Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   12/11/2024

Good afternoon.

I'm pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 11th of December at 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note that at the dais we have Supervisor Anne Malek of the Whitehall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Supervisor

Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jewett District, Supervisor Bila-Pistol-Curtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, and I'm Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

The quorum is present.

We also have at the dais our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our Interim County Attorney, and Mr. Andy Herrick, and also our Clerk Claudette Borgerson and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

also let me please welcome our Albemarle County police officers present Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Master Police Officer Dana Reeves.

Thank you both for your service here today and for the work you and your colleagues do every day on behalf of all of us in Albemarle County.

And I now ask that you join us for a moment of silence.

So board, our first item of business is to adopt the final agenda.

I've heard no suggestions to changes to that agenda.

So moved.

We have a motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

Malek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Lapisa.

Currently.

Thank you.

This is our final meeting before the holidays.

Holidays are a time where people like to travel a lot.

It's also a time where people are often gathered in close proximity.

And because of the weather, people's immune systems are lower.

So we are no longer in a public health emergency where the county or the state or any other public bodies are issuing strong restrictions on individuals.

But I would just remind the public that it is always a good time to practice smart public health measures.

Be thoughtful about whether or not you're masking if you are feeling well.

And that's all I got.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Well, I thought you were going down one road, so I'll just add to where I thought you were going.

In the same vein, everybody's close together around this time in their cars.

especially if any weather comes up but with people out doing shopping the next couple of weeks can be a pretty busy time on our roadways just in addition to how busy they are already are so I just ask that everybody have patience and take their time moving around so that they're everybody will remain safe.

Thank you.

I think they both said everything I was going to say.

Well actually I wasn't going to say it but now that they've said it I agree with them.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I agree.

Five minutes longer in the trip, getting there safely is absolutely important.

And getting a ticket will take you a whole lot longer sitting beside the road, and therefore you'll really be late.

So take a chill pill, everybody.

Great things on Saturday.

The biscuit run.

We've been cutting at 10 o'clock in the morning.

And also at noon, right here at the Vietnam Memorial on McIntyre, will be the reads across America at noon on that day, all across cemeteries.

across the United States will be people gathered to put Reeves on the markers.

So everyone's invited to join and maybe the parking you will come in through the skate park and drive around to the top of the hill and walk down to the memorial.

Thank you.

And the theme seems to be to have a healthy, safe, and happy holidays.

County.

So our next item, we have no proclamations or recognitions, is from the public, matters on the agenda, but not listed for public hearing or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

All right.

And just checking with Claudette, we don't have anyone.

I thought we had another.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

We have it now.

Let me just read the guidelines.

We have one person signed up in person and one person signed up on the line.

So 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.

The signup 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 Elmar County, your Magisterial District.

Dress comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

When 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 to raise their hands in recognition.

Please do not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

Welcome.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Vicki Bravo and I'm here representing Impact.

Is it okay if I ask the other people from Impact who are here to just raise their hands so you can see?

Thank you.

I'm here to speak about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

We started speaking with you all about this in 2017

Since that year, we have received hundreds of stories from members of our congregations who we know about the need for affordable housing.

I just want to share a few short ones with you.

I live out in the county.

I have a good friend of mine also in the county who's a few years older than me.

She has a very small home.

and was really struggling to afford the upkeep on it.

Her family has been able to support her so she can stay in her home, but if she didn't have them, she would not have been able to keep the home and would have had nowhere to go.

A client I used to have worked as a florist.

Couldn't afford to live in the county.

Ended up finding a tiny house that someone let him rent under the table.

The total size of the house was smaller than my living room.

And a couple of mothers in abusive marriages right now.

If divorce or separation needs to happen, it may be impossible for them to find housing because they have kids.

They're going to want to keep them in the same school district.

And the last one I want to share with you.

We are homeless and staying in my car or sleeping on couches as we can.

My daughter is in high school and I hear her crying at night.

This problem hasn't gotten better since 2017.

It's gotten worse.

We learned recently that there are enough

homeless children in the county to fill the enrollment of a middle school.

We researched this problem and learned that affordable housing trust funds are the best practice nationally.

The fund in Charlottesville has helped build, helped fund the construction of over 2,000 affordable homes.

We know that you all take this seriously.

We know that in July 2021, you passed a new housing policy, including an affordable housing trust fund.

We are here to push for the affordable housing trust fund to get up and running immediately and be funded with $10 million annually.

The sooner we get the trust fund up and running, the sooner the county qualifies to bring in more money that they can leverage

Thank you.

Thank you.

If you have any comments, you can provide them at the clock.

Okay, great.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Leonora Crane, and I am a resident of the Crozet area.

And I would just like to discuss the AC44 specifically.

So I have a couple of concerns regarding this plan.

I've spent the past couple weeks reading the development plan.

And I noticed that it mentions that the area is expecting 31,000 new residents, but I don't see any analysis in the development plan that the proposed upzoning and infill zoning is going to be able to meet that demand.

I would like to emphasize that the county not only has to deal with the additional increase of residents in the area, but also there are a ton of employees in this area that aren't able to afford to live in Albemarle.

And I really encourage the members of this board to go out to local businesses and ask service workers what they're doing about the housing situation.

I know a lot of workers personally that are unable to live in the county and, for example, I know people that work in Crozet but end up living in Waynesboro, Stanton.

In an area where the median income is $47,000 but the cheapest rent you can find in Crozet is $1,700, that makes a large portion of the county unaffordable to all low-income people and many middle-income workers.

To combat this problem, I request that the county considers the following proposals.

First, I ask you all that the AC44 should grow a lot further in increasing density and growth zones, especially in employment centers.

Second, I believe that the county should be investing more in affordable housing incentives and allowances.

Third, I think the county should consider establishing a land bank or a land trust.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

I have not heard of any suggestions for pulling anything from the Consent Agenda.

If so, then we have a motion to approve the Consent Agenda.

Salute.

Second.

Ms.

Malek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Lapista-Curtley.

Good.

Board, our first action item today is the receipt of the fiscal year 2024 annual comprehensive financial report and audit results.

And this portion is being led by Shanandra Usher, our Assistant Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Chair Andrews.

As you mentioned, I'm Shanandra Escher.

As Chair Andrews mentioned, I'm Shanandra Escher, Assistant Chief Financial Officer.

And I stand before you today to present our fiscal year 24 annual Comprehensive Financial Report and audit results along with Megan Argenbright, our managing partner from Brown Edwards, our audit firm.

Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge and thank our CFO, Jacob Sumner, for his leadership and support in addition to our entire year-end team

If you are here this afternoon, please stand to be recognized and our partners to help with the report.

Before we jump into revenues and expenditure figures, I'd like to provide an overview of the annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

The report is delineated into basic sections.

The delineated sections of the report are the introductory section, the financial section, the statistical section, and the compliance section.

The introductory section includes the table of contents, the letter of transmittal, the organizational chart, a list of principal officials, and then there's a GFOA, Government Finance Officers Association Certificate of Achievement Award, if you're granted that.

The financial section contains five segments.

There's the independent auditor's report, the management's discussion and analysis, basic financial statements with notes that go along with those statements, required supplemental information, and then other supplemental information.

The basic financial statements include two types of statements.

There are government-wide financial statements, and then there are fund financial statements.

The government-wide financial statements are enterprise-wide financial statements that cover governmental activities and business-like activities to include our component unit, which would be our partner entities' activities as well.

The fund financial statements include financial reporting on the county's major and non-major funds, internal service funds, investment funds, and custodial funds.

Fund financial statements focus on near-term inflows and outflows of spendable resources

at the end of the fiscal year.

Then there's the statistical section.

It's broken into five categories to include financial trends, revenue capacity, debt capacity, demographic, and economic information, and then there's operating information.

Finally, there's the compliance section, which includes the independent auditor's report on internal controls over financial reporting and compliance,

the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, commonly known as our CIFA report and the schedule of findings for the current year and our prior year.

Now we'll take a look at our fiscal year 24 general fund revenues.

There's a 2.6 positive variance in our revenues resulting in $10.7 million overall.

This is mostly seen in our property tax variance of $10.5 million, due to real estate tax, growth in assessments, collection rates, and the first half of our 2024 personal property tax assessments, where the board increased the rate, 54 cents per $100 of assessed value.

In other local taxes, there's a positive $2.2 million variance.

This is strongly driven by utility tax and business, tangible personal property tax.

I'd like to highlight the use of money and property, positive variance of $926,000.

This is mainly due to interest, due to the high interest rates.

And I'd like to thank our Office of Investment and Debt Management for monitoring our investments.

Our transfers in are mainly due to the Water Resource Fund,

County.

Tourism revenues connected with parks and rec and then our federal housing assistance fund.

Our fiscal year general fiscal year 24 general fund expenditures.

Overall we have a savings of 17.3 million dollars which is 4% a 4% positive variance over what we

greatly, it's mostly in salary and benefits with the most notable savings being in information technology, department of finance and budget, and human resources.

Also within the general government is a large portion of the savings is for the business optimization reserve, which is reappropriated into this current fiscal year.

Healthcare, health and welfare, excuse me, health and welfare, actual activity for social services was less

then we budget it due to these expenditures being reimbursed by the state and this correlates to less revenue being received on the previous line.

If you notice, there's a new line item here.

It says leases and speeders.

These are related to some new gasping pronouncements that we've implemented this year.

They were from previous years, but we implemented this year.

Gaspy 87 and Gaspy 96.

Speed of stands for subscription based information technology agreements.

These are reported here because the amounts are pulled from the functional areas based on Gatsby reporting requirements and the actual statements themselves is referred to as debt service.

So this is a new line item that you'll see in our expenditure and our list of general fund expenditures.

Transfers out.

These are predominantly capital improvement projects and debt service.

on the next slide we'll see the excess of revenues over expenditures, which is equivalent to $6.5 million approximately.

This is also our net change in fund balance, which when added to our fund balance at the beginning of the year of $91.3 million lands us at $97.8 million in fund balance.

So for fiscal year

Our fund balance is broken into three different categories as defined by the governmental accounting standards board, which is GASPY.

These are non-spendable, committed, and assigned.

The non-spendable is the balance of our inventory, prepays, and at least leases receivables.

Our committed, our funds already approved by the board for future use in all of our functional areas.

This includes in conferences and the school reserve fund balance and are unassigned

are funds for future use to include the policy use of fund balance which includes our 10% fund balance reserve, our 2% budget stabilization reserve, and reappropriations.

Now I'll

turned the presentation over to Megan Argenbright, Brown Edwards.

She will present to you the results of our fiscal year 24 audit.

