Board of Supervisors Regular Meeting   7/17/2024

Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 17th of July at 1 p.m.

in this Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note that today we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the Whitehall District, and myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

The forum is present.

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

Claudette Bergerson, and our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Also, let me please welcome Albemarle County police officers present, master police officers, Stephen McCall and Paul Quillen.

I don't know that I've heard of any suggestions or any changes.

If there are none, then we're open to a motion to adopt the final agenda.

So moved.

Second.

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

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Aye.

Great.

I just have one announcement that I would like to make.

And looking into the audience, I think it's very relevant today for this announcement.

Many of you may have seen the press release from Java that our CEO, Marta Keane,

has decided that she is going to retire and take life easy.

Although I doubt that that will really happen.

But I just wanted to make the announcement that Marta's retiring.

She's been with Java since 2013.

We are very, very appreciative of her service.

She's done a wonderful job.

But we are seeking a replacement.

And not that we can replace you, Marta, but we hope to name a CEO in December.

and Marta has assured us that she's going to remain around for a while to help usher the new person into the position and show them their way.

So I had the distinct pleasure of getting to enjoy what is my favorite calendar event every single year, which is the 4th of July down in Scottsville.

And so if anyone else made it down to the Scottsville 4th of July parade, market and festival and fireworks, really all day long event, 12 straight hours of events, then it was a real hoot and holler.

I would also be remiss if I didn't acknowledge, you know,

The Scottsville Parade is always a distinctly political affair also, right?

You have people from all adjoining counties, candidates marching.

I always march with the Albemarle County Democratic Party, along with several other candidates.

And the tenor this year was different.

The tenor this year was different.

I was directly jeered by a lot of people.

I was directly shouted at, screamed at by several constituents and also frankly supported by equally vocal, equally loud people.

We recently had a president who was shot in public

We have a

A significant volume of rhetoric and political and borderline conspiracy theories about queer people.

I was in this parade as someone who is openly queer and know what the rhetoric around a school board election last cycle looked like.

I am sometimes afraid to be openly political in my own community.

This really speaks to what I think is something we should be concerned about and should be talking about, which is the ongoing role and the way it has trickled down from the federal government, trickled down into state government, trickled down into local politics of normalization and acceptability of violence and building a culture in our country and our community in Albemarle County that does not treat

Life and the right to human life and enjoyment as the thing that is the primary thing that we should be concerned about.

And it is chilling.

And I'm concerned.

And that's all I had to say.

I appreciate that.

I was going to see if I could quickly pull this up, but Supervisor Pruitt's comments, when Supervisor Mallek and I had the opportunity to attend the National Association of Counties this past several days, we just both returned yesterday.

And the Pew Center for Research did a study that had said that the public, by and large of the G7 nations,

that the United States used to be first with its constituents feeling having faith and trusting their government and are now last.

Further research was showing that that animosity or that distrust of government was primarily being focused at the federal level, starting to seep into the states.

And the point of the session

was that local governments are still a place where people should and still have some level of faith in their local government, that they will listen, adhere to their needs because they know the impacts can be so great.

So when we start seeing things like this seep into our world, it's contingent on us as local officials to know that we are likely the firewall to prevent it from getting into all levels of government and to continue to do what we can do to combat against that.

and I have to tell you, the National Association of Counties is not made up of one political party and all seem to be in support of that and not just doing it for the sake of show.

I didn't meet anybody down there that was worried about sharing their opinion on where they felt or where they stood, but that was one thing that they were all seem to be in genuine agreement of.

So thank you for sharing that, but just that's what came to mind in listening.

I'd also want to just say to Marta that I've got constituents in my district that have asked me not to endorse your retirement.

Just say no.

Just say no.

Well, I agree with what Supervisor Pruitt and Supervisor Gallaway said.

There is no room for violence.

We know that.

I think at the local level, the best thing we can do is to listen to everybody, listen to all sides.

That seems to really calm people when you actually engage with them.

And it's too bad you didn't have a chance to engage because once they get to know you, they've got to love you.

So, unfortunately, that part doesn't happen, and that's what probably needs to happen.

But as far as announcements and everything, I just wanted to say proudly that board endorse that the Albemarle County Fire Rescue Foundation will have another meeting tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And as Supervisor Gallaway said, the NACO conference was long and exhilarating and exhausting.

But as the materials are available, I will share them upon everybody so you can try to get as much out of it as you can from a distance.

It was great to attend digital communities.

event and see Roderick Burton and meet Kelly Spencer, a longtime county staff person who I've never met before who is now in IT.

But listening in at the dinner conversation with them conversing with other IT people from other counties, I was so impressed with what they are bringing to us and the awareness they have of

The Great Risks, which all of us in all communities face.

And I felt very comforted by that.

And I know that they will be presenting something to the board when they're ready.

But I just wanted to thank them for all the work they do every day in addition to whatever they're going to talk to us about from the event.

Whitehall District did have three parades, each different from the other and each different from last year.

Fewer bicycles and children in costume and more veterans, but crowds were still large and mostly supportive.

Some shouted criticism, as you had mentioned.

Ever since I came back to Albemarle in 1982, I have worked to build

and Retain that community strength and trust in process.

I'm a process wonk.

That's the way it is.

But when there is a process and people can count on the process happening and knowing that they will have a chance to share their views and build whatever the structure is that's being considered,

That does give them confidence.

And I think the confidence is eroded when people see that things are slipping away and they're not getting a chance to say anything bona fide, you know, in a discussion.

So we cannot despair and throw up our hands about this.

We have to all dig in and make sure that we can make ourselves, make Albemarle County different from what is happening in other places.

I'm all in on that.

Also great news about the Rosenwald School in Greenwood.

which was built in 1925.

To teacher wooden structure, it is still in pretty good structural shape.

The University of Virginia's architecture school is working on evaluating things with

Mr. Dailahendro, who is, and they're working on planning what the rehabilitation would be able to do, very exciting stuff.

And the church who owns the property, Mount Zion, is happy to be a partner in that effort.

So I'm really excited about that.

And historic preservation is incredibly important to all of us to know where we've been, we might know where we're going.

So that's all I have for today.

Thank you.

And I share the sentiments of concern about political tensions that we're facing and hope that we can, as a board, show that we're listening to people and open and receptive and therefore keep things toned down a bit from what we're seeing on the national scale.

So, in that end, I have a couple of later announcements.

The good news to announce that if you haven't seen it, the Plank Road through truck restriction that we had acted on earlier has been approved and Vida is preparing signage.

So that was announced in June.

And then I'm not stepping on anyone's announcement, but I did note that the 2024 National Night Out event is scheduled for August 6th.

and from 3.30 to 6.30 that's a putt-putt with the police annual event at the putt-putt course over by Rio and conducted in order to get the police into the community and I guess over a thousand attendees were there last year so I encourage people to to join in on that.

Yeah, well, and I'll try and be brief, Jim.

Thank you.

But just to address the topic around the way we're treating our fellow citizens and how it's spilling over, perhaps, into our behaviors, my daughter yesterday was driving on Old Lynchburg Road.

And as she was passed in a county office building south, she noticed that there were cones along the way, and then she came upon

a utility truck and she noticed that the driver was out of the truck and she was concerned about his position and the way he looked and she went up and came back around and checked on him and in fact he was very ill and he

and he actually received some burns, I think, from the truck, regardless.

She said that she was able to count 9-1-1 quickly and the ambulances were able to come and help him.

But she said what was the most appalling about the whole situation was the woman who approached in the big black truck who was so inconvenienced by the ambulance that her behavior was just appalling.

And you think about how we've gotten to the place where it's not only political discourse, but it's not even taking into consideration the safety and well-being of our fellow citizens in the community.

And I'm sure that the police and the fire and rescue see that every day.

They nodded their head to Megan and said, yes, not unusual, but it's getting worse.

So as we're driving and as we're moving around our community, let's think about health and safety and the welfare of our fellow citizens, our fellow residents and our community.

and help lower that frustration tone a little bit because at the end of the day, if we get somewhere two minutes late, five minutes late, 10 minutes late, it's probably not the end of the world.

Thank you.

Board, our next item is proclamations and recognitions.

I believe we have only one on the consent agenda, so we'll move on from there to matters 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.

I believe we have both in person and online.

We have six people who have signed up in person, and we have one person who signed up electronically.

So with that, I will read the rules.

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

other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing.

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak at each board meeting during matters from the public.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office.

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

For those participating electronically, the clerk will coordinate with each speaker when it is their turn to speak.

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

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

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

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

For online speakers, you will be notified when the three minutes are up and you are requested to bring your comments to a close as your microphone will be muted after about five more seconds.

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

When addressing the board, state your name, and if you live in Albemarle County, your Magisterial District, address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and Forth debate is not permitted and please do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

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

If participating by phone, press star nine to let us know you want to speak, then press star six if from a landline to unmute.

If by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called to speak.

Oh, right.

And let me see what the first speaker... And I do apologize ahead of time if I mispronounce anyone's name.

Please be gentle with me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Marta Keene, a Rio district resident and will continue to be one after I retire.

And I am the CEO at Java.

And you have in front of you some stories.

I'm here to say thank you for your support, both during the budget as well as ongoing collaboration with so many of your different

Department.

And I thought today was a nice day to go from talking about numbers when we were doing the budget to talking about stories and feeling the difference.

Our first value is compassion, and I think given our

discussion a few minutes ago.

It's particularly nice to read these stories and realize that there is a lot of compassion out there and have some faith in our fellow humans.

On pages two and three, there are stories about our J-REC, our Respondent Enrichment Center.

And basically, I think it just reminds us that something as simple as a manicure or a shave

can make such a difference and help people have such a sense of dignity when they're living their life with dementia.

And so I think sometimes we forget that those little acts of kindness really matter.

I'm not going to read this to you.

I'm going to leave it to you to enjoy at a different moment.

But if you choose to go to page 10, there is a story that I would like to highlight.

And I would just say many of the stories

are featuring different counties in the city so that we can show everyone as we go around the region.

But they all represent the kinds of similar activities that are happening here in Albemarle County.

So on page 10, we have a woman who had come to us to help her with applying for long-term care Medicaid, which is not an easy process.

So many people do need that help, and we're glad to help them.

But then after that happened, she did move into a new apartment house and her husband passed away.

So she's got grief going on, she's got macular degeneration, so she's really having trouble reading her recipes.

and it's really changing how she and her daughter now needs to interact and so our agent service coordinator was able to work with her to get home delivered meals set up so she doesn't have to worry about grocery shopping or cooking and her daughter doesn't have to worry about doing that as well.

She can come and be a daughter and then they can have meals together when they choose to and I just think it's a good example of what home delivered meals

how they make such a big difference and we appreciate that you support the funding so that we can do that.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rob McGinnis, and I'm here representing the Pima Environmental Council.

My comments pertain to the work session, presentation to the Planning Commission on the restructuring of AC44 ComPlan update and the new timeline.

I first want to recognize the dedication, hard work, and contributions of staff

Planning Commission members and the Board of Supervisors.

The proposed new published timeline indicates that public engagement will occur after the county planning team has already published a draft COMP plan document, despite the unknown changes that may have been made to goals and objectives.

PEC recommends that the county undertake robust community engagement during this next phase and all future phases of the COMP plan update.

Community members should receive clear

Communications, on the status of the previously developed goals and objectives, what those goals and objectives will be going forward, and any new goals and objectives that have been introduced.

The county previously engaged community members on the chapter goals and objectives as the primary driver of the proposed action items.

The county's information regarding the status of goals and objectives should be communicated to the public as soon as possible.

PEC strongly recommends that the county engage the public on the development of the proposed new section on the growth management policy before a draft plan is completed.

The growth management policy is one of the most important elements of the comp plan and should be driving the development of the comp plan elements.

The previously revised draft growth management policy statement was buried in the land use and transportation element, which limited public comment on the new policy.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Randy Fleitman.

I'm not sure about the last name.

I probably mispronounced it.

What's Fleitman?

Fleitman.

Fleitman.

Fleitman.

Okay, got it.

Welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Randy Fleeman.

I live in the Scottsville District in the Glenmore Development, and Mike Pruitt is my supervisor.

And I was a economic officer in the Foreign Service for 33 years and environment was always in my portfolio.

So climate change is one of my top priorities.

And I'm very concerned about how

The Comprehensive Plan is going to balance all of the priorities and still meet the county's greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

Economic growth and adequate housing are important priorities, but climate change threatens all aspects of our lives and achievement of those goals is critical.

