Board of Supervisors Regular Meeting   1/22/2025

Good afternoon, and I'm pleased to call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 22nd of January, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note 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 myself, Jim Andrews, representing the Samuel Miller District.

Corum is present.

We're also joined by our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our interim county attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our clerk, Ms.

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

Also, let me please welcome Albemarle County police officers present, master police officer, Jerry Schenck, and officer, Tayvon Richardson.

If all present, could please stand as you are able and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Board, our first order of business course is to adopt the final agenda.

I have not heard of any suggested changes to the final agenda.

I will note that one of the consent agenda items is to note that our first meeting in February would start at 5 p.m.

instead of 1 p.m.

Are there any other, if there are no suggested changes, then is there a motion to accept the final agenda?

Ms.

Lapista-Curtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Malek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Yes, few things.

First off, I don't think I actually need to tell anyone this, but it's worth reminding people that the weather is absolutely foul.

And there are still some roads, some private parking lots, some things like that that have accumulation of ice in paths of vehicle travel or in passive personal travel.

Additionally, it is not really conducive to life inside the temperature.

So make sure if you got pets that they're inside,

if you got people.

County.

I'm sure that they're inside.

This is not whether that you should be out and if you do not need to go out.

Additionally, you know, it is still ongoing legislative time.

General Assembly is in session.

They're only in session for about a month.

This is their short session and there is a lot of important work.

I'm sure other members of my peers will touch on.

I want to mention that two very important budget amendments are both moving forward.

Delegate

Park, the additional spur to Biscuit Run to connect over to the other side to the Southwood community is moving forward.

Additionally, there is quite a lot moving on the Rivanna Station budget amendment.

Dishley, a few things that I am tracking that were not necessarily things that the board was highlighting but I would like to share with the public.

Delegate Naderius-Clark has reintroduced his rent stabilization bill and is moving forward so far and Delegate Coulson has been working actually with me through my other job.

on an Algorithmic Pricing Bill, which is going to be very exciting.

It's going to take site at these illegal cartels enabled by organizations like RealPage that allow people to artificially raise rents through illegal coordination with other parties using algorithmic approaches.

Very exciting stuff.

Thank you very much for this opportunity and touching on legislation HB 1666 by Jones regarding photo speed cameras that's something that the board as a whole has prioritized for several years now is being heard in committee around four o'clock so we do hope that that does go through and so we'll see what happens there.

The other thing I wanted to mention is

Albemarle

County Police Department has done an outstanding job of making sure that the animals are safe and done their job.

I know Green County was involved also in doing

some things with other dogs, but we have to respect the process and make sure that we don't judge anyone before we know all the facts because when you listen to social media a lot of those facts get distorted depending on how people believe.

and they just stored them on because they want to.

We have very caring people that live in Albemarle County, but once again we have to respect the process and let the legal system go through what it has to go through, protecting our animals but also protecting or making sure that everyone is heard and we know the full complete story.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

I'm fine.

Thank you.

Supervisor Calloway.

I have no announcements.

Thank you.

I'll have just a couple.

The Crowley-Earth and Craft Festival is on Mother's Day weekend, but it is now time for, excuse me.

People, artists who would like to participate to apply for the jury selection process, which will be beginning, is available now.

And also for non-profit groups who would like to partner and have a table at the festival.

So the Crozet Arts and Crafts Festival website has all the information.

in the environmental line in the freezing cold and beautiful sunshine last Saturday.

I went on a very long hike several miles along the Meachams River with a landowner who has trails but also wanted to show me and others this serious

County,

a steep drop

University.

And I missed the word.

There are several different terms, headword, migration, headword, erosion, or head cutting.

And so it's 22 years since the drought and it's had its way, possibly to make its way all the way out past the three rivers junction and into the mechums.

and we'll all be charging on to keep writing our General Assembly members pursuing support or opposition to various bills that we're all dealing with.

So thank you all for your help with that and the local government day is tomorrow afternoon and people will be descending on Richmond for the VACO meeting and then descending on the General Assembly to track people down.

Thank you.

On the subject of waterways, I just want to call attention to the Batesville community, which is organized after the Batesville floods, looking to the future community conversation tomorrow evening, 7 to 8, 30 of the Batesville Methodist Church.

And that includes talks with our emergency management, fire rescue, environmental services personnel from the county, talking to the community after a 6 p.m.

potluck at Batesville.

So I'm looking forward to being there.

I did forget the great news about Billy Wagner, who is an Albemarle County landowner who has been, either husband or will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

It was a very, very challenging picture.

and lives in the Whitehall District and coached us.

It's really developed the program, a baseball program at Miller School with great success.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Board this brings us to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings.

We have some signups and Supervisor McKeough will read the rules and read the names.

We do have signups.

We have four folks in person and no one online.

So I will read the rules first.

During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered are currently pending before the board other than scheduled public hearings.

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.

University of Charlottesville

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

In order 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 Elmore County, your Magisterial District.

Address comments directly to the Board as a whole.

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Do not speak from your seat or out of turn.

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

Please talk into the microphone as much as possible.

Pull it right to me like this.

Okay, my name is Suzanne Keller, Anna Keller, and I'm an Albemarle County voter.

I'm in Mike Pruitt's district, and I live at Cavalier Crossing, a housing complex off Fifth Street Extended.

Most of the residents are extremely low income, like myself.

As you may know, it's been bought by an investment firm that's kicking out all the current residents at the end of July to turn it into luxury apartments.

There are 144 units rented by the room, three to four rooms per unit, and the rent is $500 to $600 per month.

At full capacity, it houses about 400 people, and though it's far from full capacity now, even if there are only 100 to 200 residents, that's a flood of very low income people who are going to be looking for housing at the end of July.

People like me, I'm on Social Security, and my income is about $15,000 per year.

I just want to ask, how is the Albemarle and Charlottesville area

going to accommodate all these people who are in the same position.

Please consider this when you think about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Vicki Bravo.

I'm representing Impact, our local interfaith community organization of 25 various faith organizations that work on community problems.

As you know, we've been speaking to you for some years now about affordable housing, in particular about establishing an affordable housing trust fund, which we know

was voted in as part of the new housing policy in 2021, contingent on passing the developer incentives.

We know that the developer incentives have been passed.

and now we are looking to you to start the affordable housing trust fund funded at $10 million a year and prioritizing people at 60% area median income which is about $75,000 and below.

We all know it's a terrible problem so I'm not even going to talk about that.

except to say that in the county website it says that there are over 10,000 homeowners and renters now in the county struggling to find housing they can afford.

What I want to focus on is that over 700 communities across the country have affordable housing trust funds, cities and counties.

Among counties around the country, the average that they can leverage

is eight dollars for every one dollar they spend from the trust fund.

So they spend a dollar and that helps them qualify for eight dollars from other sources that wouldn't be available to them without them putting the money in.

So what I want to say is, the longer we wait to start the trust fund, the longer we don't get this leveraged money into the county.

and the last thing is that I have learned that the number of kids who live in the county who do not have secure housing is enough to fill a middle school.

The third speaker, Stuart Overby.

If you give them to our clerk, or give them to Jeff, he'll pass them down for us, one way or the other.

Thank you.

Okay.

Hi everybody.

I'm a steward at Overby.

I'm part of a grassroots group in southern Albemarle called Don't Spread on Me.

I live in Samuel Miller District.

And I'm speaking today about the AC44 Environmental Stewardship Chapter.

The handout is a copy of comments.

I've also emailed you all, so you'll have them electronically with the links work.

So in here, there are some specific recommendations, requests for language to be added to the AC44, but I just wanted to highlight some recent news before we go into that.

on January 14th.

In a 300-page report, the EPA finally admitted that PFAS chemicals in sewage sludge, what the industry calls biosolids, used as fertilizer on farmland poses serious health risks to those farmers who have used it and to the people who live nearby.

The EPA also provided fact sheets for farmers and the general public for whom to contact with their concerns.

They recommend, and I quote, consider contacting your state environmental agency, that would be DEQ, or a county government, that would be you all.

to learn about its efforts to address PFOA and PFOS, including in wastewater and biosolids.

Many wastewater systems have not yet collected sewage sludge monitoring data for PFOA and PFOS, so these other resources may have more information.

So my question for you today is this.

What will you say to folks when they ask, what are you doing about PFAS-contaminated biosolids as the EPA recommends?

Telling them there's nothing we can do isn't true.

There is a lot you can do.

You can direct staff to create a report on biosolids.

You can adopt an ordinance, as at least 17 other Virginia counties have done, to regulate test and monitor the land application of sewage sludge.

and you can add language to the AC44 to help guide local government response to the situation and we have further in this four specific things that we're hoping you would like one or more of them and we'd love to talk more with you about them and finally you can direct the county attorney's office to revisit its assessment of the file solids ordinance issue from 2011

in light of the new information about PFAS, there'll be some other things for them to consider.

Like one, the potential cost to the county of doing nothing, for example lawsuits.

Two, the biosolids ordinance from Rappahannock County that we could adopt as a model.

And three, any other actions the county could legally take to support people who may have been exposed and to prevent others from future exposure.

Hello.

My name is Sophie Massie.

I live in the Samuel Miller district near Scottsville.

I'd like to reiterate everything that Stuart said, especially the need for an updated staff report.

I think it would be wonderful if we could be proactive in our outreach and education on biosolids because so many people in this community don't know about PFAS or biosolids and that's not because it's not happening here.

It's widespread, particularly in Southern Albemarle where I live.

I think the county does a fantastic job of outreach with PSAs about how to drive in snow and other

County, New York.

obviously who lives on or near land that's been applied with biosolids but also people who may have other levels of risk like they live near the airport as well or they live near the decommissioned landfill.

PFAS bio accumulates and that would be added risk if they have both biosolids and these other contaminated sites.

I think it's been fantastic how the municipal drinking water has been proactively treated for PFAS by adopting the GAC

granular activated carbon filters early before the EPA required that.

And I think that's wonderful.

And I think it's wonderful that people who live on municipal water enjoy clean water.

But a lot of folks in this county live on private water.

And even if they're really proactive about testing their wells, like through Virginia Tech's private well water testing program, that doesn't test for PFAS.

Nobody is routinely testing for PFAS.

that doesn't mean that PFAS tests don't exist.

We could be educating people on the options that are out there.

And we should be because, again, the EPA is telling people to come to you for advice.

So I'd just like to close by saying that I'm not concerned for people that live in town or in Scottsville or anyone on municipal water, but I'm deeply concerned about people who are on well water.

And rural folks deserve clean water, too.

Thank you.

Board, this brings us to the Consent Agenda.

Again, I've heard no suggestions of anything being pulled from the Consent Agenda.

And I'll remind you again that it includes an item to move our next meeting up to start at 5 p.m.

I move the option of the Consent Agenda.

We have

Which brings us to our big item for the afternoon, which is AC44, Environmental Stewardship Chapter.

This is being led by Scott Clark, Conservation Program Manager and Tanya Swartz-Druber Planning Manager.

Welcome.

I see others here as well and look forward to the discussion.

Good afternoon, I'm Tanya Schwarzenegger, your planning manager for the community development department here to talk to you about the comprehensive plan and the environmental stewardship chapter.

So today we'll be looking at the environmental stewardship feedback that we received from the PC back in December.

will look at the community input themes that we've heard so far, go through the objectives, and then focus finally on the discussion topics and review the upcoming schedule for the following chapters.

Here are the direction topics that were provided to you in your packet, as well as the presentation that was sent earlier.

And this slide will show up at the end of the presentation as well for your reference.

So the PC had a few comments based on our presentation about a month and a half ago.

They suggested that we incorporate macro level biodiversity impacts and also recommended using data and targets to measure progress for biodiversity protection, including the heat maps.

They also wanted us to consider adopting a fire hazard overlay similar to how the flood hazard overlay functions currently.

Our community input themes that we've heard throughout the process have been grouped into the following categories and focused primarily on protecting our waterways and improving water quality as well as protecting biodiversity and ecosystems and improving habitat connectivity.

