Board of Supervisors Legislative Forum   12/7/2023

Good afternoon everyone.

For what is going to be for the next 10 years one of our favorite meetings and that is meeting with our legislative delegation.

So I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Board of Supervisors at 3 o'clock p.m.

on December 7th, 2023 in room 241 of the county office building.

The supervisors who are present today are Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor and Vice Chair Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, myself Supervisor Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Galloway of the Rio District is unfortunately unable to join us today.

We do however have a quorum present.

I'd also like to mention and welcome 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, who are also present for the meeting.

I do have a few brief remarks before turning it over to our representatives from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to go over the legislative work.

The first is to welcome our esteemed delegation here, Senator Cree Deeds who needs literally no introduction.

is a resident of the city of Charlottesville, has served in the General Assembly for 31 years, first in the House of Delegates for nine years from 1992 to 2001, and more recently in the Virginia State Senate from 2001 to the present, now representing the 11th Senate District.

Let me also express extreme joy in welcoming our two new delegate elects.

Katarina Carlson, who will begin her first term in the House of Delegates representing the 54th District,

resides in the Raya Magisterial District in Albemarle County and most recently has served as both a member and the chair of the Albemarle County School Board.

In her professional life, she is assistant city attorney for the city of Charlottesville, giving her a true city-county connection.

Delegate Kallsen joined the Teach for America and also served as a middle school math teacher in Linn, Massachusetts, and she's a graduate of Yale University.

Delegate-Elect Amy Laufer, who will also be in her first term in the House of Delegates representing the 55th District.

She resides in the Rivanna Magisterial District of Albemarle County and previously held elective office on the City of Charlottesville School Board and founded Virginia's List to support Democratic women running for state office as a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

and Columbia University and previously served as a Peace Corps volunteer and a teacher.

And you may have noticed our visual aids on the wall on both this side and that side.

And you may also be wondering, Donna, why are you wearing your vote earrings when we had an election last month and we don't have another one for a whole month?

As my friends know when it comes to novelty earrings, vote earrings in Virginia are great because you get to wear them all the time.

But I'm wearing them symbolically because they measure and they signify the power of the vote.

And the power of the vote was most significantly shown not many years ago when we passed a constitutional amendment which allowed for redistricting and had an escape clause to prevent gerrymandering.

And as you look at those maps, what you see is that Albemarle County has no longer been gerrymandered into oblivion as happened in the 2010 redistricting So if you look at those, and we'll start with the Senate In 2020, each state senate district had approximately 215,000 residents 165,000 of the residents in this senate district reside in the city of Charlottesville in the county of Albemarle

which means for the first time in a decade, Albemarle County has a true, strong voice and we know we've got that voice with Senator Deeds to represent.

Similarly, if you look at the map with blue, the yellow reflects the 54th district that delegate-elect Kallsum will be serving in and the blue represents the 55th that delegate-elect Laufer.

And while the House districts average about 85,000 residents, that means that the county of Albemarle has over 40% of the 54th district and nearly 95% of the 55th district, which means for the first time in a decade, the voters of Albemarle County actually have a voice and a vote and our two delegates will represent

For those of you that have been around these priorities

We'll look familiar, I guess.

Public education funding is the top priority that remains the top concern across the region with the local governments and increasing state support for K-12 education.

I think this position got a boost this past summer with the release of the JLOC report which really told us what we already knew and had been saying and that was there needed to be a stronger commitment from the state to fund K-12 education, particularly the standards of quality.

You're aware that back in September I guess with the adopted budget there were some additional funds for K-12.

for the Literacy Act, for some compensation supplements, for some of the support positions.

I think that we will continue to see some emphasis on those things as well as others as we move forward into the 2024 session.

It is a re-benchmarking year, so that will come into play as well as legislators are tackling the K-12 budget.

The next position relates to budgets and funding.

This is just kind of a catch-all position.

again that we've had for a number of years in the regional legislative program really speaks to not having unfunded mandates.

It speaks to supporting the state to provide enhanced funding for locally, local services I guess that are carried out, state programs carried out locally.

And it also speaks to preserving the revenue generating authorities that we have so that those are not entrenched.

The third priority is one that used to be a priority the last several years.

It's been down in the legislative position section.

But I felt like that land use and growth management was worthy of bringing back to the forefront and providing a little bit more attention this year.

You know every year we get to the General Assembly and local governments play a lot of defense and it seems like that a lot of that occurs in the area of land use.

Some things we can anticipate and know that are coming that are going to usurp or infringe upon your authority to regulate land use.

Other things we don't know about.

So we thought particularly with kind of a changing landscape a lot of new members at the General Assembly thought it was a good idea to elevate this to a priority this year.

That is the summary I wanted to provide.

Thank you.

Let me first, because I didn't give them an opportunity earlier, on Senator Dietz and our two delegate elects.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

This presentation actually has three participants.

I'm Steve Rosenberg, the Albemarle County Attorney, and I will present first.

I'll be followed then by

Trevor Henry in the County Executive's Office and JT Newberry in the Economic Development Office.

So I'd like to extend my welcome to members of the local delegation.

Today we will review with you your supervisor's legislative priorities and legislative positions and policy statements for the 2024 General Assembly

While I drew the short straw and have the pleasure of making a large portion of this presentation this afternoon, what I will share with you is the result of a collective team effort in addition to Mr. Henry and Mr. Newberry.

