Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with the Economic Development Authority   8/14/2024

needs to be to invite Supervisor Jim Andrews to join us remotely in accordance with the rule of the board rules of procedure, rule number 8B1D, enacted pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act.

Thank you very much.

And with that, if the supervisors would give me a motion to admit Jim and a second.

And first for the motion and B for the second.

This is really great because we haven't done this for a long, long time.

For the Board of Supervisors only, our first action item really is a resolution of confirming the declaration of a local emergency.

And it was in your packet.

and I would really appreciate a motion, unless there are questions, a motion to approve that resolution.

Second.

Okay, so we have a motion from Ann and a second from Bea.

Alright.

What did you call for the vote?

Mr. Gallaway.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Hi.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Great.

Very good.

As we normally do, especially when we have so many people, we're going to go around the table and ask folks to introduce themselves.

And just if you can introduce yourself, let us know, maybe you're a Magisterial District you represent, or if there's some other tidbit that you would rather us know about.

Jonathan Follwell, EDA Director, Whitehall.

Ned Gallaway, Supervisor for the Rio District.

J.T.

And I would like to introduce Claudette Mortensen, who is the Florida Supervisor's clerk.

Ashley Horenda, Florida.

Ashley.

Please, Jim, though, do help us remember like that to make sure that we see your hand going up or to catch it.

Yes.

All right.

I also want to thank and introduce Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Master Police Officer, Chef Riley, who are here this evening.

We thank you for your service today.

and for your work in making our community and safe and your colleagues work as well.

So thank you very much.

Is there anyone else in the EDA that you want to introduce?

I don't.

All right.

Sounds good.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

I'll take you up on that offer.

We do have Andrew Slides, who is the DAC program manager.

Well, welcome.

This is a great opportunity for you to introduce yourself to this group.

When we get to the Rivanna Futures update item, Daniel Hyer with Lightning Grade is here with us to help support any questions that you all have.

As you all know, tonight's meeting is an opportunity for us to come together, share information and provide direction, updating our MOU to better reflect the county's economic development strategic plan, Project A. Today,

Key elements of our successes have been public-private partnerships and prioritizing workforce development.

It is through collaborations that we leverage resources, expertise, and innovation, while driving sustainable economic growth, diversifying our tax base, and creating career opportunities for our residents.

Our discussion tonight offers us an opportunity

to align our shared MOU with Project Enable, which reflects Albemarle County's vision of community.

And I really appreciate it.

Thank you all for being here tonight.

Sure.

I don't have much to add to that.

I think that's a great description of what we're going to be doing.

I think from the EDA's perspective, what I really hope we get out of is directions.

and then make sure we're doing it in partnership with the Board of Supervisors.

Did we do the local emergency?

Oh my goodness, here we are.

All right.

So we thank you all so much for a meeting like this is really difficult to get a date on the calendar to get everyone prepared for and to have a good discussion.

And I know we had the opportunity to connect with both members of both bodies in different ways to prepare for this evening.

So I just really want to thank everyone for being here, for making time to prepare for a good conversation and what I know will be a great conversation ahead.

So we'll walk through three main items this evening.

One of the first is an update on Rivanna Futures.

We've been working on some conceptual engineering work with lining grade support.

And so this will be an opportunity to catch everyone up on the freshest information that we have on Rivanna Futures project.

So we're really excited about that.

We'll do some questions after that for clarification.

But the bulk of our time is really going to be spent on the other two items, which are the discussion items this evening.

The first one, the Economic Development Strategic Plan update.

We are seeking input from you all to help sort of at the very front end, foundational input to help guide our early work on that project.

And then the last conversation will be on the memorandum of understanding.

And we've teed up some topics for discussion here as well.

I think I'm going to stand for this one and invite, I'm going to invite Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive, and D.P.

Newberry.

They're going to help support different parts of this first section.

Thanks Emily.

I just have a few slides really to tee up this work.

As Emily said, the intent is really to share the latest award-winning one as we continue the site evaluation

and preparation process.

This image is an image that has been seen by both boards.

This has been kind of represented as a concept, or what we call our intelligence, a national security innovation acceleration campus.

Just as a reminder, the work of this came out of work led out by the State Veteran and Defense Affairs Office back in 2014.

14 period as they were going listening tours throughout the state.

and an analysis of opportunities.

And what came out of that was this campus expansion concept.