So throughout the public process and with your input and the PC's input, we have developed the environmental stewardship goal that addresses healthy, thriving and resilient ecosystems, prioritizes connected habitats and natural carbon sinks, and values natural environment for inherent beauty and benefits to local animals and plants.

These are the objectives that we developed and the actions that we will go over later.

Implement these objectives.

I won't read these to you since they're provided in your packet, but they do address those same topics that we heard from the community PC and yourselves.

We did make a few changes from the 2015 plan, basically updating the goals and objectives to reflect the current community input and those themes really focused on clean and healthy waterways, drinking water protection, biodiversity, natural hazard mitigation, all of the same themes that we heard.

through public input.

We also incorporated the updated county plans, which are the Biodiversity Action Plan and the Stream Health Initiative, and Scott Clark will be talking about that in a few moments.

The summary of your input that we've heard previously is here on the screen, and you all supported using Biodiversity Action Plan to evaluate

applications and potential impacts, as well as supported increased groundwater protections and programs and financial assistance to address failing septic systems.

You provided input that we should consider improving requirements for tree coverage and tree replacement.

These recommendations, as you have already heard about for the development areas land use, have been included into that chapter.

We also heard that you all wanted us to implement more effective lighting requirements to protect dark skies while also taking into consideration safety of our community members.

I'm going to let Scott go ahead and focus on the related chapters and take you through the rest of the presentation.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Scott Clark, the conservation program manager in community development.

So what this slide reviews is what is included in this chapter and what isn't.

You'll see that this chapter focuses on water supply protection, water quality, biodiversity, and natural systems.

Of course, you'll see immediately that's not the entire scope of environmental stewardship.

So there are several other topics that are addressed elsewhere in the plan.

just for example here you'll see that some climate matters such as emissions reductions are just throughout several chapters.

Resiliency issue is in the resilient community chapter.

Land conservation for example is mostly in the rural area land use chapter.

So it's spread out across several chapters with the focus here being on water and biodiversity.

As Tanya mentioned, we've tried to take the recommendations from the stream health initiative and the biodiversity action plan and reflect those in the drafting of this chapter.

So I'll just review that in the next few slides.

The stream health initiative has come out of a long history of water resource protection in the county since the 70s.

Back in 2017, the board directed staff to develop strategies for improving stream health throughout the county.

there were two phases one focused on development area related issues or development related issues and then phase two which was more focused on the rural area and included a large stakeholder review and public input process and then a series of 14 recommended programs that were presented to the board in the end of 2021.

So the next two slides are just an attempt to show you how those 14

program recommendations are reflected in this chapter or elsewhere.

I won't read every single one out to you, but you can see that except for a couple that are already underway, the stream health recommendations are all reflected in individual actions under the objectives that Tanya showed you a few minutes ago.

and so there's 14 of them, so we have two slides.

There is one that we realized the watershed education that in recent edits we had lost from the action, so we'll add that back in.

But the other 13 of the 14 are in there as actions.

Just wanted to, because it's one of your discussion questions for today, just wanted to call out number 11 here, which is the low impact development item.

And just as a refresher for everyone, these are

Water Quality Protection processes in development that try to mimic natural processes and reduce the impacts of development on downstream water resources.

Second, we've also tried to follow the recommendations of the Biodiversity Action Plan in drafting the related actions for this chapter.

just as a quick reminder the action plan came out of the 1996 to 1998 comprehensive plan process which called for the creation of the natural heritage committee and development with staff of a biodiversity protection plan.

The work group was created in 2004 to set up that process.

2005 the committee was created.

It wasn't until 2018 that the action plan was completed by the Natural Heritage Committee and by previous program managers.

And then in 2019, some of the key recommendations were adopted into the existing Natural Resources Chapter of the 2015 Complan.

and again this is just to show you how the recommendations are reflected in the current chapter, the current draft chapter.

These nine priority recommendations came from the executive summary to the biodiversity action plan.

The plan itself has 60, 70 individual recommendations of actions that might be taken.

These were the nine that were prioritized for soonest action in that report and again all of those are reflected

either in this chapter or in one case in the developmentary land use chapter.

And this is just a map, one of the products of the biodiversity action plan.

There were several map and geographic projects came out of that.

This was the conservation focus areas, which was intended to guide

So this is the schedule for the next month and a half, I believe.

So we're here to you today on environmental stewardship.

The next time we see you will be February 12th, and we'll be going over the revisions that we've already made to the chapters that you've already reviewed.

So those chapters are the development areas land use chapter, the rural area land use chapter, and then the growth management policy.

So that'll be February 12th.

And then Parks and Recreation will be presented to the PC next week and to you on February 19th.

I also wanted to point out that we have our quarterly community check-in on January 29th in this room at the Linging Auditorium at the County Office Building.

Again January 29th from 6 to 8.

We will be discussing the environmental stewardship chapter as well as the Parks and Rec chapter.

There is a virtual option that will allow folks to access the

presentation of that input, of that meeting.

Unfortunately, just because of technical challenges, we won't be able to cover the breakout sessions of that, but if you are participating virtually, you'll be able to go to our website and provide your feedback in that manner.

Here is the website address and we continually upload the chapters as they are finished.

There are multiple ways to keep in touch by signing up for emails and newsletters as well as providing your feedback on several of the questions that we have available.

With that, I'll leave the direction topics up for you all to discuss.

Thank you.

Okay.

I think that should work.

Okay.

So we will start in our order with implementation of incentives for low impact development for stormwater management.

Thank you.

Just to clarify, are we doing a round entirely on the first bullet and then a round entirely?

So I appreciate the section of the presentation that told me what this was because I'm not sure I knew what it was previously and I actually starred that as.

What is that?

Can we actually flash to that slide so I can have it on the screen?

I apologize.

I don't have any issues with prioritizing, incentivizing it.

I think the language we use currently in Section 2.1 is allow, encourage, or require.

Allow seems like pretty baseline.

Insofar as it's not violative of the building code, encourage seems like what we would normally strive for.

The use of the term require gives me pause.

That's not what this bullet says, but it's what is in the draft that we are provided with.

I appreciate the fact that there's an ore there, but it is something that I might always have some nerve about an advocate coming in the future saying, hey, you told us you would require rooftop gardens on all multi families, which is not what we said, but I would be worried that that would be a window we might open with this.

which doesn't have any basis, right?

But that's the only thing that gives me pause.

Thank you.

Yes, I like the wording and I'm in favor of this.

I'm just for clarification, we're going to go through these four bullets.

If we have something that we want to present that's not... I think the fourth bullet is, are there any topics or actions needed?

Okay, so we'll be able to do... Okay, that sounds wonderful.

Yes.

Perfect.

I just want to make sure... And we will also go through the actions

Right, sounds good, just for clarity, maybe as much for me as well as the public and staff, but anyway, that's great, thank you.

I have just a couple of questions about the first bullet.

Yes, yes.

So if we, if we prioritize them, right, and we, we actually prioritize them for implementation, are we going to get feedback on how we're actually doing, how successful it's been?

I'm just looking for some feedback on how it's been incorporated.

Yeah, I mean, I just think if we prioritize that, I see Frank walking up.

Hello, Frank Polk, County Engineer.

I may be able to answer that.

So as an alternative to low impact development type BMPs, a lot of folks use offsite credits.

So one way we can monitor this is, I'm going to say the same thing I said the other night, with the new system, we're tracking nutrient credits on site

Okay, it just seems like to me that it would be good to have

as we're talking about this have a measurable column or something that says this is how we're doing so you I think you understand what I'm asking for and I hear you but what has happened in the past is we don't really get much of this implemented everybody the developers always choose the credits which means that they just pay us money and while I'm not totally against credits

It's really not accomplishing it, in my opinion, what we're trying to do.

And I'd like some thoughts on that.

Maybe not now, but I mean, if we're just going to support continuing the same, it's kind of like... So I do have a few thoughts.

It's like our formal housing.

If we keep on doing the same thing we're doing, we're not making any progress.

Yeah, incentives are, what do they mean to a developer, right?

There's a performer that they've got to meet and there's risks, right?

So there are limits on credits.

For instance, if you have more than 10 pounds that are required, you have to do 75% of your treatment on site.

So the state and the county has already adopted that regulation when they're over 10 pounds.

but under 10 pounds they can buy all of their credits from a bank.

So how do you incentivize on-site treatment?

And I don't know the answer to that other than a financial type of incentive or density or there are things that could require changes to the ordinance that would qualify as an incentive.

I don't know how often, but I mean it is frequent and I don't know, it's probably the majority of the time whenever it's available to them.

I don't know that we can do that based on state code, because the state has limitations on what we can prohibit.

For instance, we have to have a TMDL.

One way to prohibit is having a nutrient TMDL in our streams, or in a stream, and then that watershed you can restrict nutrient credit purchases, like Harrison Berg did recently, probably two or three years ago.

That's one way to restrict.

Other than that, we have to allow it.

Right.

So help me a little bit, and I'm sorry if I'm taking too long with this, but I really want to understand.

Yeah, Harrison, the city of the city.

They had a TMDL that was recently acknowledged by DEQ or issued by DEQ.

So how's that playing out for them?

And I guess my question is looking at, so we have Harrison Berg as an example.

Are there any other best practices that we have looked at or have we evaluated that might be out there so that we're not having to reinvent the wheel?

But I'm very concerned that what's happening here is that we're not getting to what we are trying to get to with our

County.

That's allowed by law, though.

So they're allowed to restrict the purchase of nutrient credits when there is a nutrient TMDL in a stream within their jurisdiction.

So one of their streams has a nutrient TMDL.

So Frank, I'm very naive.

Help me understand.

So our streams are mainly impaired by sediment.

We have, yeah, so we have a lot of streams of sediment TMDLs.

We've talked to DEQ about making that connection, and we were told no.

So I don't believe, well, I should be careful how I say this, but I believe there is a connection.

Let's put it that way.

But we would have to do a study to prove that to the DEQ.

And that's no small study.

You have to make that connection.

That sediment causes nutrient deficiencies or TMDLs also.

And I don't know if that, you know, when you start getting into it, I don't know if I can't say that there is a connection, but I believe there is, because when you see these sediments, there's, excuse me, in the other TMDLs, there's usually sediments involved and nutrients attached to sediments, right?

and when they get stirred up, they're stirred up.

So I'm not a chemist, so I don't know of all the things, the binding properties, or I can't get into the details.

But I think a study wouldn't be needed to try and make that connection.

And if that were possible, then I can't remember the number of streams, Laurel, that have a... I see some movement there.

Lora might know the number of streams in the county that have a sediment team deal, but there are quite a few.

So other than that, the incentive route is the way to go.

And we've heard of density as being an incentive.

And financially, of course, that's another type of incentive.

I don't know what other meaningful incentives there could be for the developer to increase their on-site treatment.

So I see some supervisors leaning in and I also see Jody leaning in.

Did you have, I'm reading body language, Jody.

Did you have something you wanted to add to?

You're okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So we'll put that aside for right now.

May come back to that later.

I have another question.

The low-incent impact development, let me go to that list.

Trying to find that list here.

I think I have, there we go.

Yes, formidable pavements.

I remember very clearly, Mark Graham, our previous

director, Jody's predecessor, saying to us that permeable pavements didn't do not work in our community because of our soil, because of our red clay.

I know that they are used on occasion.

I see them some in the city and areas.

And then at the same time, part of the discussion was

If you use them, it is so expensive because what you have to do is prep the soil so much and create such a

Base, I guess for lack of a better word.

So I'd like to just hear a little bit about that because it just to go out and say we're going to reuse and I'm all for them.

They make great sense, except if our soil, if they don't work well with our soil and then it's costing more, the cost is greater than they're probably not going to be used.

There's pushback.

So help me with this a little bit.

has that changed?

There are different types of soil throughout the county.

So some areas of the county, a lot of areas are not permeable.

So that is true for those areas.

But there are some other areas that permeable pavements may be adequate or not adequate, but a good choice for

County.

And that makes sense.

So do we differentiate with that?

