Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   6/12/2024

Good afternoon.

I am pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 12th of June at 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District,

and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

The quorum is present.

We're also joined here by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson and our county attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg and our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgeson, our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Also, let me please welcome, thank our Albemarle County police officers present, Master Police Officer Dana Reeves and Officer Andy Muncie.

Board, as always, our first item is to adopt the final agenda.

Do we have a motion to approve the final agenda?

So moved.

Second.

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

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

and board.

Our next item is brief announcements by board members.

We'll start with our order for today.

I just wanted to say I did a, we did a presentation to, well, two of us at the Rivanna Station and it's, what we're doing there is really important work and it was really nice to be out there and some beautiful, beautiful land out there that hopefully

will help injured veterans, those suffering from PTSD, once everything gets up and running, which will probably take a while, after the board approves everything.

Not before.

And that's all I have, actually.

Thank you.

No announcements today.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So it is the last week of early voting for our congressional primaries.

Just as a reminder to everyone, that means you can vote in person early in either the Republican or the Democratic primary for our congressional district.

That is at the county offices on Fifth Street, not this office, but the other one on Fifth Street.

You can do that anytime during normal working hours.

importantly, for the last week, we keep it open through Saturday.

So the polls will be open on Saturday for folks who want to go and vote.

This 17th, June 17th, on a Wednesday, Scottsville is going to be celebrating Bateau Festival.

This is a traveling festival that goes all up and down the James River.

We have had the poor luck that it has been quite rainy the last two years in a row.

So far, we're looking at clear forecast for it.

So this is going to be an exciting time because it's got to be the first

first clear skies we're going to see in three years, knock on wood.

Additionally, the Scottsville Boys and Girls Club is going to be celebrating a major anniversary on the 21st that is going to be from five to seven in Scottsville at their location.

And lastly, it's a very Scottsville-centered time of year.

Of course, one of my favorite events in the entire county every year, you know, there's a

I tell people you know I just graduated from three years at the law school and people love an icebreaker where they go around and say what's your favorite restaurant or thing to do in Charlottesville because it's all full of transplants right.

My thing I always say the best thing to do in the Charlottesville metro area including the entire county is the Scottsville Fourth of July parade.

It is truly a wonderful experience we pull from people all throughout Southern Albemarle throughout the whole county

all throughout the surrounding counties.

People come up from Buckingham.

People come up from Nelson.

It is one of the most diverse and authentic just spectrums of our country and our community that you will ever find.

And it's a blast.

It goes all day.

The parade is at nine.

But the farmer's market starts at eight and runs till, I want to say, one.

And then there are additional flea markets and live music from one until nine, followed by, of course, fireworks.

And that is all I have.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

just to add to Mike, that parade in Scottsville is what parade should be.

Seriously, it's what we all remember as a child that still exists and it's just wonderful, so I agree with you, it's great.

Just a couple of things, I want to thank once again

the board for mentioning that Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority had made a presentation to your CACs.

and so I reached out and I think Bea specifically mentioned it.

I mentioned that I reached out and Jennifer Whitaker, the Director of Engineering and Maintenance at Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority presented to my CAC this week and it was actually spellbounding.

Spellbinding?

Spellbounding?

Anyway, people loved it.

It was informative.

It caught all of us up on where we are in the county with regards to infrastructure.

We also had an interesting discussion that I want to mention because we have a lot of campers in our communities.

I mean, mobile campers or campers.

And there was a concern in my district about inappropriate dumping of the toilets

from those campers.

What I found out, which was very helpful at the meeting, just so everyone knows, if you have a camper, your waste, your toilet waste, can be dumped at our Moors Creek Advanced Water Resource Recovery Facility, which is at 695 Moors Creek Lane, which is right off of Franklin Street.

And the description was that as a camper,

Enter, it's a person driving, or the camper enters the plant from the front gate.

The dumping facility is immediately to the right.

Campers are generally not charged to fee, and I don't know exactly what the generally means, but they say generally not charged to fee.

But they do require assistance from the staff to discharge the system.

But the system is open 24-7.

There's a sign at the facility with a contact phone number in case the operator

is not in the immediate vicinity, so you can most often find somebody to help you.

This was a piece of information that I wasn't even aware of, so just sharing it with you.

The other great information presentation we had was from Dan Eggleston, of course, who is our Atmar County Fire Chief.

because we've had a number of fires in the community and some concerns around safety.

I asked Dian to come and make a presentation.

And again, it was just wonderfully received.

Dian did a great job.

And during that presentation, what I discovered was something that this board's talked about a lot.

We have, over the years, talked often about the concern about all the mulch fires that we have.

that the belief is that they're started by cigarettes being flicked out of windows and of course they're flicked onto mulch beds at businesses along the roads and they start fires, which the fire department has to respond to.

Dian said that they are being proactive right now in areas like pentops and a few other areas where there are businesses along the road and they have mulch beds and plantings

and they're reaching out and asking if the business owners would be able to switch out the mulch beds to rock.

Now, you're going to see cigarette butts on rock beds, which is not terribly attractive, but the rock doesn't catch fire, which is a safety, more of a better regarding safety than having all of these mulch beds catching on fire and many of them have been at gas stations.

which is also not very good.

So he said he's having great success in the business owners being willing to switch out that mulch to some sort of gravel or rock as a safety precaution.

Just wanted to share those two things and I do thank though very much Jennifer Whitaker and Dan Elgleston for the great presentations.

Yeah, so thank you.

Thank you very much, and thank you for the announcement about the camper, where to take it because there was one on the shores of the reservoir a few years ago that was a little scary.

Thank you so much.

All right, this is the summer season for the Charlottesville Band, who will be traveling around to different locations to do

Monthly Concerts.

There will be one this year at Monticello High School.

So watch for the date for that.

The next one is June 30th.

It's the Family Pops Concert at the Paramount.

So it's a very popular one for children of all ages.

But the one last year, there was not a seat in the house and half of them were kids, which was really fabulous.

It is parade season, and not just in one location, but June 29, the Saturday before the 4th of July is the customary day for the last 70 years for the Crozet Firemen's Parade, which will begin at 5pm at Crozet Elementary School and go through town

then the mobs will migrate to King Family Vineyard for the family events there and fireworks after dark so there will be a new location for the after parade activities and it'll be an interesting experiment for the first time but I think it'll be great fun and the scenery is pretty spectacular out there for seeing fireworks at

over the mountains.

Also on the July 4th at 10 a.m.

will be the 28th annual Earleysville Parade.

We're for the one mile right down the middle of Earleysville and we look forward to seeing our regular soldiers, horses, decorated prams and bicycles out there for that.

also at your counters is the annual report for the Virginia Career Works and I would just like to have we just had a great workforce board and elected officials joint meeting yesterday and some figures which are somewhat in this report but also the five-year figures over 35,000 dislocated adult and youth people have come to the workforce center or been involved in training

over 2,500 jobs resulting for these people who many of whom have been without work for a long, long time.

Over 400 credentials have been earned by students, lots of different

Sectors, but the health sector, light manufacturing, skilled trades, IT, cybersecurity is one, and logistics are some of the most popular of the credential categories.

And the training funds are budgeted up to $5,500 per qualifying student.

And I would call your attention to this page here in the report because

It talks about the per locality earnings.

So the county puts in locality funds, about $22,000 in this current year's budget.

Over $260,000 is being returned to our county residents in training in one year.

So that's a pretty good return.

And I will be back for more next year.

Thank you.

Yes, I would like to move that the Board adopt a proclamation recognizing John Henry James Day reading, whereas the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors has committed to sharing an inclusive history of our county as a part of our community remembrance project, which includes untold and unsavory stories that have been excluded from the dominant narrative, and whereas, after the Reconstruction Era in the United States, the crime of lynching succeeded slavery as a means to uphold racism and white supremacy.

and whereas John Henry James was one of at least 84 people lynched during the period of 1877 to 1950 in Virginia.

And most importantly, the National Equal Justice Initiative has determined and documented that it was in Albemarle County where Mr. James' body was shot dozens of times and his corpse left hanging in public for hours and whereas

No one was ever punished for this injustice that occurred in Albemarle County on July 12, 1898, though it happened at the hands of over 150 unmasked white men in the presence of the county sheriff and police chief.

and, whereas, it is a new era in Albemarle County and the Board of Supervisors recognizes a history of racial injustice must be acknowledged, recognized and remembered for community healing and that July 12th, 2024 marks the 126th anniversary of the lynching of Mr. John Henry James and now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize this tragic anniversary

Second.

Mr. Pruitt.

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Thank you, and I believe we have Mr. Jim Hindley, our Commonwealth Attorney here to accept this proclamation.

I appreciate having the opportunity to make a few brief remarks.

I appreciate the opportunity to make a few brief remarks.

One thing I'd like to say at the outset, that this is a part of the community remembrance project, this proclamation, and there are other parts of the community remembrance project that are important for the community to be aware of, and I think the historical marker relating to the John Henry James lynching, which is in Court Square,

is a good way for communicating the truth of what happened in 1898 with the John Henry James lynching.

Also, this county is supporting the collection of soil from the lynching site and it's displayed at different places around the county along with

information about the lynching.

And so this proclamation is one part of a broader effort for this community to remember this past racial injustice.

Another part of the community remembrance project that I was privileged to take part in was last year the dismissal of the indictment against John Henry James in the Circuit Court of Albemarle County.

and that was a motion to dismiss that I brought as the Commonwealth's attorney.

It was a proceeding in court and it created another form of the record of this past injustice.

Now this is spread in the record books of our local circuit court.

One thing that stands out to me particularly about this incident in our history

is that the lynching was countenanced by the legal system.

It was not outside the legal system.

And that's a hard truth, but it's the truth.

As the proclamation indicates, the perpetrators of this injustice, this racial terror lynching, were known to the community, and yet

No law enforcement official, no public official, no prosecutor, took any action to bring the perpetrators to justice.

In addition, my predecessor in office in 1898, Mykazha Woods,

and so forth, convened a special grand jury just for the purpose of issuing an indictment against John Henry James, an unfounded indictment but an indictment nonetheless that expressed the position of the legal system that this

Lynching was justified.

And, of course, an indictment was issued against John Henry James posthumously, which is a highly irregular procedure.

And it was issued as far as we can tell from the historical record on the basis of no credible evidence that he was involved in this

and so on.

and the indictment by stating from the order that Judge Higgins entered when this indictment was dismissed.

And the court said that the indictment was not intended to be and did not serve as an instrument of justice, but rather was used corruptly

to sanction the racial terror lynching of John Henry James.

And so as we remember this on this occasion and throughout the year, we acknowledge this past injustice in our community and

In acknowledging and recognizing and remembering this past injustice, I think it serves to help all of us rededicate ourselves to building a future where such injustices cannot take place.

And so I thank the Board of Supervisors for its work in issuing this proclamation.

and the other work that you're doing to keep the remembrance of this terrible event in front of the community.

Thank you.

And we'll pause for a moment.

We'll have comments, perhaps.

This is something that is very sad.

I'm glad it

I'm glad we did something about it last year regarding correcting the record, but I would rather not have to correct past actions because it should have never happened.

It should have never happened.

Whether it was in 1889, whether it was in 1939 to 1945, things like that should have never happened.

We have to remain

Dilligent, and making sure that this type of thing doesn't happen ever again.

And I'm actually concerned and afraid for our country because I think things like this could happen.

I hope they don't.

But we're here to honor John Henry James Day.

And he's someone that should be remembered.

and it's something that we all need to remember as human beings and to give respect to everybody.

And he certainly deserved it and he didn't get it.

And that's why it's very sad for me personally.

But I thank you very much for coming and everyone else for being here so we can honor John Henry James.

Thank you, Mr. Hinchley, for being here today.

I think I've made similar remarks in the past, and I have some additional remarks I'll make after the next proclamation, but I think it's incredibly important because in a lot of this we talk about remembering or acknowledging, but your office was complicit.

An office you now represent.

Our board was complicit, the board that we now represent, and it's incredibly important that we take responsibility in that complicity.

and the things that we are doing, I think, the steps that we are taking are our actions to say that we are trying to take responsibility for those actions.

It would be naive to think that elected officials and government officials, based on the timing of when Mr. James was pulled off the train, the timing of all of that, that there weren't folks that were both elected and or in positions to be protecting the community weren't complicit in those 150 folks.

So it's no surprise to me that there was no prosecution of any of those folks because they were all the ones in power leading on and letting others follow.

And we have to recognize that in an official way and take responsibility for the actions of this board, your office, and I'm sure the sheriff and police chief would feel the same way for those that represent those positions now today.

So thank you for being here today and in your part and the actions you have taken to take responsibility for that.

Mr. Hingeley, thank you so much for being here today.

You know, in one of my very first classes in law school, someone told me how, a professor told me how, lawyering, and especially trial lawyering, is about telling a story.

You're not out there reciting a law.

There is crafting the story as best you can understand it, and presenting it to the community so that they can issue their own judgment on it.

Which is something that hadn't occurred to me before, but I think it's well put.

and so I'm very grateful for your office's role as well as the role of the Honorable Judge Higgins and Professor Schmidt and other members of the community who all helped come together and rebuild this story that we had lost as a community and present it to the community so that we could grapple with it and I want to recognize how this proclamation and

and the establishment of this day moving forward is a continued part of that process of storytelling.

I also do want to talk about how I was also there in the courtroom.

I was not sitting with my other peers up in the front row because I got there maybe five minutes before.

Let me tell you, there were

at least two additional overflow rooms.