It's a concept of expanding work within the agencies that would include public-private partnership, in this case the county has now acquired the land, but in working with

University of Charlottesville, Diantha McKeel

really with a consideration of the project that has been successful out in St.

Louis.

The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA, has a campus and headquarters that is referred to as NGA West.

It has all the elements that I just talked about in place and working right now.

And so we've been advised throughout this process by folks that

for Retired Voice Admiral, actually led a lot of the work out in St.

Louis and has been supporting the work here as we've gone through visiting and the work to get us to today.

And we feel strongly about all the elements of our ecosystem can support that kind of work unease goes in our area.

And so to further kind of learn about St.

Louis,

We're meeting with the St.

Louis Geospatial Ecosystem.

Branch of folks from out there and really listening, learning, sharing what we're doing and what our concepts are and I think will be in a great place as we continue to work multiple lines of effort on this project.

Just as a reminder, this acquisition was both to support the existing Rivanna Station which is part of a significant

Economic Generator for our region.

It's to support the 3,000 employees that work there on a day-to-day basis and to make sure whatever expansion would look like would be done so in a collaborative way that does not affect the existing missions nor create any kind of encouragement concerns.

Next slide.

This is a slide that really is a kind of, we call it the layer cake.

It really is showing the different elements of the work required to move this to fruition, which is a, you know, 15, 20 year plus process.

Getting site control was key and really the linchpin for us to be able to have the conversations that we've had at the state level with our federal partners.

You're muted, Jim.

The topic for today really is, and the work that is happening now both internally and externally is around site readiness.

JT will walk us through some of the concepts that have taken us out of the possible and trying to place that onto the land based on

what the land looks like and what the land can accommodate.

And so I think it's really interesting.

It's work that is new that the board and the ADA would be saying for the first time.

But it is reflective on feedback that we had from the state as we put in a funding request was, great, we understand what it takes to do the full project.

What is a reasonable planning effort to unlock elements of the site?

I think Emily and I are going to stand up for the remaining parts of these slides.

I'm going to turn the laptop around so I can navigate the electronic laser pointer.

I have just a few slides to present before I turn it back over to Emily to talk more in depth about the conceptual engineering study, which is the 11 by 17 printed packet that you have sitting in front of you today.

The purpose of my slides is to really tee up that conversation, give a brief recap.

of the work we've been doing since closing on the property and provide some context for you as you read through the specific elements of the study.

So this tool that you see on the screen, I believe, is information that both bodies have seen before.

This is the state's rubric for site readiness, and it's a tiering system that goes from tier one to tier five where

Tier 1 is raw land where there's really little to no information about the viability of a property to support commercial or industrial development.

And it goes all the way up to Tier 5, which would be a shovel-ready project where an end user can expect to be able to use the property just based on the construction timeline of the particular structures that they need.

We wanted to show this not only to give you that context, page six of the report will estimate the tier, the level of readiness for the different development blocks that were studied as a part of the conceptual engineering, but also just to note that we still have study that's going on right now.

Last week we started a stream delineation study

that will go on for another month and that information is critical to having the state recognize the county's property as fully Tier 3 and it will also be critical for any grant applications that we submit to accelerate and escalate the level of readiness that we're at now.

We've been really focused on getting the county's property to a Tier 4 level of readiness

And that's to give confidence that an end user could be up and going in about a 12 to 18 month timeframe.

So I'm just going to quickly touch on the rezoning and special use permit before diving into the conceptual engineering information.

Back on June 12th, the board of supervisors approved a rezoning and a special use permit for 172 acres of the county's property within the development area.

That was rezoned to light industry with a special use permit for office.

We think that that is the appropriate zoning district and entitlement for the kinds of future users that we see here.

And it was subject to one proffer, which was related to vehicle trips.

Right now, the property is served by just one way in, one way out, and that's Boulder's Road.

And so approval of a site plan for any development that's greater than 5,000 vehicle trips would require the submission of a traffic study.

But we were very excited to get this rezoning approved.

It's a step that allows us to be minimally eligible to apply for that grant funding so that we can continue to work on our site readiness activities.

So this is an image, I think it's on page four of your packet tonight that gives you a good sense of the layout and I'll highlight a few things before I turn it back over to Emily.

Dashed in the red dashed line shows the bounds of the 172 acres that were rezoned to light industry.

The dashed yellow line shows the approximately 60 acres that are within the development area, but not a part of the rezoning action on June 12th.