No.

I mean, it's in the specifications of how to create or build or design, I should say, these

You can also have an underdrain in the pavement so if you do have a hard pan impermeable under a base then you can put in under drains that will drain the stone out and it still counts for credit.

So it, even though we do have some, you know, poor soils throughout most of the county, you can still use the permeable pavements.

The issue for permeable pavements that I see is maintenance, long-term maintenance, you have to vacuum these out.

Frequently, or they get clogged, and if they get clogged, they just don't function.

And then you've got to tear it all out, which is very costly.

That's another issue in the vacuum machines.

I'm not sure.

There are a few of them in the county.

So if we implemented these principles and practices, would that be part of our instructions?

Frank, where I'm going with this.

And I also just heard you say, I think that most of the land in the county had the soil that was made it very difficult to use these.

Is that right?

Do we know?

I mean, is it 60, 40, 80, 100?

I don't know at the top of my head because it also depends on the depth and when you get to a certain layer.

But these are all available options, right?

And that makes sense.

It's water-staining stuff.

The idea of the permeable pavers is that you would recharge the groundwater, that it would go into the ground and not have an underdrain.

So maybe he was speaking to that, but again, it depends on where you are in the county.

Most of the county, as you get towards the mountains, my experience is also that we have very poor soils, but biofilters

are similar in the fact that they rely on permeability infiltrating into the biofilter.

But we see those being installed with under drains in them.

And they still reduce phosphorus and they provide a nutrient reduction for the site.

So in a similar fashion permeable pavers

Interesting.

Well, I don't have a problem with these.

I was just, to be honest with you, I just remembered that conversation and you've really helped a lot with clarifying what the difference is and what is happening.

So obviously, as we would work through this particular item, we would be working with folks with an understanding of what it takes and

what it means.

So it would be any type of development?

Well, I would agree with that.

I just wanted to make sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just looking at my notes here.

So I was thinking about the incentives being stronger, but what I'm hearing is, because I was thinking about required, but

Oh, we have someone else coming up to join.

Hi, I'm really sorry.

I stepped in late.

I misjudged how quickly you would get to this item.

My name is Greg Harper, Chief of Environmental Services and FES.

And my colleague back there, Laurel, reminded me that we had a meeting with DEQ a couple of years ago.

And Frank, you may remember this.

County.

Guidance from DEQ is never super clear.

So we have to interpret kind of what they say during meetings.

We got the impression a couple of years ago that if we wanted to make LID a requirement or make on-site water quality treatment,

a requirement when it may not necessarily be required with the normal rules.

We have the authority to develop a watershed improvement plan to address impaired streams, whether they're impaired because of sediment or benthic or nutrients.

So we could take the initiative to

explore what would be required to help us to return our streams to a healthy status and that could result in us tightening restrictions and requiring more on-site water quality treatment if we wanted to.

So I don't think requirement is completely off the board.

Would you agree or disagree?

That's good to know.

If we do go down that route, I think we would need to consider, of course, the tension between dense urban development and slightly less dense

development that has a slightly less impact on the environment.

So there will be that tension.

The more compact we can get urban areas, obviously, the less stress on other parts of the county there will be.

So that would need to be considered.

To just agree with you.

Yes.

Okay.

I think for right now, that's all I have.

I mean what you just brought up is the inherent tension in having the growth area of rural area because we're putting all the pressure on the growth area and we right away now we're starting an argument that do you want density or environmental protection and then folks will say well we want both and if we require it more regulation usually results in higher expense higher expense to development something does not get always gets passed along to the end user and we already have an affordability issue

County,

County,

of environmental protections versus focusing density and development in one area.

And, you know, there are plenty of folks that would argue that, well, it's worth it for it to cost more because the, you know, the outcome means that you're protecting the environment.

All right, I'm not disagreeing with that, but explain that to the person who's at 40% area median income and needs $200 more to afford a place to live

you know there's different prioritizations even though value judgments can change, value judgments can change given your particular living circumstance and for us to just take one area and not consider all of that can can be an issue for me to focus on number one and you answered my first question which what are the incentives which we have none you said we have no incentives you threw out density potentially

and some of these questions or comments I'm going to throw out are going to sound very critical of staff and they're not.

We are limited in time, resources, etc., and staff is incredibly overworked.

We passed the Biodiversity Action Plan in 2018 and under Goal 16, Protect and Restore Urban Streams, it says, number two, develop density bonuses, tax credits, or other incentives for preserving and restoring streams.

So my question

and it's not a gotcha, it's just a legitimate where we at.

Have we done that?

That was seven years ago, six and a half.

And we're now we're talking about putting this, putting, prioritizing the implementation of incentives into the comp plan, but our own biodiversity action plan hasn't checked this particular goal off.

that we've done.

Again, this is not blame or fault, that's fact.

So this is where I get leery of any plan.

The climate action plan, not to just pick on environmental things, but our housing affordable, housing Albemarle, our economic development, we oftentimes will say develop, support

and they get put into the action items in the goals, but then where's the scorecard for achieving it?

Had we already, I mean the conversation would be very different today if number two under goal 16 of the BAP would have been accomplished and achieved, point blank.

So I only bring that up, you know, to say that in our own action plans when we put in these different

Policy Plans.

I get, I mean I think as a supervisor we have to be careful of how much stuff we put in relative knowing what our reality of a work plan is given staff and resources or come budget time.

You know, there's no safer grants for community development department.

And they're the ones that have to do all this work that we're saying well it's important for somebody to pay a couple hundred dollars more in rent for environmental protection

but it's not tax rate important enough for us to raise taxes to do the work that we're saying we need to do in our climate action plan or BAP, et cetera.

So this is, at the end of the day, I do not want to require low impact the development.

The word require, I just see too many inherent conflicts within our own policies

and what we're trying to do in our specific situation that require is going to create issues.

If we're going to develop density bonuses or tax credits or other incentives for preserving and restoring streams, which is a goal in another plan, that specifically helps this.

Now, I'm thinking specifically of the growth area or the urban area, but it should help if it's outside of the growth area and the urban area.

So I would have no problem considering one of my questions was, you know, after rereading the biodiversity, you know, which the reason I read the Biodiversity Action Plan again was because the Planning Commission said that we should consider all applications for development against the Biodiversity Action Plan.

And when you read the Biodiversity Action Plan, 90-some percent of it doesn't even apply if you compared an application against it.

I mean, we're not going to, you know, take Rio Point out on, maybe Rio Point, maybe, I'm not Rio Point, out on Prophet Road where the stream and the salamanders, you know, there's some stuff like that.

There's a certain circumstance given that situation, but we didn't need a biodiversity action plan to come up and figure out that that application was scrutinized for wildlife and some other considerations.

So I guess my bigger point here is that we do a lot in the application review for development already because of the value system that you've heard from the board and that a lot of people that work for us hold.

And how can we make it easier on ourselves to say we already do a certain amount of this?

If we want more, then let's just hone in on specifically, yeah, let's give a density bonus and figure out

with developers what a true one

The public is the one that's going to have to pick up the cost on this.

So let's just identify what we say, you know, yeah, we'd be happy to give you a percentage density bonus if you were to do some of this low impact development pieces on your particular property.

I'd be happy to support that and find language for it.

But, you know, I didn't get to review the climate action plan.

Were there develop anything like develop incentives in the climate action plan?

because I don't remember.

I haven't re-read it.

Well, that's just, I feel like I'm ranting at this point.

I think I've answered the question here.

There's a lot of good recommendations in the biodiversity action plan for protecting or restoring urban streams specific to the development area.

I feel like that if those things were being accomplished that in and of itself I don't you know I think it in some ways it may even go further than rain barrels and rain gardens so you know this is a really complex issue for me taking the different areas trying to fit it into something that the comp plan is supposed to guide all of it but

I'm struggling with going, well, wait, where are we at with the current state of things that we said we were going to do in these other plans that if we were accomplishing or doing or checking the boxes off with, we could be at a different level in this comprehensive plan conversation.

It's so nice not to be the only one ranting, thank you.

I appreciate the company.

Just as a starter, Complain Language in my experience has always been consider and do something.

It's not the same as the zoning ordinance that says you have to do it now and otherwise or else.

So I'm never worried about those words particularly because it is things that we haven't necessarily done.

So that was just one thing I wanted to put in there.

Let me zoom back to the top here so I don't miss out.

Regarding the first bullet, I'm okay with a lot of it.

I think the only paver that I'm very familiar with is the Greenhouse Coffee in Crozet, where the parking is right next to a stream that feeds into Lever Creek.

and so on.

It was just the desire to do it right and to use that old house in that location where it was walkable for so many people that has helped it to succeed.

So it is always a trade-off of, yes, it's a higher expectation.

If it's someone who really cares to do a better job, then they will be drawn to that activity.

There are others who just want to do the bare minimum, and those have to have the requirements.

Otherwise, Frank and Greg

University.

I believe that was in the planning commission feedback that was mentioned.

I think the way we would address that, I hope, in a future revision of the Biodiversity Action Plan would be to establish

County.

The plan is lacking right now.

It has a lot of recommendations for what to do, but it doesn't have indicators to tell us how we're doing.

And there are the localities since that time, some in very different environments like Los Angeles, but they have developed a set of indicators for success.

So I think that's how we would approach

That's what's happened in 20 years since the plan was started.

So that's perfect.

I understand that completely.

Now, let me zoom down here.

I'm not... I think every time I go by the biosphere light here, which is fabulous and successful, and treats the huge volume of water from way up above Bodos all the way to the railroad track and maybe even further, and all of our parking lots and all of our rooftops,

that could just as easily, I guess, and probably more cheaply for the county, been one of those big steel tanks under the ground.

But it's going to rot, and then it's going to have to be replaced at some 50-year interval, just like all of our stormwater pipes that Greg is assessing all over the place.

So anytime we can push people to do

The at-surface level treatment, like the bioswales, not just a snake pit, as my predecessor used to lovingly call the VDOT holes, where it was just weeds and some water now and then.

But something that actually has the right kind of plantings and is a benefit.

I see people walking with their kids, looking at the flowers all season long.

It's a great asset, and it makes me very proud to be able to

Point people in that direction.

So prioritizing the low impact development, whatever features can be required in the building code and things that make it the way we do business going forward, I hope to see that.

I don't know what to say that would be words that you could put in the comp plan.

The whole credit nonsense is always very challenging for me because I get the streams and the nutrients and the wetlands and everything all mixed up in my brain and that I don't know.

I know we have some of each in the community, but in order to keep the benefit, whatever we can do, and you all figure out which category it goes in, that will allow the benefit to be retained in our area where the impact is happening is what our goals should be.

I've been still have nightmares about us not having any qualifiable facility like we do with the lagoon now, I think it's a qualified facility for Woodbrook Lagoon, correct?

So people can't, it's shaking your head.

So people then can still go down to Appomattox and drop the money in Appomattox.

We get no money either.

We're not making anything to offset the cleanup costs that our staff and taxpayers have to do.

The developer is still allowed to

go way beyond the carrying capacity of their particular soil and pay somebody in Appomattox to do, if it was, I guess, a wetland bank, then there's a bank up in Whitehall, and there's the stream bank in Jack Jewett, and I don't know of any nutury banks.

But the county could make one.

and so on.

Yeah, I'm gonna make sure Frank corrects me if I'm wrong, but I think the only bank that developers can buy nutrient credits from in the county is the Ivy Creek stream restoration that David Slutsky did.

I think that's when you mentioned.

The county cannot create banks for private developers to buy into.

We could we could bank our own credits for our own purposes.

Like if we were to do some development, we can trade just like any owner can.

But yeah, I think that's the that's the only one and you're right.

Okay, so that's still an unsolved question about how to figure that out, but I'm definitely in favor of trying to figure that out.

This is the 2015 Natural Resources Objective 1B, Prepare Submit and Implement a Watershed Implementation Plan.

It's been in there for 20 years, too.

So I was very intrigued when

The example was given of if we have go to the effort, prioritize the effort to do our watershed implementation plan, then that puts us in a better situation to be able to have requirements that help return our streams to good health, tight restrictions, et cetera.

