Board of Supervisors Public Hearing on County Executive’s Recommended Budget and CIP   2/28/2024

Welcome.

I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 28th of February at 6 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

I'd like to note that we have on the day us Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, and Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, myself, Jim Andrews representing the Samuel Miller District,

Quorum is present.

We're also joined at the meeting by a county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, and here Mr. Steve Rosenberg, our county attorney, as well as our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

Also, let me please welcome and we will soon introduce our other distinguished staff who are presenting tonight, helping to present tonight.

also let me welcome Albemarle County police officers present Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and senior police officer Ronnie van der Veer.

We thank you for your service today and for the work you do and your colleagues do every day for our safety and security throughout the county.

So, our primary business tonight is simply a public hearing on the county executive's fiscal year 2025 recommended budget.

And to start this off, we'll turn it over to our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson.

Chair Andrews and members of the board, thank you very much for the opportunity for me to be here this evening.

My name is Jeff Richardson and this will be the second time in the last week that I have been before the board to talk about the county executives recommended FY25 budget.

And as you noted, sir, tonight is the public hearing.

And so what I will do this evening is I will briefly

Go through the slides as an overview of a part of what we put in front of the Board last Wednesday at our meeting, knowing that we've got a number of work sessions coming after tonight, and Mr. Jacob Sumner, who is to my right,

along with Andy Bowman from the Finance and Budget Office.

They will wrap us up this evening.

They will talk about what happens after tonight.

They will certainly be here this evening to answer any questions as well as myself on any questions that the Board may have this evening.

But Mr. Chair, as you noted, tonight is the public hearing and so I will try to be brief and run through several slides just to be able to tee up

and the FY25 recommended budget.

Yes, sir.

So in the overview this evening that I'll be covering, I'll talk just a second about our budget development process that we have with our eye on the strategic plan.

In doing so, we're going to spend most of our time this evening focused on the recommended FY25 budget.

And then finally, we'll talk about next steps after tonight.

Let me talk just for a second about our strategic budgeting approach.

I want to talk about the board's five-year strategic plan.

This board stepped away in fall of 2022 and worked diligently with staff to identify your six most important goals that we want to focus as much attention and resources as we can

for the next five years.

These six goals that you see in front of you represent the five-year strategic plan.

Those six goals, we worked diligently to align our resources with.

Last year, we were at this time, we were aligning year one with the budget process to these six goals.

And so at this point, we're approaching year two, and we will be working with the board

over the coming weeks to look at the alignment into the six areas, we'll look at where our resources are and how that ties back to day to day operations in each of our departments.

Board, this slide really is to represent in addition to the five-year strategic plan and the work that went into that, that our budgeting process is almost a year-round process.

This Board realizes that.

You realize that we work to look at our economic outlook.

We look at our five-year financial planning.

We tie all of that back to our five-year strategic plan.

We're keeping an eye on our revenues as we work toward the start of the budget process.

We look at existing commitments, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute.

And finally, all of that is underpinned with our financial policies, where we are a triple, triple-A, bond-rated local government.

for a medium-sized local government.

That's somewhat unusual, but we are proud of the fact that we work hard in our community to be physically conservative and to guard our AAA bond rating.

Born and proud,

to recommend a budget this year that is balanced on the current tax rates you see in the slide above you, what those current tax rates are, what those lines of revenue are that come in to inform our overall revenue picture each year.

So now I want to take a couple of minutes and I'd like to talk to the board about our FY25 recommended budget and give me just one second to align my notes.

The theme for this year is really to continue to build momentum with what we began in fiscal year 24.

I reminded the board last week that we're entering year two of a five-year strategic plan.

FY24 was the first year we launched several new programs after a lot of planning work, onboarding work, and we're really beginning to see the fruit of our investment as we go into FY25.

I talked to the board last week about the pace of growth in our local economy and that it was not matching what we had seen a year ago or two years ago, but we still have strong, strong revenue growth in our community.

The work of the board that you did last year, you've worked to increase our budget stabilization reserve.

You directed a portion of the ongoing revenues last year into one-time transfer to capital fund.

You positioned the county to soften the impact if our revenues did slow this year, and they have.

