how to make those applications and we just have to figure it out again, which in a way is kind of a pain.

I don't have my knickers in a twist about this too much to be perfectly honest with you.

It's just that we have to understand the process.

I do think, though, to what Ned said, it will probably be really important for our EDA and for the staff in economic development to have a real understanding of this because there are some changes and that's going to be important, and for us as well.

Just thinking if I had anything else to add.

And this is my, I will say this is my personal viewpoint, but I will reiterate it again.

Sidewalks and multi-use paths and connectivity is my first priority with that is always getting people to jobs, to schools,

to grocery stores, to healthcare centers so that they can safely get around to the places that are critical for them, right, for their basic needs.

That's always my priority.

And I would hope that we'll be able to, that that will work within the constraints of this.

But I don't think we necessarily need to spend a lot of time, in my opinion, fighting this.

I just don't see that.

We need to figure it out and not fight it.

All right, thank you.

I would agree that we should not go and fight it because we will pay for that later.

This group is going to do what they're going to do.

But I do, I think that there's a lot of frustration that I've heard from VDOT staff.

And I'm a little crabby that they're saying, oh, there are all these incomplete applications.

Well,

It's simple enough.

Just don't take them.

Community development has learned how to do that.

If the blanks aren't all checked, then you don't get in the door.

And so that's their job.

And I think they're trying to sort of give that fault to somebody else.

But I think they can step up and take care of that very easily.

And so did I understand correctly that safety is only looking back?

not as

The reason it's so important for people to get in a crash that doesn't result in a hospital visit or a death is that there's no paper trail unless our people call 977-9041 and report it to the database there at the police department because that's the only way we have to develop our own set of what's really going on out there for the dozens and dozens of crashes that happened that people just decide not to go anywhere with.

I think there will be lots of bike and pedestrian things that go with the bigger projects that will benefit that connection, that job to school, the grocery connection that has already been mentioned.

So I'm not going down the drain about that either.

I think that

It's discouraging that first we're told the Exit 118 was too big and therefore we couldn't get funded when it should have been funded 10 years ago and it would have been done long ago.

And that's another place where there are lots of crashes all the time.

Or the hydraulic road, which we were told, oh, it failed so now we can't even reapply the second year, which might have worked because the personalities had changed.

So anyway, we're just going to have to make lemonade out of this and figure out the ways

to do it, but I very much do not want to be seen, as Albemarle County, be seen as a whiner and a complainer in front of the CTB.

There is a town hall, I think it's the 21st?

The town hall occurred yesterday.

Oh, it was yet?

Oh, that is because it's October.

Sorry, I'm just a little distracted here.

Yes, it was done, so we don't need to worry about that anymore.

But I'm very grateful for all the work that you all are doing to try to help our community be in the best place we can to get baby steps along the way is better than backwards big ones.

Thank you.

I won't add any more to most of the comments that have been made.

I really appreciate Supervisor Mallek, you giving recognition to how many people have been working

to bring us to where we are today from all different departments and agencies and everything.

There's one area I'm going to continue to comment on as others have.

In particular, and you don't have to go back to them, but slides 4, 5, and 7 when we spoke about the bike ped improvements.

Many of the issues we are dealing with today are because when the infrastructure was built it did not include anything other than vehicular traffic options.

Last week I had the good fortune to travel through four European countries and bicycles are everywhere.

and while we're not flat like Amsterdam where you literally have more bicycles by far than vehicles, e-bikes are game changers in terms of bicycle transportation and we need to do what we can to include multimodal in all of our projects because it is the safest way to get people in the city the most environmentally friendly

and again with e-bikes, you can go anywhere.

So I appreciate all the work everyone has done and any other comments by supervisors?

You want to go first?

Go ahead.

I was just going to say I do agree about we need to make sure and I think in all fairness I think we are doing that.

But I agree, and I think we do have to concentrate on it.

As the representative who has the hydraulic intersection in her district, I just want to make the comment that

While we did not end up with a grade separated intersection, we were competing with a tunnel in the Newport News, you know, that area, Norfolk area.

I think we ended up with a better project, I'm just saying.

And so I am very much looking forward for the construction of that.

those roundabouts.

We have now a pedestrian bridge that is going to go across 29.

So I am really appreciative.

You know sometimes you do if you take a step back and rethink things you can end up with a better project than maybe you started out with.

I think the Rio intersection is great for where it is, but I think given the location and what we're talking about with the hydraulic intersection, I think we have a great project moving forward and I'm excited about the construction of all of these and I just wanted to say that.

Do you have what you need from us because you mentioned a December 4th date.

Is that the final date with which we can have

Okay, you'll be sending us the presentation, right?

Yes.

I know several of you have gone over this a few times, but I'd like to see it and understand it even more so I can comment.

All right, Board, we're scheduled for recess.

Boom!

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for coming back on time.

We can now move to item number 11, a discussion item continued, county transit analysis phase one report.

Thank you to the chair for the introduction.

This item, as is mentioned, is a discussion item on the county's transit analysis report.

Staff will have a presentation.

I'll be joined in a moment by our consultant who I'll introduce.

And we'll follow this up with some board questions and comments.

No action is requested by the Board of Supervisors today.

Before I introduce my co-presenter, I just want to provide a little background on this report and how we got here.