Yes, the Paris Conference is great because nations are there.

but I can tell you from my own experience, subnational organizations, the state, the county, municipal and local levels are critical.

to America reaching its greenhouse gas emissions goals.

So those land use policies, those energy policies, all the other policies are really, really important.

They're important to me.

They're important to a lot of people.

And I ask that you keep us all very well informed of what's going on in this planning process, because I know from my experience in the federal government and doing advocacy for the last six years, once a draft is made public, it's really hard to make any changes in it.

So please intensify the transparency and the opportunities for public comment.

You've got a lot of very well-educated and informed constituents here in the county, in the city.

We are advised by very expert groups who can point out things that we don't necessarily catch.

And this is really important for us to reach all our goals and balance all of our priorities.

Gene Hayd.

Hyatt.

Oh, OK.

Sorry.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jean Hyatt, and I'm a member of the Board of Directors of the Local Historic Preservation Group, Preservation Piedmont.

And I live in Charlottesville.

We have been following along the county's comprehensive plan process and sharing comments and recommendations as it has progressed.

And we appreciate all the hard work that has gone into it thus far.

However, there has been a long period now with no updates from the planning team.

We are eager to learn if all the previously determined goals and objectives remain the same.

And if any have been revised or eliminated, can they be specified?

And also if any new goals have been added.

We respectfully request that this information be shared with the community by the end of July and that going forward we request that the county planning team will provide for a strong and full community engagement this month that will continue through all the phases of the comprehensive plan process.

Please don't make the community wait until after the publication of a completed draft document.

This is of course important to our group as well as many other area residents.

Some of our specific interests, activity centers in the development areas and also in the rural areas, the design guidelines.

entrance corridors, future development in rural areas with legacy zone parcels, and land use in rural I-64 interchanges in the historic areas of Shadwell and the NC Mills.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Thank you very much.

I'm Peggy Gilgis from Jack Jewett District.

I've been involved in the AC44 planning process through the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee, and I've also written to you about the importance of maintaining a rural areas chapter in the COMP plan.

I was away last week, but I read Sean Tubbs' coverage of the refinement process, which is being proposed by planning staff.

As an engaged resident, I subscribed to the AC44 mailing list, and there's been no notice to the public about a pending reorganization and rewrite of AC44.

So I think the staff's proposal should be sent out to that email mailing list.

As you know, the county had gotten as far as completing goals and objectives for all chapters of the COMP plan, and people who've been following its development have been waiting several months to see the result of advisory committee and public input on the third phase of AC44.

The action steps or strategies to achieve our goals and objectives.

I would have said that we were three quarters of the way through with completing AC44, but now

Staff is asking for permission to cut the comp plan significantly in size.

And in their presentation to the Planning Commission, they compared the size of the document with sizes of documents from other localities.

But Albemarle County is Albemarle County, and it's not anyplace else.

The content of the COMP plan is what matters, and in this proposal, the planning staff has offered nothing concrete about what will remain and what will be left on the cutting room floor.

I don't think it's appropriate for staff to finalize a draft without further input from the public and advisory committees.

Planning Commissioner Clayburn asked a very good question during last week's meeting.

What happened to our emphasis on climate inequity?

In the newly proposed AC44 changes, climate protection appears to have been substituted with resiliency.

We won't have resiliency as a community unless we address climate change.

We need to ensure that plans for population growth and economic development don't prevent us from meeting our climate protection goals.

Adaptation measures won't be enough.

Failing to meet our goals on climate by 2044 means dire impacts on underserved communities and future generations.

We have a window of opportunity to protect and preserve our natural resources to counter climate impacts and biodiversity loss and maintain a good quality of life for people.

Please ensure public disclosure about and constituent input on any revisions to AC44 and please reinforce your attention to climate action and equity in our comp plan.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Christine Putnam, and I live in the Scottsville District.

And I serve on both the Natural Heritage Committee and the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee.

Both of these committees have provided recommendations and feedback on the AC44 goals, objectives, and action steps.

We appreciate being heard and seeing our feedback incorporated into the phase two drafts.

That said, committee members have been eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to engage with the AC44 planning process.

After listening to the July 7th AC44 Planning Commission presentation, I'm concerned about transparency moving forward.

Information should be made available to the public regarding what aspects of the previously developed chapter goals and objectives remain unchanged.

Which ones have been revised?

and or eliminated and what new goals and objectives have been added.

Robust opportunities for public engagement must continue after the comp plan has been drafted, giving citizens and advisory committees time to review and to provide thoughtful feedback.

Growth management policy needs to be the center of the COMP plan.

How we manage growth will impact our ability to meet our climate goals, protect finite natural resources like drinking water and forest cover, and to provide equitable access to a healthy environment for all of our citizens.

The last month, the brutal heat and the threat of drought should get everyone paused about the threat of climate change.

We need a comp plan that will boldly address climate inequity because we know that some will suffer the impact of climate change more than others.

The county has spent $58 million to purchase 462 acres for the Rivanna Futures Project.

What actions will be taken to minimize and mitigate the impact of this development on our climate action goals?

Was climate considered?

in the rush to move forward with this project.

This development will demand more housing, roads, sewer, water, waste disposal, and energy.

And if a data center is part of the plan for the Rivanna's future, we can throw our climate goals out the window.

As we move forward with AC44, I hope you, our leaders, will be steadfast in your commitment to addressing climate and equity while continuing to engage the public and your appointed advisory committees.

Don't let economic development opportunities overshadow this commitment.

and our next speaker and our last speaker is speaking electronically, so I'm going to look to Claude at.

Good afternoon.

Hi, my name is Clay Bowen and I'm currently working as a climate justice policy intern at the Community Climate Collaborative in Charlottesville.

A few weeks ago, I was asked by my supervisor to commute from my family home in Ivy to the office using jaunt as an assessment of its reliability and availability to individuals who might rely on its services.

As an intern, I go into the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, typically from 10 to 4, a relatively shorter workday compared to the majority of the workforce.

I don't own a car.

I rely on borrowing my family's car or carpooling to get into the city.

Without this assignment, I would have never known that John was even available as a means of transportation.

I've never encountered any advertising or marketing for this service until actively researching on John's website.

Once I registered for a commute from my home, I learned that the operating hours for John's services in my area are from 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m., a four-hour window.

Furthermore, only inside this time frame are rides offered, meaning the latest time you are able to schedule a ride is 1.30, in which you should be picked up any time between 1.30 and 2.00, as the service cannot offer precise pickup and drop-off times.

This meant that even with my shorter in-person hours, the service is practically useless for me as cat standard bus routes don't reach Ivy or does their microtransit.

And Ivy Center is about seven miles outside of the city, an excessive distance for most to bike on a high speed limit hilly road with zero dedication for pedestrian or biking infrastructure.

For those outside of cat's bus and microtransit systems, John is the sole option for available public transportation.

Mentioned in Phase 2 of AC 44's 20-year comprehensive plan is the topic of rural land use and transportation.

It speaks on the need for development of a transportation system in these more rural, less successful areas.

While a more thorough transportation system is needed at a minimum, increasing the operating hours of jaunt will be an effective step in the right direction.

If the operating hours were to be increased, ideally encapsulating a typical 9 to 5 workday, John would prove to be much more useful not only for working individuals, but for people needing to run errands, commute to school, or go to a doctor's appointment.

With these notes in mind, I advocate for the lengthening of John's hours of operation in the IV area from 10 to 2 to 9 to 5 during the work week.

I tell him.

Board, that brings us to item eight, which is the Consent Agenda.

I'm not aware of any requests to pull anything from the Consent Agenda.

So the floor is open to a motion to approve the Consent Agenda.

So moved.

Second.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Aye.

Thank you.

Board, we have a very busy afternoon and evening ahead of us.

We have a couple of work sessions.

The first is a review of proposed changes to the outside agency funding process led by a academic, our chief human services officer.

Welcome, Ms.

Good afternoon.

Help is on the way.

Thank you.

I'm sure I'm supposed to know that.

I apologize.

Cachydemic Chief Human Services Officer, I'm happy to be with you this afternoon to talk about the past agency budget review team process and our review of that as is our custom and then make recommendations for our fiscal year 26 process.

So as background, there are many ways in which we support community agencies.

And to this afternoon, we're speaking explicitly about and specifically about the agency budget review team process and not about cultural arts and festival contributions and not about the Department of Finance and budget application review process, which is for larger regional agencies with whom we have enduring partnerships.

So just ABRT.

And as way of background, the agency budget review team process serves as a method of evaluating requests for county funding from outside agencies, primarily nonprofits.

Teams of community volunteers and staff review and score applications against a prescribed rubric.

Funding recommendations are not made by the team, and final approval is made, of course, by you all.

Every year, we evaluate the process and make improvements.

In fiscal year 25, there were 70 applications, which is a lot.

It's been increasing pretty substantially every year for the last five years, representing just about $4.7 million in requests from 49 different organizations.

They were reviewed and recommendations were made for your consideration and they were awarded just over $2 million in funding.

49 of those applications were for the traditional agency budget review team process, and 12 were for the new emerging needs human services funding review that we considered last year for the first time.

And nine of those applications were for something broadly referred to as contractual support.

which includes, for example, a small one would be the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless's coordinator receives contractual support because it's not direct service, but it's critical coordinating effect and impact for our community that we think is important.

You think is important.

And as far as feedback loops, we have a lot of ways in which we review this process.

not only reviewing it with you today, but we get survey responses from applicants.

We review surveys that we do with our volunteers and staff who actually do the reviewing.

And then we get feedback pretty consistently from the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, who has a different process of asking for feedback from nonprofits who participate in our process.

And we have an annual debriefing session between human services staff and the Department of Finance and Budget.

In terms of the big picture changes that we are recommending for your consideration, we're recommending some pretty broad changes that would help the agency budget review team process be more responsive to community.

but also more responsive to your human service goals and would incorporate some best practice changes as well.

We propose that these changes take place over two years so that there's not a sudden shock to the system about those changes.

The specific recommendations that we are asking you to consider are one, a pretty easy one, is to change the name.

Agency Budget Review Team only refers to something insiders know.

It doesn't actually apply.

Even if you were on the website and you saw something that was called Agency Budget Review Team, you would not assume that that was about nonprofit funding and click on it to find out more.

So we're recommending we change it to Albemarle County Human Services Funding Process, which would be more specific about its intent.

that we would improve descriptions on the county website to help applicants determine which application best fits their programming.

I think it would be hard-pressed to tell you how many phone calls we take from community agencies who ask which one of the applications they ought to be submitting for their activity.

A, because some activities don't fall neatly in one of those categories, but also because there hasn't been a lot of guidance about that process.

We've been very fortunate for the last several years to have John Freeman, who's a retired Albemarle County DSS assistant director, return to help us with this process, and he's exceptional with nonprofit applicants and guiding them through this process.

We may not always have John Freeman in that role.

Review, which agencies are included in the contractual obligations pool?

This is something we do every year anyway to make sure that we've clarified what it is our intent is around identifying contractual pool versus traditional pool.

Both applications get reviewed and reviewed with the same rubric.

It's just a different pathway.

And so we do find ourselves sort of stopping every year to evaluate.

Prioritizing those applications that provide critical human services to Albemarle County.

This is one of the more substantial changes that we're recommending.

Be consistent with, again, your strategic goals around community safety and expanding human service response.

The prioritization would be as follows.

We would prioritize applications that provide basic needs safety net services and those applications that reflect a service to a particularly vulnerable population.

which is not to say that we wouldn't review and or even recommend for consideration programs that don't do those things but that in the potential and likelihood of a constrained budget environment fiscal year 25 was challenging fiscal year 26 and 27 promised to be similar that we would prioritize the organizations that are providing services that the county would otherwise be compelled to provide if that agency wasn't doing that work.

which will be focused on vulnerable populations and around basic safety net programming.

There are agencies and organizations that prioritize for safety nets or vulnerable populations, including community foundations, those kinds of things, but I did a little research to identify local governments that do the same.

Loudoun County prioritizes crisis intervention and diversion services, which is the way that they identify safety net programs.

Their focus is to address immediate needs and reduce or prevent the need for more restrictive and expensive hire and services.

So both an interest in crisis intervention and prevention of deeper and expensive process.

Richmond has historically for several years actually was prioritizing funding for seniors, particularly vulnerable seniors living in poverty or with an additional compounding experience, currently prioritizing homelessness, seniors, people with disabilities, and health services for marginalized populations.