However, after Megan is done presenting and you've had the opportunity to ask questions, I have an additional slide in order to fulfill the Virginia Audit of Public Accounts financial reporting requirements.

I'll share more about this requirement after Megan's report.

Hello.

That was amazing.

And the reason I say that was amazing is because these financials are your financials, right?

And so to have somebody on your team who's presenting the numbers is spectacular.

That is not always the case.

I do a lot of these presentations and it is not always go that way.

So, love to see it.

Shana Andrew did amazing.

So I'm going to hit the highlights, the audit stuff, right?

I'm Megan.

I'm the partner on your audit.

Addison Rushley is here with me.

He does all the work and so and the rest of our team back.

at our offices.

But I do want to say I don't want to belittle how much effort it takes to go through this audit.

It's my job.

They're all doing it.

The county staff is doing it on top of their regular job, right?

So it's part of it.

But it is a lot to take on when we're asking a lot of questions.

And so we do appreciate their patience and time that they

and the value they put towards the audit.

Importantly, we issued a clean, unmodified opinion.

That is the opinion that you want.

We have issued the final report and we will be submitting the last piece of this to the APA today.

So everything is done on time, which is also, it's a heavy lift and so we're very pleased that we are all able to get that done.

In addition to the audit opinion, as Shanandra mentioned in the compliance section, there are two more Brown Edwards reports.

The first one is what we call the yellow book opinion.

That is an in relation to opinion.

We are required to gain an understanding of your internal controls.

We don't test them, but we do gain an understanding of them.

and so that's what that letter is speaking to.

And then the second one is the letter on the uniform guidance, your federal compliance.

We did test SLFRF, most commonly known as ARPA, but technically known as SLFRF.

We tested child nutrition and the Medicaid cluster as part of your federal compliance audit this year and we did not have any federal program findings for any of those programs.

We are also required to do some compliance for the state of Virginia.

The APA, the auditor of public accounts, comes out with very specific procedures that we have to look at and we did not have any findings related to those procedures for FY24 either.

We have two other deliverables that I will not go into detail on, but one of which is for you guys.

It is called the communication to those charged with governance.

And we did discuss this when we presented to the finance committee a couple weeks ago, but it's a standard letter, but that's because it's all required and it's stuff that we have to tell you about.

for instance, your financial statements have a lot of estimates in them.

I think we all know that.

You guys have probably heard me say that before.

Attached to that letter is also management's representation letter, which is about seven pages of things that

County is saying, yes, we told you everything.

Yes, this is everything we know.

And so at some point, probably good to peruse it, if you will.

And I think that's all the things I have.

Thank you.

This is maybe a bit for my general education and also it will help me communicate with my constituents if I inevitably get these kinds of questions.

But just comparing when we are looking at our actuals versus projected.

It does seem like general government has a pretty wide variance, and we compare that to much larger funds like schools, which have very, very narrow margins.

I guess I would just love to hear the layperson's explanation.

That is the explanation for a layperson, recognizing the color experts.

The explanation for a layperson as to what triggers that kind of pretty substantial variance in our actuals versus

And so their budget is very much more strict and that they know what they're getting.

Revenue and the county is a little broader and more difficult to

I think that's what you learn each year in your budget process and looking at actuals, I think is the best way to go about that.

There's going to be variances.

Nobody gets its spot on.

And I'd also add that revenue is more volatile.

Less control over that than you guys have over expenses.

I think part of the answer to that, too, is our own policies, set up some of those variances, the contingency, the reserves, the overarching policy.

So those are in there as well.

It's always the trick after the policy items, what those variances are, on how well you're projecting or both costs and revenues.

that can be interesting.

I might have assumed those were incorporated into it.

But then on top, once you take that 13 out, then you get into, well, are the property values really what we thought they were going to be?

are the expenditures really what they, I'm sure Jacob can have, if he makes comments, can speak to all that, but that's, we'll go through that with a fine tooth comb at budget time too.

Don't have any questions, thank you for the presentation, both presentations.

I know that in the audit committee, which Supervisor Andrews and myself were on, that there were some things that were noted, and I know that staff has a good handle on that, and I know that with some new systems that are part of our workforce optimization, those being brought in are going to go a long way to helping correct some of the things that have

that have been found, which, I mean, that's why we do audits is to find these type of things.

So I appreciate that both the auditing team helping us getting things tightened up and staff and already having things in motion that probably would have corrected even if you auditors didn't come in and find it.

So that's a good thing to know.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm referring to slide seven, and I just had a question regarding that.

We're talking about the $89 million unassigned.

Good afternoon, Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer.

Yes, so the $89 million is unassigned, and it's an accumulation of multiple things.

So it includes, yes, the 10% fund balance reserve, the 2% budget stabilization reserve.

Also within there are reappropriations that were reappropriated from 24 to 25, but the board has already taken action on.

There's also, as part of our normal budget process, there is the use of fund balance.

So when we appropriate the 25 budget,

We had a revenue source of use of fund balance.

Okay, so the ten, the two ten and one, they don't, that doesn't not make up, of course.

Yeah, there's multiple things that are in there.

And, you know, I'm going to read into the question a little bit.

There's usually around this time, particularly as we move into the budget, the next budget cycle.

What are the fund balance amounts that are truly unassigned, uncommitted, that are part of a future budget that's already been appropriated?

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

No other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jacob, you may need to come back.

So one follow-up on the previous question.

That is actually going to be in a different fund.

That will be over in our capital improvements fund.

So that's how we fund, as you recall, through the capital improvement process.

We're funded with the local cash that's part of our transfer, but also debt borrowings.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think that sometimes the difference between a budgetary process and an audit process gets a little confusing because it looks like unassigned, but in fact, we have very much in our budgets determined a lot of this, but not every bit.

And there are other things, of course, that you've highlighted that are new.

where you put leases it no longer tells us sort of where they came from so but this is the best way to audit those leases as opposed to actually budget them and that's one of the difficulties that we face.

Again I'll second Supervisor Galloway's comment that you know we heard more in the audit committee about

Of course, we'll send the PowerPoint out to everybody on the board and I will just reiterate that the full 230, 240 page annual financial report is available on our website too.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One more slide.

We have one more slide.

Right.

Thank you all for your questions.

Thank you, Megan.

In accordance with the Virginia State Code, our financial report submission to the Auditor of Public Accounts should be accompanied with a notarized statement from the Chief Elected Officer, Chair Andrews, and the Chief Administrative Officer, Mr. Jeff Richardson, certifying the audit financial report has been presented to the Board of Supervisors.

Given this requirement, Chair Andrews, I present to you a staff recommended motion.

Thank you.

We have a motion for us.

Second.

Motion from Supervisor McKeel.

Second from Supervisor Malik.

Mr. Galloway.

Yes.

Ms.

Malik.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Lbees.

So, Kirtley.

Thank you, members of the board.

Happy to be here this evening.

Ann Wall, Deputy County Executive.

I will provide part of this presentation and I will turn over to also Ben Chambers with the City of Charlottesville who will assist in the presentation as well.

It's important to point out at the onset that this has been an effort between the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, as well as our friends at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District and I believe Christine Jacobs is in the office, in the auditorium.

We would also like to point out that we've been greatly assisted by our transit partners in the community, including representatives from CAT, John, and UTS.

As we get started this afternoon, I wanted to provide a little bit of history about our region's efforts related to forming a regional transit authority.

Really, how we got here.

Back in 2008, the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit

Report was completed which explored the formation of a regional transit authority.

The authority was intended to promote the development of regional transit services with the goal of providing travelers with an attractive alternative to driving on increasingly congested roadways throughout the Charlottesville Albemarle area.

In 2009, the General Assembly passed legislation

to enable the formation of

coordination and collaboration among transit partners.

This effort and ensuing study resulted in the development of the regional transit partnership, which was intended to serve as a precursor to a transit authority.

In 2022, the Regional Transit Vision Plan was completed amongst local leaders, transit agencies, and a wide variety of stakeholders who collaborated to develop a clear vision of the future of high quality transit in the region.

The Regional Transit Vision Plan identified short-term, long-term, and extended long-term actions that the community must take to support the community's vision for high-quality transit.

The first step in achieving the vision was the initiation of the Transit Governance Study to guide a governance structure of a regional transit authority and likely revenue sources and other key funding structures.

in 2024, the transit governance study was completed and recommended that the region initiate the formation of the transit authority envisioned in the 2009 legislation.

It recommended early discussions regarding regional planning efforts towards a shared vision, establishing bylaws, engaging rural localities, and engaging transit partners.

The 2009 legislation requires action of the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County to activate the authority.

The item before the board today is the consideration of a resolution for Albemarle County to consider membership and the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, or as we reference it, CARDA.

Just as a note, we've spoken to the board before and previous presentations, but to remind the board of the role of CARDA, the role of a regional transit authority, and we've listed many of those roles on the screen.

The intention would be that CARDA, or a transit authority, would serve as a collaborative, multi-jurisdictional entity for identifying and solving transit issues.

that authority would provide long-range transit planning services to the region, could recommend transit priorities, advocate for transit needs to the state and federal partners, apply for grants and other kinds of funding, and could serve in the future as a vehicle for administering and potentially collected dedicated regional transit funding.

County.

Welcome back.

I'm Ben Chambers City's transportation planning manager.

I swam over from City Hall a while ago.

So we'll talk about what we've

So when the transit governance study was completed, the regional transit partnership, which meets on a monthly basis, asked the city and the county staff to get together and figure out what are the next steps to get us to that actual regional transit authority.

So we've done a lot of work over the past 10 months, 11 months at this point.

We've worked with the surrounding localities, engaging them to see

is there an opportunity for them to join in this effort with us?

We've also met with UVA as well as the transit services in the region to make sure that plans are aligning with the regional transit authorities.

We have started developing draft bylaws that conform with the CARTA legislation and we came to you a few months ago and most of this information we provided at the joint meeting between the City of Charlottesville City Council and Board of Supervisors here today.

So let's look at what the authority legislation actually says about what the authority is supposed to be doing.

County.

It describes the powers of the regional transit authority, mostly based on planning can also do things like apply for grants.

It identifies the city of Charlottesville as the initial members along with Albemarle County.

It also says that the surrounding counties can join if they would like to as partners on this.

And

and the Board itself and lays out some committees that may be involved as well.

So our draft bylaws that we've developed do reflect what is in the CARTA legislation.

It's two members from the city, two members from the county, and some non-voting members including UVA would be a part of that as well.

We are currently working on a work plan of what CARTA would be doing over its first year.

but generally it would be setting up CARTA in the first place and some general sort of organizational work continuing to do outreach with the partners both our transit partners and the potential surrounding county partners that we'd like to see join us in the future.