So I'm also in favor of that.

And that also comes under this same category of either its incentives or it's a combination of carrots and sticks that

that would help us to reduce the impact of these things.

I know that I argued for years with Mark Graham who always said that in the growth area he was in favor of putting all the streams and pipes and not bothering with them.

But the drawback for that is that the quality of life of the people who live in the growth area is dramatically reduced when there's

no greenery, no open water, it's just one ocean of asphalt, and then that has its own problems.

So if we can also, in the same way that we're, the higher impacts that the growth area has due to density, etc., to me it's worth the investment of time and effort and money.

to do better than we're doing now, so that we have a better quality of life for the people who live in the growth area, because we want, I mean, that's the most cost-effective and environmentally, I guess, climate useful way to have people live is more compactly.

And most people do not want to live out in the country where I live.

They just say, I wouldn't live out here for a million dollars, and I understand, that's okay.

So we wanted to be a successful and healthy option for people in the growth area, and to me it's worth more effort than we are doing now.

Thank you.

I'm not sure we're clarifying real well here.

The question, I guess, has led to some confusion, I think, because, of course, if you look at Objective 2, there are references to requirement of low-impact development, and this just simply says prioritize implementation of incentives, and then we've got questions as to what are the incentives.

other than, you know, what we do with nutrient credits or something like that, but incentives as density or financial.

I guess where I get stuck is the word prioritize.

And that is, I'm not sure what it means to say to prioritize implementation.

It may help to clarify what the question is because we didn't mean to ask you all, do you want to recommend or require or do you want to focus on one of many, many possibilities because there are quite a few.

We contracted with Hirschman Environmental and they provided us a list of suggestions for addressing low impact development.

I want to say there were 55, something like that, you know, a whole wide range of code changes, possible types of infrastructure.

There's a lot to look at.

So we didn't mean to come to you all and say, do you want to do all that right now?

It was just you three, this is an important topic that deserves some staff resources and time.

Well right there you said after the buffer ordinance it's already underway and that tells me where it is in a priority and I do think that that's a good approach.

I'd like to see the buffer ordinance get and work get prioritized in that case but otherwise I'm supportive of this.

Not sure if others want to make additional comments or we want to go on to the next.

I just had a quick comment because I'm in favor I know we talked about

Okay, incentives, that's the whole thing, but like pavers and such, then I found out today, well, not all pavers really work that well, which reminds me of

are our county is so diverse that perhaps what we want to do, especially if we use the word require, what we want to do may apply in an urban area, in a rural area, but maybe not in another rural area or another urban area.

So that's the problem

that I'm having is I would like to be able to see if the Board does decide to have requirements that there's always someone who could say, you know, I would love to do that, but it doesn't fit on my piece of property, on my land.

Thank you.

I mean, I think one of the things you're hearing is that we're not necessarily experts on all the different ways in which this might be implemented.

So the question really is, are you going to spend some time looking into low impact development incentives?

We go on to the next question.

I think we can continue to try to.

County.

So should the actions

both biodiversity protection actions, but also on the county doing this on its own land and demonstrating.

I want to start with a slight kind of zoom out that supervisor Galway's comments kind of got me thinking on because he addressed how parts of

question one, our kind of duplicative with existing tasks in our biodiversity action plan that occurred to me, you know, I don't have the 2015 comprehensive plan committed to memory.

Maybe it's also a reference in the 2015 comprehensive plan.

I truly don't know.

Which now draws me into, I want to just voice a kind of lack of familiarity with our own program, our own internal program evaluation process and how that should be informing how we're thinking about this, right?

So like,

when I worked at the Office of Naval Intelligence.

That office has several, between a dozen and 400 national intelligence priorities that are assigned to it, broken into regions, broken into subspecialties, and then each one put into a portfolio with a single statement that is assigned to a senior analyst.

And it would be

Analyze and Document Country X's Mine Inventory and Strategies, something like that, right?

And that person every week is trying to collect every single publication, every single project, every single thing that happens under their portfolio.

put it all in a nice list.

They look at that, they make a subjective determination, and they put a dot on a line of bad to good of how well they're progressing toward accomplishing that national intelligence priority.

And all 12 to 400 of those get accumulated, put on slides, briefed all the way up to the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence.

very basic program evaluation.

That is just a single model.

I think that's pretty standard like corporate model for how are we doing the things we're curious about.

It occurs to me, we've talked recently about kind of going toward a more quantifiable approach with SPIR, but that is not getting at our stated goals in the comprehensive plan.

County.

That is a separate analytic tool for a separate set of analytic goals.

It's not getting at our stated goals for the biodiversity action plan.

It's not getting our stated goals for the housing Albemarle or our climate resilience plan.

And as someone who has served on this board for a year and a month, I'm realizing I don't always know when I'm circling the drain on something that has already been established in a

again I don't I would want to sound unfair or cruel with this but it's not always clear to me how much county staff is aware whether or not we're circling the drain on something that's already been established so can I get and I realize this is a big question that outstrips the environmental protections chapter but can I get a sense of

what that program evaluation process looks like in the comprehensive plan and how I should be understanding that in the context of what I'm saying on these push points, right?

And I don't know who is equipped in this room to answer that question.

Good afternoon, Board.

Jodi Falardo, Community Development Director.

Supervisor Pruitt, that's the million-dollar question.

One of the things that we have been focusing on, we being the AC44 team in looking at each of these chapters,

The follow-on to all of these chapters is the development of metrics to be able to tell you all where are we with these things?

I mean, it plays also to Supervisor Galway's earlier comments.

We've got to do a better job of reporting back on how these actions are being implemented or not.

We do try to knit together our spear list of tasks to accomplish in the year that coincides with your strategic action plan.

However, there are many more things that are in all of these plans that are really hard to integrate.

And so part of what we are going to be doing as we get done with these chapters is to come up with a list of metrics that we'll be able to present back to the board.

So, like I said, you're right on the money with that question.

It is not easy to knit those things together.

But that is our pledge to you all to try to do that so that you can know, are we making any progress on all these things you're asking us to do?

It does.

What we don't have is a well integrated set of any of these metrics because we've developed each of these plans as we've gone along with all of the best of intentions to do all of this work.

and very little time spent integrating all of those pieces.

Although with AC44 the team is reading through all of the Climate Action Plan because of the lens that we have presented to you all and promised to address and the Biodiversity Action Plan as it relates to environmental stewardship.

But overall with all of the actions from

2015's plan.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I guess what I'm reacting to is it feels like when we review these actions, there often is kind of

there is an existing crosswalk to previous policy statements that is invisible, right?

Like, we can say, oh, actually 2.1 and 2.2 are rearticulations and refinements of this specific action item that Supervisor Galway reported in the Biodiversity Action Plan.

Actually, this is carrying over and refining something from this discussion.

This is pulling from the 2015 plan and refining and updating it.

That is not

that information is available on request.

and on top of that, besides those various plans, we also have hours and hours of community feedback and stakeholder engagement and online feedback to us as well and our lunch and learn sessions that we do.

So it's a compendium of many things which makes it really difficult to say, this one thing came from this one place, right?

of course.

Thank

I am not clear if we are being asked to kind of develop on the spot whole cloth.

Like everything in our current set of objectives before us is notionally applicable to all land in the county.

This asks us, OK, the county owns certain lands.

Do you want more for that?

I am not a chemist, a conservation scientist.

I don't have a MIRP from VCU.

And so I guess I'm not clear if there are specific

County lands.

So I think that's one of the things we're being asked to consider in this thing.

If there are things staff would like us to consider as potential things to include as additional regulations that we would place over County lands.

And then I just maybe before we get even into that question or as you're getting the slides ready for that question.

I I might just ask for a very

and the lands that our facilities sit on, which would mostly be schools, buildings, police, fire stations.

That's accurate.

Schools.

And so can you help me direct me toward

Well, you'll see here in this slide about objective four actions 4.5, 4.6 talk about invasive plants on county public lands, which could be parks and school properties.

And 4.6 is talking about protecting, increasing, restore habitat areas in county parks and other county.

These are very general.

So I guess what we were asking was

from your experience, from your contact with folks in the community, are there more specific ideas about these kind of projects for county outland that you all have heard about or have an interest in that you'd like us to include or pursue?

There are lots of possibilities.

I'm not sure I can cook up all of them on the spot, but just for example, there's been an effort to move

to less frequent mowing, conservation mowing on some of the school properties so that there are large grassy areas.

Instead of the mowing them as frequently and having all the emissions, you leave the longer you get more spots for grassland birds to use for breeding, there's some water quality benefits.

So that's just one example of just an operational question of how do you do your land maintenance.

I don't believe I'm in a position where I could tell you things that are being requested that aren't already in place.

I can think of things that are already happening on county lands, right?

We like to encourage native plantings in our schools.

We like to, we are working through non-profit partners to mitigate invasives, right, which is consistent with

I went on a run this Saturday and ran into RCA while I was there.

Waved at them, talked to them about the Saudi invasives work they were doing.

It was actually in the city.

But I don't claim to be an expert or have any particular insight.

So I like that text is written.

I like the way it is written.

What came to my mind, and I'm glad there was this clarification, and you gave all the other bullet points, but what came to my mind is if we were, and correct me if I'm wrong, please, but if we were to add more measures on county-owned land, would that prevent us possibly from maybe building affordable housing?

because I know it's come up before, can we use Canada Land for affordable housing?

And I'm wondering if we put more measurements, measures that if that way would in any way make that more cost prohibitive for us to do.

That was my only concern and if that's not a concern then I'm fine.

didn't mean to give you a stumper there.

I think the idea was that on existing county-owned lands that might be wooded or might just be grass, what are the practices we can do not to preclude other uses.

If a grass area needs to become a new classroom in the future, that's fine.

We're not saying it has to be locked down for all eternity to be used for conservation mowing.

But where we have areas that are in

opens space or recreational spaces in parks, in school properties, as Professor Perot mentioned at fire stations, where we have the opportunity to do those kind of land management options for local biodiversity for water quality protection.

We're just trying to explore what those might be.

County.

I'm not necessarily to commit to only that.

Thank you very much.

And then on 4.4, I know we have improved the templates of county and ACA held the easements to more specifically address appropriate blah, blah, blah.

Would that also include the ACE committee?

Which is currently on hiatus?

But that's not our only conservation easement program.

We have donated conservation easements that the authority takes, and occasionally we have these clustered subdivisions.

So both of those programs involve deeds of easement.

that follow a

but if the ACE program is resurrected, that could include that.

Supervisor McHugh.

The short answer is yes.

The longer, more complicated answer is

and

County, and

protects habitats for animals.

That, in my mind, is a win-win.

There are ways that we can do that on county-owned land, and I think the schools are doing a good amount of that.

We did that down here when we talk about, we did a great project on our property right here with Daylighting the Street.

The University of Virginia has actually set the standard in this community in my brain for daylighting streams to make them a win-win for the community, better for the Dell is a great example.

So I would say absolutely, the quick answer to this is yes.

And I guess I don't need to belabor it any further than that, but there are lots of options I think for this.

And I would be looking immediately for the win-wins where it saves us

County.

And that money provides something wonderful for the community is environmentally sound.

And those things are out there.

and if we're not, it's very difficult to then go out and what was the words we used?

Influence, suggest, require, whatever the different words are.

But that can't, not just in practice, but also in finding alternative ways, necessarily for funding.

So if we're utilizing

Grants that could potentially be available not just to public users, then we're opening up perhaps the pathways for others to use those said grants to them, do it on their own property.

If it's a piece of property like the one identified by Monticello that housing could develop on,

We are the perfect place where we can stop the pass along of the cost of something being, if we think it's an ideal we want to achieve and it costs more to develop or put in place, then we can say yes without then the end user having to pick up the tab for it.

It's a subsidy, but it would be backing up our own values.

where we could get rid of that inherent conflict I was talking about earlier, where the environmental value versus the affordability question, we could actually handle that if we owned the product.