Washtenaw County and the city of Ann Arbor collaborate on their process and they fund safety net grants in the region in the area of food, health, housing, and homelessness.

Sometimes they add childcare to that depending on how many childcare spots are actually available to see whether that's an urgent need in their community or not.

and the County of Santa Barbara focuses on anti-poverty programming.

Interestingly, just thinking about counties that choose a prioritization process for their funding.

Sonoma County and the County of Santa Clara both are fire-prone organized counties areas and so they prioritize funding for programs that focus on resiliency for families to respond to emergencies like that.

So there's history with counties and local governments prioritizing their nonprofit funds beyond whether the nonprofit is likely to be a nonprofit that delivers the program and is a good steward of taxpayer dollars, but actually prioritizing the actual service delivery itself.

Lastly, we recommend creating an abbreviated process this year, which would be a way for nonprofits who have historically been funded through ABRT to have a pretty more straightforward and easier way of getting access to us, and also free them up and county staff to focus on longer term changes to the agency budget review team process.

Anticipated changes for consideration for fiscal year 27, just so you know we're looking forward to that.

Revising our application process and updating our website.

It says sophisticated online platform and I don't want to oversell it.

Let me say more sophisticated online platform.

and expanded technical assistance and, importantly, and responsive to your concerns that you expressed during the agency budget process this past year, enhanced compliance reviews.

Right now, we do not have sufficient staff or sufficient process to do deep dive compliance reviews other than looking at outcomes for programming.

And what we heard from you is that you'd like us to be able to do that more regularly.

And so we would help to create a design like maybe every three years we do a deeper dive around compliance, around some of those that sort of look at better at budget numbers or budget process, including also how you evaluate the services and the impact.

For your consideration, we have proposed some changes for this year and for next year in advance of our guides to nonprofits, which we usually issue in August, and we usually start having technical assistance training for nonprofits in September.

We want to particularly make sure that you're comfortable with these changes and support the idea of having a prioritization process that prioritizes those agencies that are providing safety net services like food, shelter,

our emergency response and those organizations that are funding or that are supporting people with particular sort of vulnerabilities.

I'm delighted to have assistant CFO Andy Bowman here with me who is traditionally in front of you to talk about the agency budget process.

He is of course a critical partner in the delivery of this.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

We'll come through our order with questions and comments.

Thank you, Kaki.

And I really want to thank you and your team for looking at this through a different lens, very thoughtful and deliberate approach.

And it's also good to have the two-year phase in.

We all know that.

I have a question.

I really like hearing about the emergency response.

You referenced climate change.

Could you play that out a little bit more?

Because we're certainly seeing hotter days

I think we're not quite there yet as a county about how it is we want to respond but thinking about sort of climate change goals and response thinking about community risk reduction thinking about an increase or increased focus on human service needs

There's a place where all three of those meet together and that really is about providing some resiliency support to people in our communities.

A small example right now would be that we've been collecting supplies to help somebody survive a 72 hour

power outage or sort of emergency in their home, like a small first aid kit, a small flashlight, an emergency blanket, an emergency whistle, those kinds of things, and then preparing to distribute.

I think we have 300 of these kits that we've developed already to distribute as part of our emergency service planning.

But it is one of the ways in which I anticipate in the next several years sort of expanding our response so that if we're traditionally saying we're not going to be able to respond to a significant natural disaster for 48 to 72 hours and we ask you to shelter in place, there are people who right now who don't have the basic tools to be able to shelter in place.

How do we identify them and how do we deliver those things?

You speak of an opportunity for us that I think as a county we're moving towards be able to respond in a proactive way.

That sounds very positive and really I appreciate it very much and sounds really the way that direction that I think we would want to at least consider going.

That's great.

Just another question or two more questions for

Yes ma'am what we're asking is for those things to be foundational and then for us to evaluate rather than right now we evaluate applicants based on their whether they're a good non-profit or whether they're a good applyer and now we'd like to be able to apply a rubric around what you're delivering to the community and having that be at least a prioritized process where we say we need safety net programming because otherwise the county would be forced to

to be responsive in that way.

And we also have a particular concern around vulnerable populations.

You have a great way of saying that, and I really appreciate whether or not you're a good applicant or a good provider.

That's really, really good.

And this is just a question about dollars, because I have folks ask me from the community.

And we had 70 applications representing $4,690.

And we were able to

Award, 2 million.

That sounds like a question.

Good afternoon, the board.

My name is Andy Bowman, Assistant Chief Financial Officer, and thank you to Stemick for the kind words earlier.

Really, when we look at the ABRT's work, they are evaluating how agencies score.

We then take that work and prepare our recommendations as part of the county executive's budget to translate that.

For example, an exemplary score, we may take your base funding and then apply a certain increase to that.

As we look to new agencies, we'll look to a reasonable metric to implement something new.

Last year, the board talked about the used to be rule where you could only be eligible for 50% of your request that has been removed.

So that'll be something we look at differently and continue to look at differently in the future.

where if an agency was not being their performance, we would look at reallocating that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I'm excited about this.

I think an immediate takeaway that kind of leapt out across the this year's budget process was that there was a lot of discontent with the way that we were currently doing the ABRT process.

and surprisingly, it's actually something that I hear in the community too, right?

It's weird to think that a very specific funding mechanism that we use would be something that people have an opinion about in the community, but it is something I hear about.

So I'm excited to see a new approach.

The main thing I just want to clarify, I am reading this as, you know,

Two years ago, the board implemented a set of four different priority areas that they wanted to focus on.

We weren't able to realize those other than through a specific discretionary pool of money set aside for them.

And then it was only for one of those focus areas.

My understanding of what you've presented on today and looking at the material that we have is that that concept is going away and instead we now have two

not even focus areas, but criteria, which is whether or not they are providing, of course, a social safety net function or whether or not they are serving a particularly vulnerable population, which does kind of cross those four areas very effectively.

But I want to make sure I'm correctly understanding that that framework, along with other things that we have come to know and love about the ABRT process is gone.

Correct.

I would love to imagine that it's not gone permanently.

I think to be fair, we went into the fiscal year 25 process saying let's leave the agency budget review team process largely alone and let's add some priority areas to have some significant investment based on human service emergent needs in our community.

We were unable to support any of those with the exception of the community safety contingency fund.

and so if that is likely to be the case heading into fiscal year 26 and 27 based on our continuing obligations then how else do we prioritize the applications we receive to best meet the most urgent needs in our community and so this is another mechanism for getting there and I would

I would hope one day there would be sufficient funds and opportunity for us to try to do both deep investments around emerging human service needs and prioritize the traditional funding process.

But at this point, I think it's prudent sort of consideration or forecasting to assume we're not going to probably be able to do both in the fiscal year 26 and 27 process.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

I'm also curious how into the weeds you've gotten with what the evaluative criteria and rubrics would look like moving forward.

I mentioned this just because I know our

are community partners develop their own criteria as part of their applications, and they can make those criteria as ambitious, as ambiguous, as they might choose.

it seems very easy to juke the numbers depending on how thoughtful I am about preparing my application unless we are like vetting that on both ends, right?

Yes, it's an excellent question.

And it is one that's in the weeds where we are right now.

And that's part of the reason why we're suggesting that these changes unfold over two years is that that that is actually fairly substantial work for us to do for each kind of application we might receive.

And I think as part of this process, we would be recommending that the county identify the

The criteria, not the applicant.

And we would say these are the needs we're most interested in supporting this year.

Again, doesn't mean an agency that's doing something else that we like and is good isn't going to get funding, but the prioritized funding is going to be around the agencies that can best meet the kinds of interests we have.

Forgive me if this is too pointed.

We can't do that for every application every year with current staffing capacity, but we can do a rotating process.

We can be on a cycle where every third or every, then we do a deep dive in your nonprofit compliance or we do on a separate year, a deep dive into your impact data to make sure that you're providing that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McVie.

I'm glad you made the point earlier about the arts and cultural under a different umbrella.

I had a question about that coming in.

Who is that under?

This is squarely under your human services and the new team, but where does that arts and cultural stuff fall into?

Those applications are received by the Department of Finance and Budget.

Based on the board's direction last year, we really streamlined that process.

That used to be a committee of about staff from five departments.

It's one of our approaches, Mr. McEllude or two is really putting our efforts in compliance, prioritization with that funding is the greatest.

So for example, a contribution that would be greater than a million dollars, we would have much more agreements reporting the compliance in place versus a smaller contribution of $2,500, for example.

And there would be a scale of that.

It's not binary.

And that's, I mean, it's off topic from what's in front of us, but that

I probably would have more things to say if that were the topic today.

Based on arts and cultural and thinking even back to our Broadway blueprint and some of the conversation that happened there.

So I'm just kind of flagging that as that might be something worth thinking about before it's next budget time.

Thank you, Andy.

Loudon County.

They prioritize crisis intervention and diversion services.

So what's interesting to me about that is the crisis intervention is sort of the same as sort of safety net.

But also the focus on diversion services as a way of trying to avoid the need for and or access to like a deeper and more expensive service.

I'm not familiar with Loudouns, but I know Fairfax has a program like this in place that they think finally got up and running about a year ago, but it's been a couple year effort to get buy-in, and it's the same thing.

They hit a point early, expend resources there, and then the impact and the effectiveness of it, I mean, in their county, huge cost avoidance down the way, which then those dollars can be freed up to be repurposed for like a staffing consideration, so you don't have to do something every three years.

The way that we've gone through budgeting and when we hear staffing needs, we all go, oh, that's a problem.

We should be able to staff that.

But at budget time, we don't add that many positions beyond what is requested.

So that cost avoidance to be able to find those dollars is an important part.

So I'm all good with everything that you're recommending here.

I just hope that this will help us hone in on those services that really give us the bang for the buck down the road.

And I hate to say just bang for the buck down the road, but when you have limited resources, $4 million are requested and only a $2 million in allocation.

Finding the efficient programs that allow us to get further on a dollar is going to be critical.

But I say that being mindful of the fact that even impact sometimes can't compete with efficiency.

Meaning, you know, it might be a smaller cost program, but the impact on a single individual could be huge.

Whereas something that's coming in that's maybe serving more could score better in an application process.

So I'm just saying that, and this is probably getting into the weeds of how these things are considered, that I would want both to not be a priority over the other, that yeah, we all are in favor of getting five bucks out of $1 in terms of what it could mean, and then what it could return in cost avoidance.

but we can't lose sight of programs that have high impact and in the big scheme of our budget are also on a smaller amount.

I don't know that what you're suggesting here helps get at that.

That's probably more into the philosophy of how the programs run or the consideration of the applications, but improving the process would probably free up airtime to be able to think about those type of philosophy.

Right now, there are points for leverage, and those points can be realized in the application if you're leveraging, using local dollars to leverage a larger state or federal amount.

We like that.

Also, there's points for leveraging or reducing costs downstream.

What we don't have right now are points for evaluating that effectiveness feature, and so that's the part of the weeds where we're trying to sort of figure out.

Right now, you could be an exceptional applicant with reasonable-looking numbers, but not necessarily.

You might affect 10 people and somebody else might affect 100 equally, and they're evaluated the same right now.

I'll just comment that the Fairfax program that led them to get there was not a department level project or program.

It was a board-directed undertaking because there was significant buy-in needed, not just in the government, the bureaucracy of the government, but the community and why things would be redirected there.

So if it was that kind of revamp to get at that

Thank you very much, Miss Dimick.

I agree with how you're doing this and your priorities, the safety net for services, health and safety, that something I believe the board has always said over and over for the past few years, and for the vulnerable population.

I do agree regarding effectiveness.

I think each one has to be, each application has to be looked at, how effective it is.

You're going to be entering this triage with this new criteria, which actually should be able to help you get to the programs that are most helpful.

That's what I'm hoping, that more effectiveness, which programs are more effective, and then your effectiveness in determining those programs also.

Will this, your criteria, especially the first two, will that begin?

Yes, we're here today so that we can influence the way we train nonprofits in the application process this fall.

So the way it usually happens, we provide guidance in August.

We provide technical assistance in September.

We open the funding portal sometime in October.

We get applications by the end of November.

We have our volunteers reviewing usually between Thanksgiving and Christmas and then we have recommendations to the budget office by early January.

Right, and I know things take time and should we

have a windfall of finances, which would be very nice.

Then we can go further down on the list, correct?

Absolutely.

We can always remain helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I'm pleased to hear your explanation for the continuous improvement because you're faced with a really challenging thing, a small bucket and a big need.