So this discussion really started, I shouldn't say started, it was last discussed with the Board of Supervisors back in March during the budget process where we held an in-depth presentation and discussion around transit.

And in that discussion we included in the budget there was $98,000 approved to perform a transit analysis.

For some background of why that was funded, staff really discussed at that meeting that our transit is continuing to increase in complexity for the array of services we're providing, the multiple providers, the change in the state and federal landscape of funding, the complexity of CARES and ARPA funding that has come into the system in recent years, and also just the impact of transit coming through the pandemic and what does that look like.

So staff acknowledged that while I'm fortunate to be part of the team with many talented individuals, we had many people involved, but no one subject matter expert to really understand the depth and breadth of transit.

Because transit in the county is very different from other services, while an internal county department may be to ride that service.

As was acknowledged earlier, CAT is a memorandum of understanding with the city that we participate in.

Jaunt is a public services corporation, which the county is a member of.

So with all these complexities, we really needed to get some outside expertise to make sure that we were really protecting the county's investment in transit.

to make sure that we were ensuring that quality of service and making sure that we were doing our part to drive those future discussions in transit from a county perspective of what are the right questions and conversations that we should be having.

So the funding was appropriated in July.

We are here four months later for where we are to date.

This is just our initial report with the progress we have made.

We've contracted with Texas A&M Transportation Institute, you'll hear from in a moment.

And there, kind of the scope of the work that was undertaken is summarized at the bottom of this slide.

I do need to thank in this report, first, Texas A&M Transportation Institute for the very thorough and depth report they have that's attached to today's agenda.

I also need to thank two gentlemen and their staff for the audience behind me today, Garland Williams, CAT Director, and Ted Reek, Jaunt Director.

Their participation in this report was critical, and I'll acknowledge there are several statements sometimes in the report where maybe something was not fully determined by the report's deadline.

That was not a reflection on CAT and Jaunt's willingness, that was more a reflection on the aggressive timeline we were working on in this initial report.

So, thank you gentlemen for your partnership in that.

and just a little bit more background as we head into the content of the presentation.

Really today's desired outcome is to really provide just an update to the board of where we are and I want to emphasize that this is really just a starting point.

One of the things I appreciate in this report is there's not very prescriptive recommendations and the county must do this.

It's really highlighting these are the questions and conversations the county should look to have in the future.

as we consider what our transit network looks like.

Earlier today we heard about the governance study and kind of that long-term strategy.

The short term, this is more about what are some things we can do right now to make sure we're putting systems and procedures and processes in place to get those results we're expecting.

At the end, we'll come back for board comments and questions.

Mr. Walco, I'll introduce in a moment, we'll be going through recommendations and findings of the report.

If there's areas the board wants more information, we certainly want to focus on those, but certainly any other questions or comments on the progress to date are welcome.

My final slide before I hand it off is to highlight our total transit budget is $4.8 million.

I must confess that was not a number I had off the top of my head.

That was in today's presentation for the question that was addressed earlier.

Just to acknowledge our current transit system where I spoke to the complexity, we have the fixed route service, which we discussed earlier.

And I want to highlight really the critical interlocking of that and the ADA paratransit service, where once the fixed routes go into place,

that ADA paratransit service provided by John is a mandated service.

Earlier the board has spoken about and there's been much discussion this week of the microtransit pilot now underway.

and then finally I want to speak to the collaboration through the Regional Transit Partnership.

There's been a lot of effort that we heard about earlier today with the vision plan and the governance study.

The progress we've made has been substantial in recent years as they have been a key partner in helping develop some of the MOUs and work that's already in place.

I think a natural evolution through those and talking with our consultants is how do we

How do we take the progress we've made to date and continue to build upon it?

So this analysis is really not to supplant anything that would happen through the RTP, but really to complement that work to help the county be in the best possible position to ask the questions and have the conversations with that intent.

So with that, I will introduce from Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Mr. Michael Walk.

He is a research scientist and program lead with them, and he will take it through the recommendations of the presentation, and I will come back at the end for questions.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Michael Walk.

I'm with Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

So I'll give you a little bit of background if you're not familiar with TTI in terms of who we are and what we do.

TTI is a member of the Texas A&M University System and that organization does transportation research all modes, freight, public transportation, highways, etc.

across many different spaces and I'm sorry my timing on these slides is automatically moving me on.

We do tend to work with public sector and working with transit organizations, providers, state DOTs, etc.

I am the program manager of the transit mobility program which is a part of TTI.

That focuses specifically on public transportation and other forms of shared mobility.

And you can see one of our focus areas is in transit management, finance, and policy.

And that experience comes to bear on the work we're doing for the county.

Today I'm going to walk you through the report.

We'll go through the six sections relatively quickly.

Sections one through five will go pretty quickly.

We'll spend the bulk of our time today in section six, which is the preliminary findings and recommendations.

So in sections one and two, which is the introduction and methodology, that's the introductory material that helps you understand why the report was put together and how we did it.

particularly Section 2, we do lay out the methodology.

So if you're reading through that, you'll see that it was an iterative process.

As Andy mentioned, we worked with CAT, we worked with Jaunt, we met with the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation or DRPT staff in order to get a good understanding of how they funnel state and federal funds to Jaunt and to CAT.

And we also collected documents and data and reviewed that from all these various parties.