I'm not saying it'd be easy.

County believes in what they're saying, to the extent that their properties are being managed that way, and they value it enough that they're not going to pass the cost on to someone else.

I mean, we're still taxing people.

But the fact is, is that we've been stated in a strategic plan, a comp plan, et cetera, what our values are, and then this is where we can actually do that.

We just can't force that on other people that have control of their land.

And I do, I think, the call out of the schools, but I also think of some of our stormwater, like Hillsdale, where we're keeping the litter out of it from going on.

We're putting things in place that we control and doing a good job there.

So in my ideal world, developers, private property owners, et cetera,

would go, I'm interested in this.

Where can I look to see it being done?

We should be the one that's showing the way.

And if we're not the exemplar, then we're done.

This was the whole point behind getting rid of the damn weeds in the medians.

If we don't take care of the public places

yet we turn around and require businesses and others to hit this high standard when they put things in place on entrance corridors, but we let them, if we don't, if we don't make them look good, then what are we really requiring people?

It just, it makes us look hypocritical.

Thank you.

Yes, I think demonstration projects are incredibly valuable.

And just a little rollback to 2010, the Rivanna River Basics Commission got a $400,000 grant from National Fish and Wildlife Federation.

And each locality participant in the RBC

developed a demonstration project to help educate their populace and each one was slightly different than the others.

Charlottesville High School gathered bioswale there.

In Crozet, what the county developed was a constructed wetland with the beautiful meandering stream through the middle and all the different elevations and what that does is collect the sediment as the water slows down and moves into the project to pre-treat all the stormwater coming off those little tiny lots

in a very old community where there's no room on each individual parcel to have your stormwater basin, where a big, you know, green field subdivision would be able to incorporate that in.

So I think those were very successful and have been a great asset for, again, the quality of life of the people who live there as well as all the people around the different installations, one in Flavanna, one in Green, as well, that helped.

Water and Sewer also take all of their steep banks, and instead of mowing them, they're doing the conservation mowing there, reduces the danger for the people trying to do the work, first of all.

And I think that those kinds of examples are excellent, the ones that you've given.

Thank you.

I'm also all in on this one.

I'm noticing that as we go through these that they relate to different objectives and actions in a, you know, not necessarily one-to-one ratio, but in ways that might be helpful.

So this first one, obviously, Action Objective 2 has several actions about low impact development.

This one fits under 4.6, Protect, Increase and Restore Habitat Areas in County Parks, another county on land.

but you also mentioned previously that there are going to be additional things about education potentially in here and this would be an area where I think that making sure we educate the populace about the public about what we're doing to help and why with respect to these demonstration projects.

But I am otherwise looking at this as a very limited question that fits under Objective 4.

There are a lot more to Objective 4 that will come up in a minute I think but I'm very supportive.

Could I just add something?

Because I think you hit on something that I meant to say and I forgot.

The school division has done a really good job with signage.

They have a sign that says, this is why we're not mowing this area, and it gets to your point, Jim.

And I think it's really important, and the University of Virginia has done that as well, when their daylighting streams are doing work.

They have signage or an explanation so that people understand what it is, and that gets to the education part.

Sure.

So this conveniently gives us, I think, an opportunity to talk about what we've been hearing from the public recently pretty heavily, right?

This ties in closely with the discussion on biosolids, other potential, I would say this ties into, I know some of the members of this group are interested in other agricultural practices that maybe aren't implicated by biosolids, but other potentially environmentally destructive agricultural practices.

So I have a few kind of questions teased out from

what they presented to us.

They actually have some very specific line items on our comprehensive plan.

I might address some of those, but for starters, can I just understand, do we currently have any program that does monitoring, testing, or mapping of PFAS, PFOA, all these horrible four letter words of chemicals?

I don't know to what degree the water and sewer authority is monitoring that at the public water inputs, the sources.

We could certainly, if the board was interested, we could add that level of monitoring as one of the actions in, I believe it was objective three.

I'm trying to mentally remind myself that I am a firm little D Democrat.

So I do try and when something is coming to us reliably from the public, engage with it as thoroughly as I can.

So that's a bit how I'm thinking, but I will also just raise that PFAS and forever chemicals are an increasingly major subject of national attention and their presence in waterways.

And if this is an opportunity for us to lead rather than follow, it does seem appropriate to me.

I would also I think be curious about whether or not and I know this becomes a challenging issue with with state supremacy and also with frankly competing interests but I would wonder if this is an area where we might say something along the lines of monitoring ongoing as an action that we would monitor ongoing trends in

that in agricultural practices that potentially affect water and soil quality, including the use of biosolids and other fertilizers that were able to intervene as appropriate.

I know that's complicated heavily by the state laws on right to farm and also frankly it is potentially challenging because it

Impites potentially certain agricultural practices or makes them less economically viable, but it does seem like it is a I think I've heard several times from constituents in the room and people who are not in the room it comes up a lot and I know this is a challenging question especially in

Southern part of my district where we have a lot of waterways that are in close proximity to farming activity and farming activity like all industrial practices like all commercial practices are always chasing a bottom line which means they're always trying to figure out what is the best way to deliver value and that is always not that is not always necessarily the thing that is going to be best for the public good so I would be interested if it is within our one if we can legally

do anything about agricultural practices that could potentially impact water and soil quality.

And if that is within our ambit, I would be interested in just having an inclusion in our comprehensive plan that would monitor and continue to keep an eye out on this, right?

Well, localities are quite limited in their ability to directly regulate agricultural practices.

We do have a soil and water conservation district and they cooperate every day with voluntary projects with rural landowners and farm projects.

They know a lot more than we do about the current practices that are underway and the projects they're supporting through grant programs for

stream buffering, soil management, soil conservation.

I think

County.

They've had with neighbors or other residents.

I have residents come to me expressing things that they would like the county to regulate, but we either can't or we don't relate to farming practices.

This is a thing that keeps recurring, and it does feel like I continue to just kind of stand there with shrugged shoulders because it does not feel like something that the county

carves out an authority or a space or like scope of our own responsibility vis-a-vis these relationships and comments.

So I'm not even trying to come down in this moment on what our position should be, but I guess I'm kind of acknowledging, at least in my jurisdiction, it feels like a quite present issue.

This conflict of interest around water and soil quality and agricultural practices, it feels like something that

is my feeling that our policy kind of collectively shrugs its shoulders on it rather than try to engage with it and scope out our turf on it.

And I don't know if that concern, I mean certainly that is a concern but I don't know if it's more district related because I'm not hearing

quite, you know, the same things that you are.

So once again, our district is so, our county is so large and so diverse.

one of the things I'm having a problem.

Well, one of the things I support is the 3.1 partnering with the Virginia Department of Health for responsible manage of septic systems.

I know there are a lot, not only in the development area, but also in the rural areas.

And they're talking about, you know, pump out requirements and hiring staff for outreach for data collection, community input.

to me, why this comes to surface is everything that happened at Southwood.

That whole septic system there was a disaster, absolute disaster, and that's something that's now been cleaned up and such, but how many others are out there?

maybe not even large developments, maybe just individual homes and getting back to some of the people in the development areas who maybe even rural areas who've lived there a long time older and maybe they don't have the money.

I don't know.

I mean, I would like to know.

I think that's important because you don't want that going into the ground water.

You don't want that seeping in.

And frankly, homeowners may not, some of them may not even know that there's a concern.

But I really like 3.1, so that's what I'm looking at.

Thank you.

Yes.

I agree with much of what Mike said.

And in just thinking about, I think we can recognize that regulating biosolids is not anything we can do, sludge, right?

Having said that, we can monitor it.

and I think that's really important.

That's a starting point for us if we're monitoring.

I think that's a good idea.

Just to get to some of these specifics, I'd like to go back to the idea of monitoring groundwater levels.

I know it's very difficult, but I think it behooves us to at least

attempt to figure out a way that possibly we could do it.

I know the county is very different and I understand that and explained that there was something we did a few years back.

I'm not sure I really understand how successful it was.

It was only one, right?

But I think you said just one.

But anyway, I think it's important for us to be able to do that.

So we have some sort of a basis, especially when you're looking at climate change and droughts and where we are right now and all the folks that have wells

I just think that's important.

And I'll be honest with you, is there a way that can we map?

I don't really have a sense of where our water flows.

maybe everybody at this dais does, but I don't know where it's flowing from yards, farms, streams.

I made a note here.

Chris, yes, I get that, but I'm just saying to have some more information about it and maybe, and you have a wealth of knowledge about this that I don't have just from your years of experience.

But when we talk about Chris Green Lake and the issues we've had at Chris Green Lake, I mean, we could go on, right?

And I won't do that.

But I think for us and the community to understand better, the mapping might be appropriate.

Again, though, I'm going to come back to all this time, takes time, and I hear chaching, chaching, and work plan issues, right?

and I guess if any other knows I fear and this is not being critical of the Virginia Department of Health but I fear that they are so underfunded that it's very difficult right now for them to help us.

and to try and maybe we need to have some sort of an effort legislatively for the health departments to be better funded, I guess is what I'm saying.

But that's true in Virginia, isn't it?

Lots of things are underfunded.

Lots of entities are underfunded.

But I do think it's a good idea to cooperate with them as best we can.

I think they are our experts in a way.

But I am very concerned about their funding.

I guess my answer would be probably.

When I read through your actions, it seems comprehensive, but I don't know.

I'm not personally expert enough to be able to go, oh, this is missing when I look at it.

But there's different things in there that I think get at it, like your point about the Soil and Conservation District.

there's different goals in there that are speaking to water quality and protection yet we still have you know the the issue that's been mentioned a few times that we've been hearing from the public on the on the biosolid issue to me it seems that we need to be need to be in a position that if things that we missed as a staff or as a board or as whoever that we just need to be ready to respond to in a meaningful way

and know that that may be a funding issue or resource issue.

In addition to that, that's just thinking of, oh, did we think of some mitigating item or some specific issue?

But we probably need additional protections in our own enforcement of what's on the books.

So that's a different, that's a budget question for sure.

That becomes a staffing issue in a lot of ways.

But it goes to some of the things about, oh, well, if we develop these action steps and these plans, but then we're not able to do them, well, if we come up with expectations or rules or regulations, but then, you know, we're just waiting on, you know, we often hear it with the homestay stuff.

Well, it's, you know, it's community enforced.

Noise complaints only pop up when somebody complains about it.

Well, you know, the water quality seems to be such a high value item in this county that it shouldn't be just a complaint based type of system.

So perhaps the additional protection could be the need for compliance control of what's on the books already and then

that's a little maybe more proactive.

I'm hesitant in saying that because there would be, that would likely mean, I mean, I don't know what the cost would be, but I know that translates into staff needs.

But, you know, if it's that high of a value or that high of an item, then we should be thinking along those lines too and not just trying to think of every

instance of, or every example of what could undermine water quality.

Well, okay, we've done, we've identified things now.

Let's go out and figure out how to make sure it's being fallen.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm very heartened by what I've heard from my colleagues already.

So let me just run back here for a second.

So we did, the county did have until the recession in 2009, a regular reading of a well in the Meacham's River Basin.

I'm looking at Greg to make sure.

for four locations.

Okay, due to staff reductions in 2009 that was stopped but the wells are still there and I think could very easily be put back into measurement.

Someone from another community told me that they have a partnership with private well owners who volunteer

get trained on how to read there's some machinery that you take the cap off and shoot some laser down there and it brings back with the height of the water.

that would give tremendous advanced knowledge about what the status is throughout the broad spectrum of county situations.

I mean, Mike's got bled them down there where people have to go to 650 feet to find a drop.

And up where I am, you hit it about 40, but there isn't very much.

And so it runs out really fast.

So in every area, the rocks are so different underground.

So I am very glad to lend more support to bringing programs like that.

back, especially the ones where we have the infrastructure.

I remember just when Dan Eggleston was here a few meetings ago talking about the emergency preparedness and how having river monitoring stations throughout the area would give advance warning to streams going up and down when storms are approaching and that would help them to pre-position when things like the campground in Greenwood are going to go bad for a third time.