But because of that, because of the work that we did last year, we entered FY25 in a strong position

to continue to advance the strategic plan priorities because we're shifting from shoring up the foundation to building momentum as we go through FY25.

or this is one of my favorite slides and it is a reminder to me that while we're doing a one-year budget process for physical year 25, we can easily reach back into 24 and look at the commitments that we made that have multi-year effect.

We look into 25 and we try to examine 24 with 25 and then we're also looking into FY26.

We budget annually, but the decisions that we make from one year to the next has an impact on what we do down the road.

And frankly, Board, that's why we want to do multi-year strategic planning, because we're not going to be able to address every opportunity and every problem in the community.

and it's the staff's goal to be able to align our resources where we have our biggest opportunities or our biggest problems and the board has done a really good job of working that strategically and helping us with our annual budget process.

I'll take one second just to remind the Board that the federal relief revenues have been a significant part of the county budgets since fiscal year 22, funding through the America Rescue Plan Act, ARPA,

We're designed

during the pandemic, and we've put it in places that we hope have made the greatest impact for the community during those very difficult times.

We're now back to local funding.

Those programs were funded with one-time money, and those programs have been managed accordingly, and you'll see in FY24 just a small amount of money that is left in the federal funding as we go forward, okay?

I won't talk in detail about this we did last week, but you really see examples of how our past decisions drive future budgets.

We can see that in three areas.

One is pilot programs where we talk last week about commitments that the county has made to trying new things, looking at how we do service delivery, new ideas, cross-departmental and cross-agency collaboration.

that we have used that we in some cases have moved pilot programs into our ongoing budget as well as new facilities.

You'll see in FY25 that we've committed to new facilities that once finished they've got to be opened and they've got to be operated and you see that funding and then finally to the right you see grant funds and we've got good examples in our budget of how we've pulled down non-local dollars

for things that we needed to expand, start up, examine on a pilot level, and we're in the process of doing that.

We know that when we use this non-local money, most of the time it's federal and state grants, that most of these grants have deadlines, and they have sunset provisions, and we plan for that accordingly, and we've done that as we go into this year's budget.

Board, the total budget for fiscal year 25 is $629 million.

That's an increase from fiscal year 24 of $74.3 million.

As I said last week, that's due to

increase in local revenue but in addition to that there's annual fluctuations in our capital program needs and based on the capital outlay, the timing of capital outlay for project as well as debt issuance in any one given year it can make your total budget go up or go down.

We always spend a tremendous amount of time with our general fund revenues and our general fund budget.

That's where the tax revenue is received.

It's the primary funding source for schools, capital debt, local government, and it's where this board has the maximum amount of policy discretion as you begin to prepare for your upcoming budget work sessions.

This general fund revenues and the fiscal year recommended budget is $432.2 million.

I'll take a second just to talk briefly, and I did last week as well, about the allocation of new shared revenues.

So there is a shared revenues formula that we exercise.

This is Board-directed, where we have a formula between local government, our public schools, county public school system, as well as our joint debt and capital.

And as you can see, Board, 10% comes off the top for the joint debt and capital.

to pay for both schools and local government capital.

54% is earmarked for public school operations, and the remaining 36% is for local government operations.

Just as I mentioned, the general fund revenues, the general fund expenditures also are balanced at $432.2 million.

And this is a little bit of a different type of funding than what we looked at on the prior page.

But you can see that with everything mixed that we're still transferring almost 50% of all the general fund expenditures are going to our public school system.

So they are a key partner for us.

Board, this is really a nitty-gritty slide of where is the increase in capacity, where is it going into next year, and it's tight and concise.

We can see that going into FY25 recommended is an additional $10.1 million for public schools.

on the top right is an additional $9.3 million for local government that's earmarked for customer service enhancements as well as compensation, money for healthcare and other related personnel commitments.

In the middle part of the slide you see an additional $2.2 million for partner agencies.

that frankly without these relationships, these partnerships and these agreements, we could not provide the services to our community without our valued partner agencies.

To the far right in the middle is our quality of life where we see an additional $2.1 million for public transit.

and then on the bottom left we have obligations.

These are multi-year obligations.

They're driven by contracts, agreements, and we see an additional $2.8 million that we are obligating going into next year.

And then finally, bottom right is additional 1.1 in the area of safety and well-being.

Before we advance the slide board, I would just say this does not capture all of the revenue and all of the commitments in next year.