To name just a few of the other contributors, I'd like to express my thanks and appreciation to members of the Board of Supervisors who guided staff in the development of the Board's positions

Emily Kilroy of the County Executive's Office, James Douglas of the County Attorney's Office, and David Blunt, TJPBC, with whom we work closely during each legislative session.

So with that I'm pleased to provide you a review of the legislative priorities of the Board of Supervisors for the upcoming 2024 General Assembly session.

Before we dive into the substance of the priorities, let me briefly recap the board's process for their development and this will be familiar to the board members.

The board started back in early summer in June when they reviewed the 2023 legislation and began discussion of possible legislative priorities for 2024.

Then in the fall, in September, there was continued discussion of possible legislative priorities as well as the board's legislative positions and policy statements.

And I'll explain to you the distinction between those two products.

You have both of them before you at your seats.

Later in the fall on October 18th the board formally acted to adopt the priorities and the positions and policy statements and then today we have this meeting with members of the local delegation.

The results of this process has been the board's adoption of three legislative priorities for the 2024 session.

This is a significantly smaller number of priorities than in years past.

with the board taking a more targeted approach, very intentional.

To be clear, legislative priorities are focused, specific needs requested by the board to be met through legislative action by the General Assembly and the governor.

They are used by the Board of Supervisors to communicate with each of you as members of the local delegation about local priorities for legislation or delegated authority.

So I want to review each one of the three priorities, and they are presented in order.

This is the order that was accorded them by the board when they acted.

And so the first priority is to provide state funding for the county's Rivanna Futures Project.

And now that I've identified that as the first priority, I'm going to skip it.

and then we will come back to it.

But do take note that this is the board's number one priority.

Priority number two will be familiar to Senator Deeds and others who have been following the county's legislative efforts over the past several years to grant the county taxing authority for school division capital projects.

There are presently under the state code nine counties and one city which have this authority.

I think we'll get the bill on the governor's desk.

The only question is whether it will sound or not.

Yeah, so its history was that on the House side last year it failed in committee in the Senate.

It was passed and then failed in committee on the House side.

There are dual, I won't belabor this given your comments, Senator Deeds.

There are two different approaches.

One is to add the county to that list of currently authorized localities.

And the other is to simply amend the code so that every locality in the Commonwealth has the option.

Of course, you all know that under the current statutory scheme,

It requires a local referendum to implement whatever authority is granted.

Presumably, whatever bill is presented to the governor would have the same requirement.

Madam Chair, the first one of these bills came from Jimmy Edmonds, a Republican delegate from Halifax County.

And they did it for Halifax County.

And a lot of us didn't think they had enough retail business down there to generate enough money to build a school.

But they did.

They built a new high school with the money.

And most of the counties where this has been acted are counties that have Republican delegates and senators.

But the reality is only one of the referenda

did not pass.

That was in Pennsylvania County.

It was very close.

And they did it again, and it passed.

So this has just been hung up by a Republican subcommittee in the House of Delegates.

It's a priority for both Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

And Amherst County, last week, told me they wanted it to.

So just last year, what we tried to do was take the bigger approach, the statewide approach, and stick it in the budget.

So we can at least have another few weeks to talk about it.

The conference committee turned it into a few months.

and we never could reach agreement on it.

The third priority also will be familiar, and that is to expand the county's authority to use photo speed monitoring devices.

This has been a recurring priority of the board.

Last year, it was the subject of legislation introduced by Delegate Hudson, which failed in committee.

And let me also say that there's

You know, we are cognizant of the fact that one of the issues with this priority previously has been that in a prior session in 2020, the county had been granted authority, more limited authority to install these sorts of devices in school zones and school crossing zones and highway work zones and so

There had been some suggestion that there was a reluctance on the part of members of the delegation or the General Assembly, members of the General Assembly generally to expand this authority when the county had not yet even commenced its efforts to implement the existing authority.

So that legislation for school crossing zones and highway work zones was enacted in the 2020 session.

Earlier this year, the Board of Supervisors enacted the local ordinance to implement that authority.

And the county is in the process now of procuring a contract with a vendor to facilitate the establishment of a speed enforcement program as authorized in those zones.

And I would anticipate sometime in the next several months that a contract will be awarded, that equipment will be installed, and that that program will be functioning.

And so the desire expressed on the part of the board is to expand that authority to apply to segments of secondary roads that have posted speeds of 35 miles per hour or higher that are selected based on speeding, crash, and fatality data supporting the need for additional enforcement.

You can see that the rationale for those devices is to promote public safety by providing broader enforcement of speed limits and safety of law enforcement officers who are called upon to make traffic stops on dangerous road segments presently, putting them at risk.

Just so, Madam Chair, I did submit this in a pre-file.

I did hear two concerns, just to let you know.

One was school zone issues.

And then the other concern I heard was that secondary roads, 35 miles an hour plus, might not be enough.

They would like to see it in more places.

So I'm just bringing that up too.

The other question I might have is, so what other broader issues or can you imagine the police department potentially using this for?

No, what I was suggesting was that if they had these devices available, that it would free up personnel to attend other critical police work.

You also have at your places then the legislative positions and policy statements that have also been adopted by the Board of Supervisors.

So the three priorities that we've already talked about, those are specific tasks for legislation to be enacted by the General Assembly.

The positions and policy statements are broad statements regarding direction and support for policy areas, which could be addressed through legislation or other means, including study or funding.

Legislative positions and policy statements are used during the legislative session, especially by county staff, to respond to inquiries by the local delegation

to inform their decision making.