I was up on the third floor, which was also packed watching a simulcast that had bad sound.

But this, the entire court building, was packed to the gills, absolutely packed, with people who wanted to show up for racial justice and to talk about how this is indignity in our history.

Shouldn't be something that we just endure, but something that we confront headlong.

and I think it's important that we take that momentum, that we take that energy and we recognize that our courts are every day packed with racial injustice.

It is systematic, it is ground in from this point in our history and it continues to be lived every day.

The same week that this motion that the indictment was dismissed, there were also 27 evictions that were processed through that home or through that court building.

Evictions in Virginia, we know from looking at the data, do not track to whether or not you are poor.

They do not track to whether or not you are in a community that is falling apart or that is suffering.

They track to whether or not you're black.

You are more likely to be evicted in Virginia if you're black.

We know that nationally, drug convictions track not mainly to your rate of drug use, not mainly to your rate of income, but to whether or not you are black.

the rate of parole denial, the rate of sentences that exceed recommended guidelines, the rate of kids in Virginia who are burdened by court debt, often for crimes that they were not convicted of, all of these track directly with race and primarily track directly to the disfavor of our black community.

Your office currently engages in a practice to try and deal with the hundreds, maybe even thousands of criminal records that people bear that did not result in a conviction that were sometimes dismissed outright, that they were sometimes exonerated of, but still sit on their records.

that deny them employment opportunities, that deny them housing opportunities, and I don't actually know the data on the racial impact of that, but I've been with you in one of these processes where we're trying to exonerate these people, and I can tell you, looking around the room, that the majority of them are black.

This is a continued part of our, this is not part of our history, right?

Like I said in Black History Month, Black History is ongoing and we need to continue to grapple with this.

And so I'm grateful for the work that your office is doing, that the work that our court and that the work that this body and our police force are doing to try and grapple with this history and to try and bring us in a new direction.

And I only hope that we continue to come every day with the energy that everyone had showing up to the Charlottesville Circuit Court to get that motion dismissed.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Thank you, Jim.

We appreciate everything you've done in being here today and all of your work over the years for the decades that you've been working in this area.

I usually always use this date or this proclamation to talk about the Equal Justice Initiative, the museum in Montgomery, South Carolina, because many of us went there.

I'm sorry.

Alabama.

I'm sorry, I said South Carolina, Alabama, excuse me.

And it is a very moving, moving memorial.

And while a large contingency from Alamoor County in the city went, I would encourage everybody, when you have a chance to go down there and see that memorial, it is very impactful.

There is no doubt that black history is American history.

and we really have to admit that.

What we see happening in our country right now is very concerning.

We went through years of desegregation

and now we're resegregating, I fear, in many of our communities.

We're seeing that in Virginia.

We're seeing that in other communities.

And that's not a good place to be.

And I do have one question, and I don't know, Jim, if you can answer this, we were very excited

when we were able to install the marker at Court Square.

And during the time when we were looking at that marker and talking about where we were, and I'm talking about the James Henry-James marker, we were very pleased to be able to put it at Court Square.

That's an appropriate place for it to be.

There was also discussion about being able to get two markers.

and put one out on 250 West in the location where the lynching actually happened as a way of informing, further informing the community and even tourists about the importance of this event.

And I don't think that that marker has not gone up and I'm just curious as to, and maybe I'm just putting on the table right now for somebody to take a look at it and see.

I don't even know if you're allowed to have duplicate markers in different places and that may be part of the problem.

But I would be very interested in finding out if it's possible to put a duplicate marker out in the actual location of where that lynching took place.

And I'll just leave that there.

Not expecting an answer right now.

But I do thank you.

This annual reading of this proclamation is really critical for our community to remember the history in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you, cumulus attorney, for your leadership throughout this whole process.

It's been really helpful to our whole community.

While my parents moved here to Virginia in 1942, I grew up here, and yet there are so many things I did not learn about in school.

Even at Admiral High School graduating in 1967, lynching and the associated terror were not part of our American history class in junior year.

I appreciate I have so much to catch up on individually and will do my part to do a better job in the future to show up for justice and for citizen service every day.

Thank you, and I'll add my expression of gratitude for your being here and to bring this story to us again.

And I think that we can't be reminded enough.

We need to know both the good and bad in our history.

UVA strives to be both good and great, and I think, you know, actions mean we need to do better.

and being better is part of that.

So continuing to try to find ways to root out systematic injustice.

I was reminded this morning there was a New York Times article about a real estate transaction in Virginia Beach where the

Seller tried to back out based on the race of the buyer.

The article actually quotes extensively from Brenda Castagnata, formerly of LAJC, now the Home Project.

So there's work to be done and I appreciate the reminder with this.

Thank you.

and I think that case is going to be pursued by the federal government.

That's what I'm seeing in the papers.

Thank you.

Supervisors, next it is my honor to make a motion recognizing June 19, 2024 as Juneteenth.

And this is a proclamation to be read as in the form of a motion to proclaim Juneteenth.

Whereas the county of Albemarle in keeping with the core principles of our great United States of America believes that all persons are created equal and possess unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Whereas on June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to free all enslaved people, enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas were finally told they were free from the bondage of slavery and were for the first time recognized as citizens of our nation.

and, whereas Black Americans came to commemorate this day of Juneteenth with celebrations across the country, building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today, and whereas the Board of Supervisors recognizes the enduring cultural and historical significance of emancipation, acknowledges the universally cherished values of liberty and justice, and emphasizes our common humanity.

and whereas the Board of Supervisors encourages all persons in Albemarle County to recommit to our shared work to ensure racial justice and equity and to commemorate the centuries of struggle and progress led by educators, civil rights advocates, abolitionists, activists, lawyers, trade unions,

Religious leaders, public officials, and everyday Albemarle County residents who have brought us closer to fulfilling this promise.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize June 19, 2024 as Juneteenth and celebrate the joy of people finally being free.

Sign this 12th day of June, June 2024.

Second.

I've made the motion.

Supervisor Mallek, second.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Thank you.

And I believe we have several people in the audience here to help us celebrate this occasion.

In particular, I'm inviting Ms.

Marnita Simpson-Shepard, UVA Law Librarian and descendant of the namesake of Simpson Park, Mr. James Elias Simpson in Edmont.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you for the invitation.

I am a third great granddaughter of James Eli Simpson.

And as I proudly accept this proclamation, as I will in a few minutes, there are countless African-American, Albemarle County residents who should be heralded.

along with Simpson, who deserve to have their sacrifices and hardships recognized.

Time constrains us, so I'll focus on just one for now, our ancestor, James Elias Simpson, who lived from 1875 to 1950.

So that kind of gives you some idea about, you know, how great his contributions were that the park was named after a man who died in, you know, a black man, you know, who died in 1950.

As an entrepreneur, successful merchant, and substantial landholder at a time when because of racism and subjugation, most black Albemarle County residents couldn't either read or write.

We feel it's appropriate

to acknowledge his contributions to the county.

Simpson Park, located in his hometown of Esmond, where we will be commemorating on June 30th.

I think it's four o'clock or so.

That afternoon, it's a Sunday.

Commemorate this achievement.

I'm speaking for those who came before us, those here today, including this plethora of Simpson descendants out here on this side.

There's other

Great, Mises, Nephews, and such back there.

I'm speaking for those of us who came here before us, those here today, as well as those following when I say this is a momentous day in the history of Albemarle County.

Our ancestors did not suffer labor and struggle in vain and today is proof of that.

Our friends, family, and community members stand and witness to that right now, today, in this very moment, as Albemarle County officially recognizes Juneteenth.

I'd like to imagine that the souls of those who endured so that we may live freely fly even higher and lighter on this day of recognition.

Thank you.

And we'll have comments.

Thank you very much for coming today and bringing your family and friends.

It's nice to see everybody because this is something that is very momentous.

Juneteenth is something very important, not only for all African-Americans, but for everybody, for all of America.

and I'm happy that we have this proclamation.

I'm happy that it's a holiday and I'm happy we're doing what we're doing.

It needs to be recognized and it needs to be celebrated.

So I guess I kind of see it as, well, it's just another important day in the history of America, of all Americans and it's so nice to have this proclamation.

Thank you for coming.

Yeah, I really appreciate you being here and for those who have joined you while we do the proclamation today.

I was struck when, usually when these proclamations are here, it will invite reflection on my part in different areas.

And over the years, it's been interesting to see, to me anyway, I'm self-interest of where that has led me.

This year, it was actually the phrase in the John Henry James

Proclamation that says racial injustice must be acknowledged, recognized, and remembered for community healing, appropriate for the context of that proclamation.

But when I think of what's occurring, it triggered an article that I had remembered I had bookmarked that was with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

And that article was moving from equity awareness to action.

If I can just read this, the bigger point is awareness, remembering, reflection, recognition does not translate to action.

And as a policymaker, I think it's important for me to share with folks that that is something that I am now reflecting and have been trying to reflect on for 30 years.

In this article it says it's an expression of entitlement for those of us who are white or who have other privileged identities to embrace the personal growth of awareness without upending the conditions we're trying to understand better.

It's an even bigger expression of entitlement when we keep circling back to awareness building as a tactic to avoid deeper equity and justice work.

I don't think we're embracing entire awareness in that fashion in Albemarle County, but I think it is

important for me to continue to remind myself that you can only reflect and be aware and recognize so much that the action part has to happen.

And as somebody that's an elected official and a policymaker, day in and day out as we think about everything from land use to our budget programming resources, that that's where my thoughts are.

and the proclamations today have me reflecting on that quite a bit.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I actually want to, and thank you for being here and for everyone who has come out for this proclamation.

I want to actually circle back to something that Supervisor Mallek was talking about.

She graduated in the 70s and had not learned much about our history of racial terror in the United States and especially in the South.

I just want to say I graduated in this millennia.

I also did not learn a lot of these things.

were celebrating Juneteenth.

And I would, I'm not going to embarrass anyone, but I would challenge that if we had a razor hand of all the white people in the room who knew that Juneteenth existed 15 years ago, that in fact most black Americans were not actually free for a significant amount of time after the Emancipation Proclamation, there would not be many hands up.

Very recently, I had a phone call with my father in which we were talking.

He had just watched the TV show Watchmen.

And he was like, did you know about the Tulsa Massacre three years ago?

And I'm like, dad, I'm a well-educated man.

I'm a lot younger than you.

And the answer is no.

I did not know about the Tulsa Massacre.

I don't think I knew about Juneteenth until probably around the time that they had the Atlanta episode about the Juneteenth party.

Two TV references today.

And I think it is, and I take Supervisor Gallway's point, that we can't just stop at understanding and appreciation.

We have to translate that into action.

But I do think it's important that we just do the very basic education of the white people who sit up here in decision-making positions in order to internalize and realize what has brought us here and what actions need to follow from that.

So I'm very excited that this is now something that is part of our, you know, our national lexicon.

This is part of the base understanding for Americans that this is something we pause and recognize every day of the year.

Thank you.

Thank everybody for being here.

We really appreciate it and there is a lovely park.

It is just lovely.

And we really appreciate your family's part in that park and your family's contributions.

I will agree with Mike that I didn't know about the Tulsa Massacre either.

That was completely off my radar screen.

That's why it's so important that we remember that black history is American history and it has to be taught.

and, you know, we must support our school and I think we are doing a pretty good job as the board in Elmar County of supporting the school system in teaching history accurately, but there's a lot more work to be done.

It does strike me that as we're talking about John Henry James and Juneteenth, that the last lynching that is recorded in the United States is in 1981.

that or was in 1981.

And that is shocking to me that I graduated from high school, I graduated from college, and I'd started a family in lynchings were still happening in this country.

But we thank you for being here.

We appreciate the lovely park, and I know that the community in Esmont just gets great enjoyment from it.

Thank you.

Thank you all, other Albemarle County natives.

Equality and equity have been so hard to achieve throughout our nation's history due to that lack of action that was mentioned by my colleagues.

And our community here, while working hard, has a lot to learn and much more to do going forward to ensure opportunity for all and to make those founding documents that we did all study in school actually be real.

and I second the comments made by the other fellow supervisors of gratitude and I want to bring this over to you and again, I appreciate everyone who came out for this.

So again, reminder that June 30th is the Juneteenth celebration at Central Park.

Thank you.

Board, we now move to item number seven from the public.

Matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

Okay, then we can move on board.

Our next item is the Consent Agenda, and I just want to point out with respect to item 8.2, there was a revised form of the motion distributed in blue, simply because the previous motion referred to changes on the attachment, attached personnel policy manual, but the changes were simply repeals.

of Particular Policy, so there's actually nothing to be attached.

I'm not aware of any requests to pull any items from the consent agenda, so the floor is open to a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended with the Section 8.2.

So moved.

Second.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Thank you.

Our first action item is to consider the Broadway Blueprint Phase II study, a final presentation by Mr. David Benish, Development Process Manager.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

David Benish, Development Process Manager with the Community Development Department.

And I'm the project manager for this study, along with assistance from JT Newberry from our Economic Development Office.

This meeting is to present to you what we hope is the final draft of the Broadway Blueprint Phase 2 Implementation Study.

We see this meeting as hopefully a final check-in with the Board on this study.

Rachel Falkenstein from 3TP Ventures, one of our two consultants working on the project.

We'll be presenting a study to you in just a minute.

We also have here Daniel Hire from Lightning Grade, Civil Engineering, our other consulting firm working on this project.