This is just a really high-level overview.

and as we go into the budget work sessions over the next weeks, you'll be diving into more of the details about what this means in the departments for service delivery and for the community that we serve.

Just a quick snapshot as I wrap up, as we look at the Capital Improvement Plan for Schools, the recommendation for the Schools Capital Improvement Plan for next year is $206.8 million.

This covers over the next five years and you see the green check marks that are aligned in the budget years for recommended increases for projects that are in the school system.

You see also the same capital improvement plan for local government, and this is just our summary.

It's $128.9 million over the next five years, and you get a feel for what those commitments are, not just in 25, but as we work all the way out through year five.

So, Board, that is a high-level overview.

I appreciate the opportunity to be back before the Board tonight.

Our staff is here to answer any questions.

I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Sumner and let him talk just for a few minutes about next steps and some specifics about the work sessions.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Good evening, Board.

Jacob Sumner, Chief Financial Officer for the county.

The slide in front of you is the budget calendar for the remainder of the budget season.

As you see, as we transition into March, we have at least five work sessions planned.

And in just a minute, I'll go over some more details on the work sessions as far as topics that we'll cover

particularly in the first three work sessions.

In April, we'll move towards our public hearings on the tax rate and on the budget itself.

And finally, we'll look to May 1st for appropriation and adoption of the budget and setting the tax rate.

So I did want to take just a moment on this slide to talk about the first work session, which is going to be on Wednesday, March 6th.

This will start with the general fund.

We'll focus particularly on general fund revenues, and then we'll move into the general fund expenditures starting with administration, judicial, public safety, and our goal is to get through public works as well.

These are functional areas and categories that we report out on for the budget.

So these aren't department-specific, as you see on the screen, but there are departments embedded within each of these functional areas.

The second work session on March 11th will be a joint work session between the Board of Supervisors and the School Board, and this is when the public schools will provide their recommendation or their request to the Board.

at the end of

The last section that I'll go over for tonight is on Work Session 3.

We'll be focusing on our capital improvement program and our debt service.

We also have some time reserved.

Should we not make it through some of the general fund items from the previous nights?

That we'll wrap those up hopefully on March 13th.

Thank you.

So before opening the public hearing, I want to make sure that I remind the public that there's a sign-up sheet under the window to my left, first window.

But before turning to that, I'd like to check with our supervisors to see if anyone has anything they'd like to ask beforehand.

All right.

Then we will open the public hearing.

And I believe we have several people signed up.

I guess while she's getting that, the only thing I would ask is that I understand that these presentation materials will be online.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

As well as, I assume, even a question and answers as they come in and things like that.

Yes, sir.

There's plenty of opportunity for people to weigh in.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel will read the rules for speakers with public hearing.

These rules are also included on the published agenda for the meeting, which can be found online.

and on the signup table to the audience's right.

During public hearings, the board will acknowledge speakers addressing the item listed for public hearing.

Speakers are limited to one appearance of three minutes per public hearing.

Timekeeping is conducted through the timer and light system at the podium.

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

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

The red light indicates

Your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments.

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

When addressing the board, state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district.

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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 Altmark County website.

And with that, we have six speakers that have signed up tonight, and we have no one online.

Welcome, Ms.

Farr.

Please adjust the microphone so that it works for you.

If you have papers prepared for us, please hand them over to the clerk.

It's fine.

Thank you.

Please adjust the microphone as you can.

Oh, you can't hear me?

Okay.

Is that better?

I want to make sure you hear me.

Good evening.

My name is Heidi Farr.

I reside in Earleysville in the White Hall district.

This evening I will be sharing with you my experiences as a parent and a volunteer in 4-H.

Hopefully to demonstrate with you why I am thanking you for the current funding and to ask you to fully fund the Virginia Cooperative Extension's Office 4-H Budget for the fiscal year 2025.

With 4-H participation at its highest level in the 20 years, it is evident that our community is looking for what 4-H has to offer.

however sustaining and expanding these invaluable programs that are free to anyone requires resources and that's where your resources, your support becomes pivotal by endorsing the budget request for 4-H.

You are not merely allocating funds, you are investing in future leaders, innovators, and changemakers in Albemarle County.

I'd like to tell you about one of these future leaders.

In 4-H, the kids are responsible for running the business meetings, with volunteers only assisting as needed.