So those are things that I would very much support

County.

We already have a really good example for that because there are a factor of many tens, more sites in Albemarle County being read because stream watch now RCA is certified by DEQ to read them as opposed to other places where they only have a few because they have only county staff or DEQ staff to be able to do it.

those kind of partnerships are already existing and I would like to see them expanded.

On a totally outside the box thing for months I've been thinking every time I drive on Burkmore over the river I think we need to have a sign that says just be great watershed.

As many many communities do I think probably the foundation CBF would probably supply them for us but that would help people to understand

how far up the watershed comes in our direction and for 30 years when people have said well you know it's 200 miles away why would I care and I said well

you care about what your own grandchildren are going to be able to play in your own backyard and if we solve the problems in our own backyard and all the other communities or most of the other communities do what they can, also all of a sudden the Bay's problems are fixed.

Nobody's fixing the Bay, we're fixing ourselves and I think that's a really important way to go about it.

I'm very glad to respond to the citizens who have come again to talk to us about the sludge because

I would, if it fits into the, the board is interested, I think, a suggestion that Albemarle County does, what, investigate and figure out how it's appropriate what the 17 other counties are already doing in Virginia under state authority to have reporting of locations and dates and times.

that is public information because that is incredibly important and it puts in a kind of accountability to the community of when this is happening and there's a map somewhere that flew by my email and now I can't find it that shows a big cluster in the northwest part of the county in Whitehall district and then a big cluster down on the James in the Scottsville district and maybe a few others scattered around but it's those are the two biggest ones that were

County, and

They did bring their health department in the county.

I did verify this recently, and that is another way to be able to get, even if we do part of the programs that VDH locally is not able to do, that is a way to work something out on that.

And really give the, oh, wrong way.

data collection, the additional protections, and enforcing the rules we already have, I'm very much in favor of doing that.

But I also appreciate how the citizen surveys have resoundingly been clear about what's important to them, and I'm so grateful for their participation as well.

We just have to be careful not to be duplicating what our partner agencies are doing, and I'll get to that when we go through the blue thing.

Thank you.

I'm again interpreting this to basically you have an objective in actions under three that tell us what are being planned and this is what additional projection protections.

I will add my voice to the interest in hearing more about what can be done to monitor biosolids as has been discussed about 17 other locations in Rappahannock.

In particular there was a suggestion in one of the materials we received that there were ways to get the

County, New York.

piloted for the first time this past fall a PFAS monitoring in the wells.

So we had our well checked for PFAS.

So that's obviously something that is important enough to merit that expanded program.

You know, as far as additional protections, there have been suggestions from time to time that we've talked about that make them up as we go into buffer ordinances as to whether or not there are parts of the Chesapeake Bay Act that we want to consider.

We know we don't have the whole thing, but

I don't want to go into those now, but that's the only thing that I could otherwise identify.

I agree that we have a complaint-driven system, and as we find ways to monitor things, maybe we should be a little more proactive with respect to our water supplies.

They're pretty important for that.

And particularly if there's a low-cost way to implement a program to monitor groundwater supplies,

at this point board we are due for a recess and I think we've been going pretty well here so but the last question is are there topics for actions that need additional context or explanation is is kind of open-ended and I'm not sure whether it would be better if people could try to organize their thoughts a little bit as we go forward that we go through the actions now and as we look at each objective

Add in at that point any topics or actions that need additional context or explanation.

In other words, to treat this fourth question as part of what we're looking at as we look through the essentially four slides of actions.

Does that sound acceptable?

Sure.

Great.

Then 15 minutes.

We'll be back and do that.

Okay, thank you.

Welcome back.

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

Supervisor Gallo, we will have to leave at about 10.04 and I'm asking permission to change the order up and let him go first to make sure he gets his comments in before we go, but it's only if that's acceptable to people so that he can finish his comments before he leaves.

I guess you've got these on like five or six different slides but there are more than that but there are there are five objectives and maybe we can try to do them one objective at a time even if that means bounce them back and forth between what's on the screen all right so we'll start with objective one

and the idea is here any comments but also focusing on, as previously asked, anything that's been missing from this chapter.

Particularly additional topics, actions needed, additional context or explanation.

and I guess the narrative is mentioned, so I should point out that if you have comments on the narrative, then take your first opportunity to mention those as well.

I'm going to give a quick overarching piece based on my earlier comments than supervisor Pruitt's comments that kind of had me thinking while we were doing this.

and I think it's a larger piece relative to the whole COMP plan and all the chapters, not just this one.

So for example, the 2015 COMP plan did call for the creation of the Biodiversity Action Plan, which was a check off.

but then the action now in this comp plan iteration we saying you know do some updates to the biodiversity action plan.

So I really feel like between some of my comments, some of Supervisors Pruitts and some other comments that there's an opportunity in there to figure out how to use these action plans to our advantage in the metrics and the things that we're calling out for to do.

Part of my, I think part of my struggle with many of the chapters for the comp plan

When we do budget, this did not exist my first year on the board, but it exists now.

I can call out a very specific thread from the strategic plan to the budget, and now we have the new scoring system.

I forget the name of that.

Spear.

And Spear didn't exist two years ago, three years ago.

But now I can go to the community and go, here's what our strategic plan is.

This drives how we program the budget.

And then the spear tells us, are we doing the things that we said we were going to do?

I'm yearning for that with the COMP plan.

And I don't know what the right threat is.

I think it should be, the COMP plan drives the, like I like the biodiversity as an action plan versus affordable housing, which is just the housing policy.

I like action plan just because it's more active and says steps are going to be completed and all of that.

But I almost want that comp plan would be in place for the strategic plan that then drives what the action plan should be doing and then we should have spear for the action plans.

I'm bringing all that up to say that if we know a process is in place

and whether that's the right order or not, forget it, whatever the right order is, we can talk about that.

But then that helps us determine what the objectives and the actions are in the comp plan right now.

I don't know if that's even a possibility, I'm just throwing it out there to say.

Then we could start saying things in the comp plan like implement the housing action plan.

Implement the biodiversity plan.

or move the needle.

It gives you a better measurable and it's all well-defined somewhere.

We're not trying to redefine things here that are defined elsewhere.

So I'm just putting that out as the map the complexity was what I wrote down.

Like how can we map the complexity of the COMP plan, which is an overarching document, down to our many various action plans, policies, what have you, economic development, etc.

Then how to spear, what's the equivalent of spear to those plans?

I think if we could pull that off by the next time we do a comp plan element, we'd be in a completely different.

I think we could really start to see progress in the community could say they're implementing their comprehensive plan.

That being said, on an objective one, I had written down, tell me a little more about this, but that can likely be something that I can handle offline.

16.

It says develop metrics that it can form.

And I wrote down, do these not already exist?

RCA, for example, has metrics.

They have rated streams.

and then it says in watersheds over time, use these metrics to help prioritors where to focus the county's water, et cetera.

So we don't even need that first one if the metrics are already out there that we could use.

If we're saying we're unhappy with the metrics are out there, then I could understand developing new metrics.

But this is where that first line then is a redundant.

If we have metrics, let's use identified metrics, because I'd put down maybe ID metrics.

is opposed to develop.

And this is just in the spirit of trying to get things moving where it doesn't develop metrics.

I mean, how much staff time would it take to develop metrics versus identifying the existing metrics?

And then we plan to figure out how to then do what that second line says, because number one would probably take us a long time.

And we could just immediately jump to sentence two.

There's probably a lot of things like that throughout all of the actions and objectives, like all the chapters.

Are we just getting in our own way a little bit?

What was the other part of the question on the other slide?

No.

Thank you.

I don't have anything on what's two.

Yeah, I don't have anything on two.

I didn't have, I mean I have comments, but I can add them later.

Three, but four,

County.

I can just say, I'm just revisiting on 4-3.

You called it out today in your presentation.

The safety within the development area is a highlight.

And then 4-11.

And we kind of hit this with some of the incentive consideration earlier.

you know I think this I would I don't know if there's other incentives or grant programs here but oh I know oh consider like consider is not a good word for any plan ever I can consider it in 30 seconds and say I considered it and I'm done so we're either doing this or we're not doing it so does this need to be here I think I hate the wordsmith but consider

If we want to establish grant, let's get right to the meat of it.

We're doing it or we're not doing it.

Let's not consider things.

That probably should be fleshed out.

Considering things needs to be fleshed out as part of the process, but not make it to the end product.

But then I'd also ask, don't we have examples in place for this?

And then 5-1 I think was the

Oh, it's a follow-up for later, but cost implications of 5-1 would probably be a big one, which I don't know enough about, and maybe I'm wrong.

Yes, so in Objective 1, can you help me understand the difference in what is being accomplished between 1.2 and 1.4?

They both seem to be talking about energizing a riparian conservation easement program, and I

I'm sorry, you said one, two, and one, four?

Yes.

And again, these are both recommendations from the stream health initiative.

One is focused on, 1.2 is focused on acquiring new or amending older conservation easements.

I appreciate that.

My comments are about adopting the Chesapeake Probe Bay Preservation Act.

We've talked about that, but it's been years.

And it seems like to me it's time to go back and have that discussion again.

in my opinion.

The Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act would allow us to encompass a lot, or encompasses a lot, not everything, but a lot of what we've talked about today.

It would free up some staff time.

I believe it may create time in other places, but when the last time we talked about it, my memory was

that we pushed it aside and didn't go there because the amount of staff we were told we would have to hire to do it.

I believe that's correct.

I'm looking at, and just for clarity, the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act was enacted in 1988.

Each jurisdiction east of Interstate I-95

implemented an ordinance and programming were mandated to implement an ordinance and programming to support the state code.

So everybody east of I-99, they were mandated to do that.

We were not because we're west of our location.

When I go back and look at the geographic regions that implemented this, many of them are smaller than we are.

They're not as wealthy as we are, and they're smaller.

Caroline County, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Essex, Gloucester, Hanover, Henrico, James City, King George, King and Queen, King William Lancaster, Matthews, Middlesex, New Kent, Northumberland, there is Richmond, Warwick, Westmoreland and York.

I guess I just don't understand.

Staff is going to help me understand how counties that were smaller or at least not as wealthy as we are, but certainly smaller were able to implement this.

And we feel like we can't.

And that's a strong word, but that we would need so much additional staffing.

So I guess my

My comments on a lot of what we've been talking about today, and I'm happy to go through each objective.

I don't have a lot of comments on each one, but my overarching comment is we at least investigate or go back and discuss again.

and I am in favor of adopting the Chesapeake bag.

There's a model in place.

We don't have to reinvent the model.

It's there.

It has shown some success, not complete success, but we're still talking about things that we tried to implement and we still are waiting on them for years just because.

So I mean, I get that.

If we join our neighbors,

in this initiative, then we are already locking down existing programs.

It is an existing program.

At the federal government level, we don't know what's coming, we don't know what's going to stay, what's going to go away, but it does seem like to me it would be appropriate at this time to lock in what's there and use that model.

and I guess with that I'll just let that sort of sit out there for a few minutes because I know there are probably some reactions to that, but and let me go through and take a look at to do what Jim wants us to do.

The goal?

Just number one.

Right.

We're doing just one right now.

Actually, this gets what I was just suggesting.

I'm going to let this one go.

Okay.

Oh, goody.

Just a minute.

I was not ready.

Sorry.

Come on, come on.

Okay.

So as you can tell, I have a lot.

So 1.1

My handwritten chicken scratch on here had, next to mitigating, reduced the number of permitted impacts.

because why are we always allowing people to do things that they shouldn't be doing and then trying to mitigate them?

It's always cost more and cost more to clean up.

1.2 in the category of not duplicating what's already out there, federal cost share programs are huge and implemented through Solomona Conservation District here and also Farm Service Agency.

We are in the Louisa branch there.

I want to make sure that those are not lost. 1.3

and 1.4 is, again, existing programs.

For some reason, I have a mental lapse and don't remember anything about a riparian conservation assistance program as if it was something brand new that was going to be stood up.