I will reiterate that I hope that you will find a way in the questions you choose to ask and put the burden on the applicant rather than on staff if you're very clear with your questions and don't allow them to pontificate as others have mentioned and cloud the issue with saying what they want to say instead of what you want them to answer that that may help you and I hope that you will find a way to

get information about staff turnover, what their training is all about, because when we hear stories of completely ineffective agencies and not having, and everybody leaves because of a leadership failure or something, then that doesn't help them.

It certainly doesn't help their clients, and it makes us look bad.

So we really want to try to, I encourage you to get as much information as you can, way beyond the 990.

and, you know, I always raise an eyebrow when they're a hugely expensive executives and very low-paid staff.

You know, we can't have the client contact making $35,000 a year and one person at the top making $250,000.

That's just not fair.

And so that's sort of the general

Rubrik of what I'm concerned about you've already answered the fact of the effectiveness for county residents because you've heard me over and over again say this is this is our taxpayers dollars many of our taxpayers are stretched to the limit already and they need to know that their their neighbors needs are being met.

So that's sort of the suggestions that I have on that.

And I'm very interested in the crisis prevention diversion thing.

As Ned said, the Fairfax Program, I think, was driven as much by law enforcement and they actually have residential places.

And you may have gone to the tour up there.

I know several people tried to get there.

But because we have relied on Region 10,

There are many, many, many beds short to be able to have a place for the people the hearts team interacts with to go locally.

So there are some gaps in there that are not, that they're the other counties, maybe bigger and able to do these things.

We haven't quite gotten the way to wrangle that extra dollars in there for all those other solutions.

And I think we just have to face the fact that we will always have, it's like a bottomless pit of need, and we just have to really do, and I appreciate all the work that you're doing to do the very best job that you can.

All those

Topics that the various cities talked about were all really interrelated, you know, when one domino falls, then all the rest of them fall.

Thank you.

We could turn to slide seven, just briefly.

My understanding.

We lost him.

Back one slide.

I'm going to watch you again in a real way.

Amazing.

I bring it up just because my understanding is that what you're looking for today is the board to approve of the updated framework for guiding the fiscal year 26 process and these recommendations.

So that's basically when I have everybody look at these, we go through and make sure that these are what we're saying we all are fine with.

and I certainly am fine with them.

I see improved descriptions and I do say, well, yeah, I want to see those descriptions as well.

I don't want to be going to the point where our board is directing, maybe as Fairfax, but I certainly like to really understand the process and understand what the descriptions are.

My understanding from this is also that the fiscal year 26 process, that the application process will be a little more involved

Because of these changes, then the fiscal year 27 process where it can be abbreviated because people will become more familiar with it.

Yes and no.

I think we're recommending that applicants this year do an abbreviated process and not the full bore because we're working on the questions and the process for that, but that we apply the new prioritization rubric to that.

and they'll be more invested, will be more invested and involved in that conversation.

We're aware that you all are frequently asked for guidance or information about this process from nonprofits.

Thank you.

I'm going to look to my right and left.

I mean, I understand this to be a question of developing a consensus that this is good for going forward.

And I think that is the case.

No, sir.

Do we need a vote?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Our next work session, AC44 update, Comprehensive Plan Structure and Project Schedule.

This will be led by Tanya Schwartz and Trubber, Planning Manager.

Welcome.

I think this may be your first time here before the board, but you are there with the Planning Commission.

And we're very interested in this update, as you know.

So thank you.

Thank you.

It's good to be here.

I'll bring this up and introduce myself.

Good afternoon.

I'm Tanya Swartz-Jerber, Planning Manager for the Community Development Department here on behalf of the AC44 staff team.

And to give you an update on the progress of the project.

If it's okay with you, I'd like to run through the presentation and take questions at the end.

My colleagues, Tori and Ben and others are here to help me work through any questions that you may have.

And just as a side note, this presentation is slightly different than the one that you received in your packet to respond to some ongoing comments that we've been hearing.

specifically about public engagement that I will address in a coming slide, if I could.

We've prepared two questions that we'd like for you to consider while we move through this presentation.

We'll revisit these in the end.

But those questions are, are there aspects of the comprehensive plan structure that are missing?

And also, do the expected features for the development areas and rural area match up with your expectations?

You'll recall earlier this spring, we were here to discuss the goals and objectives.

Throughout phase two, we received extensive input and feedback from you, PC, the public, and other community stakeholders.

We spent the next few months reviewing everything that we gathered and built on the existing document structure and nomenclature.

I want to pause here and just assure you that any previous content feedback is still incorporated into the document.

We are only looking at the document structure here.

We're not changing any content or process.

We acknowledge it's been a while since we've provided an update.

We've taken the time to work through the document structure because we want to get it right.

So it's clear and understandable document for our public, our leadership and staff.

Public engagement is important to our county as evidenced by the enthusiasm for the project over the past few days.

Thank you for staying engaged.

We can assure you that as the details of the plan are developed, there will be extensive public engagement along with PC and board work sessions.

Please stay tuned.

Let's look at an overview of the document structure.

During phase one, we evaluated existing conditions and data to determine where we are and analyze future trends to begin to understand where we need to go.

Predictably, there are areas that we are doing well and others where we could improve.

Considering these areas along with the Board's vision and priorities and stakeholder feedback helps to develop a framework for an equitable and resilient community that we will call the guiding principles at this time.

These principles guide the plan and implementation to shape what we want our community to be like over the next 20 years.

With that end in mind, the second part of the document, we will set our intention for where growth and protection occurs geographically.

The growth management policy establishes the development areas and rural area, and we will use that as a framework for this part of the document.

This section will generally address how we provide services and infrastructure and protect our current resources differently in each area.

The next layer is how we will work toward the vision for our community and implement the COMP plan recommendation.

This chapter includes the plan elements,

Sorry, the section of the document includes what we've previously called topic chapters, but it also includes other important components of the comprehensive plan, including, for example, feature area plan approach.

This will show us how we implement the recommendations included in the comprehensive plan that will go into more detail in the coming slides.

In part one, as I've already stated,

We're setting the stage by clearly stating what we need and want as a community and how we'll get there.

The guiding principles are what we want to be like and we're established as part of phase one.

You'll recall they are green and resilient, welcoming and equitable, connected and accessible, thriving and prosperous.

This part essentially gives us something to aim for as a community and outlines the policies for getting there.

In part two, we develop our intentions regarding the application of land use, transportation network, protecting of existing resources and provision of public services and infrastructure, which would include utilities, parks, and emergency services.

Practically, the approach to apply these tools will differ between the development areas and the rural area.

In a moment, we'll look at the anticipated features of each.

but first I'll mention that these are a compilation of what we heard during phase two and we will discuss these draft components in more detail later this summer and into the fall.

Activity areas are areas within the development areas where there are already nodes of activity.

This is where we need to focus and concentrate housing, transit, and jobs as part of redevelopment and infill.

They're envisioned to be mixed use areas with an urban-like built environment.

and connected by multimodal transportation choices.

We do this by allowing a variety of housing types, efficient land use and public investment in services and infrastructure.

The community design guidelines will support connected and mixed use communities with open space networks and inform the zoning ordinance.

In the rural area,

We will encourage the primary land use to remain agricultural and forestry while addressing legacy land use.

We will protect and restore our natural environment and limit public services and infrastructure.

Both the development area and rural area, as I've just outlined, constitute our kit of parts or toolkit, as it were.

In part three, we see how we specifically use those tools to get to where we would like to go.

The section will contain the plan elements.

As we synthesize the feedback on goals and objectives, we need to normalize the level of detail.

The goals we discussed over the past several months are drafted into goal statements and objectives are combined and clarified.

Additionally, some of these objectives have turned into actions.

as we realized that they fit better at the action level of detail and we're more oriented toward implementation rather than measuring plan progress.

The gathered feedback along with our partner departments are guiding the development of actions and catalyst projects.

On your screen are draft action types.

All the actions will be categorized into one of these types and will help identify funding, resources, and responsibility for implementation.

We acknowledge that varying levels of involvement will be needed from different departments to implement this plan and will need to be discussed accordingly.

Additionally, we will work to develop a draft list of catalyst projects that are prioritized projects involving several departments to be initiated in the first five years after adoption.

This will all be discussed in further detail over the coming months as part of public engagement and work sessions with both the Board and PC.

Please stay tuned for more details to come.

We will draft metrics for tracking progress and reporting to leadership once the plan is adopted.

And additionally in this part, we will propose an approach for future area plans, comp plan amendments, and review for compliance.

The last piece of the document is the appendix where we'll include any other county and regional plans and initiatives as necessary.

We'll include our community story, which will contain all the data and trends analysis discussed as part of phase one, along with a summary of public engagement and a document glossary.

This last slide is our anticipated high-level schedule over the next several months going into next spring.

If the Board agrees with the direction that we have just presented, we'll move into developing our materials for public engagement and PEC and Board work sessions.

These will likely include in-person workshops on the area framework or what I just presented as part two.

In late fall, we'll put all the pieces together and roll out the draft document.

By sharing the entire document as one, as a whole, we can show how all the pieces fit together and have continued opportunity for input and incorporating the community priorities.

with that.

That is the conclusion of my presentation, and I will leave the questions up there for your reference.

Thank you very much.

We'll go through our order.

Thank you for the presentation.

And this is a lot clearer.

In listening to the Planning Commission presentation, I must admit, I was a little confused.

This presentation has really explained it much better in a much clearer way.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

Can we just go back, though, and I know you did address it a little bit, but we have had multiple speakers that have been talking about the lack of public engagement, and there's almost been a lack of a better way to say it, some suggestions that staff has been behind the scenes cooking up some secret sauce.

I'm just saying that that's what I've been hearing and seeing, and I want to just make sure that everyone understands and make sure I'm correct.

I understand what you all are, what you've done here, but my understanding was that staff was just going to step back and take a pause.

and try and look at this through the lens of what makes the most sense, what is the clearest for the public based on the comments that we've received from the public.

And I understand that as with much that we do these days, staffing is always a challenge and time and the framework and time for staff is always a challenge.

So that was the lens that I was reviewing this through.

And I hope I'm saying it right and correctly.

Oh, you're so faint I can hardly hear you.

My husband might not agree.

I'm Jody Falardo, the Community Development Director.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and thank you for the question, Supervisor McKeel.

Over the last few months, we've been considering the structure of the document as informed by what we've learned from the Zoning Ordinance Modernization Project.

What we realized as we were going through the normal routine of comp plan preparation, as we've done in past years, we were on our way to another 900-pound gorilla.

And we didn't want to do that because we've been challenged with such a large comprehensive plan.

to make sure that there are consistencies within the plan and we don't have discrepancies within the plan.

It's been difficult for staff to learn the entirety of the plan and difficult for the community to understand what we're asking for.

So what we've been doing in the last couple months is we've been exploring

and other communities and how they've structured their various plans and we actually have reached out to a few of them and said, you've had your plan for a little while.

We like the way it's structured because it's easy to comprehend, it's accessible, it's in plain language and we've been checking with them to see has this worked out for you and have in fact found that people were very excited about that.

So rather than just kind of

Pushing on along through our regular routine, we decided let's take a pause, let's get the structure right, and then we'll pick back up again.

We are very thankful for everybody in the community reaching out to let us know how interested they are in engaging in this process, and we've seen that all along, and we fully intend to engage them again.

What I believe one of the comments at Planning Commission that got people concerned was the fact that we were saying, well we want to share a draft of the plan, not bring it to you in pieces.

Some of that is reflective of the fact that feedback we have received from the Planning Commission was, okay, we see this piece, but like, what does that connect to?

Where does it fit?

We don't get it.

And so we're trying to find that middle road where we're taking the information and all the feedback we've received from the community thus far

moving that forward but we're trying to build it into a structure that's easy to understand and then put that out based on all the feedback we've had thus far to the community, the planning commission and then of course to you all taking all that and funneling it together.

So we're trying a slightly different approach aiming at getting a much more readable format for everyone

but we fully intend to keep the community engaged in this whole process.

That helps a lot.

And that sort of explains what was happening during the pause, right, that everyone was concerned about.

And we are always saying in Almar County, we need to look at what best practice is and what other communities that we like to compare ourselves to, or we think are utilizing best practice, what they're doing.

And that's what you took the time to do.

And I really appreciate that.

And your explanation was very helpful.

So there will be opportunities for public engagement because we certainly in this county have never shut out public engagement.