Recently, one club needed to appoint a fundraising committee.

About a half a dozen kids were willing to be on the committee.

However, no one wanted to be the chairperson.

The president had the responsibility to appoint a chairperson and came up with a unique solution.

She made everyone play rock, paper, scissors until only one person was left standing.

The winner or loser was the new chairperson.

Imagine what this kind of out-of-the-box and unique thinking can do as she and her peers participate in our community.

The funding request is for $117,335.

With over 3,250 kids served last year, this investment will only be $36.10 per child annually.

But we don't plan on stopping there.

We have a lot more to do.

While I could continue to talk about many other things, I want to leave you with one other story.

Each fall, our clubs have elections.

And at this last election, things progressed normally.

Until one particular young lady, who was exceptionally shy, stood up.

With her hands and body trembling, she shared with her peers why she wanted to be club historian.

Not a single kid moved or spoke while she was speaking.

And when she finished, they erupted in cheers and applause for her.

Imagine what this can do when other kids have it.

I invite you to visit a club or a 4-H event to see these stories in action.

That is why I am thanking you for the current funding and respectfully asking you to fully fund the Virginia Cooperative's fiscal year 2025 budget.

Are there questions?

I'm not sure I can.

If it worked for Jeff, it'll work for me.

Good evening, Chair Andrews and members of the Board.

My name is Dan Rosensweig.

I'm President and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

I want to thank Mr. Richardson for putting together a thorough and really helpful budget explanation.

And I want to thank you all for allowing me to speak tonight.

I want to start with some good news about the partnership between Habitat and the county at the Southwood Mobile Home Park.

This $500 million national model redevelopment without displacement

has a long way to go, but thus far exceeding our expectations as well as your own benchmarks.

Nationally, in similar redevelopment projects, only 11% of residents return.

At Southwood, the second group of families, or the first group that's after the early adopters, have made their choices in a staggering 85% of families are staying.

And we expect that to actually increase.

This group was the only group that wasn't able to design their own neighborhood because of COVID.

So all future neighborhoods will have designed their own neighborhoods.

So we really think we can push that retention rate above 90%, which is unprecedented nationally.

We also

are pleased to report that we're outperforming our first performance agreement with the county by 60 affordable units.

The first performance agreement required us to create 155 affordable units.

In fact, we're delivering 215.

So again, thank you so much for your support.

As you consider this year's budget, please keep Southwood top of mind.

As you'll recall, prior to the first rezoning of the property in 2018, we entered into a performance agreement providing the county clear deliverables in exchange for cash contributions and tax increments.

Then three years ago, in the lead up to the second phase, it was determined that we should wait until after the rezoning to enter into performance agreement.

That was more than two, that was about two years ago.

And the second phase of the development represents about 80% of the park.

In anticipation of that, given the severe health and safety issues resulting from failing septic systems, Habitat has spent more than $3 million remediating and clearing the first section of phase two.

More than a 12-acre parcel is now clean.

That's the good news.

It's pristine as warranted by the DEQ.

But the tough part is that for us as a nonprofit, this has created extreme cash flow challenges.

Really extreme cash flow challenges.

Our forward expenditures of funds now threatens consequential delays in the project, which would imperil families by keeping them in unhealthy living conditions, potentially forcing some of them to move twice and creating costly inefficiencies in land development and new home construction.

So my request to you tonight is to support for Phase 2 at Southwood in your upcoming budget, and prayerfully, if the capacity exists, finding funds now from the remaining year's budget to help us continue moving forward in partnership with the families at Southwood.

Thank you.

Hello, board.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Gustavo Spinoza.

I'm a tenant organizer with the Legal Justice Center.

I work with low-income Albemarle County renters.

Before I was an organizer, I was a rent relief assister.

So I was helping hundreds and hundreds of Albemarle County residents access the state's pandemic rent relief program that ended a long time ago.

And so I want to thank the board

in the Department of Social Services for launching ASERP, the Albemarle County's Emergency Relief Program.

Now I finally have, there was a period between the rent relief program and ASERP where I was knocking on people's doors to let them know that they were, that they were being evicted, that they were being brought to court, but other than legal assistance, there wasn't a financial assistance that I could offer them.

and so on and so forth.

Cases filed last year.

So that's for a day.