Put that together into the report.

A part of the report in section 5 also documents what we would call industry best practice in several different topical areas.

I'll unpack that a little bit later and what sources we used.

So sections three and four really are the existing conditions sections of the report.

In those we document in section three the services that are operated by CAT and by Jaunt and not only the services that are operated within the county boundaries but also the entire portfolio of both organizations, particular Jaunt which has a much larger service area serving six counties.

Section 4 goes into each one of those organizations, Cat and John, and unpacks the organizational structure, their assets and facilities like vehicles and where their main facilities are, as well as what their costs are and where the revenue comes from.

And then last but not least, Section 4 documents their procedures currently for allocating their costs to their local partners, their funding partners, including Albemarle County.

In section 5, I wanted to unpack just a little bit about best practices research because it's always helpful to look at what's the norm when it comes to what levels of service are operated and how do local partners share in the cost of transportation.

And so just a little bit of background on what we looked at when we did the best practices research in section 5.

In the concept of the levels of transit service, how many hours of service are normal, how many days of the week of operation, etc., we relied very heavily on what's called the Transit Capacity and Quality Service Manual, which is an industry guidebook towards what levels of service accomplish what kind of goals when it comes to public transportation.

When it comes to how is public transit funded, what are the sources of revenue, and then how are those costs allocated to others?

The main sources we relied on, of course, are the Federal Transit Administration or FTA circulars and the guidance put out by them, as well as resources on cost allocation from the National Rural Transit Assistance Program or National RTAP.

as well as the Transit Cooperative Research Program.

These are all national level organizations that publish guidance, guidebooks, manuals, etc.

for the public transportation industry and that was the backbone of what we would call best practices to see if they are being applied here in Albemarle County.

One of the other key takeaways of Section 5, which I'll touch again when we get to the findings in Section 6, is we were tasked to determine are the levels of service being offered in the county reasonable given the county's population, given the county's makeup, et cetera.

And so this slide here walks you through just a quick overview summary of the different services, the general public demand response, the commuter bus routes operated by Jaunt, the ADA paratransit, et cetera.

of a summary of when they operate which is in the third column right that's the service level column and then what we would call our evaluation right so based on the current services being operated and the characteristics of the county does this seem to be a reasonable level of service now reasonable is always hard to define because it's driven by goals right the goals that the county has the goals that the city has in order to provide mobility options for the residents

But the key takeaway from this was that the services being provided right now fall within the realm of reasonability.

They are a reasonable level of service across the board, whether it's fixed route, whether it's the demand response service.

So this chart just gives you a quick summary so you can understand, for instance, the rural public demand response service operated by Jaunt.

in terms of since it's operating Monday through Friday about 10 hours a day approximately and that's appropriate for a wide variety of trips.

It's not going to accommodate all trips but it does focus on transit dependent residents needing to get to medical, work, shopping, etc.

And all of the right hand column is again applying the standards from the transit capacity and quality service manual.

So what I want to move to is Section 6, which is the preliminary findings and recommendations.

And we'll spend most of our time there.

There are 22 findings and 22 recommendations in the report.

We organized them according to four different topics.

And on the subsequent slides, you'll see in the lower left-hand corner an F and an R. Those are, in case you're following along in the actual full copy of the report,

The finding numbers start with an F and the R numbers are the recommendation numbers.

To avoid sharing 20 findings, which would take a lot of time, we paraphrased and summarized a few of them on the slides themselves.

But I just want to give you a tool by which you could cross-reference back to the report if you wanted to do so.

So everything you're seeing is a summary of what's in the report.

So in the first category of the transit services operating in the county, our first finding was on ADA paratransit service operating on Sunday.

So we just wanted to make sure that the county was aware that ADA service is being operated on Sunday by John currently.

It's not actually required federally because CAT isn't operating fixed routes on Sundays.

So the finding here is just that the service is being operated.

It's not required currently.

whether that's a good or a bad thing is not really for us to judge but we wanted to just raise that there are options regarding whether that service should continue to provide that mobility for people on Sundays and it's a discussion that needs to be had between the funders of the RTP.

Moving on to the next set of findings which still revolve around the ADA paratransit service.

So this first finding is that the

Roles and responsibility of ADA paratransit can be somewhat unclear and particularly ADA paratransit service is a key mobility option for people who need it.

It also is by and large one of the most expensive per person transit services to operate simply because of the nature of the service.

And so across the industry, cost management and supply management of ADA paratransit is a key topic that comes up again and again and again.

And one of the challenges with the way that ADA paratransit is currently being operated and funded here is that there's what we would call a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities, who's ultimately in charge of ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of the ADA paratransit service.

So as a reminder, the way it's working right now is a portion of the funding that comes to CAT, their urban funding from the federal government gets sent to John for John's operation of ADA Paratransit.

And of course CAT, the city also contributes its own funding, its local funding, to help offset those costs.

And the county also funds ADA Paratransit.

So we have several players all involved in the ADA Paratransit service.

So what we are recommending, given the likelihood that, well, given the difficulty of ADA paratransit and keeping the supply there for a reasonable price point, is that the county begin exploring alternatives with its partners in terms of operating that service.

That could take many different forms.

It could involve continuing the current relationship with Jaunt as the operator, with CAT as a funder, and the county as a funder.

and that could continue with perhaps some changes, some recommendations that we talk about later.