And we have various staff from our Economic Development Office here as well.

and we're all here and available to respond to any questions or comments that you might have today.

Our goal for today is to hopefully receive general agreement and consensus from the Board on the draft study and to receive from you any direction on refinements to the strategies that you may see that you would like to see.

Our game plan is for staff to share the final draft document study along with a index of background data which is currently being compiled and provide that with any suggested changes you give us today.

Provide that full document to you in an upcoming consent agenda item for official approval.

So we're kind of looking for general agreement on the plan or any comments from you today and then we'll forward to you a final document for formal action.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

I'm Rachel Falkenstein.

I am a project manager with 3TP Ventures.

It's great to be before you and see you all again today.

Do I have to do something?

I forgot to drag.

Okay, so as David mentioned today, we're going to present our final draft report for the Broadway Blueprint Phase 2 Implementation Study, and we're going to focus on not all of the strategies, we're going to focus our presentation on short-term strategies and the integration strategies, but you'll see in the materials we provided there are also long-term strategies, so we're prepared to answer questions on those if you have them.

So our agenda for today will start with just a quick bit of background and a status update what we've been working on over the past few months since we were here last.

We'll go into the strategies in a little more detail and then have time for discussion, input, and questions from you all.

So a reminder about our study area.

It's shown here outlined in the Maroon Outline.

We're southeast of the city of Charlottesville and just near the confluence of the Rivanna River and Moores Creek.

Broadway Street bisects our study area and it's about 62 acres total.

And the adjacent city neighborhoods are the neighborhood of Woolen Mills and Carlton to the west.

So a reminder about our project goals.

We had three goals identified at the beginning of our work.

This is really about creating a kind of a menu of implementation strategies that you all can use to support the topics of connectivity, placemaking, and economic vitality within Broadway.

I really want to build on some past investments that you all have made in the area that the private sector has made in the area and the interest that has kind of swelled up in this area based on its unique location and unique assets.

And then the third goal is process-based, really want to make sure we're engaging with the stakeholders and the broad spectrum of stakeholders within the area.

So our scope was building on a phase one study that you all completed in 2019 and 2020 and we wanted to kind of take that work and build upon it and we had three parts to our work.

We did a kickoff where it was just more kind of listening information gathering.

Then there was a midpoint review and that's when we were last before you all back in February of this year.

where we had some observations, some opportunities we had identified, but wanted to check in and get some direction before we pulled everything together into final recommendations.

So we're here today with our final recommendations.

It's still a draft because we need your input and direction before we finalize that, as David mentioned.

So when we were back with you in February, there were some themes that emerged.

We just wanted to kind of remind you what we heard and how we integrated that into our work.

We heard that you all really want us to prioritize industrial land uses within the area.

You want to see this area continue to be an industrial area for Albemarle County and not to have large-scale residential integrate into this area at this time because of the tensions that could come with the industrial and the residential land uses.

operating side by side or the concern of displacement that could happen.

we brought up the concept of an arts and cultural district with you all at that time and we heard support for that and supporting the artisans in the area and the art studio space that is there and we heard some support for recommendations to improve Broadway for pedestrian and bicycle facilities but you also highlight the importance of coordinating with the City of Charlottesville Broadway is unique in that in order to get to the area you have to travel on city streets

and so to improve the transportation network broadly and connectivity to and from Broadway will require coordination and partnership with Charlottesville.

through each phase of our work.

We have had opportunities for engagement with the folks within Broadway.

The stakeholders are a broad spectrum of folks.

There are residents in Broadway.

There are tenants.

There are property owners.

There are developers who own property in the area and are interested in opportunities for their property.

So throughout each phase we've heard from

A wide spectrum of folks and stakeholders within Broadway.

And here are some of the themes we've heard throughout.

I won't read each of these bullets, but I'll highlight that these have been kind of consistent.

Folks are concerned about displacement, especially tenants in the area who don't want to see their rent go up because of gentrification.

and a desire for more access to the amenities.

So pedestrian improvements has been a big theme in the area.

And then broadly, people do want it to maintain its industrial nature.

There has been mixed support for residential.

Some people really want to see residential and some people don't want it at all.

There are two areas of focus for residential that we'll talk about within the strategies and that is along Franklin Street and Pervious Row and I'll get into that in a little bit when we talk about the strategies.

So as I mentioned, we're going to go through the strategies now and we're going to focus on short term and we're going to focus on integration strategies, which are those that require a partnership.

So we were hesitant to put a timeframe on them, but they are all equally important.

And it's kind of the county's role to be ready and available to partner when the opportunity arises.

So starting off with our short-term strategies, the first five strategies I'll cover today are part of ongoing processes or things you are already doing.

So I'm going to just briefly go through these.

1.1 is just maintaining industrial land use, maintaining industrial zoning in areas where it already exists today.

1.2 touches on an area along Parias Row and Marchand Street that's circled on both maps.

The left map is your comprehensive plan future land use map, and the right map is your zoning map.

And so in your comp plan, these parcels are identified for residential in the future, but your current zoning is for industrial, light industrial zoning.

And so we're recommending that you consider a residential zoning on these properties.

And the rationale for that is because, A, they are currently residential uses.

There are people who live here.

We've talked to some of the folks who live there.

They don't have a desire to leave or see their properties be turned over to an industrial use.

All of these structures, except for one, are contributing structures to the Wolan Mills Historic District, and we think the best path toward protection of these structures is keeping them as residential uses.

They are houses currently, and so keeping them as houses seems to be the best path to protect these resources.

As I mentioned, these also are ongoing processes that are either already underway or things you're already doing.

1.3, we think you all can look at this when you do your countywide zoning ordinance update.

Look at your light industrial zoning requirements and see if there are opportunities to continue to support your industrial users, especially around allowing them

to capitalize on their locational assets, especially in Broadway.

There is more foot traffic in the area, and so can there be opportunities for makers to sell their goods and have expanded opportunities for retail space with their industrial use?

That might apply to tasting rooms for breweries as well.

And also looking at relaxing your parking requirements and making sure you formalize opportunities for artisans and art uses within the industrial zoning.

1.4, also an ongoing thing that you are working on, your AC44 process might be an opportunity to continue this work, but maintaining efforts to identify other industrial land uses in the county, we've looked at the data and we've heard from the stakeholders that there is not enough industrial inventory in Albemarle County and folks are being displaced to adjacent localities.

So continuing to identify opportunities for industrial

Langeuses within the county.

And then 1.5, again, this is ongoing.

Your Economic Development Office is doing this as we speak, but continue to connect with businesses down there and troubles you as issues come up.

Help them work through issues and make sure you're keeping a pulse on kind of what's going on and what their needs are in the Broadway area specifically.

Oops, wrong way.

Okay, 1.6 is where we start to talk about new initiatives for the county.

Again, we're still in short term and the short term I should have said is we're recommending it's one to five years from study adoption is what we're calling short term.

And this one is about looking at the area on Franklin Street that I mentioned.

The map at the bottom is your comprehensive plan, future land use plan, and I've circled the properties we're talking about within our study area.

that are along Franklin Street.

You can see Franklin Street here in the city of Charlottesville on the west side.

But these properties are identified in your future land use plan as parks and green systems, but there is developable land here.

And in fact, this aerial photo here shows that corner parcel of Broadway and Franklin Street.

It's being developed right now.

There are some slopes that front on Franklin Street that are identified as preserved slopes right now.

And there's a stone wall there as well.

And so we're recommending some analysis of this land to identify which portions of this land are actually developable and updating your future land use plan accordingly and saying what you should be there.

So should it be residential?

Should it be mixed use?

Should it be industrial?

There is a use on this building as well.

It's Carter's bread.

And then we understand that there's a portion of this parcel that is outside of floodplain that is also developable.

So analyzing that land, looking at the resources, seeing if they should be protected, or if there's an opportunity for redevelopment or reuse of this area, and updating your future land use plan accordingly.

The next strategy is the Arts and Cultural District, which we talked about last time.

This is an opportunity for you all to adopt a regulatory policy to incentivize arts and cultural uses within Broadway.

And there's a number of routes you could go with this.

You can provide grant funding, you can provide reduction of taxes, you can provide permit flexibility.

So it would have to be an additional process where you would do some engagement and include this within your ordinance, but it's an opportunity to incentivize those artisans and perhaps make it a little bit easier for them to afford to stay within Broadway.

Thank you, Rachel.

I'm Daniel with Line and Grade, and we're going to cover short-term strategies related to

Placemaking, and Connectivity.

So the image across the bottom of the screen is an aerial image of Broadway Street overlaid with a survey.

We were in due process of this work.

We learned that ACSA was planning a water line replacement project along Broadway Street.

We were able to use the resources they had aggregated and procured for their project for our work.

And as a part of their project, we learned that they were going to completely mill and resurface Broadway Street when they were finished with the water line replacement.

which was, for us, a cue that there's a near-term opportunity to implement some sort of strategies along Broadway Street.

In this case, providing pavement markings.

Currently, there is no pavement markings on Broadway Street.

The image in the top right of the screen is a computer-generated image, a rendering of sorts.

That was a real photograph where we laid the white and yellow paint into the image.

So by providing pavement markings, we'll begin to delineate

the Hicular areas.

We will not impinge upon large vehicle movements, which are something we heard about from the stakeholders on the corridor, specifically those who rely on large vehicles to access their properties.

So this will actually be a very, very near-term strategy.

We'll be issuing bid documents for the pavement marking in June or August of this year.

And so in the very near-term, you'll see signs of the short-term strategies being implemented, pavement markings being one of them.

Another thing that will be of specific importance in the short term will be developing a way-finding plan how to get to Broadway.

As Rachel mentioned, the only way to get there is along city streets.

We think that based on what's happening in Broadway with the eclectic nature of arts and culture, but also light industrial and then tenants like Willow Tree, developing a brand identity for Broadway will be important.

In fact, as I was standing here listening to Rachel, I was looking at her water bottle

that she must have received.

And there's lots of Charlottesville way points on it, but Franklin's there, but Broadway's not.

And I think that sort of proves the point that this is an important area, it needs an identity, it needs to be clearly known.

But allowing that to happen will require specific integration, coordination with the City of Charlottesville, identifying sign locations where we want vehicles to be encountering signs and how we want them to move through

in some cases residential areas to find their way to Broadway.

Item 2.3, Marchant, Marchant Street.

We've also learned in our work that this is a street that is kind of forgotten about.

There is no clear path to ownership on Marchant Street.

It is not owned by the state.

It is not owned by the county.

It is not owned by any of the adjacent landowners.

There are no ownership records for it.

and as such, it's kind of falling into disrepair.

The asphalt is falling apart.

There are no drainage provisions.

It's only going to continue to deteriorate given the decades that it's already been forgotten about.

So one of our recommendations is to consider converting Marchant into a private street as such.

We can bring it up to current standards and provide additional safety and serviceability for that piece of infrastructure.

Item 2.4, again, largely the only way to find yourself onto East Market Street in the county is through city streets, East Market being the primary way to find yourself there.

And as current, you can't really tell what's about to happen as you leave the city and into the county on East Market Street except for a dead end sign.

There's really no delineation of how you're supposed to use that corridor.

Obviously, we know that we want to restrict movements for through traffic,

I think people are beginning to understand that, but I think specific and clear delineation of improvements for bicycle and pedestrians along that roadway and also delineating how the residents should be moving through there with their vehicles, which is a great dovetail into understanding how this area connects to the future and planned Rivanna River pedestrian bridge, which will basically, as currently conceived, be landing one of the abutments in the vicinity of

East Market Street here.

So prioritizing and understanding how we should think about broader movements of bike and bicyclists and pedestrians through East Market into Broadway and then across the Rivanna.

Thanks, Daniel.

So we're jumping forward in the report to number five.

These are integration strategies.

We jumped over the long term, as I mentioned, but we can answer questions on those.

So integration strategies are those that, while very important, they require you all to partner with another partner until you complete it.

and so the timing of these might not be able to be completed in the short term, though some of them hopefully could, especially some that would require wayfinding with the City of Charlottesville as an example.

But 5.1 is kind of a continuation of what Daniel was talking about.

So there's the study piece where you all kind of finalize your pedestrian bridge design and location study and I know that's work that you are

and so on and so forth.

as of right now, it's not really safe for vehicles to move both ways on the street, let alone bikes and pedestrians.

So having a formal plan for how folks are going to get to this amenity, it will be a regional amenity that will attract a lot of folks.

And so this strategy is really about implementing formal bicycle and pedestrian improvements within Broadway

East Market Street specifically, but zooming out as well to get folks to and from there by car, where are they going to park if they're on foot or on bike?

How are they going to get there?

Another piece that's worth mentioning is East Market Street.

This segment of East Market Street runs concurrent with the Rivanna Trail.

And so folks are getting off of the trail and walking on the street for this portion to get over to the Morris Creek Bridge.

and so it's very important to have safe facilities for pedestrian along these streets.

Okay, the intersection of Broadway and Franklin, shown in the image here, and again this is a computer generated image,

showing some improvements at that intersection.

But this intersection has some interesting opportunities for integration but requires a fair bit of coordination with other stakeholders.

Specifically, working to secure right-of-way along Franklin for future pedestrian improvements, but also working to secure right-of-way along Broadway.

The Broadway leg of this intersection actually happens to exist within an easement.

It is not publicly owned right-of-way.

The right-of-way of Broadway does not begin until a several hundred feet

to the right of where that image currently cuts off.

So there is opportunity for working to basically secure right of way in the vicinity of Broadway and Franklin.