And these evictions are across Albemarle County.

I looked at the list of the top 20 evictors, and they are across Yall's districts.

And Diantha McKeel's district, Spark Charlottesville is the biggest evictor, Barracks West, Park Sedge, and Ned Gallaway's district, Cobalt Ridge, formerly known as Abington Crossing, Mallside and Ryohill, also among the top 20 evictors.

and Bea LaPisto-Kirtley's district, Wilton Farm Apartments and Mike Pruitt's district, Cavalier Crossing in Timberland and Jim Andrews district, Brookdale.

And then I couldn't find an Ann Mallek's district, but there's lots of LLC's here that just have mysterious names that I'm not sure what apartment complex or manufacturer home community they might refer to.

I'm sure there's a lot of evictions happening in your district as well.

and so on.

But that's all to

and Acerp in order to meaningfully help the families that live in Albemarle County.

It needs to be better funded because I'm constantly hearing, especially once Acerp started giving less money, that there is no resource in the city or the county that will pay for a balance that is more than a month or two's worth of rent.

And when people lose their jobs, when they lose a family member and they have to pay for the funeral, when a kid is hospitalized, when all these crises come,

and so it's more than just a thousand dollars that people need to pay in order to stay in their homes and it ends up saving the county money.

It's the right thing to do but it also saves the county money because there's fewer services that are needed when you're able to keep people in their homes, keep kids in their schools.

Yeah, so these are always hard choices with the budget.

You're going to have to move money around.

Last year was the first time the county put its own money into emergency rental assistance.

I'm glad that looks like it's going to continue, but it needs to be at a higher level.

$260,000 is really not enough.

My name is Roger Torres and I live in the community of Southwood more than two decades ago, where my wife and I raised a family and where now we have grandchildren and they live and call it Southwood.

Their home was raised, I believe in God, in my family and in hard work.

These are values that we share in Southwood.

En diciembre, durante la época navideña, Habitat no se entregó las llaves de nuestra nueva casa.

Pasamos una navidad sin frío porque las paredes no tienen hoyos, el techo está fuerte, no tiene goteras y un sistema sanitario de aguas negras en perfecto estado y no hay malos olores en nuestra casa.

Asimismo, mi familia también

Quedan Matthe, 200 familias en el parque de trailer que están trabajando para obtener una casa decente para crear a sus hijos.

Una casa donde los niños estén sanos y alegres y puedan ir a la escuela y educarse y ser hombres y mujeres de bien para este país.

Fui y soy parte de este proyecto de hábitat de convertir sagor de un parque de trailer a un lindo vecindario con casas dignas para todos sin distinción de raza, color, política o religión.

Hello everyone, I'm Roger Torres, a resident of Salwood for over 20 years.

My wife and I raised our family here in our grandchildren called Salwood Home.

I believe in God, my family, and hard work.

Those are values we share at Salwood.

Last December, during the Christmas season, Habitat gave us the keys to our new home.

This made our Christmas warm and comfortable, as our house has no holes in the walls, no leaks in the roof, and a perfect switch system, ensuring no on place and others.

Like my family, there are over 200 families in the trailer park working to have a decent home for the children, a place where kids can be healthy, happy, and attend school to become educated individuals contributing positively to our country.

I have been involved in the Habitat Project to transform Southwood from a trailer park to a welcoming neighborhood with decent homes for everyone regardless of race, political beliefs or religion.

Tonight I come to you once again to ask you to continue to support Habitat, to continue to support hundreds of families, hundreds of children who are the future of Charlottesville, the future of Virginia.

Thank you.

Teresa Timenez?

Timenez?

I'm probably mispronouncing that and I apologize, but I think it's Timenez?

Timenez.

Timenez.

Timenez.

Timenez.

Got it.

Hi everybody.

Buenas noches, mi nombre es María Teresa Jimenez, vivo en Salco desde hace 20 años.

Soy la orgullosa madre de dos hijas y embaron mi ocupaciones de limpieza de casas.

but, además, he ha emprendido un negocio de planificación de fiestas de cumpleaños.

Mi familia, yo estamos sintiendo los efectos de vivir en un trailer por tantos años.

Económicamente nos cuesta mucho dinero mantener una trailer caliente en el invierno.