The numbers one, two, and three and outlined in the black dashed line is the existing 75 acres of Rivanna Station.

Trevor mentioned St.

Louis has the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

The other two intelligence agencies that are here are the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Ground Intelligence Center.

The hatched area and labeled number four is approximately 15 acres and that's a privately held office building that the report calls boulders one.

That's currently occupied by contractors that are directly supporting the missions at Rivanna Station.

And then finally, just the solid black line around the outer edge comprises the entire 462 acres acquired by the count.

Thank you.

So we'll be looking at sort of the same view for the next couple of slides that JT just went through.

And so what the conceptual engineering study really did was to look at, based on the land, the topography of the land, where the streams are, where some of the natural areas are,

Looking at where development naturally wants to occur on the site.

You'll note, for this land massing diagram, it does not fill the dotted red line, which is the land that's been rezoned, but it really focuses on the large land masses that would be most appropriate for development over the time horizon that we're looking at.

and so you can see we sort of have three rough land masses identified for a total of just over a hundred acres that we could look at.

What does the land tell us it wants to be as we move forward?

So then the study went down and looked at phasing and broke those large masses into blocks.

So these are block-level diagrams and then their color shading indicates sort of a time horizon.

So we would be thinking about what would be a reasonable phase one over the next five years, maybe six to eight years out, we would be looking at bringing these blocks online and then finally ending with sort of the green areas for a phase, for a potential phase three.

and why we look at it that way, zooming into phase one is really looking at how can you maximize the parcels that would become available with the least amount of infrastructure that you would be adding to the property.

So phase one looks at adding about 650 feet of road and a couple thousand feet of water and sewer pipes and these are sort of the large bland areas that you could sort of chunk out as you look at what a phase one could be.

This takes those chunks and applies an office building to them.

So these are not buildings that have been designed.

This is not necessarily what would happen out there.

But it's looking at, based on where those blocks naturally sort of form, what size building could you put out there?

How much parking would it need under the county's code?

The blue areas are appropriately sized stormwater management facilities to give sort of a good working concept of what could happen out there.

So this is not necessarily what will happen out there, but it's to develop our understanding and further our ability to sort of envision what's possible, taking the art of the possible and looking at what can you really engineer to be out there.

This is my favorite page of the report.

It's labeled as page nine.

And it really helps us think about how to move forward with a phase one.

And so it shows information about the building sizes of the buildings that are located on these blocks, again, once required under

and looking at estimating what the infrastructure needs are, a rough order of magnitude of what those costs to develop those might look like.

And we can really use this as sort of a roadmap as you look at phase one for what we would be looking to do up there.

Important feedback that we've gotten from the state is to not think about one giant site all at once, but to think about how could we break things into really achievable chunks and then focus on really delivering those as we move forward.

One area that we've heard a lot about when we engage with stakeholders of Rivanna Station is the resiliency on the security of their site.

So right now there's only one road in and out of the existing uses up there, and that's the connection of Oldridge Road at Route 29.

So one piece, once you have the massing in place,

looked at how would you flow through the site and envisioned, you know, we've been talking for a long time, our comprehensive plan shows Boulder's road looping back to Route 29 and that certainly creates some important resiliency.

This loop road adds an additional layer of resiliency and then you can look at what could potentially be emergency access up to Watts Passage as you look out over time of what that development might look like.

So the layer cake slide talked about state supported and federally shared.

So some of our next steps, the last large work area line of effort for the current phase of work is drawing down grant funding.

This is a locally driven project, but we think the significance of it rises to a state and a national level and seeking partners to help bring that to reality.

So we're working right now to prepare for the Virginia Business Ready Sites program.

That's a grant program that Virginia Economic Development Partnership does.

and all of

This can really present a roadmap for what the next couple of years of work of the county could and should be.

And we think that with this plan in place, we'll have the ability to be really strategic about going after the right grant funding rather than sort of trying to scatter shot to bring in funding that might otherwise not exactly drive us forward in a meaningful way.

That is what we have on this topic.

So we wanted to pause here and see if anyone has questions.

We know you're just seeing the large handout for the first time this evening that we received that just a couple of days ago.

And so certainly there's lots of opportunities for each of you to ask questions at a later time once you've had time to digest.

So we'll open it up to questions.

And just for the supervisors, we're not going through our order of call order like we normally do in our meetings.