There'll be other opportunities to include somewhere towards on down the line a little bit.

I'm sure it'll go to the CACs.

It'll go to the Planning Commission probably multiple times and it'll come back to us as well.

Yes, ma'am, and we will continue to use an array of media.

So we have an engagement website up and we will continue to post things there.

We have employed pop-up meetings in the past as well, and we're open to doing some more of that work as well.

So I think we're going to try to

match up the outreach approach with the enormity or volume of what it is we're trying to present to the community, but certainly the routine places we go are CAC meetings, certainly planning commission and then of course to the board.

So I really appreciate this very much.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

It works for me.

And a document that is more user-friendly is much more, I'm much more interested in, to get rid of some of the, no offense to many of my friends, but to get rid of some of the very

Lawyer Lee, attorney, jargon and language.

Well, it's interesting because Mike and I were just having that discussion earlier about simplifying language, not in this case, but in other cases.

As someone who pulls out the comp plan very often finds its weight and its size

Offsetting.

I can only imagine being a new employee and trying to come in and absorb it and make sense of it.

So I really appreciate that.

I don't think large and larger and larger necessarily means it's better.

Thank you.

But at the same time, we don't want to lose the focus of what we think is important in this county.

And I think you're getting at that.

Thank you.

So I want to just begin by, like, acknowledging I think anyone who's ever edited a very large document knows how challenging it is generally and also, you know, it is famously hard to kill one's darlings.

And I understand that this involved, I didn't coin that phrase.

So I want to recognize it was probably very challenging to cut so much in what is coming before us.

And I just want to appreciate that.

And I also do want to make sure we're saying very clearly the cuts and realignments that are happening to the comprehensive plan are consistent with the

feedback that you've received from both the board, the planning commission and the public, right?

This is in an effort to align with extant feedback that has been received.

Supervisor Pruitt, I just wanted to clarify a moment.

We haven't cut anything yet.

What we are trying to do is level set.

So we found from our public engagement list of everything everyone said that there were some very

in the weeds kinds of things, and there were some more high level policy and procedurally oriented things.

And what we're trying to do is balance those things.

This is a 20 year view of our world in Edmont County.

So what we're trying to do is

set the level of what's included to the timetable.

We aren't cutting anything notion-wise or anything else, but we are possibly reframing it

to into a larger, bigger context.

So I hope that clarifies a little bit.

We're not doing that.

Am I not correct in saying that the goal is to make a whole more lightweight document?

Yes, it is.

As in it will be rather than 300 pages, it will be

That's it.

Well, it's more like it will be 300 pages, not 900 pages is kind of where we'll be.

Am I correct in understanding then that it will be something we're strategically trying to do to have points throughout the comprehensive plan where we're incorporating by reference, right?

As in like, we will execute this broad goal consistent with our articulated policy in this, which may change.

And sure, I love a pithy answer.

That's good, that's good.

I do want to, we've received a lot of comment about public comment.

And I do want to make sure I'm, can you give us a brief notional

I will start, but then I will turn it over to Tanya and the team because they have a lot more detail that you may be seeking.

What we're really aiming for is additional community engagement in the remainder of the spring and through the summer period.

We will use that community engagement to inform the

The restructuring of the document, the realignment of the document, and then putting those pieces into the draft that will then come forward eventually to the PC, the CAC's PC and to the board.

So I don't know if that's enough detail for you.

Sure.

But the goal would be before we see something and are giving direct feedback on it,

That is the intention.

I appreciate that.

And last, I mean, it would be remiss not to kind of point out

as I think was well put by members of the public today, the real locus of our comprehensive plan does center around our growth management policy.

It is the heartbeat at the core of every piece of county policy on it.

And we also, we don't talk about it or deal with it in a very direct way.

So I'm curious,

Looking at the kind of notional framework for realigning, it does seem like it would be challenging, if not impossible, to deal with it in this glancing away as we are maybe currently inclined to do.

I'm wondering if that is a fair character.

It feels to me like it will need to be more directly confronted in the comprehensive planning process of this year, if this is going to be the structure that we're taking.

I'd like to offer a bit of a clarification on that as well.

The direction we believe we have received from the board thus far is that you all were not interested in realigning or expanding the development area into the rural area.

And so we have taken that as our course of action.

It may well be that as we are looking at all of the rural area versus the development area,

as we learned a little bit with Rivanna Futures.

There were some tweaks that we needed to make to make some of the parcels make sense and the boundaries make sense, but we're not talking about any wholesale change to that growth management policy at this time.

What we did say in previous meetings with you all is that we intend to bring forward those items that we believe you should

Keep an eye on, we will bring to you for consideration that may make you want to consider expanding the development area or making modifications.

So in our plan, we intend to identify and of course bring to you in draft and you can tweak

Thank you.

All right, well, I'll just stay on structure.

I'll stay up front.

It's very difficult for me to go from micro to macro.

This would be a hell of a lot easier for me if I had that draft so that then I could work down to the micro.

So I kind of counter the public comment that said it's hard to change a draft once it's in place because this board has proven that the hell we don't care if it's a final version will change that sucker.

So I'm not as worried about that.

but it's hard sometimes to see it be like doing the budget in piecemeal by each budget or in each department without seeing the bigger budget.

So it's just difficult based on the policy work that we tend to go from the top down, not from the bottom up.

This has been a very micro to macro process.

So that's difficult.

Now, I say that to say that it's hard for me to tell you if something from the structure of the document is right or not right or missing or should be there without seeing

A possible look at what it might be to go away.

Why the hell is that there?

It should be over there.

I think in the past, not just myself, but other supervisors, at some point, we're going to get to the action items of this document.

And I know that's where we're all salivating to get to.

And that micro level stuff is going to probably inform what the proper structure is going to be, the document format, et cetera.

I mean, the past time the board worked through this comp plan, you guys went through, I mean, it took, we have to remember they're supposed to review the comp plan every five years, not take five years to review the comp plan.

And if we get to the point where it takes five years to review a document, we're not doing an effective job.

That's not what this is about.

Your guiding principles piece, I think a missing from the guiding principles is achievable and attainable.

This is a plan that we're supposed to be working towards and implementing.

We talk about our guiding principles of climate and equity.

And we've got other items in there.

But this isn't a wish list.

This isn't our aspirations.

This is our plan.

And the action steps are supposed to show how we're going to implement it.

And then that should inform our strategic plan, then that should inform our budgeting and the allocation of resources.

I'd love to take credit for this.

But my planning commissioner, Nathan Moore,

in a conversation and he hit me up with a text before we have a regular meeting and he had said, you know, I'm struck by the framing, some are bringing long-term planning should be about where do we want growth and how dense?

I really feel like that's the secondary question.

The primary question ought to be how do we make an actual community where people can work here, live here and flourish here?

should be the overarching goal, then that should inform through the lenses of climate and equity, which we have said would be the case to the action items, which then that's where growth, both the growth management, conversations, the development rural area, land use concerns, zoning concerns, all of that should funnel down through there.

So if your structure's fine, there's probably not a structure that you would have brought here that I would have been like,

So I'm just giving you a fair warning.

The jury's out, though, on the structure.

But I'm happy to receive a draft.

And the way you're breaking it down seems reasonable to me.

But I will be looking to the specific items when we get to them that says, how are we going to attain this plan?

And then we can line it up to the strategic plan in the budget to show how we can get it there.

And folks can then count on it.

and in the meantime, I suspect we will continue to hear the feedback.

There's no media in here reporting this.

So I want folks to understand that there is a huge gap right now in how to push information out if you're not on our Albemarle County mail.

And there has to be levels of going in and looking at agendas and looking at meetings when these things are scheduled.

It used to be, I know that when you guys did the comp plan the last time, there were two or three cameras set up in here, as well as a radio reporter that everybody listened to.

That desert of information.

I don't even see Neil here today.

Seats available, Neil.

But the point is, is that that's not our fault.

That's not the public's fault.

That's the sense of what media is going to be right now.

But it does put us in a point where if it's not coming into your social media or hitting your device in some way,

even in despite of our best efforts that folks have to pay even more attention to us because otherwise that's how things start to go awry and be like, well, they are cutting things.

I mean, if something's not stated the same way it was the last time and it's still included in the content, it's not a cut.

It's there.

It may be in a different way that's more manageable and recontextualized, but it's still there.

And it's our job that if we feel something is missing or cut to call that out.

Hard to do that with just looking at a structure document.

So that's where the getting into the micro details of this document are going to be key, I think.

for me and for the whole board.

But that's all I have right now.

Do you expect features for the... I mean, yes.

I mean, the second answer is yes.

But again, the devil's in the details on that as well.

Well, I can't believe it, but I actually agree with Supervisor Gallaway.

I know it's shocking, but I have some, I had some of the same actually questions and such, but my understanding is the COMP plan continues to go through the CACs, the PC to us also.

Will we be having also work sessions that the public is invited to?

No, no, no.

For us, for the supervisors, the public can attend.

You will have work sessions.

So that's another venue for the public to attend to get information, because I agree with Supervisor Gallaway.

We've been getting a lot of emails saying, we're not informed.

We don't know what's going on.

You didn't notify us.

Well, yes, you're right.

I did not specifically call you to tell you there's going to be a meeting about this.

It's the public's responsibility.

I'm asking, what have we done?

We have the newsletter.

We have the news occasionally.

What are the venues are we doing to notify the public so that when they say, I don't know what's going on, we can say, you know, this is where you have to go.

We have the best place, I think, to go is the Engage Albemarle site.

So that is our public outreach public facing site for this project.

So it's engage.alemarle.org, I think.

slash forward slash AC44.

And there is all manner of things out there on this project.

We've got, we've had surveys out there.

We have the toolkit information out there.

There's everything that is critical and our elemental pieces for this project we load up there.

Yes, ma'am.

You're not talking just about the van that goes out and gets beaten.

No, ma'am.

We're talking about something that's online.

Okay.

Yes.

That is very important because that answers the public wanting to know, or we don't know anything.

I do like the idea of getting the draft form

because once you piecemeal it, then people will micro-manage.

I mean, they will really go down into the weeds on something.

And that's not the purpose of this.

The whole purpose is for, you know, to be able to get it done.

is what you're suggesting, which is a complete draft given to us, knowing that we can change it.

And knowing this group, we probably will change it.

So I suggest that you remain really flexible in that area, because it probably will be.

Because with a draft, it all kind of makes sense.

And I think that's a good one.

I noticed we were originally going to have this.

Pardon me.

completed by winter.

Now we're going back to summer.

I applaud you on that, because I think that's giving everybody a lot of, a lot more time to be able to do it and really have some on our part and the public's part, good input.

I did have one question I know on page, I think it was seven or eight, but the activity centers, is that also, you don't have to go there actually, but is that, the activity centers, is that another term for cross road community?

which I dearly dislike.

In, no.

Would you like a homework clarification on that?

Yes.

So, activity centers are in the development area, places that we expect to connect together, think of Stonefield versus Pantops versus Holly Mead,

that where we intend to have

probably height, multimodal connectivity, think microcat, think shared use paths.

We expect them to be job centers also.

So that activity centers is really a larger, more urban form that we are expecting supervisors.

So it's not identifying the crossroads communities like we had before.

Okay, good.

Because I visited those crossroads communities and there's some of them, there's actually one of them, there's nothing there.

So, but I like the activity centers is kind of like a small downtown area.

Right.

You could think of it that way.

And I will just add that we plan to have a work session around activity centers and future land use in the coming months.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I feel a little better than I did earlier.

So thank you very much.

You know, I have a lot of baggage, as you know, because I'll refer to some of it as I go along here.

Missing.

I will offer a slightly different perspective.

This is a wish list.

It is a vision.

It is not the zoning ordinance in my mind.

And so

That's just a different perception that we'll all have to talk about more.

So I appreciated what you said earlier about how the challenge of going along with the complainant and the zoning at the same time, you're learning some things to take to the other wheelbarrow.

And so that's interesting.

So I don't have anything for the missing right now, except

Natural Resources Protection was the overarching everything for 80 years here.

And because in my mind, without clean air and clean water, nothing else really matters.

You can't equalize a whole lot of challenges.

It was an actual board decision in about 2014, we were not going to spend a lot of time arguing about which chapter was the most important.

because they all have benefits, they all have challenges, and it is a case-by-case discussion about which thing has to have priority for that particular item.

So that is why it was, and I will remind folks that there were 15 notebooks.

The stack was like four feet tall.