For instance, changing the way that relationship works.

Does a 5307 pass through the way that it's happening right now make the most sense and provide the most clarity around proactive management?

There could be an RFP put out for ADA paratransit service as an option.

We discussed some of these options in the full report, but I just wanted to give a quick summary of thinking through these different ways to try to add more proactivity and clear management structure to help keep ADA paratransit service heading in the right direction.

So all of these are related to one another, those three recommendations you see on the screen.

The first is exploring those contracting alternatives.

The third is, sorry, the second exploring different governance and performance management options.

That could be as simple as setting performance expectations in the agreements with Jaunt in terms of the on-time performance of ADA service or the cost efficiency of ADA service.

Those could all be added to the agreements as a way to kind of keep cost management moving in the right direction.

And then the last recommendation here is to explore opportunities for proactive demand management.

Again, with ADA Paratransit service being free, it is a very attractive option and of course that leads to increased demand which increases cost.

And so there are options to help manage that demand.

There are good policies in place already.

Jaunt has no-show policies and late cancellation policies and things like that to help reduce waste.

but also there might be options for conditional eligibility which means that you people that are eligible for paratransit for some of the time not all of the time depending on their actual disability and so those are things that might be worth exploring in order to help manage the demand and therefore the cost that comes from the ADA paratransit service in the long run.

Related to that was the finding that the that 25%

split of 5307 funding.

So that's the proportion of urban funding that comes to CAT that gets sent to Jaunt for Jaunt's operations of the ADA paratransit service.

Right now it's just a flat 25% based on the analysis that was done 10 years ago.

We believe that it would make sense given the rising cost of transit, the rising demand in ADA paratransit, that that analysis and that split percentage be re-looked at again.

to make sure that if that is still reasonable or should be changed in some way given current conditions.

Related, now moving out of the ADA paratransit world, we took a look at the non-ADA general public demand response service operated by Jaunt.

Generally speaking, the services like I mentioned before are reasonable in terms of service levels.

We did see some opportunities for improvements in the way that Jaunt is scheduling and dispatching its services.

However, Jaunt's already working on those.

and we've been in contact with them about those improvements over time from prior studies.

So they're heading in the right direction certainly, but we just want to make sure we raise that there was a past practice that they're working on fixing.

We also found that the commuter bus routes, the connect routes, there's the two, there's 29 North and the Crozet connect routes, that both of those routes, albeit they do have ridership at this point,

have relatively low productivity compared to industry standards.

What we mean by that is how many passengers are on the bus per hour that the bus is in operation.

Right now the 29 North is about 4.3 passengers per hour and Crozet's at 1.94 according to the data that we saw.

Industry standard is somewhere around five passengers per hour.

Again, TTI did not go out and ride the buses, maybe

Maybe the buses are half full.

I don't know that.

But just comparing those performance measures to the industry standards suggests that those routes might need to be looked at in order to ensure that you're getting the best cost effectiveness out of those routes.

Options could be marketing, or all the other way is actually changing the routes or the service in order to get more cost effectiveness from them.

Moving on to the microtransit service,

Again, I'm hoping I'll be able to get up to that region to ride it now that it's live.

That'd be fun while I'm here.

But certainly, microtransit as something that is a ride within 15 minutes and is fare-free, again, is a very attractive service option, which is a great thing.

But speaking from industry experience, it's also very difficult to manage and control over time when it comes to cost.

and so one of our recommendations is just to ensure that all the parties are paying very careful attention to the effectiveness of the microtransit, the cost structure of the microtransit, and also what are the service standards, how are decisions going to be made as demand increases, which it likely will, and more regions start saying I want this in my neighborhood.

and so having service standards in place for microtransit and performance measures in place for microtransit will help prepare all the parties to make those decisions before the service gets too popular or the costs go too high.

The last few set of findings and recommendations are in the transit operations section.

So we did look also at the assets of both CAT and Jaunt.

Overall, the size of the fleet of CAT, how many vehicles they have, is reasonable given what an industry target of around 20% spare ratio, particularly if CAT is returning to its pre-COVID service levels sometime in the near future, which I believe the plans are heading in that direction.

For Jauntz, the fleet size was quite large compared to their vehicle requirements.

They have about a 56% spare ratio currently, although it is moving in the right direction.

And this is something that Jauntz mentioned that they are actually very aware of and are heading towards managing that down to the industry target of around 20%.

So of course, that should continue.

so that there's not undue burden on the capital side in that coming across as a contribution from the county.

Now when we talk about the cost of service, we'll start with CAT.

So just as a reminder, both entities, CAT and Jaunt, allocate a portion of their cost of operation to the county.

And in the case of Jaunt, it's all of the other parties that are funding Jaunt.

and so we'll start with CAT.

With CAT, their operational cost allocation model, so operational costs are fuel, operator, wages, maintenance, those kinds of things and how those costs get allocated out is a reasonable approach.

It's based on the miles that fall within the jurisdictions and that is an industry practice for fixed route service.

It makes sense, it's transparent, easy to follow.

The only finding here is that really it's not as fully documented as we would like to see.

you know so having a full documentation and step-by-step process as to how you go from the costs and the data and ultimately to the charge to the county would help improve the transparency of the process so that was one recommendation is to make sure that that's fully documented.