Speaking of wayfinding and pedestrian safety and making intersections more friendly for all users, there's an opportunity to consider improving this intersection to be slightly more compact.

clearly delineating pedestrian facilities and also integrating that with wayfinding.

At this point, if you've gotten to this intersection, you should clearly understand how to get to the Broadway District.

And this slightly more compact, slightly more soft intersection could be a great place to integrate wayfinding.

And also funnel people maybe toward Carlton as opposed to going underneath that one-way bridge under the Buckingham Branch Railroad

I don't really foresee that that underpass will really ever be changed.

It's kind of a little nook and cranny of the Charlottesville Street network.

So Daniel started talking about Marchant Street in the short-term strategies.

Right now, Marchant Street terminates in a closed railroad crossing.

This street used to cross the railroads and was recently closed within the past couple of years.

And I think the railroad Buckingham Branch was able to close it because of the lack of ownership that Daniel had talked about.

There's no clear ownership.

they don't need permission they've closed it and so we're recommending the county explore as the street is upgraded to a private street standard the possibility of reopening the railroad crossing as a bicycle and pedestrian facility as Daniel was mentioning that underpass in the city on Franklin Street is not a safe facility for folks to walk and bike under if it's it's very narrow and if a car and a person were passing it's very tight there's a very narrow sidewalk

So this might be a better route for bicyclists and pedestrians to go to get to points in the city like Riverview Park or in the future Rivanna River pedestrian bridge.

Okay, one thing we learned, and this was surprising to me,

In that image, you see those four buildings.

This is a small little business complex on Broadway Street.

Right now, those buildings connect to a forced sanitary lateral that pumps their sewage up Broadway Street to the top of the hill before it can find its way into the RWA system.

So basically you have private infrastructure within a public right of way.

and I think it's a very limiting factor to the capacity of these businesses here.

The irony is that there's sanitary sewer right here in this intersection just downhill of where they are.

So I think one thing we can be doing is advocating for some of these landowners for basically inter-jurisdictional connections that there's no reason

at this point in time that these properties need to be on a forest lateral type system, pumping sewage hundreds of feet up a hill to basically get into the sewage plant that's literally right next door.

We can be advocating for these property owners to connect into basically modern utility networks at this point in time.

Part and parcel with that is really how we're providing for these services to these tenants and owners

folks who are along this corridor.

One thing we heard is petty theft is not uncommon, so working with local police authorities to make sure that they patrol the area on some kind of regular interval.

And then finally, and this really is paying attention to how things develop over time, but making sure we're coordinating opportunities for transit between Broadway and downtown Charlottesville, whether that's microtransit or jaunt or some other type of mechanism.

I know when Willow Tree redeveloped, they paid into some sort of fund that will eventually be considered.

So anyway, it's just drawing attention to the fact that people at Willow Tree specifically express that they're still trying to get folks to the downtown mall for lunch and stuff like that.

And then lastly, our last two are really about kind of being open to opportunities that might come about as time goes on, as properties turn over, as new businesses come here, as the existing businesses continue to do their grassroots placemaking.

This was something we talked about last time we were in front of you, that there's a good bit of grassroots placemaking already happening.

their organizations hosting art studios, having events, opportunities for folks to come out and gather, listen to music, see art, rotating artist studios.

We've heard conversations in our stakeholder engagement where neighboring property owners were talking about the possibility of building a trail across their properties to connect adjacent to the railroad.

and so we're advocating for the county to kind of champion and support these efforts in ways that make sense for both entities.

We heard a desire for the county to not be super heavy handed when it comes to these types of efforts, but to be more of a partner and to support the work that's already going on.

And so we provided some ideas of what this could look like for you all, formalizing trail networks as property owners, kind of initiate them, providing support for arts,

Streamlining Permitting for Block Parties and Events.

That was also something we heard in a conversation between property owners that they would love to see block parties down there.

And potentially in the future, if there were an association that were to kind of organically coalesce around some of these businesses, providing support and partnership to a potential future kind of business association down in Broadway.

and then 5.6 is similar.

You already have participated in a public-private partnership in Broadway but keeping your ears open for future opportunities.

We heard a lot about a desire for some public space down in Broadway where folks could gather and have a small pocket park or something like that.

So continuing to be open to opportunities like that if they may arise.

So our next steps on this project, David mentioned, the next steps for the report will be, will take any input you all have.

If the strategies need any adjustments based on your direction, we will do that and deliver a final report to staff.

And that can come to you on consent for action on a future agenda.

We also have an appendix that we're in the process of compiling with some technical documentation, some of the strategies that Daniel talked about.

We have some schematic designs that we'll deliver that you all could use for budgeting purposes or to apply for grant money.

and then the next steps for implementation.

If you all accept the study and adopt it, it will be kind of passed off to staff in community development department and economic development office for implementation and they'll do the work of the department resource requests to get these projects underway.

and with that we have just two questions for you all.

Do you have any recommended changes to the strategies as they're written?

And then do you endorse and accept the study so we can put the final touches on for final adoption?

Thank you.

We will go through our order.

Yes, thank you very much for that presentation.

Frankly, it's all very exciting.

I really like the arts corridor aspect of it.

The bridge across the Rivanna River, the connected bridge.

Do you know where that is?

Or maybe Supervisor Mallek knows where we are with that?

The last I heard was a lot more than what we had anticipated.

I'm asking that question to see how much of a part this will be.

Right now the raise grant was submitted for planning stage based on to try to get a better understanding of the costs, especially the engineering costs for it, to see if the total up jump in the

dollars could come down and then, just like we've used raise grant in the past, where it could qualify for a raise grant, you know, actual project after the planning grant or study.

Yes.

Okay, just trying to get the price down.

All right.

Okay, so that's a, hopefully, shall we say?

Okay.

Yeah should the county elect to pursue additional pedestrian improvements along the corridor

We've discussed this with Vita at the beginning to implement that program that you saw, which is basically a walking shoulder defined as a pedestrian facility.

So it has certain ADA requirements that it has to meet, but it's basically lowering the bar of getting the facilities on the ground as opposed to traditional sidewalks and curbs and gutters and drainage systems, which along Broadway would be a massive amount of cost.

In a number of places there is.

So the asphalt now just does this all the way down Broadway.

and I do like the idea of the plastic ballards, you know, along there for separation.

So recommended changes, I like what you presented and then going to the EDO and CDD

I'm in favor of that also, but I'm also going to listen to what my other fellow comrades have to say.

I guess I'll start with a question.

The Arts and Cultural District, if that was put in place,

The Arts and Cultural District is intended to support uses that provide space for or opportunities for events related to arts and culture.

So we may have to find other incentives for

I would call that out as we, I'm not saying it has to be put into the, to this strategy, but I mean it should be called out for the economic development.

Team, especially as I know we'll be eventually gearing towards Project Enables, you know, the re-study of that.

The March in Street, the ownership conundrum, is that, do we need to take ownership before we can do anything?

You would not be the only one to have said that.

Well, shocking.

Yeah.

anything we're going to do.

Ownership is probably the first step.

So I guess that's a legal question or a legal action call out.

March on.

I would certainly support the land use analysis on Franklin Street and we just want to call that out.

I think that that's a wise

that would be a wise strategy to do.

So I endorse all your strategies.

I'll just say that up front.

There's nothing here I'm looking to change.

I have some comments on a couple of things.

But that one in particular, I think we need to do.

And what's interesting is on the what stood out to me in reviewing the plan.

It's on page 11, I believe, of the actual plan if you're following along.

so it's under Broadway study area observations and under the category economic vitality when you read the four bullet points which are affordability, rising costs, local inventory, essential businesses and organizations and again I'm not saying anything needs to be changed here because it's under observations so I'm not suggesting an edit but if you read through what the story says and reading through those four stories first off we say it's been an area that has

has been an affordable space for the operations to be in.

The second point says, well, cost-surprising.

So now the places that like it for the affordability are starting to feel constrained and pushed out.

At the end of that states, some Broadway businesses may determine that other locations in the county provide a better long-term value to their operations.

But then the next point goes on to say, well, current industrial vacancy in Albemarle County has slimmed none,

and many businesses are forced to locate outside of the county.

So the last statement under rising costs conflicts with the statement under local inventory because it's probably not the case that if they're pushed out of Broadway, they're not going to find a home somewhere else in Albemarle.

They're going to find a home in some other county or place.

Then we go on in the last bullet point to say, but these businesses are important to us.

It's worthwhile of having them in this location.

So I call all of that out to say that we have to understand that it's not about that last statement that they may find other locations in the county provide a better long-term value.

I don't think that's a true statement.

I don't think that does exist.

I don't think that can exist.

So if anything, maybe that sentence gets struck or it said it agrees with local inventory that they may be forced outside of our county.

The bigger point or the comment is

and I guess this would be directed to staff and the strategy of it that that arts and cultural district getting that put in place, you know, to me would probably be full speed ahead as soon as this is endorsed and handed over to the team so that we can start getting some tools available to help the existing businesses and other businesses that are there because I think that activity ultimately what

encourages or pushes the dominoes over for pedestrian infrastructure block parties and other things like that.

If the local business area is vibrant and they feel some long-term stability, I think that's what's key to the rest of some of these things that the plan envisions to fall into place.

I'm not interested in displacing any of the residents there, but I'm also one that's not real interested in seeing this become all residential.

I want this to stay LI and have the business activity that's going on down there.

I really don't see anywhere else where we do this as a collective area or spot.

So I throw all of that out there to say, yep, I would think the arts and cultural district is an important tool that we need to put in place.

I know it's even limited.

The state has some limitations on how long you can do things for, and we all have to be educated on that, because I don't necessarily, I don't know all the ins and outs of what that could mean, but it's not just forever.

You can only have defined time frames if you put a tax embayment in or something like that.

So I would hope that that would be full speed ahead in coming to us in some way once this is complete.

Yeah, I think we're there.

I appreciate the work, I appreciate the job, I appreciate the vision that's in here and I do endorse.

So aside from that little piece under rising costs, I would think that I'm happy to see this move forward and would endorse all the strategies that are in here.

Thank you.

Thank you for this presentation.

One of my favorite hidden gems in my district.

I also want to just kind of address the possibility of unforeseen consequences that specifically relate to displacement from some of the key questions, right?

Because what we have is a kind of naturally occurring set of circumstances that have resulted in patterns of affordability that have benefited both industrial and residential tenants, right?

Closely related uses, which generally makes both of them less expensive because it's less convenient for both of them and you have inconvenient placemaking, which can sometimes lower values that people are paying.

So in addition to just generally making it a more appetizing community, there's some of the specific elements that we're working with here that I would be worried

I want to just make sure we're considering the possible consequences and have safeguards about it.

A big one that immediately led to my mind, and we were discussing right before the meeting, we are talking about where we have existing residential uses that our grandfathered in.

I had, just as a slight tangent, I had asked during the previous one if we got a sense of what the prevailing rents there look like.

I don't think we have that information still, but I would just say,

observationally, I might guess that some of the units are what we would call NOAs, naturally occurring affordable housing just because of the age of the units and the material readiness of those units.

Those currently can't be easily redeveloped because that would interrupt their continuous use for residential purposes and they can't be redeveloped, right?

There is also the concern then that if we try and align the uses in this largely historic district that has naturally occurring housing,

that is somewhat affordable that that could actually make that a good value proposition for redeveloping into more expensive units.

I don't know the way that the historic district intersects with that and how that might complicate or change that value proposition, but that's a possibility for displacement that I would be worried about.

Similarly, when we talk about the

Arts and Cultural District.

You have galleries, you have breweries that have naturally occurred in this space.

And I am interested in continuing to incentivize and help them grow and expand what they're able to do and create more synergetic partners in the area.

But my worry might be that the creation of some kind of business or tax incentive through the district

would not necessarily benefit the visible records of the world, first and foremost, who are already able to survive in this location, but it might instead create an interesting value proposition for the investor who is like, oh, I can easily locate my gift shop that sells watercolor prints of the Charlottesville skyline and coasters there and capture these tax credits for some other use, right?

I'm not saying that's what happens, but I would just be worried about, are we supporting the businesses that are there or are we creating a value proposition that is going to be captured by some other use?

I don't have the solutions for this, but this is maybe one of the, I would say, the most pressing concern I have with this.

We've identified all these kind of naturally occurring values that we get out of this community.

And some of our strategies, I would just worry, make it

such a compelling value proposition that it could naturally displace some of these, which aren't necessarily the kind of expert investors, the kind of sophisticated interests that might be positioned to capture them best.

There's a lot of ways that we could work with this.

We could help these individual landowners, these individual residents, these individual tenants through some kind of navigating function to make sure that they are positioned to best capture whatever kind of benefits are made available through different parts of this plan.

I just want to raise that.

I'm excited for the physical improvements that are being planned for Broadway.

I'll be more excited when we actually have a little bit more pen to paper on what those are going to look like, but I do agree that the shoulder, the walking shoulder element seems very well suited for that.

I'm a little intrigued just to know, because I know a concern that we've talked about with Broadway is that

it's width naturally excites people and also the fact that it is largely unused and that that encourages high speeds down it.

I'm curious if this shoulder is also coming with a diet below the standard road length or road width rather or if this is just going to make it conform with a V dot across the board standard.

So that I just want to pause on if you know the answer.

Are we looking at a

The tarmac width of asphalt will remain unchanged.

It'll still feel kind of broad.

The pavement markings themselves, the white and the yellow will bring visual cues to drivers of where their cars should go.