They were all combined into that, and yes, it took a long time, but

Our 2015 ComPlan1 National Awards and it is a history book of our county and how people can look at it and say, well, what's been going on with natural resources here or what's been going on with historic preservation and actually see pictures and see real stuff.

And that is the value of it from my perspective.

The engagement has always in this county been different than other places.

So I will beg you to keep that in mind as you're looking at what other things are.

You will remember that I went completely to pieces when it was suggested that this just be farmed out to a consultant because it is a locally driven process.

It has been forever.

And from the comments you've heard today,

People take this very seriously.

It is sort of the basis for existence as far as what people perceive that it creates the quality of life that we have here, the fact that we have something real to rely on.

So there seemed to be, I realized after I got some comments that I hadn't received anything about go to the website and look up this new thing for months either.

So that's probably why people started to feel concerned.

And then there definitely was a perception as I was listening to parts of the planning commission thing that

You'll be out of touch until we're ready.

And so I'm glad you clarified that.

So based upon that, I would still have another question or two.

What will be, can you provide a little more detail about, I mean, the renaming of stuff, you know, I don't do well with change, but I'm going to train myself to do that.

I don't think we need to

I don't think our original one was technical.

I mean, the zoning ordinance, absolutely, I need a translator all the time from our county attorney.

But this is more readable, so I would ask you to seek a middle ground as far as not making it.

I don't want to be rude here, but this is really serious stuff, and we need to use serious words to describe what's going on.

There will be people who will want to avoid accountability for anything, any rules that we have.

So my concern about lumping a whole lot of criteria together into one sentence, it doesn't work because

then there's nothing to point to to say and we had this a really good discussion at the story preservation committee when an earlier draft came through and they were various things lumped together and there was really interesting points of view from around the table very different perspectives but they all basically said the same thing was those two don't go together in the same sentence because they just can't stand they need to stand alone so I will encourage you to think of

standing alone whenever possible because it does give us something we can point to when there's an application.

The staff has to say this is compatible or not.

But if there's such vagary in the document, we can't prove anything.

And I don't want to get there.

I do agree that it's hard to contribute until there's some more information.

And what you had been putting out at various stages is certainly

will give us, give more confidence in people to be able to understand more about than these 14 or 16 slides that we've had here today, but I'm doing the best I can with what I have.

So, am I to conclude from what you said today that it will not be, there will be meetings going over what you've heard so far, but in narrative presentation with the public and with work sessions before this draft is put out?

so that the elements of the draft will be discussed first.

And that makes your job much easier, because at least you know to do it once or twice instead of 10 times.

That's good.

So as soon as you can

to map out maybe in two months and in four months or whatever.

Even if it changes, I don't care if it changes, but if there's something to start with, that will be very helpful for all of us.

Just getting ready for today was really hard for me that the packet came out on Friday and I was codely without internet until last night.

Because 30 hours on the train was wasted because there was no ability to use it.

So it's

It takes time to be properly prepared and we all want all the public wants to do the best job they can when they come to the meetings and they really need I think to be shown the respect of having a lot of information to work on.

And I think mass meetings, the group larger meetings, rather than these pop-ups that, I mean, it must be sad for the staff, you know, six staff people and they get three people to come.

I mean, I don't want anybody spending that time for that amount of interaction.

But we've had 50 to 100 people show up at big meetings when we hold them.

So I think all of us can certainly help to get the word out about those and with the interest that we have on all these topics, I hope that people will come.

The most important thing about the meetings is that people hear other people's questions and it may change what they thought altogether or go, oh, well, I don't worry about that, but I worry about something else.

I think we learn a lot from each other and it's really important to try to have as many of those opportunities as we can because it is the public's document and we want them to be part of it as far as contributing to that sense of community that we all talked about at the beginning of the meeting today and what is under challenge everywhere and we all have to use every opportunity that we can find to build it.

Thank you.

and I have seconded a lot of the comments that Supervisor Mallek just made, but also other supervisors and I'd like to just clarify a couple of places.

With respect to these questions, are there aspects that are missing?

I'm not aware of them, but until I see it, I don't know for sure.

Do these match up with my expectations

I'm still having trouble clarifying my expectations because I'm not sure how all the pieces fit together, which takes me back, so I'm going to go back one slide, if you will.

I know that was a problem last time, I hope it's not.

Okay, so this is the one where I noticed the biggest changes from what was in the packet before and specifically community engagement preceding a draft.

And I share the concern Supervisor Gallaway expressed that, you know, until we see the draft, it's tough to know.

But I also believe that, you know, there's a cry out for

Much more community engagement, and as we develop things, we should be very transparent, if we can, with those.

The catalyst projects, for example, land use transportation frameworks, these can be put out there even before they go into the full draft, but obviously I think everybody's going to feel better and expect that we will review pieces and make big changes, probably, to the draft.

which why better not to push it off to the point where we're feeling completely crunched by it.

If you go back, I'm going to jump now all the way to slide five.

So this actually addresses the question, are there aspects of the proposed comprehensive plan structure that are missing?

And this and as well as slide nine, but I'll start here, equity and climate action lens and guiding principles.

These are really important to me.

and I'm always going to say, because I've said it before right from the very beginning, I want to understand how those appear in all the other places as well.

Since they're, you know, action lens, these are lenses and guiding principles, then I should be able to see them reflected in everything going forward, not just in a nice introductory section.

But it's something that's got some punch to it all the way through.

If we slide to, I guess, slide nine.

And this elements goal statement, objectives and actions.

Another change that I noticed from the presentation with the Planning Commission was I don't see and hear a description of how 10 goals are going to be taken into one.

sort of goal frame.

I always understood that to mean that somehow they're all going to still be there, but they're going to be formatted differently.

But there was some concern that somehow the goals are being shuffled or lost.

And so as those kinds of changes take place, as we start to reformulate, it also would be really helpful to have kind of mapping that tells us, you know, this is where we've seen this goal.

And now we're putting it here.

So we've had a lot of chapters that we've been looking at goals.

We've been looking at them all along.

And I want to make sure that, you know, help us understand how, yeah, we still have that.

It's just that we've shifted how we present it.

So, Chair, if I may, what I'm understanding from what you just said is that you really would appreciate a crosswalk of some sort.

Yeah.

OK.

Some sort of crosswalk or mapping that tells me where these things are from before.

And those are my big concerns.

I obviously agree that we want to engage the public as much as possible.

People are interested.

I think that Sean is listening and Neil probably will be when they get their next opportunity.

But you're right, it's tougher and tougher these days to make sure that people really hear what's going on in this process and it's pretty important.

Yeah, I just had a quick question regarding the COMP plan is a guide for the next 20 years and then we do revisit it every year, five years.

So I think that's important to remember also because things do and will change.

So I just want to make sure that's a guide.

It's not a, you know, step one, we have to do this.

Step two, we have to do this.

Yes, ma'am.

One of the things that staff has been working on with performance and strategic planning is how to knit together the comprehensive plan actions that we will be asking you all to adopt, obviously based on feedback from the community, Planning Commission and y'all.

and your Board Strategic Plan because we've all, the staff has put out an intention that we have the Board Strategic Plan and it was important to get that moving, but we also recognize the fact that

you all are probably going to want to get the comprehensive plan goals and objectives implemented.

And so we're trying to figure out how to knit those things together.

So our expectation is that there may be something like specific projects that have a five-year planning horizon for you, where you will tell us, us being the departments,

What it is you're wanting to get done in the next five years, we will come back and say, well, in year one, we need this kind of funding, so it will inform the budget process.

We need this kind of capital, so it will inform the capital planning project.

So we as staff are working diligently to fit these things together better than they have been fit together in the past.

Thank you, Ms.

Fullarder, and thank you, Chair Andrews.

Yes.

Board, then, with that, we are scheduled for a 15-minute recess.

We come back in 15 minutes.

I guess that's essentially, well, 322 by my more correct clock.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next item is the disposable plastic bag tax litter collection program update.

Mr. Kaimori, Deputy Chief of Operations Facilities and Environmental Services.

Good afternoon, Chairman Andrews, Vice-Chair McKeel, members of the board, county executives,

Okay, somebody change something because where's the start button?

All right.

Can everybody hear me today?

Last time I had a little trouble with this thing.

Good afternoon.

I am Chymarian, the Deputy Chief of Operations for the Facilities and Public Works Group, and here to give you just an update on our progress towards a roadway litter collection program.

Obviously, the purpose here is to discuss how we develop this program and where we see it going to try and help produce some of this environmental waste and litter that's collecting along the roads, which is ultimately making its way down towards

and the local waterways.

Ultimately, the program is projected to be supported by the disposable plastic bags bag tax revenue.

There we go.

All right, litter problem in general.

It's more than just an eyesore.

It's a safety hazard.

It's an environmental issue.

It can even be a health threat, depending on how you want to look at it.

You know, solid waste, trash, debris, they all build up.

They can interrupt traffic flow.

They can cause issues with animals.

They can ultimately, I mean, for the animals themselves, litter can be construed as a food.

I'm sure everyone has seen all the stories, especially with the ocean mammal life, with these large

PODs, I'm not sure the exact name of it, of refuse that have built up in the ocean that the creatures are eating.

It's causing many issues for them.

It also causes issues for us, especially from a more of a public works right-of-way type aspect.

It clogs the infrastructure.

It clogs the stormwater drop-inlets, sewer systems, wastewater treatment plants.

Waste Water Treatment Plants, and it backs them up.

You've got to increase risk of flooding.

Ultimately, you can shut down a road because you just don't know what's there.

And if these things are unaddressed and you leave these pools of water, you leave yourself open for such things as becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes because they just love a little bit of stagnant water to develop the larvae and start going, making lots more.

Basically, by the numbers, most of this I took from the 2020 study by the Keep America Beautiful group, which is a follow-on to their 2009 study.

Overall, they have seen an improvement in educating people and working to try and reduce litter in those two time periods.

but it's still estimated there's good 24 billion pieces of litter estimated to be along the United States roadways and another 26 billion pieces along the shores of the US waterways.

Just rough count that comes out to give or take about 2,000 pieces of litter per mile.

Most of your local roadways have the most litter primarily because they tend to have the most volume of traffic and there is a loose correlation between

Traffic volume and, you know, the volume of trash that kind of builds up and we'll kind of build on that a little bit later.

And another interesting note that was in the study is the vast majority of your waterways are rather close to roadways.

So it could be fair to say that a lot of the trash on your roadway is going to end up eventually in your waterways if left to its own devices, so to speak.

Disposable plastic bag tax.

This was enacted by the, or I guess the 2020 General Assembly enabled this for counties to be able to enact this tax primarily to try and address some of the climate and environmental impacts due to these disposable plastic bags that many of your vendors

We'll use to, you know, bag groceries, et cetera, for their customers.

And ultimately, they would like to encourage the use of reusable bags.

So we just don't have all these, I don't know how many times you've seen it.

I've seen a plastic bag just floating by in the breeze, just out of nowhere.

And then they just keep going.

For the code, it's very restrictive on what this revenue that comes from this tax is allowed to do.

There's four very specific things you're allowed to do that you can do environment cleanup.

You can provide education programs to ideally ultimately reduce the litter that's put out there.

You can mitigate pollution and or litter and you can distribute reusable bags to eligible participants.

of both the SNAP or the WIC program very specifically.

These are the only items you're allowed to use this tax revenue for.

And the board of supervisors did approve this tax commencing January 1, 2023.

Just a quick look at the revenue overview.

When this was enacted, there wasn't a whole lot of data.

I think the expectation was going to be about $20,000 per year.

It was exceeded within the first six months of the program going in service.

FY23, they brought in approximately $47,000.

For fiscal year 24, we collected approximately $120,000.

And the projection moving into the future is going to be very much on the levels for FY24, probably slightly higher.

I did a little, I'm an engineer, so I just did a little back of the envelope calculation, 120,000, that's about two million bags.

Okay, so onto our actual development methodology.

We kind of want to look at it.

We discussed earlier that correlation between traffic levels and volume of litter that tends to build up.

So we approached it from that angle, trying to look at the roads that are going to have more volume.

But we first, we started out, we want to find out, were there any existing litter programs?

Are there any formal programs in the county?

We found there are three primary programs in the county.

Albemarle County itself, we have a litter and mowing program.

VDOT has a litter and mowing program and VDOT also sponsors the Adopt a Highway program, which they are very happy.

Albemarle County happens to be a very good participant, the residents of the county to their program and they really appreciate that.