And so the best example that I can give you is, and it's not a specific example, but during the session, we get calls from VACO, VML, your legislative assistants, asking what are the county's thoughts

on a particular bill that has been introduced by another member of the General Assembly, someone who's not a member of the local delegation.

And so staff, it's difficult for us to get a sense of the board in between board meetings and to represent what we hear as an official position of a board of supervisors.

And so we use these legislative positions and policy statements

to guide us as staff in responding to the inquiries that we get from you and from the various associations who are doing work during the session.

Three of these positions and policy statements have been accorded a higher priority than all of the others, and they basically were

legislative priorities from prior years.

They were legislative asks from prior years where the board sought legislation.

But instead, consistent with that more targeted approach that the board only has three specific asks, these former priorities were carried, they were shifted

to the positions and policy statements but accorded this higher priority.

And there are provisions for legislation that would enable localities to establish a schedule of civil penalties in lieu of criminal punishment for violations of certain local ordinances.

provision for legislation that would allow localities to further regulate short-term rentals by imposing certain conditions and then finally provision for legislation that would allow

Local public bodies to hold all meetings virtually without all of the limitations that are currently in the Freedom of Information Act.

There's a limitation on the number of meetings per year for which that can occur.

So essentially stripping all of those limitations out and leaving it to the discretion of localities provided

they observe all of the other requirements for electronic communications meetings to meet virtually or by remote participation as frequently as they choose.

And so we will especially be looking for opportunities to support what this means with these three positions having been accorded priority status

is that we will be looking especially for opportunities to support legislation proposed by others to support that may achieve these particular positions.

Madam Chair, could I ask a couple of questions?

Please.

First, I was wondering if you have any examples of the civil penalties.

As I was reading it, I knew I needed it.

Madam Chair, there's a zoning

that are punishable by criminal acts.

This is a bill maybe I introduced or somebody else introduced two or three years ago, and it didn't get very far.

And yeah.

The third one was the one I introduced last year, and it didn't get anywhere.

And as I recall, I don't recall what the opposition was on the civil penalties thing.

Rob Bell went for that bill.

The Freedom of Information Act was

There were Democrats and Republicans both.

Nobody liked that bill.

Everybody else voted against it.

I will say delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker mentioned as one of her top priorities expanding access to

I do think she's going to introduce legislation that will probably touch on some of those

For the civil penalties one, and as Senator Deeds mentioned, it's basically a minor transgression

that is subject currently to being a misdemeanor prosecution and conviction.

And what we were proposing is essentially a tiered level of civil penalties as an option that the local jurisdiction could determine whether they felt it was more appropriate to proceed under the criminal or under civil, and it would be kind of tiered.

So a lower fine, for example, on the first violation, a little more of a second, a little more third, but at any time the local jurisdiction could pursue criminal.

I've been a real proponent of this because of what I see the over criminalization of minor behavior conduct and the ramifications of that for an individual by having criminal convictions is very different than some sort of a civil infraction but again it would be flexible, it would be tiered, it would be optional and so it wouldn't mandate that you had to use a civil infraction but it would give that opportunity and part of that was for people

You have poor people who can't afford to do something and they get some sort of a zoning violation and now they have a criminal conviction as a result of it.

There are other subject areas.

In which this is an issue, and I've got a list, and I can email that to you separately so that you have that.

I was just going to add that we've had difficulty getting judges to support a criminal conviction for something when it seemed to be over the top.

So it allows an enforcement without either the courts being overburdened, the courts saying, this is ridiculous, we don't want to give a criminal conviction for this, yet still have some mechanism of enforcement.

Thank you.

So with that, I want to go back to priority number one.

How much money total is the project?

Senator Dietz, I appreciate you wanted to jump right into the details.

Thank you very much.

Chair Price, members of the board, Senator Dietz, delegate elect Kostin, delegate elect Loughlin, Trevor Henning, Deputy County Executive.

Thanks for the opportunity to present today.

It's my first time I've been to many of these meetings I've never been asked to present.

And so this is maybe an interesting or unusual request in your experience with legislative priorities.

13 slides more than a minute but approximately 13 slides of content between myself to talk about the what JT Newberry our deputy director of economic development will talk about some of the why and the opportunity and then county executive Richardson will get up at the end and talk about some of the engagement that we've had to date and help bring bring that hopefully we'll provide a good

about a baseline of understanding of this important work that we're doing with our Board of Supervisors.

And I'll just note it's still in Jeff's thunder slightly, but seven days ago, almost to the minute, he and I were in Senator Warner's office presenting on this project with him and two of his key staffers.

We spent about 45 minutes with the Senator, and I thought it was an excellent meeting.

and Senator Cain's staff.

And Jeff will talk more about that.

And so let's proceed, and I always get this the right way.

So before we jump into Rivanna Station and the Rivanna Futures Project, it's helpful to kind of give a bird's eye view of location.

I'll just, the slide's a little off, but Rivanna Station is what is called a sub-installation

in Virginia, very big base, the garrison commander of Fort Belvoir, Colonel Messina currently, has responsibility of the Rivanna Station installation.

It's referred to as a sub-installation because it does not have all of the infrastructure and amenities that a normal installation or base would have.

It basically houses

We'll talk about it a little further, but it houses office buildings and a child development center.

Those office buildings are at a very high security level, they have skiff space, and they do very high level intelligence work.

So it is within a fence line, but what it doesn't have is

basic public works facilities, doesn't have its own police force, does not have a hospital or medical.