It started doing some transit planning, establishing regional transit goals and priorities and figuring out which transit improvements align with those and could improve customer experience in the region.

it will have to start preparing its own budget and figuring out how it pays for some of this planning work and some of this engagement with our community.

So it will start doing sort of budgeting work, work with the finance committee.

It'll also need to figure out, does it need staff?

Right now we're looking at city and county staff continuing to support the work that CARDA needs to do, but it could get to a point where we have a lot for CARDA to do and we need CARDA to have its own staff.

So we'll need to look at that over the next year or so.

We also need to figure out are there strategies for CARTA creating its own revenues.

I think initially the main impetus behind CARTA was figure out if we can have some sort of dedicated transit funding together.

Our legislation doesn't allow us to do that quite yet, but it does allow us to do a lot of planning so that we can think about how we get to that dedicated funding source.

will also need to use CARTA as an advocate both with the state and federal government so that we can bring more outside revenues for transit into the area.

We can also work with state and federal entities to share what our priorities are and make sure that they're aligning with their grant programs and we can as CARTA apply for those grants directly we don't need to necessarily rely on the city or the county or the transit agencies to do that on our behalf.

and along with all of these plans there are things that we want to change about CARTA.

The legislation is a little aged and there are some things we already know that we want to tweak with it so that we can make sure that we include our regional partners and so that we can potentially get some funding sources out of that.

So we'll need to work with our legislative advocates both at the state and federal level.

some key takeaways from our work through setting up CARDA we've got a lot of transit needs in the area we've got a lot of transit providers in the area

We know there's more investment needed and we need a way to be able to organize that together with the city and the county at the same table.

We've been talking about how to get through some of these questions for 15, 16 years now and the aim has always been get us to having a regional transit authority so we have a table to sit down and have these discussions.

The existing legislation gives us the fundamentals to actually go ahead and just do it.

And doing this doesn't keep us from making other decisions.

This actually enables us to make more decisions together going forward.

So this is really just the first step of CARDA.

It is doing what the state is enabling us to do so that we can start doing the things that locally we would like to do together.

And with that, I will leave you with this possible motion and

Thank you.

We'll start with going through our order with questions and comments.

I'm just thrilled to have this moment upon us.

We've worked really hard to get here.

And I really want to just say to staff and all the folks who've been in hand and all the folks that work so hard to make this possible.

Oh, it goes next Monday to city council.

So we'll be before the regional transit partnership tomorrow.

Yeah, I had the I guess the meetings are all different this month.

So anyway, that's great.

Um, and I don't have any questions just to say that I just am so appreciative that we're here.

It's the first step.

We cannot in this locality continue to pay for transit out of our operational funds.

The importance and the value that having the support and the buy-in of the non-required optional localities is going to be.

And you touched on this also in the presentation.

You also mentioned that we've done some kind of early outreach.

Are we at a stage where you all feel comfortable sharing what any of that qualitative

As you can well expect that the information we've received from the localities has been across the spectrum.

I would say generally those localities are interested in learning more about the efforts of CARDA and the work on regional training, planning,

Thank you.

I see our more rural peers as being a really essential partner in making sure that we're able to kind of have our druthers when we do go asking the General Assembly for the modifications we know we're going to need and if we're going to be

County.

We're expecting them to help us carry that water.

I think we really need to make sure we're giving the right product.

We're offering the right product to our to our rural neighbors.

And I also do just want to say it's not just to help us carry that legislative water.

It is also going to be like so

when it is so much easier to get like Nellisford and Stanardsville and Palmyra bodies to these amazing new economic facilities that we're in the process of putting all this energy and, frankly, spending into.

So I see that as very critical.

Thank you.

And transit is important for the whole region.

Oh, yeah.

and I may have asked this when we had the joint meeting with the City Council.

Are the other possible counties limited to the PDC footprint or would like an Augusta, Stanton, and Waynesburg?

Correct, or changes in the legislation.

That's the part I probably missed from the other meeting.

Thank you.

those are just notes.

I will just make the comment that I recall trying Supervisor McKeel's memory here but in 2017 when her and I were running

the campaign for this board.

We sat at this desk for one of the few candidate forums we got invited to, Supervisor McKeil, because we didn't have opponents to Neil's delight.

But I remember discussing the need for regional transit authority.

Now, Supervisor McKeil had been discussing it for years in advance, so that was my first foray into discussing it.

But I remember both of us, maybe more so me, thinking of this as, well, someday it may happen.

So it's nice that it's actually here.

I mean, there's still a lot more work to do, but this is a huge step that I just want to note the moment because we're a couple months away from the seven-year anniversary of I recall sitting here and discussing it at that time.

And I'm sure others who were on the board were discussing it as well.

Supervisor McKeel is certainly, I'm sure, delighted to be doing this with her work on transit.

Thank you.

Yes, I have a point, I guess it's a point of clarification.

You mentioned how the Carter, which this is fantastic that it's happening, finally happening.

So many people were involved, and this is just great news, that we can apply for grants through federal, you can apply for grants through the federal and state governments, correct?

then you also mentioned prior to that we can use we can plan use funding sources to plan and and I didn't quite get

which funding sources would that be?

We can go after specific planning grants like DRPT's technical assistance grant which would allow us to have consultant support in addition to

Okay, so you can already apply for those grants.

Okay, great.

That's what I wanted to know, and by the way, congrats.

Congrats.

Thank you.

Thank you and congratulations to everyone who's been pulling on this rope since 2005 and I think we should make some honorary distinction for Lee Middleditch because he's the one who got in 2005 the transportation working group together in their offices at 7.30 in the morning, which is really painful for me, but talked about the governance and all the different options, which haven't really changed much since then, but the fact that there's now more collegial approach

throughout the jurisdictions and I'm anxiously keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a bigger partner who will join us coming forward on this to change those numbers and allow us to get so much more federal dollars down when we can actually count all the people instead of just some of the people.

Thank you.

And I also add my expression of thanks.

I do want to just touch on sort of next steps.

This is a resolution to approve membership.

Obviously there is going to be a board for this, a governing authority, and we will go through the process I guess at the beginning of next year with other designations of committees to do that.

to items to point out to the board one is to that the board will consider appointments to the authority that that will be the first one the second one is that very early we may bring to this board a resolution to endorse an application to

In January.

Very briefly, Chair Andrews and board members, I want to publicly take this opportunity to thank Ben Chambers and the City of Charlottesville for their leadership

in taking over 25 community members to Champaign, Illinois earlier this year, two separate trips.

I also see our executive director, Christine Jacobs from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, representation from her staff

is a significant representation from the city to help frame the trip, to make the trip as easy as possible for us to get there and back and there is no easy way to get to Champaign, Illinois.

The outcomes, though, were amazing in that public entities.

So much of what we do is open for public review, which means we can look at best practices from other communities.

And when you go and you see seamless transit,

when you go and you see alternative fuel and how it's been implemented and you see systems in place and you see communities that have similarities to our communities.

None of that we would have got to do without the city of Charlottesville.

So Ben, to your board, to the city manager, to all of your colleagues,

County.

Also, thank you to the University of Virginia for participating in this trip and we really look forward to meaningful discussions as we move forward on regional transit.

Thank you, Jeff.

That was really nice.

And I would also add that we had participation from the schools, from our public school system.

So this is really, we're all getting in the same sandbox here and playing together like our parents taught us we really should.

and I do want to add that if anyone is really interested in this topic, the regional transit partnership has a meeting tomorrow afternoon and we will be receiving the joint rule transit needs assessment

They, John, prepared and participated in a study for us about the rural needs.

And they'll be presenting that report to us tomorrow, which will be really interesting.

So if any of you all are transit nerds and would like to join us, feel free.

You all are, right?

I agree.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, a second from Supervisor Malick.

Ms.

Malick.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Lepisto.

Currently.

Well, we're a little more than an hour ahead of our schedule.

Thank you.

I hope someone has somewhere wonderful to head to.

Good afternoon, Board.

Emily Kilroy, the Director of Economic Development.

It's my pleasure to be here with you this afternoon with the Chair of the Economic Development Authority, Don Long.

Okay, so this is a follow up to the session that the Board of Supervisors had at the joint meeting with the Economic Development Authority in August.

and the topic is the Memorandum of Understanding, which is the agreement that talks about how the two public bodies will work together to advance the county's economic development priorities.

I'm going to do just a brief introduction of sort of the topic and then turn it over to Chair Long to walk through the attachment that was in your packet today, which is a draft term sheet for discussion purposes.

And our hope today is that the board can provide direction

that would allow the attorney's office to take that draft term sheet and turn it into a draft MOU agreement.

And so that's sort of our goal for today.

So MOU history, just briefly, the EDA was actually created in 1976.

So almost 50 years ago, there's been several memorandums of understanding since the establishment of that body.

Most recently, that agreement was signed in 2017.

and this was one of the main topics of the meeting that you all had jointly with the EDA in August.

In August we talked about a lot of the topics that are in that term sheet were sort of subject of the conversation that day and the idea at the time was that since 2017 there's been a lot of shifts in the local economy in the direction of the Economic Development Office, the interests of the EDA

and the benefit of a lot of years of experience of having an EDA and an economic development office and staff that are working on economic development items regularly.

So during that meeting, the board and the EDA discussed how Rivanna Futures has an impact on sort of the future trajectory of the work that the EDA might be in a position to support.

talked about broader authority for board appropriated funds, clarification on the use of special powers that are given to the economic development authority under the state code, and direction on some various economic development items such as business attraction, entrepreneurial ecosystem development, workforce development, and partnership development.

and again at that meeting Chair Long actually recommended that we approach this as we do an incentive agreement where we agree to terms in sort broadly before getting into the specifics of a legal document and so

and staff and members of the EDA met following that meeting in August to put together a draft term sheet.

The EDA over the fall spent a couple of meetings working through that draft term sheet and at their last meeting endorsed the term sheet that is the attachment to your executive summary today.

And the idea is again that today this is the EDA presenting the draft term sheet to the Board of Supervisors, receive your input

And if at the end of today's session, the board is concurred that we're ready to go towards drafting a document, that would be the next step.

And we would work with each body to sort of negotiate through the term sheet.

All right, so which buttons do I have?

All right.

Thank you, Chair Andrews, members of the Board of Supervisors.

I'm Don Long.

I am the Chair of the Economic Development Authority.

And I'm just going to sort of walk through the big terms that we have.

Ms.

Kilroy and I sat down after the meeting, went through the notes, went through all the comments to try to come up with what we wanted to do.