Another finding is that

although CAT does have capital costs right for its vehicles and assets etc.

None of those costs at least in the FY24 budget are allocated to the county.

Now you'll find when we talk about jaunt there is actually a capital cost allocation that comes to the county in the FY24 budget but

Our recommendation here is that this is something that should be explored.

Capital assets are just as important as the operating and operational costs of CAT and so our recommendation is that the county explores opportunities for adding a capital cost contribution into its contribution to CAT.

Coming up with a way to do that in order to maintain the long term financial sustainability of the fixed route system.

We'll move our attention to Jaunt.

Again, we'll start with the operational cost of Jaunt.

Its cost allocation model is reasonable.

However, there's some documentation that is missing some key pieces of information that is actually pretty thoroughly documented.

They're just two separate documents.

And there's just a few small pieces of information that are missing.

So our recommendation is that that all be combined into a single document, easily referenced and followed by all the parties involved.

And then the same thing on the capital cost allocation model.

How John allocates its capital cost is reasonable.

One key thing here is it does need to be fully documented just like the others.

And then last, it currently is assumed no federal share in any urban capital costs, which from prior presentations you might remember was a key funding issue in terms of the ADA service not having a cap federal share of the capital costs coming from any parties other than local parties.

and so this is, we recommend exploring pursuit of capital grants through the state program, the state merit program or others where the parties all engage in trying to get some of the urban share of capital costs funded federally or from state funds.

Alright, so last few things I'll touch on and then I'll close up.

Related to what you heard is a theme of documentation and sort of keeping everything 100% transparent.

We did not find really a single comprehensive repository of all of these policies and guides that the RTP is all trying to follow.

There's several studies that are documented out there.

But our recommendation is, you know, when it comes to service standards for fixed route, for ADA paratransit, for demand response, for microtransit, when it comes to the cost allocation models, all these documents,

that because the complexity is high, it'd be good to kind of keep a standard curated set of documents that guide these very nuanced things so that all the members of the RTP are all agreeing on this is the same gold standard, the same set of facts we're all working off of.

There's a few items we would recommend be added to agreements between CAT and John's, the county and John's, the county and CAT that would lay out the expectations for performance.

What are the county's expectations for on-time performance of the fixed route service of the on-time performance of ADA paratransit.

Those kinds of performance expectations were not in the agreements that we saw and we'd recommend that they be added over time, you know, in concert of course with your providers to help

set common expectations for service quality.

Last few things here are on the agreements themselves.

There was a minor issue with language in the agreement between Citi and Jaunt that needs to be corrected.

We saw in the FY24 budgeting documentation

what I would call not a 100% unified approach.

So in particular, we saw different numbers or different assumptions on urban funding coming to Jaunt.

We saw one number from Cat and one number in Jaunt's budget.

And so our recommendation there is that both of those parties should be continually improving their collaboration when they're prepping the budgets because they actually rely on one another for funding.

and for service levels, and so we'd want to see that improving in future fiscal years.

And then the last finding and recommendations is actually a forward-looking one, which you may have already heard of, in that the, as of FY26, CAT will have spent down, according to its projections, all of the CARES and ARP funding, the American Rescue Plan Act funding, will be spent down by the end of fiscal 26, which has been, which has allowed higher levels of federal share

for CAT services and for Johnson and therefore less local contribution.

By the end of FY26, those funds will be spent down and so the non-federal portion of cost of transit in the future will likely increase relative to what you're seeing today.

And so our recommendation is to continue strategizing for ways to prepare for that change coming down the road.

And I think with that, I'm going to turn it back to Andy.

Thank you.

Just one slide to wrap up before I turn it over to the board.

I've mentioned this really is just the initial phase of the work we've been doing for the past few months.

There are future phases that we need to take place, first of which is obviously with our regional partners.

These recommendations and findings in the report discuss a whole realm of those, not that staff would seek to take on all of them at once, but knowing that we live in or work in an ecosystem of transit.

and we would certainly need to work through the progress we've made to date through our MOUs and other agreements to look to how we make those improvements, whether that be through the budget process or outside of the budget process.

The other area we've identified is there are other areas not discussed today, for example, around state and federal funding.

They're not included in this report that we even continue to explore with Texas A&M Transportation Institute, really to begin with the goal of helping giving the county staff a roadmap for asking the right questions, having the right conversations for our role in the regional transit system.

So with that, we are available for board questions.

I've put the prompt questions up here on the slide, but certainly anything that the board may have on their mind and what is a very thorough report, myself and Mr. Walker here to address any questions.

We will go through our order.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

That was a lot of information.

The future

I would clarify, the budget that the board approved still allows for work to maintain with the funds we have available and also some other scope of work that we've currently lined up.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

This is a helpful number of questions.

I'll see what I can make sense of it.

Where to start?

There's a lot of information about the services provided.

Not a lot of information about the services usage.

I heard the concerns about the Connect service.

I have a little less sense of the other services that are provided, and I wish I had a little better information on that.

Thank you for that question.

Yes, you're correct.

We didn't get into a lot in this particular phase of work, the usage questions, albeit we do have data from Jaunt on that.

I don't have similar data from CAT.

It wasn't something we asked them for.

It also would drive issues of marketing and other questions about how things may need to be adjusted.