And if I could, SCIF space is S-C-I-F, Sensitive Compartmented Information space, which means the highest classification of classified and sensitive information that our government has.

It's approximately a two, two and a half hour drive from the National Capital Region.

It's considered a coup, in some ways, a continuity of operations.

If something untoward were to happen in D.C., Pentagon, that area,

This is where a lot of the intelligence activity happens today, but also it would be relied upon for the nation and the world.

Rivanna Station currently houses three entities, the National Ground Intelligence Center, which is Army Ground Intelligence, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, it's NGA.

NGA is

At a very simplistic level, they're the map providers to the intelligence community.

They're embedded into the organization.

And in the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA is also there.

NGIC is primarily Army.

DIA provides support and services to our armed forces and our allies.

We knew that this facility was important to us as a community.

Locally, we have something called a Defense Affairs Committee, which supports military and veterans in our region.

The Board of Supervisors several years ago funded a position through our Chamber of Commerce to support that work.

But we did an economic development study.

The state has done analysis of

of the impacts of defense in Virginia, which is significant.

We felt like it was understated for our region.

And so funding through the county, the city, and UVA, we funded a Weldon Cooper study on economic development this spring.

And the result was, in our region, Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and Greene, $1.2 billion annually.

It's number two.

UVA is significantly higher.

almost $8 billion.

So UVA is an economic engine.

This is quietly the number two impact to our region.

Rivanna Station itself generates 50% of that.

And so since my work with Mr. Richardson and his ex-office dating back to 2018, I have gotten more involved in support of defense in our region.

We've developed a really good relationship with the Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs Office at the state.

Jeff and I have been there frequently.

Secretary Crenshaw many times and they have been part of this work to date that has helped support the work to get us to where we are today.

And so it is meaningful, this work is meaningful to our community and it is a very quiet entity in our community.

They don't advertise themselves much because of the nature of their work, they're up 29

Williams Road, and so they're kind of tucked away into the north part of the county.

Since 2018, predating that, the Veterans Affairs

We've had a number of these opportunities and threats for all of the defense institutions and bases in the state.

They've done this at least three times, including recently in May up at Rivanna Station, where we meet with representatives from Rivanna Station and stakeholders.

We had some elected officials there, Mr. Richardson and I were there, and they identify

I want to share this because this created awareness and a sense of urgency

to our locality, to the exec's office, to our board many years ago, which is the opportunity was there are needs for intelligence in our intelligence community of growth that are having trouble being met throughout the nation.

And we saw this as an opportunity here.

In fact, there was a master plan that was done where they were looking to do an expansion offsite, onsite,

Eventually it landed to on-site and there's an addition to the skiff that will finish next fall on the order of about $90 million.

In total, the military has invested around $312 million to this site.

This is important for them.

We also heard about concerns with encroachment.

That is probably information that you are aware of.

Encroachment of bad actors, of unsuitable development that would happen adjacent to this, any base or installation, but specifically here.

That concern of encroachment is

is a clear and present threat throughout all our military bases across the nation.

And so it was identified here as a concern, a weakness that was also identified as force protection.

Again, thinking back, Belvoir, two hours away, they don't have all of the on-base infrastructure for protection that they potentially need.

In fact, I spent five hours this morning with our senior police fire rescue meeting with Fort Belvoir

Rivanna station reps talking about emergency response, working on memorandums of agreements, making sure that we are as tight as we can be in the event that something happens on base.

So part of this work is recognizing

You know, we need to preserve this and protect this mission.

With the military, missionaries can always change.

There is basic alignment that happened several years ago.

That's what resulted in the growth of Rivanna Station that we see today.

So we want to make sure we did everything that we could to protect and preserve the mission.

We started this work before the pandemic, we stood down during the pandemic and we brought it back up over a year ago with the direction and the support and the encouragement of our board to look at what could we possibly do as a locality to acquire land that will protect, will defend the existing function that will preserve that half a billion dollar a year economic generator

and then what could we do also that would help allow that mission to grow?

JT will talk about some of what that growth could look like.

This is an image that really represents the acquisition to orient you.

Seminole Trail is at the top.

of Route 29.

This is about a mile and a half up from UVA's North Fork, or they used to call it the Research Park, not too far from the airport.

Everything in the salmon is the existing Rivanna Station.

75 acres, it's all contained within a secure perimeter and fence line.

This rectangle, this fluorescent green color, actually is a commercial building.

It's owned by an LLC.

Army and DIA have

Four floors in that building where they have staff that are housed, mostly contractors, but that is outside the fence line.

So that is not within the gate.

The building itself, though, has security within it, and that is how they manage that.

Everything else was a single landowner.

We developed a strategy internally, working with our board, working with the Veterans Affairs Office, that we

We negotiated through a blind LLC with a single landowner and were able to land a contract based on an affordability and trying to maximize the property that resulted in securing 462 acres at $58 million.

We felt that having site control of the land was the most critical part for being able to make all of this work, not just rely on future possibilities.

And so I'm happy to say, well,

I'll just hold this for a second.

Half of this land is in our development area, which means we'll be able to build it out in accordance with our comprehensive plan.

We'll have to do a little bit of work on zoning to make sure everything is copasetic, but there are significant growth opportunities for this site along for this corridor related to technology and defense.

The rest of the acreage

which is some beautiful area, lakes, more natural area is rural area and we think that will continue to be an amenity but also will provide a standoff distance that the Department of Defense is looking for.