And as I think she mentioned, we presented it to the EDA.

at actually two different meetings, so plenty of time for people to offer their comments.

So we wanted to have the board adopt and keep current and economic development strategic plan and work with the EDA in developing that plan.

We think it's important that that strategic plan guide the county's activities and investments in economic development so that the EDA knows what the focus of the county's goals are.

an important issue that we talked about at the meeting was the use of the statutory powers that EDAs have and being able to feel comfortable in using those powers and the board is supportive of the use of those powers in the goals that they have in the strategic plan.

That we wanted to be clear that the board supports the EDA's use of these powers in

County, and

who ever happens to want to come in, we would focus on ecosystem development within targeted industries.

Business retention and expansion would be a major focus of what the EDA would do, which has been in the past, but we'd also focus on the targeted industries, especially in that area.

We'd focus on workforce development, working with other partners in terms of doing that.

I know that's important to a lot of members of the board.

We'd also use our powers in terms of real estate development, redevelopment, building use that is focused on the areas that we need support from economic development.

So, Rivanna Futures, those sorts of things.

We'd also work to establish entrepreneurial activity and try to support the start-up businesses in our community and help them grow and expand in the county.

This was one of the things we also talked about was incentives and potentially having the board give appropriate money to the authority to use within a framework of, in this case we're talking about $250,000, so the board would give us some guidance and say we want you to use this in a certain way and then let the EDA make decisions so it's not always coming back to y'all to do those things.

E, work with the Board to develop Rivanna Futures.

I want to say I was with a number of y'all at the INSA meeting last week and I was so impressed by the response that the county got from the Department of the Army, from the DIA, from NINJIC, all of those organizations and how

excited they seem to be to come here.

I mean, I expected them to be interested, but I was really, really impressed by how excited they were, and I thought that was just a wonderful event.

So I look forward, and I know the other members of the EDA are really excited about the chance to do something.

I mean, we've got a really good board now.

We've got people who want to do something, so I think if we can find the right projects to help out, I think that's really important.

and then the final item and Ms.

Kilroy will give sort of a staff perspective.

The finance department is compensated for the services they provide to organizations like the EDA that are kind of under the county umbrella and we had a discussion about what the right

Basis for doing that calculation is that the money that the EDA is bringing in on its own, funds from bonds, those sorts of things, or should that calculation be done based on money that is flowing through the EDA, for instance, economic development funds that you provide to the EDA that we pass on?

Yes, that was very well.

We are working through this as partners.

So the staff perspective on administrative fees for partner agencies, entities where the county serves as a fiscal agent is generally approached as a 1% of incoming funds.

And that supports the processing of, literally processing those payments.

but also the other services that the county provides as part of the operating agreement with that entity and within the context of the EDA you can think of that as the administrative support that the Economic Development Office provides in support of the meetings and the work of the EDA, the legal services provided through the county attorney's office, budget management of the funds that the EDO manages which has a relationship with the EDA and so the staff perspective is that

and other partner agencies.

It's 1% of all incoming funds.

And I think what Cher Long is referring to is there are some instances where the EDA's statutory powers

put them in a position to best serve other interests of the county.

For example, two of the partnership agreements that the EDA provides the funds for are affordable housing projects that the county has expressed interest in supporting.

And the EDA provides the proper authorities to be able to make those transactions happen.

The EDA's perspective is they are participating in those

on behalf of the board of supervisors.

But I think the important part is this is not a big deal one way or the other.

That's why we wanted to raise this issue for y'all to decide what the appropriate way to handle it.

and then this, we went over this at the meeting.

These are the state special powers that we talk about.

These are the things that EDA can do that the Board of Supervisors can't do directly.

That's make grants to private entities, including tax grants.

The synthetic TIF structure that we've used in other cases, sell property without using the same

legal requirements that the Board of Supervisors has to do, lease properties at or below fair market value, we can issue bonds, we can make loans to private entities, and in some cases even act beyond the locality, although that's not generally what we're looking to do.

Yeah, so these are the Region 9, Go Virginia Region 9 adopted target industries.

They mirror very closely to the ones that were developed for the county in the early 20 teens.

And as part of the Economic Development Strategic Plan update process, I expect that we'll be revisiting and refining the list of target industries.

I expect Intelligence National Security

County.

So I think that's it.

Thank you.

And you're looking for feedback on the one issue of... Yeah, I think feedback broadly on any of the items that were in the draft term sheet.

Supervisor McKinnon.

Sure.

Thank you, Don.

Thank you, Emily.

I thought the meeting that we had during the fall was very productive.

It's great to see this coming to us.

I think ideally we would have received this even earlier, but the pandemic stopped lots of movement.

But this is really great.

I don't have any specific pushback on anything you've presented, Don.

I think having been a former liaison to the EDA, I know how thoughtful you all are and how careful you are, and I just appreciate the work.

And I will take this opportunity to say that I think the administrative fee that you're recommending of 1% makes sense, so I don't have a

a lot of angst about that.

I think that's fair and it seems appropriate to me.

As a first speaker out of the gate, I'm anxious to hear what my other fellow board members say.

But in general, I think you've done a great job of capturing what we talked about and agreed, in theory at least, at the meeting.

Let me clarify the 1% question.

They've got two recommendations on there.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed that completely then.

That's my fault.

Me bad.

So, so basically the, the, the 1% would only apply to non-county funds.

So funds that we would get from bonds that would come from other sources, but

Okay, that's opposite what I heard.

So I'm glad to get that.

That's my question.

Exactly.

I was listening very carefully.

I wrote it all down.

I'm going to turn to supervisor.

So I think it's kind of fair to analogize the fee we're talking about to kind of like

The fiscal agent fee that you might have a larger non-profit that is sponsoring a new non-profit have when they're organizing this.

And in that framework, I also think it would make sense that the 1% management fee only applies to non-countable funds because there isn't that new and additional reporting and tracking requirement.

County funds, they don't have that additional requirement.

So to me, that seems prudent.

It also seems something that the EDA feels comfortable with, right?

Because frankly, all of the folks getting less money.

And if you're comfortable with getting less money, then sure, great.

As in they would be taking a smaller total portion of funds dispersed as a fee.

The EDA is not taking the fee.

The finance department is, we're paying, the authority is paying the finance department.

Yeah, it's the other one.

Rolling misunderstandings.

It still makes more sense, but okay.

I appreciate that.

I know something I had expressed some trepidation during our joint work session with is economic development kind of

can be construed to encompass a lot of things.

And we had an interesting discussion on whether or not it was appropriate for the EDA to engage in housing stimulus and broader community development work that isn't directly touching on commercial or traditional economic development strategies.

And I was actually resistant to that.

Construing that as potentially going outside the the wheelhouse of expertise and potentially stepping on other stakeholders and I gave the example of Fredericksburg City's EDA which did exactly that around homelessness and did a bad job of it and stepped on their continuum of cares wheelhouse without coordinating or informing them prior and it was quite controversial.

I don't see housing in here, and I actually do take some comfort on that.

There's some language around community development.

I do see a discussion of workforce development.

Workforce development I think is more squarely in that ambit, but there's also I think still that kind of strain.

I know when we talked about this previously, Supervisor Malik talked about like, well, are we coordinating with the

County, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, New York,

I think so because I think we're in that particular area in the economic development area we are working with obviously the county economic development office and really sort of working together in terms of what we're doing and then we're working in conjunction with the other organizations you know the partnership and folks like that it's not I don't see the same issue that is would be in housing

and I don't think I think I would see what we would do with respect to things like workforce would be to support other organizations.

I don't think we're going to go out and try to set up our own training program.

We'd want to figure out ways to use those special powers.

I mean an example would be if we needed

Space, to put a program that somebody else wanted to run, we potentially could lease that space and then sub-lease it out at a lower, at a non-market rate.

I think

is becoming even more and more aligned statewide.

The board knows that the county is pursuing a grant application from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership through their Virginia Business Ready Sites program for site readiness work at Rivanna Futures.

And the governor and VEDP recently announced that they'll be looking at housing as part of the application review process.

Do you have

Do you have in the pipeline or are you working to make some headway in making sure that there's housing for the employees that might work at the sites that were that we're readying and so I think we see I think the state also sees economic development as being a powerful voice of support and we have some tools through the authorities that

Supervisor Price liked to often bring a familiar concept into government that I would like to now echo, which is

A tendency of some organizations to almost work with hubris.

Don't worry, I have this solution.

We'll solve it.

And that's not the attitude that you're going in with, and that's what I want to make sure about.

Thank you.

Well, I think I was going to make a comment that I was planning to make, listening to some of the commentary, not just from Supervisor Pruitt, but from others.

I know that at the joint meeting, somebody had mentioned concern about how some EDAs go flying off on their own and do all these things.

Well, okay, two things.

It states it here again, but we create it, we define the framework, and we appoint the people.

So if they go flying off on a handle doing stuff that we don't want them doing, that's not their fault.

We should be careful about who we appoint.

and we should be careful about the framework and how it's defined and we should be careful about our oversight responsibilities.

So I don't look at these EDAs as flying, okay you got some rogue people but they didn't get on that board without your permission.

Well, I will point out that actually one of the things that, you know, we've talked about the finance department and the role that they provided, I mean, that's one of the checks on this, is that we don't have, I mean, there might be some good reasons to have our own bank account and to do our own thing, but there's some good reasons not to, which is as long as

County's process and the review process, that eliminates a lot of those concerns as well.

And I think the oversight having the members from the board who serve the relationship with the economic development office, which I think where the issues have arisen have largely been with the EDA was just kind of off doing their own thing.

So the first in the draft, I'm speaking to the draft term sheet that was in the packet, the first bullet point says the Board of Supervisors will adopt and keep current and economic development strategic plan.

I think that's the

The expectation that it would be updated on a regular cadence.

So the current one is a little over six years old.

And that we would get into a more regular cadence of between three and five years updates.

So that the strategy remains current with the current conditions.

So I would encourage defining the time that we want this to be updated, that we think makes sense, so it doesn't get bumped because of how reality works.

The current one would have been updated sooner had it not been for the pandemic.

And that's probably the primary thing.

But minus a pandemic, other staff priorities can sometimes push out things getting updated.

And we have a lot of things that have not been updated over the years.

So this is one that I think really suffers from not a more regular update than one that could maybe last six or eight years before you do anything.

So I would just encourage to find, not three to five, I'm not, I mean a specific time.

And then we say we should look at it and review it every, and then go with it.

My opinion.

I want to reaffirm my all caps yes to your supporting, you know, the statutory powers granted under the Code of Virginia.