We're just opening it up for questions from anyone or comments.

So just let us know.

Awesome.

Could you go to the slide that had the tier in the phasing?

I think it was 13 million.

That's a 50 million.

So the tier four, or the tier column, is that what you're proposing?

Explain to me how the, because these are not at tier four yet, or tier three.

So just explain that column.

So you're theorizing that we're gonna start with those.

Joy, let's introduce yourself again if you don't mind.

I'm Daniel.

I've been working on this for about 18 months now.

There's a lot to take in, so no questions are silly.

In terms of the tiers, like JT was mentioning earlier, we're doing the preliminary jurisdictional determination work right now on the natural resources on the property, which checks the last box in terms of meeting your tier three requirements at the site.

That work is imminent to be finished soon, although there'll be some back and forth with the Army Corps as we wrap up our findings.

So in terms of working away up that ladder, tier three boxes are kind of checked.

Which kind of leaves us at the threshold of tier four, which kind of says within 12 to 18 months you have a shovel ready site.

The reason these are identified as tier four and some of them have asterisks is because if we took block A, for example, that site can be accessed right now on the existing boulders road.

and so as soon as, like, the only thing really standing in the way of having that shovel ready is an approved site plan, which could be done within about 12 to 18 months.

So those sites like Block A, to some extent Block B can also be accessed on the existing Boulder's Road.

Some of them could potentially be accessed with the existing infrastructure if you had an access management agreement with the adjacent property owner, hence the double asterisks.

You really are at the threshold of Tier 4 right now, as soon as your preliminary jurisdiction of determination work is finished.

Which is why, you know, Phase 1 is very attractive right now.

You're very close to having some implementable work.

It does.

I mean, the Tier 4 seems so far away than 3 or 4 months ago.

Having sites that were Tier 4.

The Tier 4 is a critical

And my understanding of all the tiers, that's a critical one to get to tier three.

If you have somebody comes in and they see tier three or tier two, that's very different than, oh, tier four is like, let's go.

Let's go, Ty.

I mean, tier five, I guess, is a whole different animal, but that doesn't really work on here.

Who was right next?

Can you give a little more background on what the stream delineation study takes on?

Because it will be no surprise to anybody here.

I'm very concerned about the encroachment on the stream buffers and that kind of thing.

So will that kind of detail be very granular as far as what you produce?

Yeah, so what's happening right now, the preliminary jurisdictional determination process is we have several environmental scientists who are out there walking around through the heavy vegetation and the humidity, looking for the signs of where the actual delineated natural features start and stop, and with their professional certifications and training, they know what to look for, so they'll basically flag it

We will come back and survey it so we know where it lives in the digital ecosystem that we design within.

And then all of those findings are validated by the Army Corps staff.

My environmental science knowledge is limited, but I know that it's not just necessarily the presence of water, but the presence of certain types of grasses and vegetation.

Also the soil, like with the soil components.

So water actually is almost like a

It's almost like if it's there, it's almost distracting.

It's better for them to look under it in this environment.

We're looking for the other cues of soil and vegetation and other things.

and so on.

This is a chance to really do it right and show what can be done if you try instead of just saying, oh, it's too much and we're not going to try.

So that's what I will be continuing to watch for.

And other comments or questions?

You'll have to forgive me because I think one of my biggest issues is that I never can remember if I've gotten an answer to something or not before.

So I might have asked this before and received an answer.

But during our conceptual development process, where in that kind of loop that we're going through, are we frequently touching back with fed stakeholders?

I mentioned this mainly because when we're looking at the conceptual access drawings, I'm immediately thinking, I can see the federal stakeholders at this facility having some concerns about the boulders are extended.

or the Emergency Vehicle Access Connection Point.

And I've seen other locations where the site occupants have condemned a road because they're like, we are closing this, we are blockading it because we don't want to staff that ECP.

And I just want to make sure that we are incorporating those stakeholders in this process to make sure, because I'm sure there's a lot of other security concerns that aren't

It's a great question.

So staff is in regular communication with the federal agencies, the leadership of the federal agencies that are located there.

One important way is that we are now the property manager for the primary parking lot for their employees.

And so there's a relationship on a facility level on the needs of sort of the day-to-day operations.

And then at the leadership level, looking at what the future could hold, building on some of the work that was done.

The concept for this whole vision

The basis of that was a study that was done, led through the state veterans and defense affairs group, back in the mid-20s, to look at potential opportunities for expansion.