Last slide I have before I hand it off to Mr. Newberry is that we had to do our due diligence.

We have been working rigorously internally with staff, with consultants to make sure that the land was buildable as we think it is and so we had to do all the testing we would do if you're buying a home.

We did that kind of work to make sure that it checks the

We are now down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's and really it's in our attorney's world of getting to closing.

We'll talk more about that timing next week with our board.

So mid-December is coming up, it is next week, so you'll be closed next week?

We are, and that's what Mr. Newberry will talk about.

We're talking about development in... Development closer to Seminole Trail 29?

You're actually, if you give us two slides, I think Mr. Newberry can talk about that exactly.

And the building that's in that.

Thanks.

Carlson, Delegate Lawford.

I'm going to explain a little bit more about the vision for that future development that's adjacent to Rivanna Station.

And so I'll do a quick orientation.

The image that you see here on the slide is a 3D rendering of one of those earlier maps that the state provided us through the Secretary of Veterans and Defense Affairs.

It includes

about 600,000 square feet of additional development in phase one.

And the anticipated occupants and tenants of that space includes private sector users,

after state and federal users of the space.

So just to make sure we're clear on the proximity here, this is the existing 75 acres of Rivanna Station.

Phase one is approximately 50 acres of expansion.

Again, about 600,000 square feet.

Can I ask a question?

The privately held commercial space is this parcel right here.

And so I think one thing I wanted to mention before thinking about the economic impact is just to make a connection to the state level here.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership is an office that we work closely with.

often they're updating their economic development strategic plan.

They call it their innovative framework.

Their target sectors, where they see Virginia's future job growth coming from, are knowledge work, manufacturing, and logistics.

This space is

knowledge work and manufacturing.

And so when Virginia thinks about trying to plan for how are we going to achieve its ambitious goals to become a leader in the country for job growth and economic activity, we see this as an excellent opportunity to defend and extend the gains that Virginia already has in the federal presence of investment related to the military.

Another part of that innovative framework from VEDP is a movement towards ecosystems.

We're trying to facilitate all of the inputs that are necessary to fuel job growth and are areas well suited particularly in the areas that are really driving investment decisions in the current climate and that's around talent and capital.

So we have 8,500 graduates coming out of PVCC and UVA that would provide a pipeline of talent for this growth.

We also have a number of

different tracking mechanisms for deal activity for investment from venture capital and angels in local businesses that are growing.

One of the things that we've heard consistently throughout the process of socializing this opportunity is that to meet tomorrow's defense challenges it's going to require

Academic, private sector, and public sector collaboration for us to compete with the interests around the world that don't align with our national security.

So thinking about the specific

And the average wage according to our analysis was a little bit lower than what we saw in the Weldon Cooper Center study.

Part of that is because it includes those manufacturing and academic jobs, but we know that defense employees that are starting at Rivanna Station today are starting at six figures.

So it would be nearly 900 jobs in that initial phase.

Trevor mentioned that we have approximately 232 acres in total, so this image here shows what that future expansion could look like, which would be at least a doubling of that initial economic impact that we measured.

That's an additional 150 acres and up to 1.2 million square feet of space for these types of uses.

So let's break down the information that our engineers provided in our due diligence prior to closing on the site.

To facilitate that first 50 acres of development, we're looking at doing a comp plan and master plan and rezoning amendment.

Planning for the future extension of Boulders Road.

Right now, Boulders Road culminates right at that commercially owned office space.

And then we would be looking at clearing and grading that 50 acres and doing additional studies to make sure that the intersections both with 29 on the south side and the north side are adequately suited for the anticipated traffic.

This partnership model that we would be pursuing here is something that has success around the country.

We can look at other innovation hubs in Huntsville, Alabama, San Diego, in other sectors like in biotech, which has a really big footprint here, areas like Boston.

There is this

mix of partnership and collaboration that leads to this big opportunity that we've been describing.

And so the county has been focused squarely on site control.

We want to make sure that we preserve that opportunity to make sure that adjacencies were protected.

And so with that, we're now moving into the site development phase.

I'll just quickly mention before I turn it over to County Executive Jeff Richardson.

Our region is really excited about this opportunity.

We have already an existing ecosystem.

We've been meeting with the City of Charlottesville, Green County.

Green County already has adopted a defense production overlay zone, which is something that we're also interested in investigating further.

62 acres on the east side of 29 immediately across the street.

Many of you will be familiar with North Fork, UVA's Discovery Park.

related to the defense industry.

So we see a tremendous opportunity.

Up in Greene County, around Rutgersville, there's an additional 500 acres of space.

So you're looking at about 1,500 acres and about an eight mile corridor where there could really be some special things happening that we're excited about.

To our local delegation, the key word that Mr. Newberry just stated is work clothes.

That means we're close to wrapping up and turning it over to you for questions.

But I want to take a second.

I want to talk about this because it's interesting that Mr. Henry mentioned where we were one week ago today.

To our local delegation, respectfully, do you remember where you were one week ago today?

If you think for a second or you look on your phone, you'll remember.

You'll know where you were one week ago today, even during this hectic time between

Thanksgiving and Christmas.

One week ago today we were wrapping up with U.S.

Senator Mark Warner and we had just walked him through this process for 45 minutes.

We sat around a table with a big map and we talked about this.

But with all due respect, we didn't just ask, we don't want to share with you just about one week ago today.

I would ask you specifically, Senator, do you remember where you were in 2005, 18 years ago?

Any idea what you were working on?