We took that data and we analyzed it compared to two VDOT published data for traffic throughout the county and the state and we tried to determine roads that have a fair amount of traffic but aren't being serviced by anybody else i.e.

they're not being serviced by some of the larger programs that are already existing and then we will take that data and determine a level of service based upon the average daily traffic

And to get that average daily traffic, like I mentioned, we used the VDOT published data and they published it for the whole town and they've published it for years.

So there's a pretty good backlog of pretty reliable data that they have out there.

And we grouped our roads, we basically into four tiers, basically roads that are greater than 4,000 ADT or average daily traffic.

That's the average number of cars that will travel that portion of road in a given day.

We call those our tier road or those almost call it a priority road.

That's where we're getting most of our local traffic that they talk about in the Keep America beautiful study.

Tier two roads would be just a little bit lower than tiers three and four below that.

We considered basically below a thousand cars would have some build up, but it would not be nearly as significant as the more well traveled roads that we have around the county.

Basically, the selection criteria we were using when we were going to look at these roads are obviously number one was the average daily traffic.

The more traffic, the more probable we're going to have litter.

Those are going to be higher on our list of roads.

Our second criteria is it's got to be a public road.

It's got to have been accepted into VDOT's maintenance system as a public road.

All the private roads would maintain

Be maintained by their owners, whether HOA or in some cases, you know, the Adopt the Highway Volunteer groups are out there actually policing those roads up.

And in general, we want to use public roads that are outside of most of your residential neighborhoods, mainly because a large majority of the residential neighborhoods have an HOA who maintain their common areas, which includes usually a litter and mowing project, especially along their main thoroughfares through their developments.

Okay, only a little graphic here.

So these are the three major programs throughout the county.

I kind of laid them out on a map so you can kind of see the roads that are covered by the three major groups.

So out of the 900 rough miles of roadway in the county, about 400 miles have some sort of formal scheduled litter program going on during the year.

VDOT has the largest, obviously they own all the roads.

They cover about 240 miles.

of the County Roads.

They do it about three times a year, typically around May, once around July, and then once around the October timeframe.

Albemarle County, we maintain litter and mowing collection along most of the entrance corridors coming into the city of Charlottesville.

That's about 40 miles.

We do it approximately every two weeks.

Obviously, you know, that is condition dependent.

Obviously, like for instance, lately, it's very dry, so we've actually held off on our mowing.

We try to get out there twice a month, and then they adopt the highway groups.

They cover about 126 miles in the county, all on their own, and they typically pick up twice a year as part of their charter with VDOT, usually in the spring and in the fall.

And from this, and comparing the data that VDOT publishes, we come up with the next

We found above 1,000 cars per day, there are about 65 miles of roadway that nobody is looking at.

It's kind of distributed all around the county.

Obviously there is one district that is a little more rural than the rest.

They get primarily, you know, the major roads will be serviced by VDOT, but otherwise they don't have as much traffic.

are basic kind of recommendations moving forward.

Looking at the tiered roads that have no service, i.e.

nobody's touching them, we're recommending tier one and two roads.

We'll do about four services per year.

So about once a quarter, somebody would go out and they would actually collect the litter along those roads since nobody else is already doing it.

Tier three and four roads, your somewhat slower roads, we'll do about two services a year.

And we also

were considering during the winter season, nobody's doing anything because, you know, grass doesn't grow in the wintertime, so nobody's doing their litter, nobody's doing their mowing program, which is usually

Dovetail, right in there with a litter collection program.

The thoughts we're doing up to two collections on all the Albemarle County in the Beat Out Service Roads in the wintertime, because I'll be honest, that's when we get most of our resident complaints is in the wintertime.

I've received several calls, you know, trash along Ryall Road.

That's the one that comes to mind.

I got several calls there.

to augment the existing services in the wintertime just so we have kind of a year-round holistic type program.

And moving forward,

We'd like to initiate a one-year pilot program to kind of engage an outside contractor, and then we'll assess the results at the end of that year.

We'll weigh those results based upon the litter collection totals we get from the contractor, the overall effectiveness of program as determined by county folks going out and taking a look at the roads.

Are they collecting everything?

How do we feel about this?

And then look at the opportunities to overall improve the service based upon those results.

Is there a way we could possibly mix a little bit of litter education on the higher travel roads?

Can we include a little bit of signage possibly that alerts

Our residents that there's some roads that, you know, I hate to say you're throwing a lot of trash, but you're throwing a lot of trash on here.

And, you know, there is an ordinance that, you know, potentially you could find for throwing said trash out.

You know, can we get a little bit of education to kind of go at this in the future once we develop a little bit more of a database?

That's most of this.

I figure we'll take up too much more of your time.

Just want to throw a little bit in on some other public works items we have.

You know, we have Sweeping Beauty.

She's sitting outside.

They have proven statistically, street sweeping is an effective way of your curbed roads from removing all that trash and debris that tends to build up.

The curbing is great because it keeps it from going off the road, but it's bad because it directs it right to the stormwater, which will go directly to the waterway as vice.

taking its sweet time, so to speak, to actually get there.

It came online last August.

So far in the last year, we've cleaned about 730 miles of curbed roads around the county, and we've collected over 250 tons of debris and trash.

and Tree Limbs and everything else this machine will pick up.

It's doing a phenomenal job keeping the roads clean.

I've had a number of compliments from citizens, especially our bike riders.

They really do enjoy, especially the small gravel that tends to build up on the edge of the road is no longer there.

Some other programs we also are into just for your information.

We do have that mowing and litter collection program that we do around the county.

We do about 60 miles, primarily the big heavy use entrance corridors.

We've taken that over from VDOT because

We feel it's better served for us to take care of the county.

They've got so much other things to do.

We also do the street name signs and the watch for children signs throughout the county.

We replace or repair well over 100 signs a year due to vehicle accidents and or somebody just has to take one home every once in a while.

We take care of that.

and the ones that lean over.

I can't tell you how many times the weather, if it's particularly wet, they just want to lean over.

We're really trying to gear up our vegetation management program.

We try to do things along the right of ways to get to those items, particularly that

BDOT doesn't necessarily always get the things.

If it's not causing a safety concern, it's not causing a line of sight issue.

It's not necessarily a priority for them.

We try to try to get to those things that crop up around the county.

Such things of, you know, getting some trees cleared up that are on the side of the road, you know, some of the auto accident cleanup that needs to be done.

And in general, overgrowth cleanup, that's just doesn't get done.

We try to get out there and do that.

And including, you know, we also do the maintenance on the Rye Road.

and the 29 planters, those are tough on maintenance as hard with those units.

We're actually working on a new plan to ideally populate that with a more native grass.

It's a little more appealing, takes a little bit less maintenance than the existing planting.

And we also, we spend quite a bit of time assisting residents.

We get various calls for service and we try to help them if we can.

And if we can't, I try to make sure that we get them to the appropriate agency that's going to be able to solve their problem because that seems to be a big frustration is like, you know, I've called five people and nobody can help me.

You know, can you can you do something for me?

And that is it.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes, thank you very much for your presentation.

Just a quick comment because we used to have, just for information, we used to have a really robust litter pickup program through Albemarle, Charlottesville, Regional Jail.

and people loved it.

They could submit areas to be picked up.

It was a win-win for our inmates because they earned money and good time rewards and we had a program that helped clean up litter.

We just so folks know, we no longer have that ability at Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail because we don't have a population now in the jail that we can send out even under the watch of a guard.

So, just so folks know.

It's unfortunate this does not, this program, what we were hoping, I guess, is that we'd have a program that we could eventually say we don't need it anymore because we don't have any litter.

Right.

Oh, at least plastic bags and that.

So we haven't really changed maybe the behavior as much as we had hoped.

Having said that, the revenue we're receiving is certainly worthwhile.

And that's very helpful.

As we're, can I just ask a question about, and I know we're just talking about the disposable plastic bag tax in that program, but it just had just a couple of thoughts.

As we're talking about the crews going out and picking up litter, will they also be picking up what I call the visual sign litter, all those illegal signs that appear everywhere?

It's a different department.

I understand that.

But when we have folks mowing, the hope is that they would be picking up signage and I see Lance nodding his head.

So I'm just asking if while they're there, if there is, and maybe Jeff, I see Jeff leaning in.

No, ma'am.

It's an issue that this board deals with on a regular basis, especially at a heightened time during election season.

But all times during the year, there are illegal signs.

I will work with Ms.

Wall to see if there's an opportunity to collapse that.

And I'm not an expert on it.

Ms.

Wall can certainly

and so on

what signs to get and what signs not to get.

And so we will have to explore that with Jodi, Florida's department in community development.

I understand the question and it's a very fair question.

And I really appreciate it, but there are some tricks to the trade, like medians,

and if you look at telephone poles, the property on this side of the telephone pole and the property on that side.

That's a great point.

So you may be playing it out in real time that the answer is not yes or no, but it depends and we can explore that further with Mr. Stewart, Ms.Fallardo and C. And the hope is anytime that we can use resources in a way to get our most bang for the buck, that's helpful.

We can explore that.

And I've made eye contact with Ms.

Wall, Mr. Stewart's in the room.

We'll see what we can do.

Yeah.

And I will only say one more thing about it.

It's just a shame to have people out there and not being utilized to the fullest, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I think I am.

I think that's all I have.

I think this is great.

It's a great presentation.

I'm thrilled with the program and certainly

We really are doing a lot in the way of getting plastic bags as well as other litter off the streets.

And I just think our community really appreciates that.

Thank you for the thorough presentation.

Would you mind if we hung out on the slide that has the visual of the different tier roads?

The one before this, actually, I think.

The ones that are currently covered.

Thank you.

I do hate doing this, but I'm going to politely push back on one of your core planning assumptions here.

When we are looking at the Adopt-A-Highway program roads, do you have the data that VDOT is reporting for individual collections on those?

I know that their charters say that they are obligated to do two annual collections.

I also know that they don't.

because I've been in an organization that does it.

I've talked with the Culpepper representative about it.

I know that my organization was four years out of compliance.

And I know that that is also not uncommon.

So I guess what I'm saying is, do we know what the coverage of this looks like?

Or are we taking the charters as accurate?

I am curious if that could be incorporated fairly easily to identify because

The Adopted Highway roads are often fairly traffic roads, right?

That's how they get adopted, because people care about them.

And if the coverage on them is not adequate, or if the organization committing coverage has kind of lapsed in their membership, lapsed in their capacity, lapsed in their memory, that this is a thing they have to do, then maybe that is something that we should be including as one of the roads that we're proposing to cover, because I would expect a lot of them might be

I think it's a higher priority in a community sense and also in a vehicle capacity than the ones we're currently proposing that we'd cover.

But I recognize that that's a data lift and I don't know how easy that is to incorporate.

So I mean, I trust the department to use this best judgment.

Can you help me understand, are we including organic waste as a form of litter?

I mean, we look at like backed up culverts in your presentation.

I know they're backed up culvert in my neighborhood.

That is mostly organic waste.

There's like two plastic bags wedged in it, but it's like several pounds of organic waste.

And I've had constituents out in the rural area talk to me about ditches that have been clogged with leaves during late winter.

At this time it was primarily going to be

I hate to say standard litter.

It was going to be non-organic litters.

So your plastics, your bottles, your paper bags, your plastic bags, the notional thing you kind of consider a litter or not.

I just wanted to make one more point about that.

Of course, our focus has been on developing a program to utilize the plastic bags tax, which has restrictive uses.

So if we were going to explore a program that falls outside of what's allowed by the state code, we would need to come forward with a recommendation of the county executive for what a program might look like and how we might fund it outside of the plastic bags tax.

And I'll ask while I'm here, Kai, to talk about one thing about this specific map, Kai, as I recall correctly, there's some overlap between roads that VDOT does and things that are roads that are adopted highways.

That is actually true of the road that I was thinking of in my mind.

Yes, he is Mr. Stewart's absolutely correct.

When I was drawing this map, I kind of took it from the viewpoint.

If it was a contracted service, it was going to Trump adopt the highway.

So the map shows, obviously, Albemarle

and VDOT's work primarily with the Adopt-A-Highway kind of to the side.

And there was, I won't say there was a significant amount of overlap, but there is overlap.

But in that case, yes, I put the contracted services on the map instead of the Adopt-A-Highway.

Like for instance, I know Birkmaar has a large section that has an Adopt-A-Highway group, but we as a county go through there every two weeks.

Awesome.

Thank you.