Yo pago casi 400 dólares mensualmente, lo que equivale a que debo de limpiar cuatro casas para tener ese dinero.

Además tengo que hacer constantes reparaciones en estructura de la traila y así evitar que se deteriore más.

También emocionalmente me pongo triste porque todavía el sueño de tener una casa se me ve como algo casi imposible de lograr, pero aún así con esas limitaciones me sigan estudiando y yo sigo trabajando para hacer miembros útiles de esta comunidad.

Sine, el programa habita mi familia no tendría la oportunidad de adquirir una vivienda esequible y segura.

Es un sueño por el que sigo luchando cada día de mi vida.

Creo que lo lograré con fe en Dios, en habita y también en ustedes como autoridades.

Hello, I'm Maria Teresa Jimenez and I've been a resident of Southwood for more than 20 years and a proud mother of two daughters and a son.

I work in house cleaning and recently started a birthday party planning business.

Living in a trailer for so long has taken a toll on my family.

Financially, it's a struggle to keep the trailer warm in winter, costing me almost $400 a month.

This means cleaning four houses just to cover that expense.

Consent Repairs to the Trailer Frame, Add to the Challenges.

Emotionally is disheartening as the dream of owning a house feels almost impossible.

Despite these difficulties, my daughters are dedicated to their studies and I continue working to be a valuable member of this community.

Without the Habitat Program, my family wouldn't have

The opportunity to acquire an affordable and safe home is a dream that I continue to fight for every day of my life.

I believe that I will achieve it with faith in God, in habit and also in you as authorities who can help us to continue this project.

We need resources to continue building Southwood and ensure that hundreds of families can make their dream come true.

Please make the right decision and continue back in our project.

Your support ensures that many generations ahead have a decent roof over their heads.

Thank you very much and may God bless you.

Good evening.

I'm from the White Hall District.

I'm here to, I know that you're at the beginning of your budget process and I am here to, I am hopeful that you will include robust funding for habitat efforts at non-displacement.

To give you a little bit of background about myself, I was, I'm a Colombian immigrant.

I came to this country in the 60s and for many, many years, about 30 years of my life, I was a renter in New York City.

As a renter, I had no concept of home ownership.

It wasn't until many, many years later when I was in my 30s when I purchased my first home, and then I purchased my second home.

By way of background, I was a state prosecutor for five years in New York City, and then I was a federal prosecutor for 15 years, and now at the moment, I am a criminal defense attorney in the area.

about two years ago wanting to get back to the community.

I was looking around at what organization I wanted to spend my time being involved with.

and that opportunity presented itself with habitat.

So about two years ago, I would volunteer every other Saturday morning to help build the homes at Southwood and also I acted as an interpreter for those members who were volunteering also or working 100 hours of workforce that they had to do.

I would interpret for them.

at another time, the opportunity arose where I actually became a member of the Habitat Board, so I now sit on the board.

I will tell you, growing up in New York City, you know, in that neighborhood, you hear a gunshot, you learn how to duck.

I tell you, as I walk around Southwood and I see the children who are now playing in the homes that we have finished.

You have clean streets,

You have a safe environment, you have a learning environment.

What Habitat is also doing is Habitat is truly helping these individuals live and experience the American dream, which is what we all want.

Your support of Habitat will further that American dream of these individuals.

As Dan mentioned earlier, Habitat has done so much to assist in non-displacement, which is so important.

There are so many families that have chosen to stay based upon what Habitat has done to allow them to stay.

Over 80 families have not been displaced due to the efforts of Habitat and due to your own efforts.

I implore you and encourage you to please continue supporting Habitat in this endeavor.

and that's all our speakers.

All right, just trying to read the handwriting and I have, it's like I have two names.

Well, we hope you're healing nicely.

Bruce Eads.

I'm in the White Hall, Ann Mallek's district, and been there 77 years, except for when I lived on Cherry Avenue when I grew up and graduated from Lane High School.

We were all drafted at that time into the Marine Corps or Army and sent to Vietnam.

Well, I came back from Vietnam.

I wasn't a happy camper, so to speak.

I didn't want to talk about Vietnam, and I didn't talk about Vietnam for twenty-five years, twenty-seven years actually, and a gentleman named Jim Shisler got me to speak at the Dogwood Vietnam Memorial, which was the first Vietnam Memorial in the country, so it was one.