I can tell you one thing for sure, sir, that I reminded the U.S.

senator in his office.

I said, 18 years ago, sir, as governor, you came to Charlottesville because you were really concerned during BRAC, base relocation and closure.

You were concerned about losing Rivanna Station.

You were specifically concerned about encroachment.

You were concerned that we would lose 3,000 staff, 300 military, and 2,700 civilians connected to three

Intelligence agencies in Washington, D.C.

Really good paying jobs in our community.

They're good citizens and they're good community members and they buy homes and their kids go to our schools and they participate in things and they're good for our economy.

But I said, I reminded the U.S.

Center, I said, you were there in 2005 and you were so concerned about encroachment and you said we needed to do something.

And of course, the punchline was, I said, sir, encroachment is no longer an issue because this Board of Supervisors

They just bought the property, and they took encroachment off the table.

So Rivanna Station is secure.

It is secure for the foreseeable future.

It's one of the only military bases on the Eastern Seaboard that can grow and is not landlocked.

And that's important for us to know, because in Washington, D.C., at the Department of Defense level, money is going into intelligence.

We now own the property and let's fully develop this to its potential.

And so to back up for a second, this didn't happen overnight.

There was a lot of work that led to this, but once you gain site control, you then prepare for site readiness.

And J.T.

Newberry talked about that.

And then finally, vertical development.

And J.T.

talked about the partnerships.

We need durable partners.

If you'd advance the slide, please.

I'll advance the slide.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

As we talk about that, it's locally driven, state supported, and federally shared.

So our durable partners right out of the gate are the state and the federal government for obvious reasons.

JT talked about how it aligns with the commonwealth strategy for economic development and what we need to do.

Our federal partners are obvious out of Washington, D.C.

and the Department of Defense how we're going to grow this campus.

It's so ideally located two hours away from Washington, D.C.

I know for a fact at the DIA executives get up every week and one day a week they drive up to D.C.

for meetings and they drive back and they sleep in their homes in Albemarle County.

Why do they do that?

Because they can.

They can go to Washington, D.C., have meetings and come back because of the convenient proximity to Washington, D.C.

But it's out of the beltway, out of the beltline, and it's a different quality of life here.

We are a preferred location with what we offer in Albemarle County.

So I will say that the work with Veterans Affairs, Secretary Crenshaw, we went in August to see him.

For Secretary, it's at that time.

And we were basically just putting this on their radar and talking about what our opportunities were and to ensure that we had site control.

From 2005 to 2023, there was a lot of hand wringing at the state level about what are we going to do to ensure that there's not encroachment and to ensure that we don't lose this base.

Well, we've taken that off the table.

Now let's go from defense to offense.

and it's going to be both a sprint and a marathon.

So we're talking now, we've entertained Veterans Affairs and Commerce on a tour.

We started at North Fork to talk like we are today.

Then we ended up with a site, a windshield tour inside the fence line to look specifically at what is there today and what the opportunities are tomorrow.

We've been assured that scheduling is underway.

for a soon to be scheduled meeting with the governor and the chief of staff in his office.

He's interested in learning more about this.

We would hope that we are talking about a state investment as a durable partner in the world of site readiness.

We've got to have investment in infrastructure.

Securing the site is step one.

Step two is investment in infrastructure.

To get that site ready,

for partnership development.

And it's not just about our doable partners at state and federal level.

It's also about private sector.

It's also about academic institutions.

We have met here in this room with the University of Virginia.

We have met in this building with Virginia Tech.

Both have shown tremendous interest.

Virginia Tech has workforce development contracts with seven of the 13 intelligence agencies at the Department of Defense.

So folks, this is an opportunity, and I believe it's an opportunity for a lifetime in this community.

Today, it's about making you aware.

I need you to be aware that this is our top priority and know a little bit about what this is about, how it aligns with the state, how it aligns with our federal partners, and that leads to your support.

We're going to manage this from the bottom up out of Albemarle County.

Yes, sir.

What we've talked specifically to the secretariat and to our secretaries

is a significant match on infrastructure to help us with site readiness.

And so we are specifically talking to commerce.

We're talking to trade.

$58 million.

I know that last year, in this last budget proposal, there were things in the governor's budget, parks, for example, things that I'd ask for.

and legislatively, that I had no idea were even on its radar screen included.

We're in a normal budget here.

We don't have any more federal COVID money.

So money is going to be tight, tight, tight this year.

$58 million is a big bite.

We've done money two different ways for sites.

One, with the BRAC, in 2005, I wasn't through with an election until December 22nd.

I know exactly what I was doing in 2005.

Back in those days, we were concerned about the development around Oceana.

We provided some match money to Virginia Beach to purchase some of those trucks.

But that was to provide a buffer zone.

That wasn't going to be developed.

That was to buy houses, tear the houses down, and create a buffer around Oceana.

We've provided money for site development.

You're telling me you're going to do both things.

You're going to protect the property, but you're also going to develop it.

I mean how do you do that?

Tell me how that's going to work.

I can answer that if you would like.

We're in the early stages.

Once we get closed on the property, we're going to master plan it.

And we're going to talk about the compatibility with the three intelligence agencies in the federal government.

We're also going to work with the state.

All of the 232 acres that's in the development area will not be used for military level or intelligence level assistance.

There's opportunities to do a lot of different things with the development area.

in coordination with DOD and the existing agencies.

In your packet, sir, we call it a one-pager.

And there is kind of an image that shows the potential development area.