With all of your bullet points under, this would be bullet point four on the draft sheet.

So the first one, for example, is business attraction within the identified target industries.

So I want to challenge the notion, Chair Long, that you said, well, whoever wants to commit.

I think that all of the places that say within the identified target industries should mirror what bullet three says, which is business retention and expansion with an emphasis on identified target industries.

I'd like to see with an emphasis on where everywhere where it says within the, and here's why.

Just to your point that in the next update we'll probably do something with Rivanna Futures relative to the intelligence agencies.

We don't know.

Targets are things we aim for.

They're not defined criteria.

But if we say within the identified target areas, we are putting you in a fenced area.

and we might not know what we want to aim at in three years, which also would probably be another reason why we should update the plan and not wait four, five, six years to do it.

So I want to make sure that the, because I know everybody on the Economic Development Authority understands how economic development usually is in the business world, how things can pop up that you don't know that you might not want, but maybe you do.

And if we say within the identified target industries and something like that pops up, you're already boxed out based on this MOU for considering it.

And I don't want to box this out.

So I'd like for all of that to state within, with an emphasis on, because then you're still operating within our framework, you're still being guided by our strategic plan, project enable, or the updated version.

We can address and I'm sure that like we're adding a target industry in the next round It sounds like but we will be able to discuss it.

We're not losing anything But I want to make sure that we're not excluding something you know there used to be the book by Yuri and I forget the other name getting the yes

You know, that's a good idea.

We shouldn't start from an idea of no to some things.

And this is kind of excluding you all by saying no.

We don't know what companies may want to.

I mean, I think we could all sit here and list five or six things.

We don't want it out of Monroe County.

And frankly, they don't want to be here, those places, because they know our attitude about it.

But what we don't know are some places that might want to come in here, that we would be like, oh, that's a great thing for us.

so let's make sure that you know I obviously need agreement from others around the dais but I think to me that's just smart it keeps flexibility open and it and I think the EDA would be able to exercise the judgment to go wow this isn't necessarily a target industry but boy I think the supervisors would really like like this and we should pursue it versus just going sorry you're not on our you're not within the this defined scope that we've done so we can't even have the conversation

and I think it sends a message.

You know, I think, you know, this waiting around for other folks to come in, like I said, there are some places I know probably don't want to come here and set up shop because they know about us.

You know, we're okay with that, but for some places that might want to be here, we probably should set an attitude that we're willing to listen and be willing to be open and not box anybody out from that standpoint.

and then for the fee, I'm good with that.

As long as the county is not, you know, for things that are passing through, yeah, there should be a fee for it.

So one comment, and I'll let Emily respond to this as well.

I think the business attraction, there's sort of two things.

Part of that, there's somebody coming to us and saying, hey, we want to come here or we're looking for locations and

County, and

Businesses, not necessarily a specific business.

And I know in the past, the sense has been we weren't trying to, we would talk to people when they came, but we weren't necessarily trying to encourage people to come in.

And so I think what we were trying to do with this was to say, look, if we're going to go out and be a little more proactive, we're going to aim for the things that we want, we say we want here, but not that we would tell people don't bother talking to us.

and I'll just, I agree, but when you say what we aim to, but if in a year from now, you're like, oh, we should aim over there.

This isn't going to allow you to do it.

It's not okay.

That's my point.

It's that you want to change the aim.

I don't want to restrict the work of the EDA to be like, oh, wait, this is a new thing.

I mean, there's things we're talking about now that are economic development activity that weren't even on our radars for years ago.

So it should be something that you guys have the flexibility.

I have the trust that you could do it that way.

And say, yeah, we're aiming at this.

We're following along with what we're doing.

But wait, this is something we might want to look into.

I hate to disagree with you, Supervisor Galloway, but I'm not sure that they intended it that way because I think for our identified target industries, we helped set that too.

I mean, I've seen the EDA, the liaison there.

They're very receptive to also what the board wants, where the board wants to go.

They present ideas and I've

I haven't seen

I misinterpret it, but I think that's really broad in that they would welcome new businesses.

I think what they don't, I'm thinking what they don't want is to say, okay, the flood gates are open and bring in all kinds of fast food restaurants and everything.

We want 5,000 of them.

No, we don't want 5,000 of them.

and I don't think that's something that the board wants either.

I have no problem with an emphasis on flexibility that you can make that decision.

You can also hear, maybe we hear of something before you do, and then we can bring that to you vice versa.

But I do agree also with what you're saying, have a report maybe every three to five years.

Not to say what you can do or can't do, but just to say, okay, since everything is so rapidly changing,

maybe we need something every three years or if you want to change something bring it to us in every three years as opposed to every six years.

Yeah, I think I would offer to the board when we receive, and there's been projects over the past six to nine months where something has come forward that wasn't strictly within the target industries.

And when that happens, we will do a lot of check-in.

Some of the, in the Commonwealth,

It is not consistent how the structure between the EDO and the EDA is set up.

I think that nuance can get lost a lot.

There are some localities where the staff work for the EDA, and there are some localities where the staff work for the broader local government organization.

University.

We're obviously one where we work for the broader organization.

And so when something comes forward to staff that might fall outside the target industries, it'll be that it's a good cue to me to have a conversation with the executive's office as a starting point of, you know, here's this opportunity, here's

You know, pros and cons, here's what we're thinking.

Do we think that there's an interest in continuing that conversation?

And we'll sort of work through it that way.

That's when we bring in the board and the EDA to brief them and get their feedback and see, you know, does this feel like a good fit even though it doesn't fit within the confines of the target industries?

and I think Chair Long put it well when he said if the EDA were to start doing more proactive attraction work using the target industries would be a way for the EDA to think through how do we approach that work?

there's conferences that you can go to where site selectors are sort of sector focused and so picking which ones to go to would be an example of how the target industries would help frame that work but certainly I think Mr. Galloway's suggestion on with an emphasis I think

I think it's good to be able to have that flexibility so that if someone comes in, you can say, no, that's not something we want, but if something, a new idea comes in that we've never even thought of before,

that you can say, yes, let's go.

So I do agree with the emphasis on flexibility, however you want to word that.

And I also agree with the 1%.

1% on what basis?

There are two.

One is everything that goes through the Economic Development Authority, even if it came from the county.

The other is only when it's external monies.

All right.

We'll call that the external option.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

The external option.

Okay.

Got it.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you and this is, I appreciate all of the hard work and I have some questions which may be just premature as far as your, the state that you are at.

But just you'll learn about what's rolling around in my mind at least.

So, you mentioned that you had just discussed about

with the EDA over the last several meetings about details and how to go about that.

So I'm curious about what those details are, and maybe they're all just winnowed down into the proposal, in which case that's fine.

I appreciate the thought, this is random order, appreciate the thought for the three-year update or sooner, I'm not

County.

University.

back in the 2008 to 2012-13, there was a big uproar from some sector of the community that we were losing businesses to Flavanna or something.

I mean, these were places generally warehouses.

They needed big square footage and had almost no jobs.

But also, there was this sense of, if it's not an Albemarle, that's a problem for us.

Well, we have to share in our region.

That's why the sort of

The regional target study, I thought, was so beneficial, even though it was very cumbersome to get it done.

But the whole basis of it, in my memory, was based upon the skills that our residents have about the academic opportunities which we have here, we will never be able to do everything.

And so picking the four or five things that we could do best was really important.

And defense was in ours.

The fact that it's not in Go Virginia is a Go Virginia problem, but it is in ours and that's really, really important.

We fought hard to get it in there because there were some on the board at the time.

We didn't want to have it in there as a separate call out.

So those are things I want to encourage you to really stand up for our local plan, even over the Go Virginia one, because it is what came from our community and has really good basis for that.

When you mentioned site selectors, it just brings back

St.

was very glad to hear that we're not looking at duplicating workforce development, things like that, because those are tremendous skill sets in their funded state and federally, and so we need to be in that supporting role.

I think that's a really important way to talk about it.

I've talked about limited sector.

Glad to hear the comment

about perhaps helping as a landlord for something in one of those supportive services because we spent at the workforce center about two years trying to find a place to move to that was affordable and closer to where our people were and we're okay right now but when the next one comes around and there's some extra warehouse space where we can set up and recombine and I will be calling on you for that help.

I understand the link of

where the employees can live in order to be able to bring a job group here, a sector here.

And I think someone mentioned to me yesterday, well, if a new agency is coming from DC to the station, that's going to be some number of new employees who will want to live in the region.

They could live in any of five jurisdictions or more, depending on where their family connections are and those kinds of things.

But they will have to have a shelter in order to be willing to come.

excuse me, the former head of DIA when he was trying to recruit people from Northern Virginia to come here in his agency and ended up bringing quite a number 800, I think.

There was a lot of resistance because people had, they were established in Fairfax and all those other places, much more expensive places, but they still were reluctant to leave until they knew what they were really going to be getting into down here.

So we have to continue to do a good job to describe ourselves in our, put our best foot forward.

as well.

I have some heartburn about the support of the statutory powers.

I'm a little less now considering your explanations.

But avoiding Mission Creek is a really big deal because of the limited time and staff and money that we have available.

We don't have $100 million like Montgomery County, Maryland to put up a wonderful affordable housing trust fund and do all that stuff.

We don't have it right now anyway.

We have to size our approach to what we can manage with our staff capacity as well as our funding capacity And I think that's important Having taken the since 2008 to get where we are in the defense sector I think it's really careful that really important that the county staff who are leading that effort be the point of contact

in other words especially with the military and the Defense Department, you cannot have a bunch of people out there talking, talking, talking about stuff because it really sends a bad, bad message.

So we have great spokespeople here now and I put all my faith in them being able to make those connections and guide the process.

There may be others that the supporting

Roll can do, but I'm very protective of that whole process and the message process that goes along with it.

I think I understand, with the 1%, I think I understand that the 1% meaning bonds income is what you're talking about.

County.

It was double dipping on the county money and I was not going to go for that.

But as long as it's just the outside money coming in, I'm fine with that.

I understand the board responsibility to make sure that

We are appointing good people and the board needs to provide really good guidelines, guardrails, all the things that you all will need in order to do your job well.

And that's what's sort of missing here so far is all of those

the fine wording, so I look forward to receiving more of that as it goes forward.

And I can answer I think one of your original questions, which was what did the EDA talk about in terms of this?

And what we did was we presented this document that you all have to the EDA at two meetings.

We had put it together and presented it.

We wanted to give them a chance to look at these bullet points.

gave their feedback and then we actually gave them another time because we knew that we were coming to this December meeting so we had a second go round, as you say, where their comments and we didn't get a whole lot.