And that sort of formed the backbone of the vision that we worked with line of way to sort of flesh out further.

That included the extension of Olders Road.

It's a daily concern of the staff there with just traffic flow in and off the site.

But as we continue to move forward, as we continue to flesh things out further,

the former installation commander that just was relieved.

And he leaned in at one point and said, the biggest thing you can do for us is get that room extended and connected.

So for them, the resiliency is critically important.

Part of our trip to St.

Louis is to also better understand how to move forward with our conceptual,

So that's also a future work that we have in the mountains.

And just a couple weeks ago, Emily and I and JT did a tour of our property.

I want to say we have 15 or so of staff, including the commanding officer at NGIC, in three vehicles with us.

And so there is engagement and partnership at the level that I've never seen before.

Back in the 2014 environmental study, there was continual mention of moving the guardhouse to

I think it really shows the long-term interest

back in 2014 also with all the different spaghetti hat people there who they all debated about how big or small to make the application and finally one of the leaders in the Army I don't know what his rank was or anything else he said you know we just have to stop cutting our nose off here just go for the whole thing

and so on.

At this time, the focus has been on the red-lined area, and again, that's sort of driven off of, based on the contours of the land, based on the development that is currently there and how Boulder's Road is located on the property, that was sort of the focal point for where we believe that future development most naturally could occur, and so that's

When we put forward the application for the rezoning, that was the rationale for focusing there first.

I mean, I can see it's working on, are you working on the area in red, but if the yellow area is going to be

to me, you said the rezoning portion was so important to get done so we could move forward.

I thought, that's why I was thinking, I thought, well, why not just ask for the red end, y'all?

I would add, too, that it looks like you have a lot more depth of buildable space in that picture.

If you recall

When you toured the site, there's a dirt road.

It runs down along the fence line.

There's not a lot of buildable area along that spine, if you will.

And so, again, I think we focused on where we believe the most buildability would be.

I would say there was a question that was asked, would the county be willing to extend the fence line with their partners?

at the federal level.

We said certainly all options are on the table.

That would be an easier side to expand for perimeter and access from the existing site, just as a hypothetical.

That was my only question.

Thank you.

And as B points out, the system's paying this many people.

I have a comment, then.

Somewhere on there, I saw legislative priority on one of these slides.

I think what it was

Deering towards something, well, state funding.

I mean, they just stripped a lot of economic development money out of the budget.

We've had two governors, politics aside, have stayed pretty consistent in their support of economic development.

They've tweaked, and there's been different programs, and they've moved money around, but it's been there.

It's a problem.

And that would have been a problem had Rivanna Futures popped up or not for us as a county.

I've made a few comments about this.

Big projects, fully supportive, but it can't suck the oxygen out of the room of all the other economic development activities.

And we have to remember that the funding is now not just critical to this, but other pieces that we do.

So when a legislative packet comes forward,

I really thank you, Vice Chair McKeel.

I want to really underline the staff's work with Rivanna Station.

To further prove it, ask an outstanding question.

It is a former military

and he's familiar with this kind of work and he understands the secrecy and the work that goes on behind the fence line and the need that the need inside the fence line so much of what they do is is guarded information and none of our staff have security clearance but the work that Trevor Henry and Emily JT and our and it goes much beyond that group the contract work with line and grade the work we've done

Pruitt.

We are working very close with them and I think it should be noted that it makes no sense as a local government for us to step in the way we have with the purchase that we've done and not work hand in glove with the DOD intelligence agencies because unless we work with them, we can't grow and fully develop that site to its

Thank you.

And if there aren't any more questions or comments, then Jim does not have his hand up.

All right, so it's a good transition, Mr. Gallaway's comments on sort of thinking about the future and, you know,

and all of

and the other was a short summary, just highlighting goal by goal of that plan, some of the accomplishments that the county has appreciated over the past several years.

So we won't spend a ton of time on this slide, just wanted to

point out that you do have that in your packet and that the seven goals here are have been sort of the focal point of the work of the county over the past several years.

We've been before both bodies over the past couple of months to talk about the process and the schedule for the plan update.

So this is a this is a refresh of a slide you've seen before.

We are currently the

RFQ for vendor selection closed so we've received proposals yesterday and so we'll continue to work that process to have a vendor in place to support the work ahead and we do hope to be back next summer with a final draft for consideration by both bodies.