Sort of in this slightly similar vein but different, there's recommendation 17 talks about service standards, recommendation 18 talks about performance standards.

It says performance targets could be documented in service standards.

Could you just

Yes, thank you.

Great question.

So service standards are policy decisions related to the level of service that

you want provided.

So for instance, how often, you know, what hours of the day, what days of the week, where do you want your bus stops, those kinds of questions.

So what are the standards for the service itself in terms of the supply?

Then service standards often do include what would be the demand side, right?

So what is your minimum hope for riders per hour?

So those are usually documented in service standards.

Performance standards are usually, you're looking at performance metrics like on time performance.

So what is the expectation for how you want, how often you want Cat to be on time?

How often you want Jaunt to be on time?

How do you define on time?

complaint rates, accident rates.

These are performance standards, right?

So in the performance of service, you're setting standards for your minimum expectations regarding its quality.

Service standards tend to discuss the supply side of the service.

What are your minimum standards for how much service is on the street?

So if that helps to take the two apart.

Sometimes they're documented in the same document.

No, that's helpful.

It's kind of the direction I thought this was going, but I wanted to make sure that they heard it again just to be clear.

There are discussions in part five actually about federal funds and then you've mentioned state funds.

So I'm going to say yes and no.

So my understanding of the funding that's currently available on the federal side, right, there's formula funding and of course competitive funding, both federally and at the state level, and we don't see any evidence that any of the operators like Cat or Jaunt are leaving money on the table, right, so the money that is coming to them

They are doing their due diligence.

They are spending those funds in accordance with all that is appropriate and seems reasonable.

When we talk about, I think you might be referring to the assumption that there's no federal money being assumed for urban capital.

And so that's a case where that's a competitive program.

We recommend that the parties get together and figure out how they want to pursue a competitive grant under the state's merit capital program that's managed by DRPT.

That's helpful, thank you.

Just a clarification on conditional eligibility, which you've mentioned.

I mean, so we have no, nothing that I saw saw any sort of abuse of the services being offered.

Conditional eligibility is, well, let me explain it this way.

So transit systems might deem a person eligible for ADA paratransit if they have a qualifying disability.

And they can take ADA paratransit at all times, right, for any trip, right?

That's sort of blanket eligibility.

Conditional eligibility is when, based on a person's unique condition, some trips are deemed eligible for ADA paratransit while others say actually that person could take it on fixed route, right?

So, you know, it could be a vision disability that only really affects the person at nighttime, right?

Just as an example, conditional eligibility would say, well, during the day, as long as it's not dark, you can't use ADA paratransit.

because your personal disability doesn't qualify you for ADA paratransit.

So it's not an abuse question, right?

It's a question of trying to ensure that the vehicles out there for ADA paratransit and the money being spent on ADA paratransit is being used for the people that really need it and is available for the people that really need it.

And conditional eligibility is a tool, right, to

some trips occur on fixed route opening up the capacity for other people on ADA paratransit.

I guess it does.

I didn't really mean to suggest abuse is the wrong word.

It's more a question of recognition that we have.

That's what I was interested in.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

I guess the things in here, the questions, comments on progress to date.

So I think the performance targets and the documentation of that will absolutely, I mean I think that would be good.

I also think that would get at, I think in the past, and I'm guilty of saying what is reasonable, that whole conversation.

between what I think is reasonable as a representative of a district versus the vendor delivering what they're delivering and what I'm paying for could be reasonable on one side, but another person does not think it's reasonable.

So any sort of well, having that well documented so that everybody's in agreement would be a good thing.

Same with the cost documentation.

The way you walk through, this is what it costs, that equates to this charge to you and what it's all based on.

It made it sound like you felt like there were some gaps in there.

So I would certainly be in agreement with getting, figuring out what those gaps are and getting those filled.

I'm just going to ask this question.

I think I know the answer, but I'm assuming for the microtransit, getting ahead of the increasing costs simply is that as demand goes up, as popularity goes up, demand goes up, you need more vehicles, you need more drivers.

Yeah, the balance is either to maintain a 15 minute response time

you know as demand will increase vehicles and costs will go up or the only lever you really have is to charge a fee or to say the bus will be there in an hour as opposed to 15 minutes.

Thank you for that.

So I think that falls under any particular findings or recommendations that Boer would like more information on.

I think the difficulty here, and I'm sure it's not unique, you probably have studied other places, but we are a government entity contracting with a department of another government entity.

Whereas when I contract with vendors, I can pretty much say, I'm paying you for this, you give me that.

And if I want to question you about it, then I can do so.

And I would imagine if Mr. Williams was his own

entity out there, he'd be perfectly satisfied with that.

But he works for a government entity that could be, why are you poking around in our backyard?

When we're questioning, rightly, somebody we've contracted for services on.

And if it's in here, because I've not done a thorough dive through this report, if it's in there, then I apologize.

But I would think that there are other places that you've probably

When you start talking about working together on the reasonable question, on the cost, the performance measures, anything that would be set up in a contractual situation of how to navigate or best practices for those two government bodies that oversee the department head

some advice.

Does that make sense what I'm asking?

Because that's tricky.

If I get, and we've done this in the past, we've shot some, well I have, I mean Mr. Williams certainly knows, I feel sorry for you, sir.