There is

some recent studies that suggest that sometimes Broadway kind of breaks with this study was suggesting but there is studies that suggest by adding pavement markings you are because you're adding the visual cue to the drivers that they actually can continue to speed because they know where they're supposed to be as opposed to removing pavement markings and then they're kind of like oh my goodness

What's going on here?

So in the case of Broadway, I think what we're proposing right now is the correct strategy that we, because speeding is a problem right now and there is no pavement markings, I think by adding them, we are only reinforcing a visual cue that could be helpful for one.

Are there any kind of stripping, like your rumble strips, your very softly graded speed bumps that could be used in this area at certain points that wouldn't give concern to the large trucking that is also in that area?

and that also would be within a budget.

I'm intrigued by your comment about some sort of speed hump.

It is a VDOT owned and maintained roadway.

So VDOT would have to be a willing and active participant in that conversation.

The rumble strips, these would not be the rumble strips running parallel on the margin.

They might be something running transverse across the road to give a

Attactile, Q. Those are very interesting thoughts.

I'm not a civil engineer, so I'm just pulling this out of my hair.

But I listen to enough urbanists to know what sort of the things they like are.

Thank you.

I am also still confused about what the path forward with Marchand even is.

And I don't understand how we

to create a private street.

We're a public body.

We don't create private things.

Is what's being proposed, exercising imminent domain, taking it, and then hoping someone wants to take it from us?

I'm going to try to pick my words carefully.

Making it a private street is simply denoting that the roadway is not owned and maintained by VDOT in this case.

The county could be the owner of the private street.

The county isn't necessarily preferential to that option either because then you own the street and you have to maintain the street and in this case improve the street.

But because no one, VDOT is unlikely to step in and

Acquire or otherwise own this street.

This is us saying this needs to be discussed specifically.

And if we acquire an interest in the street ourselves, there isn't a mechanism to convey that to VDOT unless they're

I think VDOT's actually trying to do the opposite where they're trying to give up their inventory.

The county's not in the business of really maintaining roads and streets.

We don't have that kind of, we're not set up for it.

If I may though, I think what's worth mentioning specifically here is that if left

It's unaffected.

If no private street or no one steps in to maintain it, it's only going to get much worse.

Thank you.

To kind of also just put a pin on this and move away from March on Street.

in addition to just not understanding how we would mechanically get to private ownership and actually denoting someone who's going to foot the bill for maintenance because I don't understand how that would happen.

I would also just be concerned, something that we sometimes hear from developers, especially from public good-minded developers, affordability-minded developers, when they're being candid with us, is that the patterns of development that we use in our community end up creating unforeseen expenses that always get realized and burdened by homeowners and tenants because we create so much private infrastructure that has to be maintained by them.

I can't help but think that I don't see a way that this does become private in a way that doesn't become a maintenance burden that falls on those residents who we don't know their income status, but it could be an onerous and undesirable burden that might even outweigh having a nice access road.

So that's just kind of the background of that concern I raise.

When we're talking about East Market Street and also, you know, the pedestrian access in that area, the fact that it's currently a pedestrian access point over to Riverview, it's not clear to me that we have very concrete thoughts about what future pedestrian planning looks like there.

Currently it's functioning much like broad where it's like it's not used enough so everyone can just use it at the same time.

And there's also existing signage there that I am not clear what it's

Legally Enforceable Powers are, right?

But like saying, do not go down the street.

Do not enter here.

I don't even understand what the legal bearing of those signs are.

I'm curious if you could help me understand a little bit more about what the next step at the market even looks like, because I understand that you're highlighting it as an area of concern, but I'm not clear what can be done.

We're going to tag team on this one.

Okay, so the property owners along East Market Street are in discussion with county staff and VDOT about what to do about the street.

And there have been options put on the table about making it a private street that is owned and maintained by them and then it would turn into a one-way street.

Nothing has been decided yet.

It's just they're in conversation about it right now.

The other point is our study is recommending a short-term improvement that would be similar to what's being done on Broadway of just some paints to delineate where the pedestrian zone is and where the auto zone is.

So that is the recommendation, but we were hesitant to be really specific about it because of the nature of the ongoing dialogue of what to do about that street between the property owners, the county, and VDOT.

I think coupled with what we were saying about the pedestrian bridge and what Rachel said about connecting to Riverview Park like pedestrians and cyclists or whomever are walking on city streets for some blocks to get back to where this eventual pedestrian bridge will go

which I think is suggestive of kind of a broader perspective of integrating Riverview Park, this future pedestrian bridge, what's happening on the end of East Market Street, that all in and of itself is like a small little micro study of, and several different stakeholders that need to be involved.

And about the signage, we drove by there on the way here just to make sure we were like, there is a dead end sign, and then there is an end city maintenance sign.

The End City maintenance sign you can't even really see is behind a tree.

There are some, I think, no parking signs closer to the end.

Yeah, I thought there was like a one-way only sign which is like

I mean, the dead-end sign is empirically untrue, right?

My understanding is that one-way sign is incorrect and not legally accurate.

Well, if it's on personal property, if it is in reference to market, it is

Yeah.

I understand that.

My point is the sign making and the placemaking is confusing, it is contradictory, and it is not.

It is not clear what is even legally binding or bearing on things, so that is kind of what I'm driving out there.

And just as a closing thing, didn't we have someone like jump the Marchant Street rail crossing like a week ago or two as a reckless driver?

I'm curious if we had, it might have been a separate part, but it was in the Broad Street Willow Mill District.

There was a reckless driver who

made a slight deviation, of course, and literally jumped the rail crossing.

I'm curious that implicates any of our thoughts on safety and planning.

I trust my fears.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Recognizing that we're running late and I'll just try and sort of keep to a high level here, but this has been a great conversation and great report.

I appreciate it.

Just a couple of thoughts when we're talking about this sort of abandoned road.

VDOT requires if they're going to take anything into the system that you bring it up to their standards.

They're in this part of the problem.

They also

when you're talking about those rumble strips.

Rumble strips on one side of the road are one thing, but when they transverse the road, they are noisy.

And I have seen VDOT have to come back and take out many of those transverse rumble strips because the people that live along those roads cannot tolerate the noise.

So you have to be very careful where you put those.

And I don't think this is an appropriate place.

I'm just saying.

and so on.

Devel's always in the details, and I have some real concerns about, while I've been very supportive of an arts district and cultural district, I think you have to be careful where you put it.

And I am just concerned about the gentrification

If this area turns into music events, breweries, all these cultural events while they're wonderful, I worry about the light industrial piece of this and what this is the only place for some folks in this community to have a business.

And there's a tension there.

And I don't know how we get at that tension.

It's not that I'm against musical events or breweries or wineries.

I'm just saying that it's really critical that we think this through because this is our light industrial for the most part.

And we have businesses there that I really want to keep there and I don't want to chase them out.

I do agree that I'm happy to support the historic nature of those old neighborhoods that are there.

I don't think we ought to be putting a lot of residential down there.

That's new.

I'm not interested in that from my viewpoint.

Let me just quickly look at my notes here.

And I guess I could probably stop at that.

But I understand what your vision is.

I just always worry that they're going to be unintended consequences.

How we avoid that and how we think it through, I don't know.

But that's my concern is keeping it light industrial, or at least a portion of it light industrial.

I don't know.

Anyway, with that, I'll stop.

Thank you, Wright.

Thank you very much.

This was lots of good work here, though.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I have a few, but I really want to start by saying I endorse the concept and the appreciation for the values of the corridor.

but as my colleagues have already said, there are some things that are real bumps in the road for me that I would just like to mention so they're on your list going forward.

The gentrification is absolutely the number one thing because anytime we introduce multifamily as a zoning element, that's the end and we've seen it over and over and over again all across the county for the last 30 years.

We lost massive acreage

for Light Industrial because people complained and said, oh, I don't have anybody who wants to be here, so I want to put up apartments.

And bang, there goes 100 acres right there.

So I really appreciate the effort of the board in the last 10, 12 years to stop that.

And I really have to hold back and not get in that trap again, because it would be very, very quick to happen.

any time you say residential, the words are there and therefore it's going to happen because it's the easiest thing to do and easiest to fill the rents and keep it going.

The idea of the neon in Norfolk appeased to me, I was doing my notes and so we can call it the BART because it's the Broadway Art District.

I mean this is great, I think that it could be combined with a

Small Business District to do.

I don't think it has to be only one, unless there's state enabling that gets in the way.

But we could find a way to protect or to incentivize or whatever the elements of these small businesses, whether they're fixing musical instruments, which is one, or crafting concrete balls that can be put in the Chesapeake Bay to make habitat for wildlife.

and so on.

to soothing about, oh, it'll be fine.

You know, they'll go somewhere else.

Well, it won't be fine for them.

So I'm really concerned about that.

How would we protect the historic district in those houses?

We need an ordinance.

We've needed an ordinance for 20 years.

That's not your job right now, but I'll still put it out there so that others can think about that as well.

Zooming on down.

Here we go.

Marsh Hand Street.

The, reminds me of,

and the 30 years with the county VDOT and CSX argued about the square in Crozet.

Nobody could prove that others didn't own it and nobody could prove they did own it and eventually the railroad handed it over to the county as a quick claim date and said it's your problem now.

That may be something our legal folks can think about as a way to turn it into a green space.

If the most important thing is to have a pedestrian place, then plant grass there.

There you go.

As I said, I'm not an engineer, so I can come up with all these hair-brained ideas that other people have to worry about.

Jumping on to 5.1.

Oh, I guess East Market Street.

And referring to the question about the end and the one-way traffic, that was part of the discussion when the mill had its zoning process.

For some reason, the one-way around the end did not get into the conditions, and therefore it could not be enforced.

and there was a lot of trouble for the neighbors as well years ago and for the businesses there with people flying down to party and wheeling around the corner at the southern at the eastern end you know at 35 miles an hour so I'm glad there's a sign that's on the private property for their benefit that's their right is their property to say don't try to come out this way you know if you come in it's at your own risk you're not getting out here

because that made a lot more safety for people.

Let me zoom down here.

I was, because I've heard it from people speaking in various occasions when we've had tours and other things going on down there, people have often said, please don't love us to death.

You know, don't help us so much that we can't be here anymore and there's fear.

that all of a sudden there'll be all these county plans and it'll end up where there's no place for them.

So the organic local growth, others mentioned it, if it's something that someone wants to do a trail, great, let's help them do that.

But don't tell them they have to.

And it has to be 12 feet wide and have cinders and paved and all that stuff because, number one, the costs will be so high that nothing will ever happen.

So I very much appreciate your short-term, low, easily carry-implementable

Striping and things like that to try to train people where to drive and how to walk.

Although in Hillsborough, they did have the same experience where I encouraged having lines put on the road and the people complained, well, we asked you for that, but it didn't work out because now people drive even faster.

So it's to be careful what you ask for.

There's going to have to be a whole lot of other training to go along with it.

I did have a question on the 5.1 image.

I don't know if you can easily go back there or not.

The Lower Right Corner

is the cliff, and Rudy's is upper right corner.

No kidding.

Okay, I'm always so busy looking other places, I haven't seen it.

All right, so the county responsibility is to the left and lower side of that and then to the right.

Okay, I just want to make sure I was oriented properly because I couldn't figure it out.

The public space, I mean, the lower right corner is a cliff.

So,

I know there was several years ago a huge debate about should the preserve slopes on the southern half of that lot where the giant something has been trying to go up there for five years.

That those preserve slopes were being removed and this is what happened.

I would not be supportive of taking preserve slopes away from this corner only because it's solid rock and very, very high.

And that would perhaps be a great place for your gathering spot, because it's everything else.

Anything built up there would tower over the whole community.

I know the city residents nearby were very in opposition to the changing of those other preserve slopes.

So hopefully this one would stay.

I've covered everything.

Thank you.

I learned a lot from people's comments and from this presentation.

And I just don't need to go back there, but endorse what you're doing.

I think it's great.

I do have some questions more, just observations, trying to make sure I understand it.

So I'm going to start with what Supervisor Mallek mentioned in this corner, I guess.

I have the short-term strategies, and there's a description of Ford Road and Belmont Avenue, and I'm not sure how they fit into that corner.

Maybe I'm not looking at this correctly.

That's on page 12 of the 13, I guess, of the study.

But, Bea, as it may, I also will point out that this picture, well, yeah, that's it.

Right at the corner of Franklin and Broadway.

So the portion of the property.

Yeah, it's a little warped on this.

So I wanted to make sure I understood.

I noticed that in the outline, in the description of what this area includes, it includes all of

Rivanna authorities as well, but there's no mention really of integrating anything with Rivanna authorities.

So when you look at Franklin, of course, there are already some speed bumps.

There's already things that affect Rivanna.

And I don't know whether that needs to be taken into consideration if the scope of this is defined to include that land area.

I just was surprised to see it in the circle for the map, since it doesn't really

and so on.

I very much agree that we need to keep this an industrial, light industrial focus for Broadway, but I also appreciate the torn about this because I appreciate the fact that as you get towards the Rivanna River, this becomes a highly desirable place to be near the park, to be near the bridge, to be able to get back and forth.

Well, Mills has amenities that are appealing.

for just hanging out and having a good time.

So being that is going to make this area attractive to residents, but we need to focus on keeping Broadway available for the light industrial uses.

I noticed when you talk about Marchant that it's currently closed because the railroad's closed it, but when we talk about opening it for pedestrians, there's still concern about how are we going to ensure safety

with respect to the railroad crossing, and I hope that gets addressed in that process because I wouldn't want to ignore it.