But we have all of these buffer programs that when we have a complaint now, rank staff has to go out and investigate because everything is treated as an individual one-off instead of having

much more thorough rules.

So that's the problem.

1.5, I wrote highest priority as if maybe that should be 1.1.

Track and Report Impact of Water Resource Protection and Restoration Activities.

DCR, LiDAR, annually done, it's incredibly detailed, far better data than what we have available in our county GIS.

In the what is missing category, making sure that all of our stream data is actually up to date.

And it should not take five years to get

Perennial Stream on the maps so that it can then be used when staff needs to look at the data, look at the maps to determine what kind of action is needed on the county's part when an application comes in.

So those are kind of providing the backbone of the information source so that we can all be doing a good job.

on that.

1.6, I wrote down stream watch criteria already exist.

I mean, the RCA now, Natural Heritage Committee task, you know, to be providing more backbone that goes with the map that I held up earlier as part of this packet that shows where all the water sheds are.

1.7, partnered with other rural localities.

I don't

and just in reaction to what others have said, I absolutely would appreciate and eagerly participate in a further discussion about the Chesapeake Bay Act because just using resource protection areas alone as an example would provide the buffers protection that we have been struggling with for years and the wetland protection, all these kinds of things that our staff has been trying to create from a blank page.

but we could take the text off of the library that others are using and make it happen.

And Loudon and Albemarle were the two on the West who adopted it all those many decades ago and we have not further implemented it.

And sadly, there were agricultural buffers up until 2014 for cropland.

They had to be 35 feet back from a stream edge.

Those all went away.

in that word cleanup, word salad thing that was done in 2014.

And we're still 10 years later trying to correct what happened then.

So I'm all in to have that discussion again, separate from or part of the complaint.

Thank you.

My primary comments echo some of Supervisor Galloway's and that there are words in here that talk about implementing and then developing and then elsewhere we also have to consider.

The comments we received from the public included saying instead of implement land conservation for water quality program or implement riparian conservation assistance program, they said develop.

And I recognize that these were part of the phase two stream health

I don't know why that comment came in and what the difference is and whether these are programs that are already developed and so if that's the case then I just want to make sure that we're choosing our words carefully and not just simply trying to find a new word to stick in and I would say that comment kind of goes throughout and I won't make it again.

Chesapeake Bay Act was discussed at the Planning Commission and I know that I agree that it should be revisited.

I know that there were discussions about not only staffing issues for Albemarle County but staffing issues for the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District and some agricultural implications and implications regarding pump outs at the time that it was previously considered I guess were

were problematic.

This requires very regular pump outs, I guess.

But any of it, I agree that this is something we need to look at again.

And those are my only comments on this first objective.

So if we go to the second objective, and we'll go, first of all, I'll ask Supervisor Galloway, because I know he'll only have five more minutes.

Supervisor Locustal Kirkland.

I'll take a pass on this one too.

Okay.

Just 2.3 is the repeat of 1.3.

So staffing up at the Solar Water Conservation District will provide the staffing as we have done in past years to provide extra manpower in the place where the expertise already exists.

and the farmer connections and the rural landowners connections and also the urban landowners through the ACAP program.

There's now a tremendous outreach for growth area, people who can get ACAP funding to

in the neighborhood as well.

So let's use the expertise we have available.

And I think that most of the comments that I would have are previously discussed about implementing these on county lands, education efforts, and perhaps at some point we need to talk about nutrient credits and how they work in this context of low impact development and other aspects of this.

on three.

I don't know that I have specific line by line edits other than to just voice support for what I know.

Chair Andrews already brought up, which is possibly exploring whether or not supporting or subsidizing testing of water quality for people who are on well.

That would be something I'd be interested in.

I'm not willing to commit to saying we're going to fund it, but

I'm in favor of all these, especially 3.1, I've said that before.

That's our program.

So the incentive was that grant program that we put out and we said at the time we kind of redirected for the current year but said let's bring it up in budget as should

So is that so?

Right.

And so incentivizing, would we say through grants or we just come in through the budget?

We took ARPA funds and created it as a program.

Yes, if it's a worthwhile program, which we all seem to agree on, this was the piece that we kind of said

maybe this is an accounting maneuver versus a policy competition between emergency assistance fund.

So instead of incentivizing, it would be more of an allocation of leftover monies that could be out there that we could gather together.

Not leftover.

Okay.

So not applying for other grants and such.

Well, we could do that too.

We could also do that.

All right.

Thank you.

So we're on three.

I'm sorry, I think I'm on the right page.

I think most of the comments I covered in the last discussion, we talked about monitoring, possibly monitoring biosolids, what that would look like, and then monitoring groundwater levels.

So I think my comments stand for this one.

Thank you.

I've got lots of pieces of paper being held here.

So under the, we're supposed to do the narrative now too, where it's appropriate.

So on page three, where it talks about water quality and storm water management, I think is relative to objective three.

I really appreciate the suggestion made by a speaker this morning and the handout that was passed around to add in the first paragraph of the narrative on page three

this, after the word chemical and heavy metal contamination from biosolids, land applied or other industrial agricultural practices, just as a research information gathering, just that phrase being added, so I will leave that for our able wordsmith on staff.

And I've got the

number three.

I've already spoken about the 3.3 wealth that we already have.

Fairfax.

Oh, 3.2 question for staff for today or another day.

At the time of.

So there are many things that are triggered when an application to change happens.

and

both repairs to septic things when deboxes or whatever are broken after many years or the things that are found, often they're not found until there's a pump out and people take the cover off and go, oh my God, what's going on?

So anyway, those are really important elements that I hope we will not be afraid of because

It does save many more things than it is an obstacle for.

So I will just leave those thoughts.

That's really all I have.

I think just one second.

Yes, that's all I have for this.

Thank you.

I think we can go on to number four.

You've got these on two pages, I believe, but I'm going to ask if we can work through the entire set.

One supervisor at a time.

Great.

So on 4.1, I remember this came up for discussion when we were talking about the cell tower ordinance.

because there was

was updated at that time, but also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe the Board expressed some concern about the periodicity on which it is updated, because we did not know there was both a fidelity issue for being able to use it for actual policymaking during that discussion, but there was also the concern of

in the status that they were described at that time, fidelity regardless.

So I guess I'm wondering if it wouldn't be appropriate for 4.1, especially that third bullet to include some discussion on periodicity, right?

If that periodicity needs to be greater than the action plan itself, which does seem like it might be prudent if we're going to try and

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

if we have the ability to particularize 4.12 more than we are currently.

Because I like that.

I like how it sounds.

But it is open-ended enough that it could involve a flyer once during the next five to 10 years, or it could involve a serious multimillion dollar program on that.

and getting back to the smart goals measurable being the one I'm thinking about.

It seems like it's a difficult one to measure.

We could be the day before final comprehensive plan evaluations are due, like five years from now, and we'd just be like, oh, quick, hang a flyer in front of McIntyre and we'll accomplish it.

I would very much want a little bit more, I think, particularity and understanding about what the scope of that outreach is going to look like, and what the nature and scope of not just the outreach, but any services that are going to go along with it, not just like communication, hey, hey, consider a wildflower garden.

helped me understand 4.11 because I like it.

But I'm also thinking we have regulations related to dark skies.

When someone comes to us with a new development, they are required to have down shielding, or at least I think they're required to have down shielding.

I hope they're required to have down shielding.

I also look at that as not something that is expensive.

And so I guess I'm trying to understand the

the scope of this demand.

Are there major commercial developments that is going to be quite costly?

Are there individual homeowners who have spotlights that they can't remove?

I guess if we're going to, I like dark skies, I like the idea of subsidizing people who can't afford to make it with the standards that we put on them.

Those are two things I like.

I'm just not

is clear if the target demo here actually needs the help or like what the scope of what we would be helping them do is.

So I have a little bit of pause on that.

And I also do just want to apologize.

I hate when I'm trying to make kind of particular policy decisions on what's supposed to be our kind of blue sky document.

Okay.

Supervisor Locusto-Curtle.

Regarding 4.9, contribute funding to programs managed by local partner organizations, would you define local partner organizations

Are you talking about committees that are formed of like volunteers?

Because we have at a Darden Tower where they're going along, you know, they're volunteers and they go around cleaning up invasive plants and the trails and such.

We have other volunteers.

So would that include volunteer committees, groups?

It would.

It would.

Okay.

Good.

I like that.

And regarding the Dark Skies Initiative,

was a

and

and maybe that could be a suggestion to use lights with motion detectors as opposed to having these bright lights on all the time and especially for businesses perhaps, I don't know, but especially homes also or developments.

So that's all.

Thank you.

Okay, so we're on four and under 4.1

I am no expert on GIS, but we did have a suggestion to integrate the biodiversity action plan GIS data into the publicly available county GIS site.

That made sense to me, even though I'm not an expert on GIS.

I do think that our

our publicly available website when it comes to the GI needs updating, I think it would seem like to me.

And I don't use it often, but I do hear complaints about it from the public.

Just saying.

So I thought that was a pretty good suggestion.

Going on to the lighting ordinance

My understanding is, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, our lighting ordinance is very much like our cell tower policy ordinance.

The lighting ordinance is very old.

But as we are going through the implementation now, people are being required to use the more current down lighting.

And if you'd like to just speak to that, but our ordinance itself is pretty old.

My understanding is that lighting ordinance would be updated as part of the zoning modernization process, which will follow on from the comp plan.

It's obviously underway to some degree, but I don't know a lot about that, but if there's someone here who can speak to it, we can follow up.

That's great, because I don't know whether it's 20, 25 years old, what it is, but it is very old.

But we are requiring the downlighting as needed as we're going through, but we really need to get that done.

For site plans and commercial development projects, yes, not so much for new developments.

But that really needs to be done.

But I will say that when we're talking about dark skies, I'm very supportive of dark skies.

but we're fighting in the rural areas one thing.

We can control, I think, and certainly encourage in the rural area.

When we're talking about in the development area, that has to be in partnership with the University of Virginia in the city.

We're never going to get dark skies if we don't get them on board to work with us, especially the university.

One only has to go to bees area on Pantops.

and take a look at the University of Virginia and how much they can help us with that or are willing to help us, I don't know, but it just seems like to me that is a perfect opportunity, dark skies, to work with the university in the city.

sometimes easier said than done, and I understand that.

But Lubick would be, and I think I've said for years, Lubick would be a great place maybe to start those discussions.

So, but I am definitely in favor of getting that ordinance updated and because I think that's really dark skies are really critical and then I On 4.9 Invasive plant removal in native plant restoration.

We have a huge problem in Albemarle County with bamboo It is everywhere

I have a constituent, and I'm just going to take the time to say this, I have a constituent whose neighbor planted by a boo came under their fence and started invading his foundation.

The only thing we could tell him to do was to go to court.

He went to court and the judge awarded him $2,500 or $3,000 or something to handle his foundation destruction.

I'm just saying that bamboo is a specifically we have other invasives with bamboo and yet I go into some of the stores and the and the and see shelf after shelf of bamboo where we're selling it in this community I don't get it I'm just mentioning that saying I guess we can need to continue to fight that at the legislative level I don't know but it is a huge problem

and I don't know whether I was helpful or not.

I was just kind of ranting.

I'll use Ned's words.

It is a huge problem.

Anyway, and it is funny when Ned and you all started talking about it and this was actually, I had the word consider circle.

to be as part of my discussion on 4.11, the word consider is coming back up again to just say, that's not the best word to use.

Let's just add to my, to the other comments about the word consider.

And I guess that's it for me.

Thank you.

Okey-dokey.

overarching.

I wrote down, avoid chemical use as an operational priority alone or in recombination when these chemicals break down in the environment.

They're incredibly destructive to biodiversity.

So if we're caring at all about biodiversity, that is one element of things we could focus on that would help. 4.1

and

County,

County, which DCR has on their critical resource maps, we're identified by our Natural Heritage Committee 25 years ago.

So this expertise is here, and I hope that we will continue to use it.