We got some feedback at the first go round, some comments and thoughts about things.

Emily was taking notes, she'll help you sort it out and you can share back with the readout on the discussion that will be helpful.

I think over 17 years, EDA has certainly evolved and my White Hall appointee is a wonderful man, but he was on the board for decades and it was the old regime and they were strictly uni-bots.

and providing money to Sentera and schools and whatever and saving their money on their construction loans and bringing in, for many, many years there wasn't even no fee.

It was I think after 2008 that they actually put the 1% in which was horrendous at that amount of revenue that was foregone on that earlier.

So evolution is okay as long as we're all in it and we're all doing our homework and we're all paying attention to the fine print because that'll make it succeed.

Thank you.

I'm going to start at the last part just because I want to make sure I get that in and see if there are other comments.

I lean towards the staff perspective on item F. It does seem to me that some to extend its right pocket, left pocket, but my understanding of the question, and that's where I want to make sure I'm on the right track here, is regardless of what the source is, there is an overhead cost to the county staff

in working with the Economic Development Authority on something.

So if the county is providing, and let me go to the example list here, providing incentives up to $250,000, if that's coming out of the county coffers and going to the EDA, that there would be a 1% fee on top of that back to the county recognizing the need to oversee the funding.

and oversee the activities.

And so that's why I lean towards the staff perspective is just seeing this is a cost of doing business through the EDA is 1% of all the money that goes through that.

I'm happy to hear other perspectives and if I've gotten it wrong, please tell me.

Okay.

With respect to the question of identified target industries, I must sort of work backwards.

The last bullet was providing incentives up to 250,000 within target industries.

Now, if what we're talking about is 250,000 and with an emphasis on target industries doesn't bother me, I get the sense that we are delegating a certain amount of authority

to say, you know, this is how you're going to do business.

We'll find out about it very quickly and identify when we think that there's a problem with the target having moved from what we thought was the list or otherwise.

But I'm not sure what else goes into that.

So if you start doing big bond issues or something that are not in the targeted industry, I would certainly want to know about it before it was done.

and so I prefer to have a targeted list and update it regularly and keep on top of it and make sure we have regular readings so that we don't deviate from that.

And I think we've already identified that the GO Virginia is very similar but not the same.

And so we want to have an Albemarle County

sort of set of targets.

And similarly then, workforce development.

I see that one as, I don't think we need to just say workforce development within emphasis on targeted industries.

I'm in favor of workforce development on targeted industries.

That's why we're doing it.

is for those targeted industries.

So that's sort of my perspective on it.

I'm not sure if that changes the story or the question, but I really appreciate the work being done.

I think this is a great step forward to giving additional authority because that's going to enable us to move quickly.

Did you get what you need in terms of the consensus on one or the other?

I'll try to describe it in the way that I think about it, and then Emily can tell me if she has it.

My view would be that there's money that the county appropriates to the EDA to then pass on.

So let's say it's a million dollars that's going out to a project.

So the EDA would then pay 1%, not necessarily of those monies, but would pay a 1% fee to the finance department to manage as overhead.

and so I think the

and in my view it's really sort of the fact that those numbers could be dramatically different in terms of size and scope and you know I can see your point look you've got overhead if you're giving us a million dollars to do something with somebody's got to manage that process somebody's got to do the forms just ought to pay that that money I think the the my concern would be that

if generally we're only sort of operating at the $200,000 threshold and all of a sudden we have a lot of money that's going flowing through, that fee gets really large relative to the work.

I think, you know, if the EDA was called on to do a higher volume of affordable housing incentives than we've seen in recent years,

I think Chair Long's point is that the revenue, the incoming revenue that the EDA receives from the loan and the bonds that they've issued on behalf of other organizations is fairly fixed and relatively small.

And if there were to be a high volume of funds that the board was

University, and the EDA's support to serve as sort of the pass-through entity, that that is the percentage on which that 1% fee is applied to, while the EDA's incoming revenues are sort of fixed at a relatively small level, and so it could potentially create a challenge for the EDA's inbound finances.

I think if we get to a point where it's way out of whack, like we got a $200,000 fee or something like that for

as a result of a large, large dollars flowing through.

Okay, thank you.

Is it, anybody have a, a clarification perhaps on your position on this as to whether it's the first one or the second one as far as whether it's all external funds or all funds?

So what has come into my brain listening to the discussion is there is a similarity to the fee that was part of a CIP award that went to FES to carry out the project.

So the similar is all county money, but it's showing almost a transparency track.

that, yes, we're building this school, but we're building something, the courts.

And there's money in the MBS budget, whoever's supervising that operation, that I had put out.

It was part of the CIP budget.

So that helps me understand a little bit about the sort of in-house round and round and round.

Yeah, and I think we can talk about it.

I thought we had 2-4.

2-4?

2-4 versus 4.

So which is which?

I read the discussion as being 2-4 yourself and Supervisor Galloway.

Okay, well clearly I didn't know what the hell I said.

Yeah, I had I had Mr. Supervisor Gallo.

Okay, so it's five to one.

I mean, you might, based on this conversation, need to clean it up.

Sure.

And the next step in the process would be, of course, that the county attorney's office would take a first approach, creating the first draft of a new MOU.

and so this will be back before staff, the EDA and the board before any final decisions are made.

I just want to make sure that I am reading the scenario

Thank you.

Glad to add my perspective on this.

From a pure dollar amount standpoint, you know, if the 1% fee, if it was on all incoming funds, historically, you'd be talking about between the $7,000 and a $15,000 annual fee.

So when we look at these administrative fees, they're similar to our fiscal agent fees that we do for the Merchant Communications Center, the CACVB.

those fees, those fiscal agent fees, are on all the incoming funds that we manage for those entities.

And it covers, you know, the multitude of services.

So it's the administrative side, it's the legal side, it's the financial, it's including them in our audit and our audit financial reports.

And so when I was talking with Emily about this earlier, the, when I saw the DDA's proposal, I saw that more as like a per transaction fee.

as opposed to what the staff perspective is on the slide here is more of a pure fiscal agent fee which covers a broad scope of services as opposed to just a per transaction fee which is really related to more of the outside local dollars.

but from Supervisor Pruitt, answer your question.

Thank you.

I don't want to muddy this by trying to, it's connected to why my earlier point about the within versus the emphasis on, but this is beyond that.

So this is a different point of importance for me.

Don't assume places that are interested in working with us are going to call us.

So what we put out there, based on that alone, has to suggest call us.

because if it's defined on there a certain way and I mean I'm not talking about misinterpretation I'm talking about how we define it the words will matter and what we suggest out there to folks will matter they will first look online if they don't know us they're gonna go what's this relationship what's what are they putting out there what's this document and if we don't suggest that there's a flexibility in

and an openness to having a conversation, they might not ever pick the phone up and call anybody.

And that is happening in some other things relative to what we have.

To nobody's fault, it's just fact.

So I'm saying that as you bring forward the final product, and we should think about this when we rethink Project Enable as well, that it's about if none of us are there and they don't call JT or Emily or Don or whoever,

and say, hey, would you be blah, blah, blah?

If they don't sense that there's that flexibility already, they're never going to make the call.

And that's probably my overarching concern, because I'm trying to tease that concern out in some language here, but that is the bigger thing that's kind of driving the point behind it.

That could exist in other places beyond just these particular points that I made earlier.

Thank you.

Shall we forge ahead?

Shall we take a 15 minute break?

County Executive is ready.

Our next item is from the County Executive here in review.

Mr. Chair, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Abby Stump who has spearheaded the effort

for the year-end review.

Yeah, thank you.

Good afternoon, board.

Abby Stone, Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

And before I hit play, I am going to take a few minutes and say a few words because I have the mic.

And thank you for letting me do that.

And I'll go fast because I know that there's some need over here.

I was recently asked what was the hardest part of my job and I shared that we have more stories to tell than time to tell them.

And that is a true testament to county staff and what they do day in and day out for this community.

and that becomes very apparent this time of year when we have to create a year in review video or any sort of year in review recap.

And so we get into a room and we brainstorm and we think about all of the possible stories that we could potentially tell and if there are any themes or ties that connect everything together.

And this year we identified partnerships and collaborations.

These partnerships, both across our departments and with community organizations, are really at the heart of what the county does.

I want to take a moment to thank the communications and public engagement staff, particularly a key Parker.

Their creativity really brought these stories to life in this video, but I also want to thank all of the county staff that were

willingly able to hop on camera and tell these success stories.

But before I dive in, I know you all love stats and figures, and so I didn't want to miss an opportunity to give you a few more that aren't in the video.

These numbers that I'm going to share really illustrate the real tangible impact that county staff and government services provide to our community each and every day.

So far this year, and I say so far because there's what, 20 days left, so these numbers are going to be grossly out of date in about two hours, I'm sure.

Fire Rescue has responded to 1,423 heart-related calls for service.

So that includes cardiac arrests, chest pains, think along those lines.

Office of Revenue Administration assisted 853 qualified property owners in obtaining tax relief through the Elderly and Disabled Tax Relief Program.

Social Services supported nearly 400 families through the Family Support and Breakstars program embedded in local schools.

And ACPD officers have saved 10 lives through life-saving measures and NARCAN response.

These numbers are not just statistics.

These are lives that our staff has touched each and every day.

They form the foundation of our core services and exemplify how local government makes a difference.

It's through these foundational efforts that we build the trust and the connections necessary for the partnerships highlighted in this video.

These collaborations allow us to amplify impact, find solutions, and better meet the needs of our community.

So, without further ado, and I do apologize, I didn't bring popcorn.

I will now hit play to highlight a few of the successes from this year, thanks to the outstanding work of our staff and our community partners.

Albemarle County's Economic Development Office is building partnerships to drive economic growth.

This year, we've seen incredible progress through projects transforming our community and creating opportunities for businesses and residents alike.

This year, the Board of Supervisors announced a public-private partnership with Home Depot associated with the development of their property located at 1531 Rio Road East at the former Sears site at the Fashion Square Mall.

This public-private partnership marks the first redevelopment at Fashion Square Mall.

Home Depot is investing over $26 million to redevelop this site, creating a new retail store and more than 100 new jobs.

But that's not all.

This partnership will also help improve the area's infrastructure, including the realignment of Hillsdale Drive, making it easier to get around and connect to key destinations in this area.

It will also generate a variety of local tax revenues that will contribute to the county's tax base.

This partnership provides a maximum of $750,000 in tax increment financing to the company over a period of up to 10 years.