I also very much support the idea of keeping this bike pedestrian friendly throughout.

And of course, I hear you with respect to the pavement markings that they might encourage speeding in a sense that unmarked roads don't, but I think we need to

to have that so that we see that there are places to walk along the road, to get along the road.

And that's a short-term problem anyway.

I think that rumble strips at that end of Broadway nearer to Franklin are a little less concerning to me than further down or somewhere in the middle of that because they're far enough away that the noises

A little less, but I imagine that depending on when the traffic is coming through will define how much people object to it.

And those were my main concerns and comments.

As the first speaker, I'm taking the privilege of being able to ask another question.

I know that the budget impact, there's nothing at this point, but you talked about future implementation of the strategies contained in the study would require funding and or commitment of staff resources

to implement.

Are we talking about getting grants?

Are you talking about getting money from the county?

Because, you know, the price tag is going to be, I need to know the price tag because we have other, you know, many other important, well, many other important issues.

David Benish, Development Process Manager.

I think we'll use this study and give to staff and our leadership for us to determine what level resources will be necessary.

I think we hope that the grant will be able to be used, the study and some of the information could be able to be used to acquire grants and apply for them.

I think the step for us as the Economic Development Office and CDD is to

take the study under advisement and to see how it does prioritize with the other needs and responsibilities that we have to implement your agenda.

So, you know, we have some sense from this study with the order of magnitude of cost are the consultants have done a really good job to try to use and take advantage of little hanging fruit type opportunities that kind of reduce that investment.

but that's really part of the next step is for us to take this study and begin to prioritize how we implement it.

Thank you very much, and I wanted to be noted that the fact that I'm asking about the cost has nothing to do with it.

I don't think that this is a very... I do think this is a very, very good project.

Yeah, if I could just summarize real quickly.

I think I did hear one comment, a suggestion I think Mr. Gallaway noted that recognizing that the arts and cultural district may not benefit all property owners and there may need to be, to at least acknowledge that fact.

But that one adjustment, I think what I heard from the board was a consensus that by and large the study is

OK to move forward.

And most of what we heard was advice to us as we take this study and begin to implement it to be careful about gentrification and unintended impacts from applying these strategies.

So I think we've got what we need.

The next step for us to do is to make that one change to the study.

And we will compile that with the appendix and have it on your future consent agenda for formal action.

Board, we're half an hour behind.

Three o'clock was scheduled for our recess, but we were scheduled to finish our SmartScale application.

So I want to look to the right and left to decide whether we take the recess now and then do the SmartScale.

Mr. Richardson, do you have any thoughts on this?

As far as your staff being ready?

Let's go ahead and do it then.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

And then we'll take our recess afterwards.

Alright, thank you Chair Andrews and members of the Board of Supervisors, Jessica Hirsch-Ballering, Principal Planner with Albemarle County Community Development.

I'm excited to be here today to talk about smart scale applications.

So the purpose of today's agenda item is to obtain a resolution of support for the eight project applications within Albemarle County to be submitted for the current round of smart scale.

A resolution of support from the Board of Supervisors is required for all project applications within the county.

Similarly, both the MPO Policy Board and the TJPDC must provide resolutions of support for projects in their service areas, which includes the county.

They have both voted to approve their respective resolutions for all project applications within the county.

So today's presentation will begin with a brief overview of the smart scale program.

After that, we'll take a look at a map of the project locations and then I'll describe each of the project applications and show the most recent sketch for each project.

So the Smart Scale Program Overview.

As you may know, the Smart Scale Grant Program is the primary method for funding large-scale transportation projects in Virginia.

Also, the Smart Scale Program doesn't require any local match, so we request the full estimated cost of the project.

Albemarle County, the TJ PDC, and the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO can each submit, excuse me, up to four project applications.

SmartSkill is a competitive program with funding going to the projects with the highest score.

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

To calculate the project's benefit, reviewers will consider how the project will impact six factors, which include safety, congestion, accessibility, land use, economic development, and the environment.

Lastly, to remind everyone of the long timelines associated with transportation projects, for the projects that are submitted and receive funding in this round, that funding is not guaranteed to be available until the summer of 2029.

onto the project map.

So the Board of Supervisors saw an earlier version of this map in Transportation's January Quarterly Report presentation, where we listed the projects we were considering pursuing for this round of smart scale.

If you have an extremely good memory, you'll notice that no projects have been added, and the Ivy Road Improvements Package is the only project that has been removed.

That project is actually still in the study phase with BDOT, and we will have the option of applying for funding for that project in future rounds of smart scale.

So projects one, two, three, and five, indicated in blue, are being submitted by Emerald County.

Projects four, six, seven, and eight, indicated in black, are being submitted by the MPO.

Project descriptions are included in your April quarterly report and in the materials for today's agenda item.

So now we'll move on to looking at the sketches for each project.

So first we have the Old Trail Drive and US 250 West intersection improvements.

North is at the top of the picture.

Western Admiral High School is in the bottom right, just off of the picture.

The intersection of Old Trail, which, hold on, let me give you guys a pointer here.

So this is old trail right here.

This is 250.

This intersection is currently a signalized intersection.

If funded, this project would convert the signalized intersection into a roundabout, replace the crosswalks on the north and the east legs, and add a crosswalk on the south leg of the intersection.

This project would improve vehicle operations along the 250 corridor and improve safety for all road users.

onto the U.S.

29 and Plank Road intersection improvements.

North is to the right of both pictures.

Dr. Ho's Humble Pie is down here.

This is 29.

This is Plank Road.

So this project would construct restricted crossing U-turns, also known as R-cuts, at three intersections.

The U.S.

29 and Plank Road intersection right here to the south, the Sutherland Road and 29 intersection, and to the north.

The 29 and Woodson Store Lane intersection.

So with our cuts, all movements from the side streets must begin with a right turn.

Left turns and through movements are restricted.

The purpose of these intersections is to improve safety.

It reduces the likelihood of dangerous t-bone and angle crashes and also to improve efficiency.

the Rio Road and Hillsdale Northfield Old Brook intersection improvements.

So north and heading towards 29 is to the left of the picture, heading towards the city or John Warner Parkway is to the right of the picture.

This is the, this is Rio and this is the intersection with Old Brook and this is the intersection with Northfield.

So these two intersections are currently signalized and they are too close together, resulting in safety concerns.

This project would convert the two signalized intersections into a single double roundabout.

A shared use path would be constructed around the double roundabout extending both north and south on the east side and transitioning to existing sidewalk on the west side.

Pedestrian crossings would be included on all legs of the new intersection.

onto the Barracks Road Improvements Package.

So this is the full package of recommended improvements coming out of VDOT's project pipeline study of Barracks Road, which considered the corridor from Georgetown Road to Emmett Street in the city.

This is project four on the list or on the map that I showed you earlier.

It is being submitted by the MPO.

So starting at the western end of the corridor at Barracks and Georgetown, this is Barracks.

This is Georgetown.

This intersection is currently signalized.

This project would convert the signalized intersection to a roundabout and add crosswalks on all four legs of the intersection.

This project would also close the median between Georgetown and the ramps coming from the 250 bypass.

Drivers wanting to turn left onto the side streets in this area will need to U-turn at one of the roundabouts on either end of the area.

This project would also reduce lane widths along barracks to allow for the addition of a shared use path along the south side of barracks, as you can see here in purple.

Same project, just moving a little bit further along the corridor.

That shared use path in purple again would continue under the 250 bypass and the currently signalized on and off ramps for the bypass would be also converted to roundabouts and crosswalks would be added at the six locations shown here.

So one, two, three, four, five and six.

These intersections currently do not have any crosswalks at all.

They do have pedestrians.

and continuing along the corridor.

Again, our shared use path continues along the south side of Barracks all the way to the intersection with Emmett Street.

On this slide, you can see it here, but it was also on the preceding two slides.

There are improvements planned for the existing bus stops along Barracks and Georgetown, which is served by Route 5.

The improvements would look like putting in at least a concrete boarding platform and a full shelter where space permits.

onto Barracks Road Improvements Package West.

So this is project five on that list that I gave you at the beginning.

It is the county's application for a subset of the improvements we just saw, but covering only the portion of the corridor from Georgetown Road to the 250 bypass section.

and so on.

Project 6, which I'll go over next, is called Barracks Road Improvements Package East.

That is a complimentary MPO submission for a subset of the full package covering the other portion.

So from the 250 bypass all the way to Emmett Street.

County and MPO staff are submitting that full package and these two complementary subset packages to maximize our chances of getting improvements along this corridor.

The sketches for the county submitted, the sketches we submitted for this West Project are right here.

You can see Georgetown here and here's where the bypass ramps are.

Everything that we included in the full package is included right here.

here's Barracks Road Improvements Package East, again being submitted by the MPO complimenting the West project being submitted by the county.

Again, this project includes all the same project components as the full package starting at the 250 ramps and concluding here at Emmett Street.

finally leaving barracks behind.

We get to the MPO's application for improvements at Fifth Street and the I-64 interchange.

So North is off to the right of the picture.

This is Fifth Street.

It's elevated over 64, going this way across the picture.

as I said north is to the right side and that's heading towards the city.

This project would convert the existing signalized interchange to a diverging diamond interchange or DDI.

Our community has some experience with DDIs.

There's a new one on Pantops at the 64 and 250 interchange and there's an older one out at Zion Crossroads.

with a DDI traffic coming off the major roadway, which in this case is 64, and I'll show you an example here.

The traffic coming off the major roadway will be able to turn left without stopping, kind of on the wrong side of the road.

This improves safety by preventing backups of vehicles onto the major roadway, and then the crossovers at the intersections would be signalized.

So this project also includes a shared use path that would go in between the north and southbound lanes of traffic on Fifth Street.

That shared use path would continue south, crossing the 64 east to southbound off-ramp right here and terminating ultimately at the sidewalk at Pinehurst Court.

The shared use path would also continue north of the interchange along the east side of Fifth Street.

It will cross this ramp here and it will also cross Fifth Street Landing, ultimately connecting to the currently in design Fifth Street hub and trails project that provides access to like the Wegmans shopping area.

All right, lastly, we have the Pantops improvements package being submitted by the MPO.

This project is a package actually of two projects that had been submitted in the last round of SmartScale.

They both scored well, but they were ultimately not funded.

So that's why we're trying again in this round.

So the first set of improvements, you're going to see two different slides here.

The first set of improvements would be centered around Rolken Road.

So this is 250 going across the screen.

This is Rolken Road right here.

North is that way at the top of the picture.

This project would add pedestrian crossings on the northeast and south side of Rolken.

The south leg would include this pedestrian refuge seen here in orange.

This northeast corner would have this pedestrian island to minimize pedestrian crossing distance.

Additionally, about 800 feet of sidewalk would be added to be continuous from Rolken Road up to State Farm Boulevard over here.

The second set of improvements for this singular application would be centered around the intersection of Peter Jefferson Parkway right here and 250.

North is again at the top of the screen.

Centaur and Martha Jefferson Hospital is not shown on the picture, but it would be off the bottom of the slide down over here.

The existing, so there's a couple of different things.

I'm going to walk you through all the different steps.

The project would include closing the, closing the existing median cut between Peter Jefferson Parkway and Pantops Mountain Road.

That median cut would be right here, it would be closed, we'd fill in the median there, as well as closing the existing median cut at Hilton Garden Inn just off the left side of the picture.

Additionally, the existing shared through and right turn lane on Eastbound 250 right here, that would be converted to a through lane only and a new right turn only lane would be added for about 220 feet here.

The Peter Jefferson Parkway and 250 intersection would also be converted to a through cut.

So traffic coming off of Peter Jefferson Parkway from the south and off of Glen Orkey to the north would be able to turn left or right but they would not be able to go through the intersection.

There's very few vehicles making that movement anyway and by removing that we improve efficiency for the intersection by removing a portion of the signal cycle.

Lastly, we would have a 50-space parking ride, a lot that would be constructed in the northwest corner of the intersection.

This parking ride would immediately serve CATS Route 10, but it might also serve regional transit in the future.

Thank you for your attention.

I know that was a lot of information.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

No questions.

Thank you very much.

Supervisor Gallaway.

I've voted on these twice already.

I will make this comment because it came up, I think, at the MPO, but like the diverging diamond interchange at the Fifth Street spot.

Because the Zion Crossroads and the 124 DDI do not have pedestrian or bike facilities, they wouldn't because of where they're located.

some folks had concerns about how bike and pedestrian would work with a DDI and that is exacerbated by the fact they can't see it at the current ones.

So the fact that those two DDIs weren't conceived with bike and pedestrian doesn't mean there aren't others that exist with bike and pedestrian.

So the fact that that would be our first DDI that does have

Need, because of where it's located to get people across the interstate in other ways than just cars.

So I'm just throwing that out there.

Thank you.

Yeah, like my peers, I already voted on this twice, excited for the projects.

I would just highlight something that I think about a lot, which is we often plan our sidewalk infrastructure with one side in mind, which leaves a lot of people in the lurch.

I'm looking here, right?

Pinehurst Court.

isn't going to be able to make use of any of these bicycle and pedestrian facilities, not without crossing a pretty dangerous road.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

Thank you very much and this was very helpful to review it one more time.

I'm absolutely in support of all these projects and Ned made a really good point and I appreciate that and I will just make the point that I hear chatter

from Bicycle Enthusiasts and Pedestrian around the Georgetown Barracks Road Projects, but what I'm seeing, and you don't have to bring, what I'm seeing is improvement to, and the concern was transit.

and how they get to bus stops in transit.