This is great all the information you're providing.

I think the game plan is solid and I appreciate what you have targeted for where the funds will go, like our cigarette tax.

It's not really curbing, as somebody said, the behavior.

So I expect this budget pot could even grow until the education or what not has to happen to get it in place.

I'll make one quick request and go through some comments and questions.

The following slide, 12.

These are the ones that are not being serviced by any group.

Would it be possible if it's not too much effort?

There's a good portion of Rio, but I can't really tell what those are.

Even seeing the road is not necessarily needing the name, because I'll be able to figure it out.

Absolutely.

It was difficult for me to get the entire county in, make some of the roads discernible.

If my magisterial district was enough of a

go down an elevation.

That might work, but it just would be helpful to see what actual streets we're talking about.

Attachment A lists pretty much almost that the that was going to be one of our next step is to completely finalize the list.

Attachment A was the roads we determined that met our criteria.

Oh, and it lists it, ranks it, associates it, or marks it back to tier one, tier two.

They're all included in there, but I didn't put the tiers to the side.

I just want to know what those roads are.

Yeah.

That would be helpful.

All right, where should I go next?

I think relative to if this budget grows, so I'm not saying that I'm disputing where you're putting the funds now, but I would say yes, and the add-ons would be if more come into play.

I think there's an opportunity here to grow the stormwater management program as it relates to when the litter does get into the waterways and the downstream impacts for folks that aren't responsible for that litter.

This, this especially in the urban ring.

So for example, you know, from, from Woodbrook up to the river, things and parking lots find their ways below them, especially on a wood one section of the Woodbrook neighborhood because they sit down.

So the wind, the water, everything's pushing down in there.

There's no real, for the waterways, there could be methods to capture that.

I know the stormwater team's looking on it, but they're somewhat budget restrictive.

So I would think that the funds from this for environmental mitigation, litter mitigation would be proper.

These are the things that capture the litter before they get downstream coming from high impact air.

So I'm just saying this could be the add-on.

I'm already looking ahead to this funding resource probably growing some.

I know that if our law enforcement sees somebody litter, that there are laws and what has to happen with that.

But if I see a public business, a business,

that's not doing their proper litter upkeep on their property.

Is that a zoning violation?

Is that a law?

I mean, where would we stand as a county to be able to go to a XYZ company and say, you're not keeping your property up and all that litter is creating work for our litter pickup team over here?

Do we have any authority in that?

Does that maybe ask Steve and get back to the kind of question?

I'll get back to you on that.

But it wouldn't necessarily be under law enforcement, like if somebody throws litter out there.

That's correct.

That's correct.

Interesting.

When we had the woodbroke apartments in front of us, we were talking about how

in an apartment development.

But who's the management company to keep the litter out of their stormwater detention system?

Because it's costly to empty that, clean that, and the faster it fills up, the more of the costs they take on.

So they've got some incentive.

But if you have a, and I'm not saying Walmart, this is an issue at Walmart, but if you're a Walmart,

And you're not proper.

There should be an incentive to keep your customers happy of keeping the place clear and free.

But I'm not even suggesting it's purposeful, but stuff accumulates in parking lots, then it goes.

So if a place is not doing their part before it goes, then I would wonder, well, we should be able just like the signs.

If a business has got a signup that's not proper, we go to them and say, hey, that sign's illegal and we take the sign down.

I would think there should be a way to do that too because I think a combination of dealing, we're dealing with the issue after it happens.

We're dealing with the impact of a behavior and trying to get at the behavior is difficult on an individual level.

That in your education plan, I think, is spot on.

We should do that, so fully endorse that as an idea.

But we need to do this for businesses as well, because it's contingent on them to handle any litter that accumulates on their property before it becomes everybody else's problem.

and this is a bigger deal in the urban ring and it really does impact drainage that are not well whether it's piped or open it's that that's where it's going it's ending up over in either wooded areas or or into the waterways to move down into whoever else's issue so I'd be curious about that what we could do to augment this because then you start targeting places where

You're really having the issue, but if we could stem some of the creation of the issue, just like the street sweepers is dealing with the end issue, I would imagine I don't think our police, you know, I don't want to be adding on, but if they see just blatant littering, I'm sure they're doing something about it.

If it's caught, the hard part is catching the person in the act.

All right, enough of that.

But that compliance piece, just like upkeep with weeds and their own mowing when it's on private property, has always been something to me that's sticky in terms of they have a responsibility if there's property.

We put all these restrictions and high guidelines, especially on entrance corridors, but then what can we do if they're in violation of what they're doing?

Oh, and the same for approved developments that haven't gone underway yet.

and then think that they can just let that land languish until it's underway, and that becomes both upkeep and litter as well.

So there's signage piece about high incident areas and all that, and that piece of that, I mean, yes, I think that's a good idea.

And then I do want to make sure that anything that is VDOT's responsibility under the safety or emergency type thing, we're rerouting to them to handle.

I'll use trees coming up out of storm drains.

I mean, VDOT is very responsive.

So I know that for one, there was one that grew up enough that it was hitting cars as they passed by.

And they took that down as soon as they knew about it.

But I would think your program, if we identify something like that, can chalk it up, report it to VDOT, if they're not ready to just deal with the issue right then and there on the spot, or not capable of dealing with the issue right on the spot, that VDOT could get out there and handle that.

Same with like Calverts, and if Calverts get backed up because of litter debris, it's really contingent on them to handle that, if it's on their right away.

A sign in the median, I get it.

Somebody is there, you can pull the sign out and take it, if you know it's not supposed to be there.

But clearing of Calvert,

If it's really, that's an undertaking that BDOT has to do.

And I know they have issues with people being out in their right-of-ways from a safety standpoint.

So I don't want our resources in saying this, using reasonable judgment, being expended on something that is entirely under their purview, unless it is a lower-cost item like, all right, they haven't mowed this corner.

That's correct.

That's typically what we do, especially if it's a safety or a line of sight issue for the roadways.

And just thank you, because world of difference on Rio Road this year compared to last summer.

Thank you.

Is that a VDOT issue?

A lot of roads are VDOTs.

Most of them are public.

To VDOT issue.

Typically.

But that is not going to be typically unless it's, for instance, this tall and it becomes a line of sight issue for the drivers in the road.

They haven't outright said it, but it's not a concern to them, and they will get to it when they can.

Is that something that we, because I have, you know, it has been very high, some of the grasses.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you for this.

It's encouraging because there are lots of people who've lived here a long time and they really grind their teeth seeing how

The pride in where you live seems to have disappeared because of the trash that people throw around.

And we do our verges every single day.

Somebody comes every single day and throws beer cans out at the end of the road.

I mean, it's just end of our driveway.

That's just protest, I guess.

So I'm assuming from your statistics that there is not a way to, that we have not seen any reduction.

There's no way, is there a way to identify any reduction in the use of plastic bags?

Because we didn't really have a count before.

The Taxes.

So that may be just the impossible question.

And that's fine if you tell me.

Okay.

Well, that's all right.

Secondly, I was not at the NACO conference.

I did pick up contacts for a company who is

makes hemp bags, and they're particularly for, it's called, Assistance with Dignity, and there is a way to provide assistance for people who are on various support programs.

So I will get you that information because I think it's very clear, we, the county should not be giving away plastic bags, which is what all those recycled grocery bags are in order to

because they're going to disintegrate and do all the same things that the regular plastic does.

So I will share that with you and you can do what you want with it.

Very excited about the rural roots.

Earliestville Road is that gap between the red and the red dot there at the airport.

And for years, we had a company who, I mean, like 25 years, the GMC company took twice a year.

They went out there with all their staff and they did miles and miles of that.

but then they moved away so this has been lost and I think recruiting people to help with the

Adopt a Highway Program is challenging when the danger is so great.

And you're probably familiar with Markwood Road between Buck Mountain and Boonesville.

And the banks are like this steep and there's nowhere to go when the people are zooming down the road.

So that creates a whole different level of hazard unless you have a vehicle with flashing lights and can just force people to slow down while you take care of that.

So that's one of the reasons why that particular road has gotten a little

more things showing up.

And I agree with you about the complaints because in the wintertime when all the leaves are gone, that's when we really see all the stuff that's built up and was grown over during the summer.

So I'm very grateful that you're thinking about doing a winter pickup program.

Vegetation management also, I mean, I understand why when a storm happens,

The whoever it is who's cutting the great big tree off the road wants to get on to the next one.

But there are still hundreds of places in the rural area, particularly where the cut face of a 12 inch diameter oak tree is at the edge of the pavement.

and there's nowhere to go if somebody's coming at you.

So I really, I don't know if that falls into your thing of you're taking an extra foot off that thing and just pushing it up the bank or whatever.

Maybe you all would have the extra credibility with VDOT to ask them to push it back because when you have to rate those and things, it takes 20 years to go and pick up all that stuff.

And the utility companies, sadly,

just leave the mess on people's front yards.

Just huge chunks with elderly residents.

There's no way they can come and pick up a six foot long 15 inch diameter piece of oak that's just left piled up on their front yard because they had to fix a pole or something like that.

It's just irresponsible.

And I don't know where the lever is to make that get fixed.

I will pass along to you for a future investigation.

I've received some contacts about the bushes at the roundabout at Berkmar and Pilton Heights.

that people really would appreciate being able to see through the intersection in order to see who's coming at them, especially with pedestrians, a combination of pedestrians and vehicles.

But there have been some near misses there.

And the people who have reported it have chalked it up to not being able to see that there was somebody coming south who was actually going 50 instead of 15.

And so that's a little scary.

So I'll leave that on your please look at it list.

And I assume that that's within the county thing because that's part of our streetscape.

stuff, but if you shifted to Bea, that's fine with me.

I talked about that.

When I was on the train to Tampa, I could not believe the miles and miles of swamp around the train, both sides, covered with acres of plastic bottles and plastic bags that had come in on high water, I guess, and just sort of pushed up against the bank where the train was.

Sogroves and trapped there by a big fence as well.

And so getting to it to remove it is going to be a nightmare for somebody.

But I thought, man, if we can prevent that, that's that stormwater sweeping and collecting with grates or whatever, they can do it, the drop in lets to try to collect the things.

When I lived in Western Massachusetts years ago, this is home rules so they could do all these things.

But the county town meeting

required that the restaurants in town, if they were serving anything in paper cups, they had their identity printed on.

And this was also so that when a whole bunch of things from one particular restaurant or cafe or whatever started showing up on the street, then they had to go and put up a trash can outside and take care of things.

It was more of an accountability measure.

We probably don't have the authority to do it, but it worked very well up there.

I'm very glad to hear actually that VDOT is doing some pickup before mowing because there's nothing like seeing one piece of paper towel turn into 5,000 pieces of paper towel when it's gone through the mower and that really makes it so much worse.

I'm looking forward to what Jeff will report back on the multi-use where staff is out doing inspections or whatever to be able to document

The Intersections, where the signs are multiplying like coat hangers in the closet.

Every time one is allowed to stay, then 16 others come.

And I think it's probably pretty clear most of the time when it's out of the county tree companies and they put up 5,000 on one weekend that that's just somebody papering us and trying to lure business away from our local folks.

So I hope that there'll be more of that.

since I haven't visited the sign jail in a while.

But I'm happy to be turn loose to do that again with proper photographic documentation as we used to do for years and years.

Take a picture and hand it in.

But that's all that I had to offer.

But thank you so much for doing this.

And I really look forward to I'll try to recruit somebody for Early Silver Road.

But until that happens, we're glad that you're going to be doing it.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

I appreciate that we're focused on the litter tax, the plastic bag tax and what it's allowed to be used for.

This is a one-year pilot program, is my understanding.

I fully support it.

I think it's a great idea.

I hope there's a process to consider which roads should be added.

I heard Supervisor McKeel mention how people would make requests.

connected with the jail program.

There's a way for people to be able to make the requests associated with this program.

I think it would help.

And perhaps some connection to the reporting system, because obviously if it's VDOT's responsibility, VDOT should be taking care of it.

And we want to make sure that we coordinate as well as possible on learning which places become problem areas for literate curious whether there'll be more instance of major spills versus just the one cup at a time type of problem.

The only last comment is just, of course, you know, we're hiring a contractor, it's going to be really important to understand what the contractor is reporting and how much we can rely on those reports, but also to make sure that the contractor is being responsible because

Obviously, their employees are at hazardous risk walking along the roadways.

And I frankly wouldn't want to be the driver who hit somebody who happened to fall into the road.