And we called the hill at Hills because

It bought me out.

I had to face my demons and I had a lot of demons.

So anyway, I guess I'll get to the point.

You know, we veterans are still healing and I think a good way that there's 7,000 veterans in Albemarle County.

So it's a lot of veterans and they're all healing from different different wars.

That is 25 suicides a day of veterans.

as you well know.

But we are still healing, so we think a way we can bring our community together is we can raise money for pedestrian bridge and parking lot over here at the memorial.

And it's going to take $3 million.

We've got $600,000 at the city, put in a CIP,

Sam Sanders just got an NCIP so it's in the plan and they're going to hopefully match it and we're coming to, I talked to Ann and she told me I need to apply in September maybe but I thought I'd get it in this year's budget because we're very optimistic and we'd like to get it done before our lifetime ends and so we're coming guys and we hope you'll help us out.

There's eight people from Albemarle County, Memorial High School on that hill that went to Albemarle High School that we knew.

Thank you.

The board, those are all our speakers, but I want to now give the board a chance to add any comments while we still have the public hearing open.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank everyone who

who came out this evening.

As always, take diligent notes while you're speaking to the efforts and the things you're asking for support for and we'll definitely be keeping those notes and your words in mind as we work through the budget.

I think I just, so thank you to those who are here and hopefully for those who are listening online as well.

I also want to acknowledge

Mr. Richardson, the day after he presented the budget to us, I forgot the date, it was a week ago Wednesday, but he did, the employee town hall was the following day, I don't know if others were able to join in, but I appreciated the fact that you were walking through that budget for all of our staff and employees, I believe it was very well intended, you may have spoke to this when I came in late, but I especially appreciated the questions they asked and took note of those as well, and just want to acknowledge here that those questions and notes will also be

kept at forefront as we work through the budget this year.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Also, echo thanks to all who came and spoke and listened in and encourage all of you to continue to weigh in by email or letter or further attendance at public hearings because lots of information will be coming forward on all chapters of the budget, lots of questions that we receive from our constituents.

We're able to take those to the budget work sessions and get even more information to be able to do the very best job we can for all of us.

so continue to fight on here.

Thank you.

I would just like to thank everyone who came out today for their input.

I especially want to express my appreciation for everyone who came to speak on behalf of Southwood

I told a constituent just earlier today, you know, I have such tremendous pride.

That is utterly unheard, because I did nothing about it.

That I get to claim Southwood as being in my district.

This is a truly generational investment that we're all putting into this community.

It's, I think, an important national model for community-led development.

And I'm excited to continue the county support of it this year moving forward.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

And I echo the fact that what my fellow supervisors said regarding everyone coming out today, 4-H, Southwood, these are very important issues.

I also, in the Vietnam Memorial, I also encourage you to come and attend or listen to each budget workshop that we have.

We have a number of them coming up that you've heard.

Listen to what we have to do, what we have to look at, what is being proposed.

and so I encourage you to continue to be involved and I thank you again for coming out.

as my other, as the other supervisors have said, thank you for coming out.

I would just add on a rainy night, we very much appreciate it.

Diantha, the information, the data is very outstanding that you're sharing with us and we really appreciate that.

It's a great, great project and I'm always happy to see students here.

It's great to get young people into this building to speak to us and thank you very much for coming out from 4-H, the 4-H clubs, that's great.

Jeff, great presentation.

We appreciate staff being here.

We're at the beginning of the process.

And all of the information and the documents and everything, we have recordings.

You can go online and listen to our meetings or listen to them as they're happening.

So we encourage you to participate.

And I, of course, want to add my welcome and appreciation for your being here tonight to talk to us, to be present and part of the process.

We welcome community engagement.

This is the first public hearing.

There are several more, but don't wait till the end.

We need to hear from people soon, and the sooner the better.

So there are ways to reach us through BOS at albemarle.org, through the county's website process with the budget office.

There's online budget materials, and of course we'll have regular meetings throughout this process when the public can come and make comments in addition to other methods.

So thank you again for being part of this process.

There's nothing else.

I will close the public hearing.

Thank you.

Well, board, we do have on our agenda of matters not listed on the agenda from the board.

So if anyone has anything, we'll go through our order.