There was concern from the city.

But this is great because it points out that actually the transit stops will be improved.

The one thing that the neighbors and the people that live in that community are insistent on is that solid, that all those crossovers on Barracks Road have to stop.

It has to be a solid barrier because people are constantly U-turning and cutting through and cutting across, and therein is the problem.

Oh, thank you.

Has there been any discussion about the numbers?

That's a big staff burden to have eight applications, absolutely.

Reddy, because I know VDOT has very high performance bars for what they're going to accept.

So if you're comfortable with it, I'm comfortable with it, but it's a lot.

So that just sort of struck me right off the bat when I saw all eight in one place.

At the Georgetown Road Corner, I was struck completely by the northwest corner that the road is right at that front door, and that whole property I guess would be purchased for the right, that's part of the right-of-way inclusion.

Okay, that's the right solution.

And now this, well done.

Thank you.

If I could, just to, since you were talking about this intersection,

It's better to have a full take than to have it right in front of your house.

Yeah, I think these are great.

I had the same thoughts when we were going through it about this one looking at how people get across from one side to the other along barracks.

And then on slide 13, the same thing, the concern with the pedestrian usage of those lights and whether they're pedestrian friendly in how they're set up so that people can get across from one side to the other.

Thank you.

Board, I believe that this requires us to have a motion to... I move that the board adopt the resolutions provided as attachment A. Second?

Oh, I was just reading out of our packet.

Sorry.

Okay.

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Sorry, I often read the recommendations in our packet and you have a different recommendation on the screen.

I apologize.

Thank you very much.

With that board, I believe it's time for us to take a little recess for 15 minutes.

We're back at 20 of four.

Thank you.

The dust is settled on a 2024 legislative session, maybe, and so it's time to think about the 2025 legislative session here to present Mr. Steve Rosenberg, our County Attorney.

Thank you, Chair Andrews.

Good afternoon to you and to members of the board.

No rest for the weary.

The circle of life continues.

We are here to talk to you this afternoon about your legislative priorities as has been the case in years past and especially last year.

This is very much a team effort.

You will hear this afternoon from me.

I will talk about the 2024 priorities and what occurred during the legislative session.

that was recently completed.

Then, I'm sorry, David Blunt, the Deputy Director of the TJPDC will talk with you about what the session looks like, what does the landscape look like in

for 2025.

And then finally, Emily Kilroy, the Interim Director of Economic Development, will talk with you all about proposed strategy for 2025.

Emily is in her interim assignment, but

is continuing to work on general assembly matters during that assignment.

and then behind the scenes we also have James Douglas in my office, a paralegal who supports us with these efforts.

As was the case last year, this will be the first of three sessions with the Board on legislative priorities.

We'll get some input from you today and then come back to you in the fall for another

and then finally in October we will have a final set of priorities for the Board's consideration.

So looking at what occurred in the 2024 session, we'll first talk about

the Board's legislative priorities.

And you all will recall that the strategy last year was to take a refined approach.

In prior years, the Board may have had as many as six, seven, eight legislative priorities.

And you heard from David

Blunt last year that because of the significant turnover in the General Assembly that we thought it advisable for the Board to adopt a more targeted approach and to adopt fewer priorities and to work to achieve success with those priorities.

So the board ultimately adopted three priorities to provide state funding for the Rivanna Futures Project to obtain taxing authority for the county for school division capital projects and to expand the county's authority to use photo speed monitoring devices.

And so taking those in order

The first to provide state funding for the Rivanna Futures Project, there was first an effort to obtain funding in the amount of $58 million, which would have matched the county's investment in that project in the way of the county's land acquisition that was closed in December of 2023.

and we did not achieve success in that effort and so during the special session when the negotiations were underway between the governor's office and the finance folks in the General Assembly, we again made an effort to include in the proposed budget funding

for the Rivanna Futures Project in a significantly lower amount of $5 million, and that effort also did not succeed.

The next priority to obtain authority for the county to impose an 1% sales tax for school division capital projects met with greater success, but ultimately was not successful.

There were bills in both the House and the Senate that provided the enabling authority

took existing authority for just a handful of localities in the state and broadened that so that every locality in the state would have the authority to impose the additional sales tax.

That legislation was initially approved by both houses of the General Assembly.

It was then vetoed by the governor and then

ultimately both the House of Delegates and the Senate sustained the Governor's veto.

And so I think you'll hear from Emily when she talks to you that there continues to be a lot of momentum

surrounding that issue.

And so it may make sense for the Board to continue to advocate for that particular initiative in the upcoming session.

Then finally, concerning the authority to expand use of photo speed monitoring devices, their

was a House Bill, House Bill 20 that would have provided very broad authority for all localities.

And that was consistent with the position expressed by this board.

And that particular bill was continued to 2025.

There was a Senate bill that was enacted and approved by the governor, but it's very limited in its scope, allowing cameras to be installed at high risk intersections

which are defined as any highway or portion located not more than a thousand feet from the limits of the property of a school that is part of or adjacent to an intersection containing a marked crosswalk that is identified in the manner provided in this section as one in which a traffic fatality has occurred since January 1st of 2014.

So lots of boxes to check

in order to be able to exercise this authority contained in the enacted legislation approved by the governor.

And we have one stretch of road in the entire county on 29 North that checks all of the boxes.

and this board's interest as I recall it was more in dealing with speeding in rural areas of the county on roads where it is difficult for law enforcement to safely make stops.

and this enacted legislation doesn't touch that at all.

So it's very, very limited in its scope.

Then let me talk to you.

So those are the Board's three priorities as they were approved by the Board last year.

There are some other pieces of legislation that were enacted by the General Assembly and approved by the Governor that were either included in your 2024 legislative positions and policy statements, which is that separate document that you approve each year.

or otherwise the subject of interest on the part of members of the Board of Supervisors.

And I want to share just a few of those with you.

And the first of those concerns, the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and the bill that was enacted and that is effective July 1 as are all of these bills

would allow all virtual public meetings to be increased from 25% to 50% of meetings held per calendar year.

And the same restrictions continue to be in place that a public body can't have consecutive all virtual meetings.

I think this board has articulated an interest in

sort of loosening the restrictions as much as possible and allowing, you know, boards and commissions to, you know, provided they provide adequate notice and adequate opportunity for the public to participate electronically, to do whatever they desire to do.

So the legislation enacted by the General Assembly did not

Eliminate all of the restrictions that exist.

And the most significant of those restrictions is the restriction on consecutive

and so on and so forth.

Virtual public meetings which are not permitted.

Those boards and commissions other than the other than the big ones like the board of supervisors and the school board and the planning commission.

The others may conduct up to 50 up to 50% of their

provided they do not conduct those all virtual meetings consecutively.

The next piece of legislation I want to highlight for you is in the Economic Development Sphere concerning the Virginia Business Ready Sites program.

And in the past year or call, this was one of the Board's priorities.

for the 2023 session.

This was a priority to reduce the eligibility threshold from 100 acres to 50 acres for parcels eligible for grant funding from VEDP as a part of this funding program.

specifically for site development grants.

The smaller parcels are already eligible for funding under a site characterization grant program, but site development grants were not available for smaller parcels.

And so the legislation enacted and approved by the governor now provides in certain circumstances

that parcels as small as 50 acres can receive funding under the site development grant program.

And some of the conditions, we haven't identified them exhaustively in the slides, but some of the factors to be considered include topographic and environmental factors.

and so if you're able to meet certain conditions then a site less than 100 acres could be eligible for funding under that site development grant program.

And then finally, and I know this will be

Great Interest to Supervisor McKeel.

I don't know if you're aware of this, Supervisor McKeel, but there has been legislation enacted approved by the Governor.

It goes into effect July 1st.

The first bill was for one year, approval for one year, and then that was increased, I thought, Steve, to three years?

I'm not sure, but I can check on that.

So these are some of the bills of, you know,

additional bills of interest to the Board in addition to your priorities.

I did have a brief conversation with Supervisor Andrews during the recess and when we about the positions and policy statements in particular,

which I think we included last year as an attachment to the executive summary.

But in any event, what we've provided to you with the executive summary are last year's priorities and last year's positions and policy statements.

You'll have this presentation also coming out of this meeting.

And then between now and the next meeting,

We will update that document, the positions and policy statements, to provide to you proposed changes to that document that reflect other pieces of legislation that were enacted and approved by the governor during the 2024 session, so that we eliminate, you know, obsolete

Verbiage, because something perhaps was adopted or for some other reason it doesn't make sense to include

particular items in that positions and policy statements document.

So we don't have that for you today, just as we don't have for you today proposed priorities.

We're going to talk with you, Emily's going to talk with you about proposed priorities, and you'll see some mention of those in

the slide.

So that's the focus for today.

And then when we come back to you in September, your agenda materials that you receive ahead of the meeting will have a revised draft of the second document with the proposed changes to that document.

And we'll be prepared to discuss those with you at that time.

Well, no, these have passed.

These were not your priorities, but based on prior priorities of the board and discussions of the board, these

Correctly so.

You're right.

Well, you'll talk, none of these really were adopted by the General Assembly in the way that this Board desired.

So Emily, in talking about the strategy for next year, will talk about whether to include these three again in just a few minutes.

She will talk with you about whether to include these three again for 2025 and in addition

whether to include some others.

Thank you.

So we will have a chance again to respond to the additional presentations.

Just if you have questions about this particular first part.

Supervisor Gallaway.

I have no questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I just have a comment.

So we're not talking about just this particular screen, but we were talking about the other ones that you had on the previous screen, too.

I'm seeing Emily not in her head.

So I just want to make a comment and we can move forward.

We don't have to get down in the weeds on this right now.

But former delegate Anderson has filed a federal lawsuit over Virginia speed cameras.

So our speed cameras now are in will be in court, just to say.

just something for us to think about if they accept it.

But he filed it with the state and with the feds.

Just saying.

It's just something to be aware of.

That's all I'm saying.

Thank you.

Did I misunderstand?

I hope.

I think it is all

This is a legislative matter getting the authority and then implementing the authority.

I don't really want to be the one to have to face the lawsuit and pay for the lawsuit if it's so.

Thank you.

Very good.

Good afternoon, Chair Andrews, members of the Board.

David Blunt, Deputy Director and Director of Legislative Services for the localities in the TJPDC region.

I'm going to try to be very brief in really just giving you a broad look ahead to 2025 and then turn it over to Emily, which I think she'll probably dig down in the weeds a little bit more so.

I think we can be informed of 2025 by looking back at 2024, as you've just heard, and some of the significant topics that were taken up that will probably come to be part of the larger discussions again, not only in the offseason, but as we head into the 2025 session.

at the top of the list, I think issues related to the Virginia Clean Economy Act, Clean Energy Solar.

You'll recall that there were a number of bills that were introduced this past session dealing with solar, most of which had the effect of either undoing, limiting, restricting, or doing away with local authority as it relates to solar.

There's already a number of groups that are talking here again in the interim about paths forward with regard particularly to solar.

Data centers, another issue that got a lot of attention during the past General Assembly session.

I believe all of the legislation that was introduced was held off, not moved forward, defeated, largely in deference to a study of data centers that is going on this year

by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

They have laid out their work plan for that study at a meeting here in the last couple of weeks and are due to report back to the commission of their findings and recommendations around the end of this calendar year.

Mental health.

I know that you all have had some interest in prior discussion, particularly as it relates to community services boards.

Certainly an ongoing issue that the General Assembly discusses.

Senator Deeds, I believe, remains as the chair of the Behavioral Health Commission.

And it's an area, I think, where both the legislative branch and the executive branch have been able to find some common ground in recent years.

and I think we'll continue to look to see where they can do more of that.

Education funding, of course the JLARC report on K-12, elementary and secondary education funding came out last July.

There were some attempts to enact legislation to seize upon this JLARC recommendations this past session.

They ultimately did not go forward.

County.

But there is a joint subcommittee of members of the Senate and the House of Delegates that have been charged with taking a closer look at those JLARC recommendations.

The members of that group have been named and I just saw on the calendar that they are scheduled to have their first meeting here at the interim next Tuesday.

So that is something

I know that I will be closely watching VACOVML as well.

We'll be watching that and participating as necessary.

And then the final issue that's cited here is in the realm of skill games, gray machines.

There was legislation that was approved by the General Assembly that would have allowed those

Those games to legally exist with a number of restrictions.

The bill came back to the General Assembly from the executive branch with a number of proposed amendments.

Rather than taking up those amendments, the bill was just allowed to, you know, was allowed to die.

and the, I think there's probably discussions that are going to be ongoing throughout the interim to see if there's some way to reach a compromise in bringing forth legislation again this coming session.

Or perhaps I've even heard during the special session, which I think the General Assembly would have to amend their procedural resolution to allow for that, but not out of the realm of possibility.

So all in all, just kind of summing up this slide, just some larger takeaways from this session.

You saw this particularly with regard to the budget deliberations.

There were no tax increases that were approved in the final budget.

Likewise, there were no tax reductions, and that was really what was kind of driving the standoff that we had there briefly between the legislative and executive branches, and then kind of some piece that was found

in the approval of the final budget to not have either one.

Certainly, I think we will look to see how those types of positions continue to evolve as we head into 2025.

And I think it's also cognizant to remember that there were a record number of vetoes that were handed down by the governor after the General Assembly adjourned.

And I think a number of those bills that were vetoed, we're going to see those again.