Great Care has to be taken for this third billet about specific priority habitat matches because you don't go advertise where the gensing is.

It's just not going to happen.

And the landowners who own it are not going to allow it and that it would be a disaster for the resource to have people tromping around collecting things in addition to the police problem that's going to result.

There was a talk previously about the

Evaluation of Forest Blocks and this magical number 4.1 out of something or other which I've never heard before in 30 years being described.

I don't know what the arbitrariness is of this number, but all forests of all sizes have importance and impact, especially if smaller pieces are connected together to make corridors.

So I'm concerned and would like to have

could come to me or the whole board or whatever if there's more information that can be provided about that number because I think it's too restrictive and leaves out too many resources from protection.

4.2, land conservation tools 2, avoid new roadways for all construction in these critical resource areas.

So if they're a 100-year-old track and you need to get somewhere, you should be using the old track, not re-bulldozing down a whole bunch of new forest in order to get somewhere.

Everything else there is okay.

4.3, as has been already mentioned, the city impact in my backyard

the oval glow is the southeast is the city and other than 4th of July that's about the only time that we hear other parts of the county going off but they're all around us.

I had I think reordering because I appreciate what Ned was saying about safe lighting for sidewalks and multimodal transportation options

should be number one.

But those can be low lights.

They don't have to be 30-foot poles.

They can be 18 inches off the ground, and therefore light the area where the people are, not way up there, which doesn't do anything except cause birds to fly into buildings.

And that's a real problem.

And then number two, dark skies three, minimize impacts on the natives.

And then 4.7, very similar to 4.14.

I'm trying these there are many things throughout all the various chapters that seem to be deplicative I'm just trying to point those out 4.8 again has it seems to be indicated in 4.1 4.10 1.6 natural heritage committee so these are their great grant programs same as 4.3 so I think that try it'll be less confusing for the reader if we have these

Packaged at least by sort of topic or subcategory so that people like me don't go round and round in circles.

And 4.12, I mentioned, when I was on the ACE committee for 20 years, trying to broaden the approach of the program and the criteria to include

Natural Resources and Habitat Protection using the DCR data.

And I hope that we will get there someday.

And 4.11, I wrote down needs-based assistance only.

Because as I mentioned also, that if there is work to be done on a property, I would hope that the new standards would apply.

And I think that is all I had to offer.

Thank you.

I'll try not to be overly repetitive.

I agree with the need to look into what we can do with GIS, with the mapping.

Again, I said I wouldn't do this, but I curiosity about the words, 4.5 does develop a management plan on county lands, but then 4.9 does contribute funding to programs.

I get confused sometimes with the word funding, where it appears here and where it doesn't and why.

I just want to be more intentional about what part of the comprehensive plan talks about funding and what part doesn't because I'm getting confused sometimes as to why we're saying we're going to fund this but we're going to just develop this or we're going to just improve this without clarity.

But with 4.11, I'm not going to beat up the considering, but I thought that the suggestion that we had establishing education and grant programs was a good one and that a lot of the dark sky initiatives may just come down to making sure people really are aware of the options to do things that will not impact the sky so much and the importance of that.

So I would hope that we would maybe include an education program with this.

It just had to be very clear because people could get very confused quickly to think that the fire overlay told us, oh, we're safe here because it's not in the fire overlay.

I do want to make one last comment about this process that we're going through.

The 4.1 is Update the Biodiversity Action Plan.

I didn't think it was necessary to make a comment about implementing it because I thought that implementing it was part of what we were saying anyway and so we don't need to have things like that in this.

They're already part of an adopted plan.

Okay.

Thank you.

The concern that's been raised already on 5.1 I think I shared I would say it's pretty tempered by the fact that I would assume that this does not come up very much and I don't know that because we already help me out here stream crossing I'm picturing I am building a large development and there's maybe some ephemeral stream and so the developments foot goes over it

and so that is a stream crossing, right?

I'm just making sure I understand terms.

Culvert would be the little dig out under my foundation of the development where I have a stream crossing and this is just saying that Culvert should be designed in a way that a spotted salamander can crawl over.

Is that kind of what I'm getting out of this?

I just want to make sure I'm

That's largely it.

We do see a lot of stream crossings, not just with major developments, but also with individual homes that are crossing streams.

And a lot of the designs that are used, such as the round culverts, end up being passage impediments for aquatic habitats for fish.

I'm hearing that the main concern is not the spot of salamander crawling over, but the fish swimming through.

and I'm also hearing that a lot of this comes down to culvert shape sub waterline and whether or not that discourages or confuses the fish or physically blocks person or physically blocks them right because these are I'm picturing a culvert I'm like oh it's shallow if there's only a little bit of water at the bottom of that circular thing often right just talking this through

is trying to get a hold of this issue that I don't understand.

Is there a significant cost differential when I'm looking at a flat bottom column?

We can look into that.

Okay.

I'm just thinking if I'm going to say anyone building a house and they have their two acres and they can only probably lay their house one place, right?

We were just talking earlier in a side about how

the geometry of your septic field and your usable land can make it, when you have two acres, incredibly constrained.

If I'm adding one more thing, I would like to have a sense of kind of what that looks like when people are very space constrained.

It's not generally a space concern so much as it is just a physical design.

It's going to be in the same location most likely.

It's just about no matter which design you use.

I'm probably making too much out of this.

No, I mean, there's an instance where I live where there's a stream running through the property and it's like, how do you build a house on in that area?

So that's speaking to your concern.

I have the same concern.

I mean, is there an exception?

When you use a word require, I mean, that's what I'm hung up on.

because I have no problems helping fish, helping aquatic life, organisms, animals, be able to cross a stream or something like that.

But I want to make sure that we can do it where it makes sense for the private homeowner or even for a development.

And when you use Bridger Culver designs, are those the only two options?

It's almost always culverts.

Geranium tunneling.

Pardon?

Tunneling, yeah.

That's mostly a joke.

They did that for the salamanders.

They tunneled under the road.

which I thought was fantastic.

I love that.

Anyway, my concern is the word require, I don't know, and maybe I'm making too much of that also.

Is that what we used before?

Okay.

Hi.

I just have a couple of things and I'll try and be brief because I know we're

I won't say long in the tooth, but I'm long in the tooth.

Anyway, having said all that requires stream crossings to use.

We were talking a lot of Culver Designs Bridge to allow animals or fish, whatever.

We have in our own backyard the Highway Research Council.

up on a observatory mountain.

They have done much of the work in this area.

They're the ones that did the study and told FEDOT where to put the fencing along Afton, where to put the areas for the animals to come through, how to build them.

and I know that they are very helpful when it comes to this.

I'm just pointing out that we have a research institution, a research facility on Observatory Mount that is an expert in this.

They've done the studies.

There's actually now a statewide organization of staffers and researchers working on this issue, the Safe Wildlife Crossing Collaborative, which VDOT is involved in, and we're trying to get more involved in.

So, yes, I appreciate the suggestion.

Because I think the Highway Research Council would love to help us, and they're right in our backyard, and they've done a lot of the work.

Having said that, I say see the word dams here, pursue dam removal.

I know that we have I think several hundred private dams that we're trying to get our arms around perhaps where they are I'm not sure but what I would be curious to know is I think what you all are looking at is the stability of those dams and perhaps where they are but my interest would be

Two very important but separate issues.

A lot of the dam failure work that's going on and our engineers know far more about this than I do but that's about active dams that are

currently used for infrastructure for farms.

So yes, we'll check to make sure we're sufficiently addressing that issue elsewhere in the plan.

This one is more about habitat connectivity and these are more often dams from the

18th, 19th centuries that were used and then abandoned and are just left in the stream.

They're blocking habitat.

They're causing water quality and flooding problems, but they aren't used anymore.

and I agree and that's great, but what this made me think about was we've had all of these events all over the United States and Europe as well and you see damn failures and it's impacting infrastructure, schools, library, you name it and so that made me think about that as well.

I'd be interested in us making sure that we are setting ourselves up for

in 5.23 before chasing after removal.

I mean, let's do some data collection first because I know dam removal is very popular and has had tremendous good benefits in the sort of natural heritage space.

But there are a lot of reasons for water stability to keep them too.

I will just say that

going back to the beginning about the stream crossings issue it's short-term versus long-term you can buy a cheap galvanized pipe that will last you maybe 20 years and then when the flood comes along it gets jammed with a tree and then you have $10,000 worth of backhoe thing so we've been through that three times since 1959 on my place and when the 2018 flood came along we had 15 years earlier gone to two 48-inch pipes from 124

It's still failed.

is cheaper for sure and there also are U-shaped concrete pieces that don't touch the stream either and they just get dropped in by a truck with a boom on it and far, far better for cost for the landowner as well as for anybody moving up and down.

The deer go through under our bridge just as much as the creatures, the aquatic creatures do.

So I think that this

Newstream crossings, I think, have to be bridges now.

I'm thinking of several special permits over the last 15 years for the Dols River, which has tremendously high water volume when there are storms because it drains up into the Shenandoah, may come headwaters are in the Shenandoah.

And so there's a lot of velocity that comes through there that would never be

able to be maintained without a significant bridge and many of the properties, old old properties were accessed by just a pedestrian bridge with a rope across there and many of those are still in use and people just parked their cars next to the roadway especially when it's snowing there's no way to get there any other way.

So I will just say I do not see 5.1 as anything new from that perspective.

From the

The Wildlife Bill, we were talking about that too.

HB 2025 sponsored by Wild Virginia is a bill in the legislature to complete the funding for wildlife corridor studies and that's something everybody can support now if they choose.

And DCR has a tremendous program requiring recertification every several years for all the private dams and they have been spending years getting the information collected about all of them.

so that is I think that for the people who have a dam on their property that may have been there for 60 or 80 years and then a whole lot of growth happens downstream it's not their fault but then all of a sudden they're responsible for the safety of people who came 50 years after them and those have caused the standards to be raised on some dams and that is one of those push and pull type of things for safety that is a concern

and the connectivity, the Powell Creek Dam of Scott was mentioning the ones from 100 years ago.

You may remember for the view and the special permit or rezoning in Crozet, Powell Creek comes down into the wetland and that was the site of an old mixing shack for the orchards and they had a dam there that had been put up

for as a water source for the chemicals that they used to spray on the orchards and hadn't been used literally for 50 years.

And so that has been removed as part of the development that's happening outside the flood plain but right there.

So that's all I wanted to share.

Thank you.

And I have nothing additional to add except that we just require new stream crossings.

I just would want to look into, you know, are we talking about the perennial streams or are we going to talk about intermittent streams?

It's just a, you know, a little bit of a nuance there is how far we have to push this, I think, with a real, a very active stream or something we should require.

We're just, there's nothing further than an alternative for staff and ask, are we, have we satisfied?

Are we, are there additional questions or concerns?

Yeah, I think that we've got, you've gotten a cover tonight, so.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, then I think we're ready to go into closed session.

Second.

Motion from Supervisor Pruitt.

Second from Supervisor Malek.

Mr. Galloway.

He's not here.

Pardon me.

Mr. Pisa-Curtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Ms.

McLean.

Yes.

Good evening.

We're back.

Yes.

I'd like to move that the Board of Supervisors is certified by our recorded vote.

That's the best of each supervisor's knowledge.

Motion from Supervisor Pruitt.

Second from Supervisor Malek.

Ms.

Lapista-Curtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Malek.

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt.

And I believe we have a motion coming out of closed meeting.

We do.

We have one motion coming out of closed meeting.

I move that the board appoint Andrew H. Herrick as county attorney, effective February the 1st, 2025.

Ms.

Lapista-Curtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallett.

Yes.

Ms.

I don't

discreetly whisper needlessly complicated legal questions that you are not in the right space or time to answer in the middle of meetings and really putting you on the spot.

That's our relationship.

So anyway, congratulations.

I'm thrilled that you're on board.

You know everything and you're going to help us and make sure that we do everything legally and I trust you to do that.

So I'm just very happy that you're permanently on board with us.

Congratulations, Andy, well deserved.