Just as it just happened this afternoon, we got updated last week on the Fontaine Avenue intersection and the board directed us to which direction to go that did pass by unanimous vote at the MPO today.

Well, one abstention, of course, Mr. Nelson from V.DOT abstained, but the four electives did vote to proceed with what was presented to us last week and all questions and concerns that were brought up here were brought up this afternoon.

Don't need to get into all of those, but

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I would also encourage residents to contribute your thoughts on three chapters of their drafts that have recently come out on the AC44 Comprehensive Plan.

Growth Area, Land Use and Transportation is one.

Rural Area, Land Use and Transportation is the second.

And Community Facilities is the third.

You may also listen to the Planning Commission discussion from last night.

I think that recording will be up in a day or so.

And that would be a helpful starting place for your own comments and being able to look at the materials that are available on the website or we can get them printed for you if you need.

also needed our elements as we talked about on the budget and also the solar ordinance draft which is being discussed and the wireless facilities.

So many, many things on which to do homework and to share your own personal thoughts as we go forward.

I think I have nothing to add.

Yes, I also want to let the audience know that we will be having

through our CAC's Community Advisory Councils.

Those are open to the public, and we will be having budget meetings or town halls to let the public know about our budget process and what it is, what it looks like.

So I encourage you, wherever you live, to look up community advisory councils and attend one of the meetings in your community or outside of your community in any district.

And also, I am

respectfully asking the board because I would like to say that we have our parks foundation that is up and running, nonprofit, that is raising money for amenities for our parks.

So there are 501C3 raising private monies for our parks.

And I would now like to also, with the board's permission, can start a fire rescue foundation, which would do the same thing.

If it's an organization that's working on it, they're doing it.

You don't need our permission to do that.

Not your permission, but I'll make you all aware.

Appreciate that.

Yeah, the only thing that I would say members of the board would be that when any board member would ask

to make you aware of something and ask for the support.

and what we're lucky about is that we already have the articles of the corporation, we already have the

template for that and also the bylaws, not the bylaws, Articles of Incorporation and MOA from the Parks Foundation.

So we can basically use that same format, which is what we did to start the Parks Foundation.

We used the Articles of Incorporation from the Police Foundation.

I would feel more comfortable if I knew what was expected of staff before we go further with this involving staff time.

So we can have that discussion at some point.

I appreciate it.

Perhaps our attorney could address that.

I think the idea would be to let staff come back to us at a later time with the impact.

Yes, the Regional Transit Partnership met last week, and as you all know, we have been talking about moving towards an authority, a transit authority.

That was the purpose of the Regional Transit Partnership to begin with, was to slowly move us towards an authority, and we're at that point.

So last week, the Regional Transit Partnership

agreed to support the staff of the city and the county working together over the next 90 to 100, it's probably going to be more like 120 days, but 90 days to just sort of begin to thrash out the basics of what would be needed to come back to the city council and the board of supervisors with the concept of an authority.

and Ann was at the table with us and as well as someone from the city and so it's really exciting.

Getting through budget cycle and then having the staff look at and bring back to us the basics of what we would need.

It is interesting to note, and the reason we needed to do it this way, our enabling authority that's in the code of Virginia says that a local authority has to begin with the city and the county.

So we have to make the first step.

I'm looking forward to that.

Board, I only want to just briefly mention that these things are piggybacking, so Supervisor Pruitt and I just had an Albemarle-Brock Band Authority meeting just prior to this meeting.

where we heard about the VATI 2021 and VATI 22 projects which are proceeding and should still be on time for 2025, essentially connecting all the areas in the county.

But one of the things that struck me at the meeting is we talked briefly about the phase out, unfortunately, of the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is not

Gatton, additional federal funding at this point, but the transition of the people who are in that program into the Regional Digital Equity Coalition.

We learned we had 2,568 enrollees in that program, so it was very significant, and now this staff who are working with them are working with them to

A system with digital skills and to find transition ways to continue to be able to access the internet and digital resources.

So it was an interesting topic.

if there is nothing further?

Would you say a little more about the regional digital equity?

Is that something that is local or is that an ongoing state program?

Well, steering committee so far, I think we have BRHD, Java, the library, others are involved, so it's a regional group for, again, helping

Fort, then we will adjourn to March 6, 2024, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium.

Opportunities for the public to access and participate in this meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.