That image is what the state referred to as the art of the possibility.

It is the work that reflects input that the agencies had,

I believe that it would be some fence line extension, additional classified skiff space, but then there would be an unclassed piece of it that would be more of the academic side, more of the campus setting.

So it's a yes and, it is a buffer area.

If I could add, Senator, it wouldn't be that the property would just be simply available to the highest bidder to be controlled in development and what entities would be able to be within that property.

And that's what both provides the buffer

but also enhances the gross economic development in the industry, biotechnology, all of those fields, research which all tie in with this intelligence area that we've got here and of the 15 military installations in Virginia

This is the only one that wasn't hidebound by other property, and now we've been able to protect it.

And a year or so ago, St.

Louis was offering an incredible package deal to take Rivanna Station and move it to St.

A future board, though, could develop up to the fence line.

Is there anything to prevent that from happening?

I think that there are steps that could be taken.

you know the regulations that will govern future development within the purchase area and so we'll be working a close concert as Deputy County Executive Henry said working closely with our partners to make sure any future development is totally complimentary and welcome

The map included on the handout here is absent of a legend, so I think it bears just sharing that the waffled area, the hatched area in white, that's the total purchase area.

The area highlighted in yellow is our development area.

and that's important.

I was just concerned about, I mean, and forgive me, all I know about it is what I've read in the newspaper.

But I thought you were mainly interested in providing the buffer.

But it's both.

But you can develop up to the fence line under this plan.

But only that's compatible with the protection of Rivanna Station.

And Senator, if I might,

We are just reaching the end of our due diligence period where we've decided that yes, in fact, it is appropriate to purchase the property.

I'm just going to add that back in 2008, the rough number for the contractor tail

in the community who are working on different levels of research or whatever was 10,000 jobs.

And it's now a little smaller number because they're much more clearly defined as far as their connections.

But I would absolutely not be going forward with this if it were not only to protect the mission and not to get in the way.

What is the buffer zone?

Is there a standard buffered zone?

The defense is looking at this as with the county ownership, it is a win because we may not have a partner in whatever extension of the existing function would be but also knowing that they will have a role in anything that we would want to develop.

Playing out a scenario, let's say Northrop Grumman or Boeing

We wouldn't just land that on the property right adjacent to Borders Road.

We would do that in a way to make sure that there is no confliction, but that is maybe not necessarily an intelligence specific function, but maybe it is in the area of technology and DOD support.

Years ago, Long Beach Naval Station was at great risk because a Chinese company purchased a large pier section right across from the Naval Station and completely jeopardized the security of the installation.

What we would be looking at here is A, preventing something like that and then B, within the development, ensuring that it is compatible uses, when I say compatible uses, industrial compatible uses with

So to Senator Deed's point, is it just like this partnership

for local government and having site control that as we move forward with what's already there.

Remember, there's 3,000 staff.

That's a very active site today.

We've got to continue to work with them on understanding their needs and understanding their needs.

and that's when we can begin to partner with them in a way where we're helping them to maximize the footprint and to grow to the level that they need to grow.

That's one of the things, I mean we're going to open, we're going to cut the ribbon in the fall on a 90 million dollar skiff space that is being built there now.

It's being built there because of need and you'll all be invited to the ribbon cutting whenever it happens.

It's projected to be open probably next November.

That's what we've learned and we went out there and on the windshield tour we looked at that.

I wonder, Mr. Richardson, it's interesting, so I don't envy you, Mr. Rosenberg, trying to figure all this out, because you can imagine a scenario at some point where there might be competing interests, where there's like a business that comes in that would be incredibly profitable, would drive a great amount of economic development for the county, but it would be really easy for the military to say, you know what, that kind of would be a pain for us.

I just want to point out, and I've gone back to this slide intentionally, because it's got this mouthful on it, the Intelligence and National Security Innovation Acceleration Campus, and I'm not sure that I

that I heard those words used to describe this concept.

But I think it does a nice job of trying to capture what it is that's intended and that this is not just a wide open economic development project, but it's intended to, in partnership with

the federal and state governments develop assets that are closely aligned with the mission presently at Rivanna Station for the long term.

And so the private sector and academic partners that Mr. Richardson referred to earlier would be

departments from the University of Virginia.

We talked about this, and then we went around the room, and every area talked about how they're connected to Rivanna Station in some meaningful way.

And that's the University of Virginia stepping into this world of support for research, again biotechnology, the relationship that is existing currently.

When we spoke to Virginia Tech, it was a very different conversation.

They've been in this world for 10 years.

And like I said, they have contracts with seven of the intelligence agencies in

and Washington regarding workforce development.

There is growth there.

There is interesting growth.

Ms.

I was going to say that Phil Roberts, who was the former and so founding head of DIA and a station, has been always on the recruitment hunt to bring other agencies here.

This has been a focus of the DOD since 9-11 because the blast zone is serious business up there.

This is so important to know what the questions are to be able to tell the story more clearly to begin with.

If we're going to make an attempt at this, we have to be able to.

There are going to be some hard questions to ask.

In the past, there was funding for BRAC and it was clear what we were doing.

We were creating buffer zones around Oceana Air Base.

None of that property would be developed.

It would be fenced.

the Intelligence side.

So I want you to remember that there are 3,000 people out there, 300 military personnel, 2,700 civilian intelligence analysts.

This is a footprint that exists in the United States.

It exists throughout the United States.