The incentive helps to offset the additional costs associated with a redevelopment project, as demolition and site conditions require more intensive site work than an undeveloped site would.

and we're hopeful that this will be the first of future redevelopments at the Fashion Square Mall property.

This major project will help transform our community and also supports the county's mission as we continue to build a better future for our community.

This redevelopment brings new businesses, jobs and public spaces that will make Rio 29 an even better place to live, work and visit.

It's exactly the kind of collaboration we need to build a thriving, vibrant community.

Another milestone is Afton Scientific's announcement of their expansion.

This local biopharmaceutical company is investing over $200 million to grow its operations, creating 200 new jobs and increasing its ability to deliver life-saving medicines to the patients that need them.

This is the company's second expansion in our community.

These successes are the result of strong partnerships.

For Fashion Square Mall, Albemarle County worked with Home Depot to provide tax increment financing, helping offset redevelopment costs,

and ensure infrastructure entire community.

The expa scientific was made possible

Together, we secured resources to support recruitment and training for the new jobs created by this investment.

Albemarle County works with the state, regional and local partners in the public, private and academic sectors to create an environment where businesses thrive.

I wanted to highlight one of Albemarle County's major successes from this past year, MicroCAD.

MicroCAD is a grant-funded pilot program for an on-demand ride share service that has exceeded all expectations since its launch in October 2023.

In its first year in operation, MicroCAD has fulfilled over 70,000 ride requests and met demand more than 85% of the time.

Those numbers tell a powerful story about how this service is meeting a critical need for reliable transit service in our community.

But the impact goes beyond numbers.

Riders have shared how MicroCAD has transformed their lives, making it easier to get to work, attend appointments, and care for their families.

Users of the service have expressed through surveys how beneficial it is to have a reliable transit service near their home.

MicroCAP represents a bold step in addressing transit needs and increasing access to essential services.

By focusing our pilot program on the high-need areas like Pantops and Route 29 North, we've demonstrated that this type of innovative service can address residents' needs for a convenient, affordable, and safe way to travel.

The fare-free pilot program has been particularly impactful for some residents.

We have heard from riders how grateful they are for a free and convenient transit service they can use to get to doctor's appointments and other daily needs.

MicroCAD's success has been driven by ongoing collaboration between Albemarle County and Charlottesville area transit staff who work closely with VIA, the contracted service provider.

Regularly scheduled meetings allow the team to review metrics, identify opportunities for improvement, and implement changes that enhance the rider experience.

One example of the success of that collaboration was the decision to add another vehicle to the fleet, aimed at reducing passenger wait times and meeting the growing demand.

This commitment to continuous improvement ensures that MicroCAD remains a reliable and effective service for our community.

MicroKat has proven to be more than a transit service.

It's a lifeline for many in our community.

Thank you for supporting this innovative program.

In 2024, the winners of the Pilot Community Climate Action Grant program wrapped up their projects

and the second round of winners kicked off their projects.

The Community Climate Action Grant Program supports projects that advance the goals, strategies and actions of the community's climate action plan.

By supporting innovative community-driven solutions, Albemarle County is not only working to meet its climate goals, but also creating a more resilient, connected and sustainable community.

These partnerships demonstrate that, when we work together, we can turn creative ideas into real change.

Autism Sanctuary started a worm composting initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, promote green gardening practices in the local community, and provide additional jobs and learning experiences to those with autism in central Virginia.

Community Bikes expanded its bike recycling, refurbishment and redistribution program and provided dozens of repairs and bikes to underserved communities in the county.

International Rescue Committee's New Roots Farm phased out all but one of its older fossil fuel-based equipment for electric alternatives and created a democratic self-determination process for designing its largest community garden

with an AmeriCorps member who helped implement these projects.

Blip Incorporated, a non-profit organization providing green jobs training to underserved communities in Virginia, held two credentialing trainings within Albemarle County, which were attended by 17 county residents.

By early summer, six participants had already achieved the national certification standard, and those that were already employed in the industry received promotions

and or pay increases due to the skills they learned during the course.

The Peabody School, in collaboration with Albemarle Parks and Rec, as well as the Center for Urban Habitat, started the first phase of a grassland restoration project at Dardentale Park to get youth involved in Kiedmont grassland education and conservation.

In the second round, two grantees, Charlottesville Community Bikes and New Roots Farm, will build on work from their first plant and three additional projects will allow a new group of grantees to work to address climate change.

Wild Rock is installing a composting system and developing educational curricula on composting, soil health, and nutrient cycling.

Local Energy Alliance Program, or LEAP, is providing roof repairs and energy efficiency upgrades to low-income households.

And Community Climate Collaborative, or C3, is conducting climate action workshops for the leadership of places of community gathering.

These projects, and many more, are made possible through collaboration.

Non-profits, community groups, and local government

I'm excited to share the story of Albemarle County's community engagement work, focusing on our spring town halls and the pop-up events that took place in late summer and fall of 2024.

Our journey began with seven community town halls

held across the county from March to April.

These weeknight events attracted 134 community members and involved 47 dedicated staff members.

The format was designed to foster open dialogue featuring a project showcase, presentations, and Q&A sessions.

The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.

Attendees appreciated the opportunity to mingle with neighbors and county staff before diving into discussions.

Many expressed that the format brought topics to life, enhancing their understanding of key issues like budget allocations, transportation projects, school funding, and public safety.

Following these town halls, our team moved into our late summer and fall activities, participating in 14 events across 12 locations.

We connected with approximately 2,600 community members, continuing our mission to create welcoming spaces for residents to share their perspectives and inform them about county projects.

This time, we partnered with organizations like Albemarle County Schools, Sinbareras, and the Rivanna Conservation Alliance to enhance our outreach.

The numbers tell a compelling story.

26 dedicated staffers and two amazing interns spent 40 hours tabling at these events.

We collected over 300 responses to our question of the day and served more than 1,000 snow cones.

Yet, beyond these statistics are incredible stories of community connections, inclusivity and hope.

At our back-to-school events, kids shared inspiring ideas about environmental stewardship and how they can be community heroes.

The Pride Festival sparked conversations about creating more inclusive spaces.

At Seize the Day, we heard profound reflections on service and compassion.

While we faced challenges such as navigating hectic event environments and measuring our impact, we also discovered opportunities for growth.

We expanded our social media presence, implemented evaluation tools like QR codes surveys, and recognized our community's eagerness to learn.

As Albemarle County continues to grow and diversify, fostering open conversations become increasingly vital for effective governance.

The town halls and pop-up events are just a part of a greater effort by our whole organization to make local government accessible and build bridges within our shared communities.

This year, Albemarle County Fire Rescue welcomed its largest recruit class to date, a milestone which reflects our commitment to building a safer, stronger community.

This effort brought unique challenges, but it also showcased the creativity and dedication of our team.

To meet the growing needs of our community, ACFR conducted a single recruitment effort that resulted in two distinct recruit schools, one for experienced providers and another for those new to the field.

This dual-track approach pushed our training division to innovate and develop new methods to effectively train recruits with varying levels of experience.

Together, these academies included 27 recruits who underwent rigorous training, which covered essential skills like emergency medical care basics, firefighting skills, firefighter survival, emergency vehicle operations, and even a child car safety seat installations to help prepare for their new roles.

These recruits will fill critical positions funded by a FEMA grant, which is helping us enhance our emergency response capabilities.

14 of the 30 grant-funded positions will enable 24-7 coverage in Southern Albemarle, ensuring faster response times and better support for residents in that area.

The remaining 16 positions will sack a ladder truck based at the Monticello Station.

This specialized unit

equipped to handle complex incidents like water and technical rescues will serve the entire county from its central location.

These additions represent a significant step forward in our ability to protect and serve our community.

The success of this effort wouldn't be possible without strong cross-departmental partnerships.

Our human resources team worked closely with ACFR to support the hiring and onboarding processes for this large recruitment effort.

Meanwhile, our finance and budget staff played a vital role in managing the FEMA grant, ensuring that funding was allocated effectively and efficiently.

These collaborations, combined with the dedication of ACFR's training staff, have helped us expand coverage, enhance capabilities, and strengthen our emergency response infrastructure to better serve Albemarle County.

The continuity plan provides a framework to ensure the county's essential functions continue when disruptions impact service delivery.

Our organization operates under an enterprise-wide continuity plan supported by department-specific plans.

You might wonder what continuity planning is, but you probably know more about it than you think.

Weekday mornings, most folks have a morning routine to get ready for the day and then commute to school and work.

An example of continuity planning at home may include considerations about what to do if the car doesn't start or if a kid is sick or has to stay home.

Anticipating disruptions and having backup plans are very important so that our day-to-day lives can run smoothly without big interruptions.

We aim to do the same for local government, knowing that disruptions in service can impact a lot of people across the community.

Over the past year, we've made significant progress in strengthening our ability to deliver critical services under any circumstance.

In Phase 1, we appointed 17 continuity liaisons across departments to assist with planning.

Together, we identified essential functions, key personnel, and over 153 vital records.

We also established orders of succession for 79 key positions, ensuring leadership continuity.

Today, every county department has its own continuity plan.

As we move into phase two, our focus shifts to implementation and refinement.

We'll conduct quarterly program meetings, provide department-specific training, and test plans through exercises.

This will culminate in a countywide continuity exercise in the next fiscal year.

The continuity program reflects Albemarle County's commitment to resilience and preparedness.

Keeping children safe on their way to and from school is one of Albemarle County's highest priorities.

The school's own speed camera program, which launched on September 3rd, 2024, was developed in response to community concerns about speeding near schools and supported by speed studies conducted on Hunter Hall Road.

These studies identified areas where speeding posed the risk to student safety, particularly near Lambs Lane campus, home to Albemarle High School, Journey Middle School, and Greer Elementary School.

Informed by data and community input, the program focuses on reducing speed and creating a safer environment for everyone.

For the first 45 days, drivers who exceeded the speed limit by 10 miles per hour or more in the school zone received warnings instead of citations.

This period was designed to educate drivers and give everyone time to adjust for the new enforcement measures.

During this time period, nearly 6,000 warnings were issued to motorists.

Full enforcement began in October.

and drivers now receive $100 citations as they exceed the speed limit by 10 miles per hour or more when the school zone lights are flashing.

This program reflects our focus on safety, accountability and compliance.

The benefits of this program extend beyond immediate enforcement by encouraging safer driving behaviors for protecting students, families, teachers and staff.

Slower speeds also create a safer environment ensuring that everyone traveling through these areas feels secure.

This initiative wouldn't be possible without a partnership with Albemarle County Public Schools.