So really the focus of this item today, and we shared these questions with you all when we sort of reached you on this topic for today, are really to get some early feedback and some dialogue between the two bodies and the sort of direction to staff on really some of the top priority areas that you all see.

as we start to think as we sort of launch that plan process.

So for this section, we'll spend the rest of our time really focusing on these three questions.

And with Ms.

McKeel and Mr. and Long's support, we're going to sort of try to facilitate a conversation as Ms.

McKeel indicated.

We're not using speaking order this evening, so if you have something to share,

We'll work through that.

And really, this is an opportunity for you all to hear amongst each other your thoughts on these three questions.

And so we'll take them one by one.

And that's how we'll proceed through this item.

And so the first one, what are some of the strengths?

If you haven't been on the EDA or the board for that long, think about your perspective as a representative for your district and as a

a valued member of our community.

Open it up.

Well, I'll just share that I think the success that I have felt and heard from constituents has been because the plan was developed in concert with the broader community.

where the focus was going to be, that it was not welcome all warehouse, but actually helping our own businesses to grow and spinoffs to launch and in place to get strengthened and trained and also to have support for things in the rural area as well as the development area.

So one of the things that I've been really impressed with, so many of you have worked so hard on this, is just really the thought process through it, really justifying the decisions and even like

The Defense Study, for an example, and using that as saying, hey, this is the economic benefit, not just saying, hey, we think this is a great idea.

Let's go for this really, just really great thought process in that, and really saying, hey, is this the best place to put our taxpayers' money?

And why should we do it?

And the justification for it, I was just really impressed with.

And so I think that's really a strength

is the work that the team has done.

Business Retention and Expansion efforts, especially the Economic Development Office staff to work.

The programs where they've gone out, met with various businesses, asked them what they needed, worked with them to try to encourage all of these additional funding for various businesses, both

I think it's been great.

It's been a real strength.

And I think the other part of that is the readiness for business, which I think we see through what we see.

Pruitt,

I was looking for something, but I didn't unmute intentionally for that.

Man, I asked real quickly.

When I was looking through the materials, there were discussions about how Project Enable worked with, particularly Southwood and Brookdale.

And I was trying to understand sort of the relationship there because

Sure.

Supervisor Andrews, great question.

A lot of the EDA support for those projects comes from thinking outside of the box.

And how can the EDA support other major initiatives

of the County related to affordable housing and other initiatives.

Brookdale was an infrastructure TIF.

It was the first time to my knowledge that we've been involved in helping to support the infrastructure needed for

housing project, and likewise the EDA processes the payments for Southwood.

Well, thank you.

I mean, it does tell me that one of the strengths, of course, is that we have the ADA, and it's able to exercise the special powers.

One of the things that I've noticed, and this goes back to Jamie mentioning, Southwood, was the thoroughness, and again, sort of as somebody else mentioned, thinking outside the box, with Albemarle Business Campus on the south side, getting access to some of the land to develop

We're going to be at Southwood now, who are on that stretch of Old Lynchburg Road in particular, who have come out that way, and to get onto Fifth Street and access everything that's happening on that stretch of road.

And just getting that access to that land will allow us to then pursue, through the smart scale, the traffic

One more comment really quick.

I think that once again some of the strategic thinking has been really sound in this one of the

Projects was a lab to support all the wineries.

There was no lab in our region.

This is basic things that they had to, tests they had to do to be able to get their product to market.

and so supporting Wynn and Crozet was huge, not just for that small business, for that lab to grow and bring on new employees, but to support an entire wine region, agriculturally and because there was no

New Source locally.

And so to be able to think that and to support in that way, I thought was really really smart.

Just smart thinking.

Because if it's easier to do business, you know, you're going to want to do more business.

And I think that's something that, that's just one example.

There's been a couple more, but I just think it's, it makes for a nice business environment in addition to everything else.

So I'm trying to think, because I'm truly not sure what the actual causal relationship here, like what the secret sauce is.

But when I did my master's thesis, I was focusing heavily on communities that were shaped generally like ours, ones that are in the Appalachian South midsize cities, and one of the most

Pernicious Problems, you see in these communities, is non-local capital is the main thing driving their active workforce, which creates boom-bust cycles and a sense of systematic kind of underinvestment into their community itself.

And something when I, for example, look at our companies that have announced expansions,

I know the CEOs of several of these, and I'm not even someone who knows that many people.