And I think it's already been mentioned about the sales tax for

School Construction, those bills will be back.

So again, we'll see as discussions continue how things might evolve and whether they will continue to be vetoed or there will be some other outcome.

just to again kind of some of that landscaping for heading into 2025 that that Steve had alluded to 2025 is a short session so the odd number years are short sessions so instead of 60 days or more as we typically see the session is 46 days so you're basically doing the same amount of work in

to fewer weeks time.

You do have a biennial budget in place, so there will be amendments to the budget, but it's not starting from scratch to build a full two-year budget.

Of course, it is an election year, House of Delegates, all 100 seats, as well as the governor up for election in November.

Again, the vetoed bills, I would expect a number of them to show up for introduction again next year.

You also see, you know, I've been around many sessions and you'll typically see in election years what I call campaign brochure bills.

It's like, let's just put a bill in.

I can say I tried.

It shows up during the fall campaigns.

and then finally, as I really alluded to with the solar legislation, we did see a lot of legislation in this past session dealing with local authority, you know, whether to take it away or whether to provide you with some additional authorities to do certain things by passing ordinances.

So certainly I think that we will continue to see a number of local authority bills introduced next year.

And then finally, this is just a slide I think that largely is a continuation of us, you know, we presented this to you last year as we were heading into a session where you were going to have new members of your local delegation and asking that you seize upon the opportunity to have conversation with them, to get to know them, to educate them.

I think certainly you're continuing those conversations as you started informing them about the critical nature of that state and local relationship

as well as the priorities that you will land on and initiatives that you may want to move forward with into 2025 certainly continue to have those conversations.

Again, I think we're just looking for questions related to the presentation at this point.

I'll look.

I don't know that there's really an impact of the former on the latter.

I think most folks can take a look at bills that are designed to send a message or be part of a campaign, have an idea of the seriousness of those, how much vested interest that a particular legislator may have in trying to really push it forward and knowing whether or not it's going to pass.

kind of following off that line of thinking as an amateur at this craft that you're an expert at.

I would say my impression of the way I might characterize the four-year gubernatorial cycle is that year one, as in the year following election, is one that is particularly poorly suited for local administrative bills because there's still animus in the air.

That is definitely the impression I got from our last year one.

is that a fair characterization?

I think this past year was perhaps that exception to the rule.

And I know some of the conversations we had last year with the board prior to you taking your seat were really about the uniqueness of this particular election cycle.

The number of legislators in both the House and the Senate, many of them who had served for a long time that were not going to be returning.

So there was just a huge newness factor that we had not experienced

A generation or two, probably.

Coupled with the numbers, D's and R's being so close in both the House and the Senate, not knowing who was going to be in charge.

So I think we'll be probably in a better posture after the next election to know maybe where chips will fall, where I think it was more of an uncertainty this past year because of those kind of unique factors.

A quick question on the following up.

Yeah, the House typically would have a limitation around 15 bills that they can introduce the Senate.

So first I want to thank David for all of his support of the county in Richmond.

We really can't do a lot of the work that we seek to do on behalf of the Board of Supervisors' priorities without David's on-the-ground presence in Richmond.

So he's a really valuable asset to the county and just always great to work with him.

The other is that I expect that our local delegation might be listening live or on a recording, so I wanted to take a moment just to thank them.

while we were not successful in the 2024 session on the Board's legislative priorities, there was success in that all of them were introduced, which is not something that we have always been able to achieve.

So all of the items that the Board prioritized were introduced by at least one member of the local delegation, so we really appreciate their support because that's often the biggest hurdle to getting movement forward.

So this is a slide that we shared last year to frame our approach for 2024.

And as we mentioned, last year we took a modified approach, and for this year we'd like to refine that approach a little bit with your concurrence.

I'm going to spend a moment here to talk about these four sections.

Last year we thought about pathways through the General Assembly and really two main lanes.

One was drafting, was draft legislation with the hope of bills being introduced, and the other was using the legislative positions and policy statements document

to share broader areas of support where the Board didn't have a particular outcome in mind, per se, but wanted to express support or opposition to some of the topic areas that we know are common and where we may be expecting legislation to be introduced by other members of the General Assembly.

For example, we added last year support for implementing the JLARC Community Service Board study recommendations broadly, not necessarily saying here's a particular bill to address a particular need.

The other two sections here are different, and I hope that that demonstrates the increased maturity of our work and connection to Richmond.

So we're recommending pulling out budget items specifically out of the legislative priorities as we had last year, and to think about those in sort of a third lane of budget amendment requests that we could put forward.

And that really mirrors how Richmond approaches thinking about budget amendments and funding items out of the state budget.

finally we had a topical opportunities wedge of the pie last year we're calling it legislative opportunities this year and that's where we would capture those opportunities not to leave requests for a new bill to be drafted but to lend support to opportunities that we specific opportunities that we know are coming forward whether that be from our geographic neighbors

or another county that has a bill that we know that we also would support.

An example of this from last year, two years ago the board had a legislative priority to reduce the minimum acreage

in the Virginia Economic Development Partnerships, Virginia Business Ready Sites Program from 100 acres to 50 acres.

It just so happened that Augusta County also had that same priority that year, completely independent of us.

And so when the bills were introduced, that was when we became aware that that was a priority for Augusta as well.

And they were facing a different but similar challenge with assembling that minimum acreage.

We became aware through the 2023 session that the Governor's Office was working with Augusta County to advance that priority, and so our recommendation to you all last year was to remove that as a priority from your program.

and really let Augusta take the lead.

And ultimately that, as Mr. Rosenberg shared earlier, that was successful as a bill in the session and it was really through letting somebody else lead that we think we saw some success there.

So that's sort of the frame with which I'm going to roll through the rest of these slides today.

So we'll start with the budget requests.

The first one that we wanted to pull out for the Board's attention is Rivanna Futures.

So last year, at the request of a state agency, we put forward a request for $58 million state funding request for site readiness for Rivanna Futures.

This year, with some feedback from our local delegation and agency contacts, staff is recommending that the Board consider advancing more of a phase one request for $5 million in the state budget, understanding that Rivanna Futures is not going to develop overnight.

but be a multi-year process with multi phases and to focus more targeted on a phase one opportunity that would look at some utility work and infrastructure and site work to advance more of a smaller first step.

The second one that I wanted to put forward for the board's consideration is not new, although it's been some time, so for those of you who are newer on the board, you may not recall that when, at the time that the county leased Biscuit Run Park from the state, there was discussion about how the state could be a partner in part of the park's development.

and so we have not as we've sort of worked to focus on opening the park we have not brought forward this as an opportunity for state funding to the board but we thought with the park due to open in the next couple of months that it would be time to think about is there a discrete project that we currently don't have local dollars attached to that could really help open up another section of the park or another amenity at the park that the state might

come forward with some state funding for.

If the Board was to support an approach like this, we would go back and work with Parks and Recreation Department staff to identify what a good candidate project might look like and bring that forward when we're back with you on this topic in September.

Okay, that's, okay, that was a confusion.

All right, so no questions.

I would throw out

bringing on a Second Hearts team and our approach to that, given some other issues in the county that are pressing, as well as just ongoing unfunded type of mandates that come down related to mental health and social services, plus the state's probably bad history of funding their own Department of Social Services that there could be

there could be something there.

It seems like some of those type of programs, even some small leeway on monies could have big impacts for localities and maybe not get caught up in the political ours versus deez kind of thing that a lot of places could go on.

So I would throw that out there as something to maybe

and so on.

members of our local delegation, small, small fixed specific items.

Yeah, I'm just, you know, the general support statements

for, oh, give us more money for community services is not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for very specific things like, oh, you're doing a great job of supporting, you know, the hearts team and what everything that's there.

What is the state doing to help localities move to programs like that?

The one of them was matching federal dollars.

So what is the state doing to help localities match those type of things?

So I'm fine with the general statements and not trying to get into that conversation.

But I guess the overarching piece is unfunded mandates.

I would think in the social services area there could be some places in there that we're not talking huge dollars in the big scheme of things that could have very, very positive local impact that other localities go, oh, that's a good idea.

For the two that are structured, I think the approach that you've presented with Rivanna Futures makes sense, makes it a much easier pill to swallow for the state each year.

Also, I think that's the first time I've seen the new word mark for Rivanna Futures, which I didn't know Rivanna Futures had its own word mark.

Very cool.

and of course I'm always excited for more money, especially if it's free, for Biscuit Run and would be happy to think of ways that we could spin this.

The thing that always jumps out to me is just how people get to Biscuit Run, which I see as one of the more complex and prudent funding priorities.

And I wonder if infrastructure along Avon and Scottsville Road could potentially be framed as part of that.

I also do just want to fully endorse what Supervisor Gallaway was saying and that was also top of mind for me.

We have quite a lot of roles specifically in social services or human services in which we are exercising state and federal authority using our own personnel and we are also attempting

for example with the Hartstein, but with several of our interventions in trying to decrease the burden on overstrain state resources.

I think there's a great framing there that's available of if locality does X and Y designed to reduce the strain on the state hospital bed system, for example, then they get X-mini dollars for this position.

Yeah, so we're talking right now about budget amendments.

I think it's an interesting question for CACI and human services.

If there is something that they can go after with the specific funding amendment, which requires, that's very different than our legis, in general, our legis.

So I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know whether that would be appropriate for this, or if they could even come up with it.

Yeah, and I think to your point, one-time type things fit well into this category.

Yeah, so maybe Khaki could think about something that gets at what we're trying to do, but certainly I'd like to have that discussion when we're talking about our legislative packet to come back to that.

I don't have any other specifics.

I certainly support these two.

Thank you.

I support these two as well and others to consider.

I know that last year in a budget amendment the city received

their share for the pedestrian bridge from the Dogwood Memorial across Warner Parkway.

So that might be something that the county could have.

It's some money toward that as well.

There was a bill last year, but I don't remember what happened to it on sort of catch-up funding for emergency services all across the Commonwealth.

I don't know if that's appropriate for this.

Department of Labor in Richmond has been massively reorganizing and nobody quite knows how they're managing the federal WIOA dollars, but it resulted in a $100,000 cut to the PMOT effort this year, which we're trying to make up with partnerships with other agencies.

But one possible discreet thing would be a bolus of funding for integrating workforce training into the high schools.

because high schools are trying to hire their own FTEs to do with the workforce people are already trained to do.

Lots of counties are partnering with us, but that may be a funding issue.

And I'm supportive of these and I just think that this discussion has pointed out that this overall organization has a question about when we say budget, are we talking about specific asks or are we talking about statewide implementation of specifics that would be applicable to any jurisdiction wanting that type of social service or workforce development or whatever.

Yeah, I just have what I know yesterday that was brought up by Delegate regarding asking for 10 million for Rivanna futures instead of 5 million.

Could either you, Mr. Richardson or Ms.

I remember that conversation and I would say at this point we'll step away and

follow up on conversations and make sure that we're aligned and that we're looking at, we're being very specific about what the infrastructure dollars would go for so that we are all in alignment.

So I appreciate you bringing that question up and we'll step away and we'll revisit that.

I did want to say to the board, I was not going to say this, I did want to say to the board because Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley asked a question related to Rivanna that, and I was talking to Mr. Henry about it as recent as today, that, and we saw this play out last year when we visited with our legislative delegation that there was a little bit of confusion about us asking for $58 million.

and I wanted to say to the board, I've had several conversations, that we were quickly able to look at the cost associated with the entire Boulder's Road project and that is completing the loop road from where it ends today all the way through the property that we acquired

back to the location on 29 that is north.

And we quickly, with DOT numbers, were able to back into $58 million of infrastructure work.

So I just wanted to say out loud that certainly I was disappointed with the confusion that that created because we had several questions about, is this asking for reimbursement?

And of course, that's not the case.

but as recently as earlier this week when we were at the site with officials from Rivanna, again we learned the critical nature of completing Boulder's Road for two ways in and two ways out as we move forward with the project.

So we'll refine our discussions.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley, that's a great catch on your part.

but I did want to say that to the board, that number was not pulled out of the air and there was a lot of discussion with state officials about that initial ask and I just wanted to clarify that for the board.

Alright, we'll go on to the next section of this discussion which is the legislative priorities.

So I've got two boxes up on the screen.

One is just showing the three from last year.

And then three bullets on the right hand side, which are items that have come up in conversation with Board members.

Sometimes folks will reference, you know, we know Mr. Rosenberg has a list.

And so this is our effort to capture what was on that list.

again this work session is really to start the conversation with you all so we're not looking to adopt or close the door on anything today but to start that conversation with you all as we prepare over the next several months to be back before you with a first draft in September

So I'm going to walk through each of these right now.

One from last year is the one cent for schools capital.

This was one that several localities, as Mr. Rosenberg indicated, have the authority on an individual basis to have a one cent local sales tax addition to the state sales tax to support schools capital as a dedicated funding source.

There was unexpected broad support from a groundswell of localities in the 2024 session for this type of broad access to that one cent for schools.

It had two thirds or greater majority vote in both chambers.

It was vetoed by the governor and was unable to be overturned with the two thirds again when it came back in April.

The energy around this topic is pretty strong.

A lot of localities wish to come back and carry that forward again into the 2025 session.

And so we are recommending that the Board consider carrying this item forward into the 2025 legislative priorities as there seems to be continued conversation with folks in Richmond as we move from the end of 2024 into the beginning of planning for 2025.

that this might be successful if it were to come back again.

I'm going to go through all of these and then we can go through the order.