I mean, can get caught between the political organizations, but we can't just go in there and demand they do something just because we're paying them for a service when he is given direction by another government entity.

So that's a tricky situation to navigate both for

them, the city council, us, the county board of supervisors, and a department head who is doing his best to run his transit service.

So that's something that I would feel like I'd like some, you asked, any more information or recommendations on.

That would be the thing that I would come up with in that.

So thank you.

And I don't know if you want to respond to that now, but I can't imagine we're unique, right?

You're correct.

You're not unique.

And I think the response is a little bit more lengthy than, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

I must admit that I paid a lot more attention to the recommendations than I did to a lot of the truth in advertising, right?

but this was a great report and the timing is really good for us right now because certainly with the micro transit pilot and our work with the regional transit partnership, just a thought and to sort of piggyback on what Ned was also questioning, we're talking about moving to an authority model.

I would assume that some of or would hope that some of these concerns could be thrashed out if we had an authority model and what Ned's concern is specifically would be resolved in a more of a transit authority model.

Is that correct?

That's what I was thinking.

You just said it better than I did.

Thank you.

So to follow on that theme, I was very interested in your

So marrying this report with our work around our authority is going to be critical.

Yes, and I'll say the one way that we think about this as staffing the report is there are things we can do in this report now to better position an authority in the future by making progress.

And as the person who remembers thrashing out with the city, specifically the mayor at the time of the city around the Regional Transit Partnership bylaws and what we were going to do, you know, I can appreciate that we felt very lucky where we were at that time, but boy it's really time to go back and look at this again.

And going to an authority is the next step.

To speak to what Andy just said, though, this is the first time that I ever saw data on what the ridership was for, for example, the North Connect and the Crozet Connect.

And I am very concerned about the low ridership, especially for the Crozet Connect.

So thinking, and maybe this is more for Andy,

But how we can talk about this more, do we need to advertise it better?

What do we need to do to get riders on those two?

Because what we hear a great deal from the Crozet community is congestion traffic.

They're very frustrated with the lines that they have to wait, you know, all of that.

Use of the Connect is very low, which could solve some of those problems.

I would say for any service, when you see where there may be a metric not quite hitting what we'd expect, kind of our first approach would be in the Department of Finance and Budget, sort of seek to understand why rather than just kind of assume that there must be something broken.

It's not just a question of what should we do differently?

What are some of those questions that are kind of put out by TTI in their report?

And so I imagine that's a conversation with Jaunt to get their input.

What have they seen?

What is the pandemic's impact on those routes?

What are some of the other strategies with UVA and others?

Because certainly they are a hub through that.

Yeah, because I just think those numbers are concerning at first blush.

And the more people we can get on that connect, the less congestion they have.

I'm just saying, so trying to figure this out would be something that I'd be very interested in.

And it's not just the Crozet, but it's also the 29 North connect, right?

Both of those, and I'm not an expert on how you do that, but in coming back with some recommendations, do we better market it?

Or does the provider better market it?

What can we do to get those numbers up if in fact that's what we want to have happen?

Let me just look at my notes.

I think that's probably, I guess I'm good for right now.

I do think that we have struggled and talked about

for a good while, usage data from CAT.

I think prior to Garland coming, there wasn't good data.

Then, of course, we ended up in the middle of a pandemic.

I think it's tricky to figure out that, but we certainly need to get to that usage data.

Coming out of the pandemic is probably a good time.

to really start trying to figure out how to do that so that we can make decisions based on data.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I will pick up with that and then work my way back up because I was flabbergasted considering when the Crozet Connect opened, they were doing 20 people a bus and had to get a bigger bus.

So I think part of it is an evolution of the route and when the park and ride is built at 107, I expect that things will change dramatically because winding through the neighborhoods

where people were very happy to put up a bus stop and get people to go is not as effective as a kiss and ride somewhere that's centrally located or whatever.

So I look forward to hearing from Mr. Reek about how what they're planning to do with that because the minute that the gas hits four dollars a gallon again people will be back on that thing even if they have to walk across town because back in 2005 and 8 and 10 whenever that was the metric gas at four dollars a gallon people were screaming for some kind of

Carpooling and things like that.

There was also when we began there was a big input from UVA paying the fees for the ridership.

I don't know if that's expired or what.

So lots of things to learn about that.

Ann, while you look at your list, you remember we had all those discussions because people in Crozet were trying to figure out, if you think about it as first mile or last mile, they wanted to ride their bicycles to the Connect and there wasn't the ability for them to do that because there wasn't any place for them to leave their bicycle.

No, if there's somehow grant funding or something for the bike walkers, that would make a huge difference for the people who can do that.

No, that's terrific.

I guess I grind my teeth a little in the overall, well, it costs too much so we're not going to do it approach, the bottom line approach.

This is a service for people, especially the paratransit.

people without options, people who cannot drive.

And so I feel a moral obligation that we don't just get to say, oh, we're going to save money and not do it.

So that's just sort of my bottom line on that.

I know that that's a way you have to analyze everything, but it is not selling lollipops here.

This is something that's really important and cutting the service is not necessarily the way to go.

You had mentioned in the discussion one of the things was capital costs being allocated to the county and it's already been mentioned how the assets are owned by a city department.

And also I think some huge if not all of the buses are bought with federal funds.