This is not bleeding edge, this is just good economic development.

the appropriate and compatible uses to get the maximizing footprint out here from an economic development standpoint.

So there is St.

Louis.

St.

Louis several years ago was expanding and giving their land away for free to get Department of Defense related agencies there.

We were concerned that we could lose Rivanna Station as it exists today.

Has the county developed sites before?

It feels to me that if this is going to be, we are creating a site plan for another entity to come in to use.

And I'm just, you know, it's on the taxpayers of Albemarle County to create a site for somebody to come and use.

Is that been a formula that's been used before?

I don't think Albemarle County is going to be driving the equipment to that level, but as Mr. Newberry mentioned, we're working currently at North Fork of a business site development readiness project right now.

So I think within the bounds of our expertise, yes, we can do that, but we wouldn't be going beyond that.

Yes, so Mr. Rosenberg, I wonder if we could go back to the slide that shows the $51 million if we keep going.

This slide right here talks about the breakdown.

These are the estimated costs from our engineering firm to develop phase one.

And that's not for any vertical construction.

This is just for pad preparation.

And I would envision we do have a number of existing public-private partnerships.

That gets up to the $51 million.

We want the state to buy the land.

We're buying the land.

almost a year ago with Colonel Messina, the Fort Belvoir commanding officer responsible for Rivanna Station.

And Jeff asked, you know, what would be something related to Rivanna Station that would aid in your work?

And he expressed concerns around just base resiliency and security, and he said,

We didn't think it was $36 million two years ago.

That reflects the cost of construction and working with VDOT and experiences we have in other parts of the county.

What about a mile of an extension?

It has to bridge.

That is a pretty good number.

Collaterally, we've also seen an increase in the high power lines coming into this area.

As you know, we recently approved a large solar installation in the county, which provides energy security.

So all of these things are pieces that are coming together to help with this, which again, it's 1.2 billion, 600 million is here.

Madam Chair, I totally agree.

I think this is a wonderful idea.

The other thing I think people may ask is maybe a bit of a surprise that the military themselves is not purchasing the land.

Go ahead.

As both the 2014 and 2018 analysis, all the generals, all the ribbons in the room over and over again, they have said the locality has to start.

It was a shock to me and we tried very hard for many years to try to change that rubric, but it doesn't change.

I will just say that this goes to the security, not only the support for the military, cyber security and such, but also if you read about five, six months ago, there were some bad actors that bought land all the way around

Edwards Air Force Base in California.

And there was an LLC from Maryland that said they own that.

They couldn't figure out who owns the LLC.

The Justice Department is now getting involved and digging, trying to find out who owns that LLC because they don't think it's

This is a big ask.

it's almost as if you were in our conversations with the secretaries at North Fork last week where you know this is a marathon this is a long game and the master plan the site development getting ready moving forward it's just it's a it's a full-time job for us to continue once we have site control to move forward and to create momentum

It was an interesting conversation with Senator Warner's office because he's a very detailed, my first experience with the Senator and he was asking very detailed questions and we explained kind of where we were in the process and he

and I think he's on board from a convener and trying to bring in those opportunities from an intelligence perspective based on his role.

But his staff, it was really an interesting dynamic between he and his staff when his staff said, you know, Senator, how many times are we asked of a need that is limited because we don't have property?

He reminded the Senator that this was the first.

This is the first time we've been in this type of meeting where site control is not an issue.

And that caught his attention in a meaningful discussion.

Because he was in Charlottesville 18 years earlier.

expressing concerns about encroachment and BRAC, which is basic relocation and closure.

We need this to be vibrant in our community.

It's a part of our economic vibrancy.

I know we're running out of time.

I'm going to turn it back over to the chair.

But it's interesting what JT said when he was up when he said, interest around the world that doesn't align with our national security.

and if you need to leave, we understand.

We just appreciate your understanding and listening.

And I know, speaking for staff and Board of Supervisors, we're happy to meet again, talk about this again, go over it in any, whether together or separately or however we can address any other questions or concerns you might have.

I will just add one fact about the speed cameras.

Several years ago, 2017, 2018, Albemarle County was number one in the state for the number of deaths on the highway.

And they were mostly all single car, run off the road at high speed, hit a tree.

And Fairfax has

almost ten times more people than we do and they have a fewer number of deaths than we do because they have different circumstances.

So that really got our police chief's attention and got my attention and there is nobody who could have enough police officers to properly patrol.

But if you can sting somebody with a $200 fine, they may not go kill themselves on a tree.

And so this is a way that I hope we will be able to make some traction this year to be

We have our branch.

We kill people every couple of years out there because if you've been on it, windy, windy, up and down trees everywhere.

The red light change has not been uniform Democrats for Republicans against.

Civil liberties think.

There are a whole lot of people on both sides that raised issues.

I get that.

No, no, no.

Thank you.

And Supervisor Galloway couldn't be here.

And Senator, I really appreciate your comments earlier about the school construction at one cent.

But that was the one thing he really wanted to make sure was mentioned.

So I'm going to mention, you know, we really want to help with the schools wherever we can get it.

I also put that in for drafting.

I put it as the statewide versus locality option.

I also spoke to leadership about it, and they were supportive so far.

And I also was just at a meeting this morning of the Western District.

Talk about a mouthful of names.

Western District, Commissioners of Revenue Association, and meeting, annual meeting.

But I ran it by them, and I did.

And that's a fairly, I think, rural collection

Actually I was at a superintendent conference over in Nelson County and that was very rural and they were all supportive.