With proven results from similar programs across Virginia, including a 55% reduction in speed violations within three months, we're confident this program will make a meaningful difference in our community.

We're highlighting a few important projects from this year that help to make Albemarle County a safer, healthier place

for everyone to live, work, and enjoy.

Our initiatives are about creating spaces and opportunities that encourage safety, wellness, and an active community.

One of the highlights from this year was the opening of a brand new fitness center at the Yancey Community Center in Southern Albemarle County.

The center was designed to provide residents convenient access to exercise equipment and fitness opportunities.

We've been thrilled to see so many people making the most of this new space.

Yancy Community Center was made possible with support from our partners at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.

Their generous grant helped make this project a reality along with other exciting additions like the Heritage and History exhibit and a community garden.

It's all part of our effort to promote health and well-being in our community.

The next exciting highlight from this year is the opening of Freebridge Lane Promenade, a new car-free space along Freebridge Lane in Dardentown Park.

This section of road was turned into a promenade for walking, running, and biking.

The project will run as a 12-month pilot and we will monitor how well it works for everyone.

The collaboration and support from the county government and our external partners help make this project a reality.

The top highlight of this year is the addition of a new 1200 acre park.

In partnership with the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the county will open Biscuit Run Park in December 2024.

We've seen how much our community values safe, accessible spaces for outdoor activities.

Thank you for this.

Wonderful.

High quality production.

If that's, we'll go through our order.

That's okay.

Just comments.

Just said really beautifully produced and really informative.

So thank you very much for this.

The ability to see this and to share it with the community is really great.

Yeah, I appreciated the point about it.

You can't tell all the stories about what staff is doing and all of that, but I mean, this does capture it.

I'd like to request, I know you pushed this out in different venues, but I think all of our CAC members would enjoy seeing it.

So if it, and I know we have a specific mailing lists for them, at least for my, I mean, I expect for all, but if we could push that out to the CACs, I think they'd enjoy, enjoy watching the video.

and I do want to make a comment about the, because the speed zones were, were put in there.

I had a meeting down here yesterday afternoon and I've done, and I had to rush from here to go get my son in Albemarle High School.

And I've had to do that trip many times over the years to get to the high school from here.

And I have to say that between the improvements on hydraulic road, that was the easiest at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I'm not saying it was like

Clean, but the improvements with the roundabout and the left turn lanes gone, that is the most efficient or fastest time I've made during that time of day to get to Albemarle.

And when I hit the speed zone, it was the first time that I have seen in both directions.

People knew they were in a school zone.

It's the culture.

It's changing the culture.

So it's starting to change and appreciate that effort.

But like the roundabout and some of the road improvements there, that's not something you can, I mean, we can't sell everything.

But there is noticeable things being done out there.

So good stuff on putting this together.

I think the roundabouts have definitely cut down on any red light, people going through red lights and getting into crashes and such so I love roundabouts.

and I agree that this presentation should go out to all the CACs and I know you're going to do that.

Would you also send us a PowerPoint today because I've got to speak with WINNA tomorrow so I want all the stats for this.

But thank you very much for putting this together.

It was really, it was very nice and a big compliment to the staff because they're the ones that make all this happen and so a big thank you to the staff.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

And will this be linked on the website for people like me in the country with terrible broadband who couldn't possibly even open the big file when it comes?

There'll be another way to see it where it's not downloaded.

We'll distribute it through all of our normal channels.

We'll send out emails.

We'll put it on our website.

We'll put it on social media.

Yeah, so I can get the email and pull the link off to put it on my newsletter, that'll be good.

I was fascinated and someone will have to explain to me how a ladder truck does a water rescue, but that's not for this afternoon.

I'm thinking we had so much experience in Greenwood two times with the campground that flooded and people had to be evacuated in the middle of the night, but there were

County, New

so appreciative of the work that John Apprandi is doing with the whole emergency planning department.

I mean, he was second day on the job when the snowstorm in January happened a couple of years ago and was instrumental in getting services.

It took 20, 48 hours, but getting services to the residents at the Meadows who had been totally forgotten by their landlords.

So I was really, really grateful for that ongoing effort as well.

Thank you, and I very much appreciate that we get out there and tell our story.

And this is a great way to do it.

I'm tempted to say let's just all watch it again for one more, no, save that.

You can see that at home tonight with the popcorn.

But yeah, thank you very much.

If there's anything further?

Which brings us to from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda.

Again, Supervisor McHugh.

I'm fine, thank you.

A few things from boards and commissions briefly.

At a recent meeting of the TJPDC, there was some interesting comments from some of our neighbors.

Supervisor Outon Nelson, I thought, had quite a lot of interesting points to make.

County, New York, New

and

is

What PVCC does and how that differs from some of our neighboring community colleges, noting that PVCC and his experience focuses a lot more on new collar kind of jobs, things that are working class jobs in tech adjacent industries, rather than a more traditional blue collar work.

made me realize that I think I need to have a better understanding of the work that we're doing at PVCC and make sure that we are adequately serving all the various needs in our community.

I would also like to share that we had a thorough and exciting conversation around bead in the broadband authority yesterday.

This is kind of the last, last mile program designed to pick up the remaining

County.

Remaining households that aren't going to be fully touched by body deployment for broadband.

The final stragglers.

There are 327 individual locations that are going to be eligible in Albemarle County.

And the broadband authority is planning once this gets approval from the board in January to vet individual letters from service providers who think that they can make a go at those

some exciting work for the broadband authority moving forward.

Just to mention the next Wednesday at 2pm is the meeting for the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership.

It's the quarterly meeting, but there will be, I think I've mentioned this before, the policy director and legislative affairs person from Virginia Housing will be there giving a print.

It's virtual, not be there, but will be providing a presentation on, you know, some prognosticating of the General Assembly related to housing issues.

and then some other presentations from members of our own committee will be doing some things.

So it could be of interest to those, beyond just those who are already appointed to that body.

So I would invite you to attend if you have some time free there next Wednesday.

Thank you.

Supervisor Lucquisto-Curley.

Just reminding everyone that at 10 o'clock on Saturday, we will have the Biscuit Run opening with the Grand Oak, well, the

Public Opening at noon on that day.

So really looking forward to that.

So I think we can wear casual clothes.

We probably don't have to be out.

I was going to be cold.

We'll all be in puffer coats.

OK, so that's fine.

That'll work.

That'll work.

But otherwise, I wish everybody a very merry Christmas and a happy holidays.

Good work on behalf that the staff has done throughout the whole year.

So really, really appreciate that.

We are extremely, as a board, I feel we're extremely lucky to have such a great, talented, qualified staff in all areas.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just a very brief update from the workforce center yesterday.

The local agency has passed with flying colors A plus on performance review from the state and met all of the goals except one, which is 1% below target for dislocated workers because we hadn't had any major

County.

So I'm very proud of what they've accomplished, and we have a considerable amount of money, instead of almost being on the line of credit at the last quarter of the year, the budget is diversified now with outside grants coming in, which supplement the money that local governments provide for special projects, and also what the state

takes.

And it is interesting, I thought of this as we were talking about the overhead for the EDA, the state takes 30% off the top of the federal money to do something with.

And they have spent millions on consultants to do new planning, strategic reinvention of the system almost every year since I joined the board in 2008.

And my focus totally has been on getting services to individual people, those people who are transitioning from one job to another or getting

in reentry and need to have skills to have a new life.

So lots of different all hands on deck to be required for that.

And also there was an email mailing coming out about HB 206, which was published last year.

And this is a focus on protection of soils and ag land, protection of soils in general, food producing land.

when solar projects are coming in and the startling fact I wanted to to bring up briefly because I know we will at some point be considering a solar ordinance and how to go forward is often in order to avoid state regulation process a developer will get control of the land and strip off all the timber before they even have a permit

and Sel, this was reporting sales of the topsoil, which takes a thousand years to regrow, stripping everything down to the bare nothing.

And then if they lose interest, as has happened in the past, especially in Southwest Virginia, where they've walked away from thousand acre disturbances, everybody's left holding the bag and the destruction is horrific.

So I will ask all of us to be thinking about how ways that we can work with staff to

and the

County already had our own rules, and therefore we were protected and our ordinance stood when other counties who hadn't done anything couldn't.

So I will ask us to think about that as we go forward in working on all these other procedural things.

I know everybody's busy, but we may need to do some little special targeting of some of these issues to get this done before we lose another year.

and thank you everybody.

I'll hopefully see people at noon at the, I'll see, hopefully people at Biscuit Run at 10 and the Rays at noon on Saturday.

Thank you.

Thank you for all those reports.

I want to just double up on Supervisor Bruitt's report on the ALA meeting.

It's a very informative, productive meeting.

We heard about VATI 2021, finally being invoiced, going to DHCD for the payments to Brightspeed, which has taken a long time to get through.

VATI 2022, Firefly is on schedule.

Dominion has done a tremendous amount of the work, getting things onto the poles, and they're now looking to finishing up some of the splicing to be able to get the miles ready.

We also heard about the effects of the board funding of the Albemarle County Bridge Program, which has kept 700 households connected and otherwise might have fallen off the rules.

All of this shows, you know, the success of the broadband efforts and the broadband office, which brings me to the saddest part of the report, which is that Mike Hulp, it was his last meeting.

He will be retiring in, I guess, February 1 technically, but in January at some point.

So we celebrated Mike, including with former supervisors.

Palmer was there and Donna Price wrote in about it.

I couldn't let this go without at least commenting on it.

and he has developed a great Rolodex.

I hope Mike will be missed.

He was wonderful.

My quick question, if I may, about the

Albemarle.

doing anything.

There are lots of issues.

I think you should bring this up with Mike Holtman and Jason Influentes.

I mean, as I said, within the last couple of months, it was still 2025, but there's, you know, it takes years to get

Board, I believe you have received probably among your hundreds of emails just a mention that tomorrow afternoon our employees will engage in a holiday party at two o'clock at Fifth Street and that's at two o'clock tomorrow.

You're an extremely busy group of people but if you have any way to come by and say hello to folks they would love to see you and that'll be at Fifth Street tomorrow at two o'clock.

and hats off to Abby and her team for the annual report.

I'm always proud of our staff in trying to pick what may make the most sense.

I love the collaboration and partnership theme.

So many things we do, it depends on our key partners in order to get it done.

So Mr. Chair, thank you.

Hope to see you folks tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

University of Toronto.

No.

We have a motion from Supervisor Pruitt, and a second from Supervisor Malek, without objection, if the clerk will call the roll.

Thank you.

Board, I think this concludes our business, and we will adjourn to Wednesday, January 8th, 2025, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in this meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors' homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.