And 20 years ago when there was a discussion about merging the transit systems, the demand from the owner was well you have to buy 50% of the bus value

which then they were told by the Feds, oh no you don't.

You don't get to do that because the federal dollars paid for it, you don't get to then charge other people to own them.

So that's something about, that's the total extent of my knowledge on that but there needs to be more information available if that's something that's going to be considered about how to go forward with that.

It was mentioned federal share of capital missing.

Is that in the transfer from CAT to Jaunt that should be expanded so that there is more of the 5307 funds that goes to Jaunt related to that 25%?

So related to the federal share being missing from Jaunt's capital, urban capital expenses, right?

We get through all the terms.

There's so many buckets of funny.

So that's not really directly related to the 5307 split issue.

Because CAT is currently using all of its 5307 funds, even sending some to Jaunt.

If it increased the amount it sends to Jaunt to help fund some of its capital needs, then the city has less for its own.

So we're at a zero sum game when it comes to 5307.

OK.

All right.

That's excellent, because that's something an authority can certainly jump on if we get that far.

And I appreciated your

discussions about the standards and how to have one of the charts showed there is no standard.

The local government has not set an expectation for one of the categories and therefore there's no recommendation.

So as the next layer of organization goes forward, we need to be very careful to have real written down expectations and then

There will be obligations for budgeting, etc.

that will come with that.

But we have to have really good rules in order to get the information that we need.

So I look forward to that.

And this was a really good starter.

Your tome was a good starter tome.

Thank you.

First let me thank Mr. Garland Williams of CAT and Mr. Tedric of Jaunt for being here today.

Your presence and cooperation throughout this process.

is indicative of the collaboration that I believe we in the community have working together to improve regional transit.

So I just want to express my appreciation for that.

Mr. Walk, I really appreciate the report that you have provided to us and I cannot think of anything off the top of my head where I would disagree with the recommendations that you have submitted there.

I also want to acknowledge that I think what everyone understands is that we are just a few months shy of finishing what is very likely the most challenging public transportation time period in at least recent memory, the four years of the pandemic to where we are today.

And so you know with slide number 20 where you at the last item exhausting the CARES and ARP funds in FY26 brings us to that preparation for that next challenging phase of how do we actually retain sustainability when all of this federal funding has come to an end.

I think things like MicroCat are going to help because that will, we believe, increase the ridership towards both the fixed route CAT as well as through jaunt systems and everything.

We are a high expectation community working with high performance organizations and I do believe that what you have helped provide to us is a mechanism of a path, if you will,

to help us reach back towards that sustainability that we need.

Because we don't have the density of population, but we have the broad spread of square miles, you know, back to the first and last mile, the Crozet Connect for example, it's much easier for the residents of that area to go to the starting point

than it is when they get to the endpoint of the fixed route from there to where they need to go.

Bike racks at the bus stop in Crozet may be helpful, but being able to bring more bikes with them along the transportation route, again, I'm going to go back to e-bikes, they're game changers, will allow people to be able to more easily get from that endpoint of the fixed route to where they need to be.

But I just want to say thank you for the work that you've done to give us so

a path forward towards success.

Thank you.

Board, we can go into our closed meeting.

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

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Aye.

Mallek?

All right, thank you board.

We can go into closed session.

Beep

All right.

Good evening everyone.

Thank you for joining us.

Call back to order the Board of Supervisors.

I do.

We have a motion by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a second by Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right.

Yes, we do.

A simple one.

All right.

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

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

All right, thank you board.

We can move to item number 15 from the county executive.

Reports on matters not listed on the agenda.

Mr. Richardson, good evening.

Do you have a report this evening?

No, ma'am, not this evening.

No formal report.

Thank you.

Thank you We can now move to item number 16 from the public matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board or matters pending before the board and I see the List being provided to Vice Chair Andrews.

So the floor is now yours.

We have one speaker signed up.

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

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

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

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

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

The red light indicates your time has expired, and you'll be asked to end your comments.

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

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

Please address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Please do not speak from your seat or out of turn, as all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

Good evening, ma'am, and please just make sure the microphone is directed towards your mouth so we can hear you.

Is this good?

That's good.

Alright, thank you.

My name is Theresa Hepler.

I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller district.

I'm here in my personal capacity only to talk about the jail renovation.

I am coming before you again to ask you to put a pause on it to get more community engagement.

I recognize that my coming here again may seem like you're just hearing from the same people over and over again.

and I just ask you not to use that belief to dismiss what I have to say but rather to take it as a sign that maybe others do not have the same privilege that I do or the same access to resources or even knowledge of the issue and that's why I am asking you to halt the renovation and actually make sure that your community is aware of this issue.

Most people I speak to have no idea that the jail is being renovated or their talks about it.

and certainly don't have an idea that we're about to invest a significant amount of money into a jail rather than community resources that prevent criminalized behavior from occurring.

And so I would say that because they don't have any idea, they don't really have a say in this process.

and I'm just asking that you do not move ahead on the jail renovation without bringing those who are most impacted by the jail or the jail renovation to the table to discuss the issue as part of a broader holistic approach to helping people avoid engaging in criminalized behavior in the first place, which would make our community much safer.

We are a smart and caring community and we can be trusted to come up with better, more modern ideas than merely renovating a jail.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming to speak before us.