It seems like an unusual amount of actual capital that has a real stake in the community, like you have.

It is not a business environment, it's not an economic development environment that is prone to absenteeism, it's prone to, if anything, the opposite of that.

picking up your bags and moving into the community and actually investing in the community.

There's something in our secret sauce that incentivizes that.

And I'm going to jump in at that because I was thinking about that with one of the questions I was going to ask was to sort of transition perhaps Emily.

Could you just, or could someone review for us fairly quickly the target industries that we currently have?

Because I hear a lot of

Yeah, so the community had its first target industry study back in 2012 through the TJPDC.

They obtained a consultant to look at the existing industries and the data that they rely on to establish what is a target industry is something called a location quotient.

So, relative to other communities, how much more of a given industry do you have in your community?

And based on that analysis where we have an over-representation of these sectors that you see here, indicating that there's a strength and something that we can build on, and that

Original data from 2012 has been validated in 2017 through the Go Virginia process.

They do a growth and diversification plan every two years to analyze the entire region and say, are these industries still our strengths?

Are there things that we're not capturing that we should be investing in?

And so in 2017, 2019, 21, and 23, the Region 9 growth and diversification plan has largely mirrored what you see on the right hand side of the slide from Project Enable.

You will see individual communities identify an opportunity within their own strategic planning process.

The City of Charlottesville recently updated their strategic plan and found clean tech as a result of all the environmental companies that are within their specific jurisdiction that that's an opportunity for them.

One of the benefits of having an understanding of what the target industries are and how you can use them to further your economic development work is this helps us understand what is our workforce good at.

And it also helps companies understand what is your workforce good at.

So the analysis that goes to develop these sectors or target industries really helps private

also a great opportunity to be able to key into partnership with the state and federal workforce system because if we're anticipating where the gaps are with our skill set of our employees then those kinds of training opportunities can be funded.

I'm just questioning, sometimes if you focus on some, you can do the work better, more in depth.

You can't do everything.

I guess it's what I'm getting at.

And I'm just wondering if, I recognize that those are still, we revalidate and those work still for our community and that's great.

But just thinking about, if we want to continue with

All of those, do we want to together focus on certain ones?

So to me that means I don't want to close the door right now.

Okay.

That's fair.

That's fair.

I mean, it just wanted to

Mention it.

I wonder, it makes me want to give credit to, we're so fortunate in our community to have organizations focused on our ecosystem, like Siebel Biohub, like Siebik, like the Defense Affairs Committee and our special guest here today, to help us support those particular target industries.

And we don't have to do it all on our own, but we can maximize those partnership opportunities.

Well, not so much on targeted industries, but I think...

time focusing on in the next five years, is greater support for that ecosystem, especially, I mean, just because I know more about this, my day job, but in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the investment, some of the things that Mike was talking about, I mean, we've developed individually pieces, angel network groups that are investing in companies,

There are a lot of individual groups that are trying to work on these things, but I think we should be considering do we need to make a bigger investment to provide the accelerators and the start-up space and those sorts of things to really encourage those companies to stick around, to grow, and to invest.

There was a concern for a long time

And, you know, I think that that is still somewhat of a risk, but I don't know that it's as much of a risk as it used to be, but I think being able to have an investment in these organizations so that people can grow their businesses internally, and then be able to grow and move into the spaces we have, I think is really important.

And, you know, this will come up, this is one of the things that I feel like, you know, we're going to put

So, consistent investment in these as opposed to we're going to do 5,000 years, 10,000 there, are we going to really commit?

Because one of the issues they run into is these organizations, if they get a $10,000 grant for one year, it's really hard to build something sustainable there.

And do we want to try to make the worst, longer term investments?

And then I think, you know, where do we want to do it?

I don't know what the role was for county investment in the 20 lab spaces in 10, 7, 4.

Which numbers put the bio up there because that money came from somewhere.

The GDA provided a commitment to $100,000 a year for three years in order to pull down a $4 million investment from the state for that particular project.

I think that speaks to both the strength, but what you need to continue to build on for the next five years.

I mean, the strength is we've been doing economic development, which we weren't always.

Lettie's, congratulations, whatever, I forgot the thing that we were under for service.

But when I watch JT and Emily and Trevor work the room and you see economic development directors from other counties there and from industries, I mean, this is something that if you put on a survey, well, how do you feel your government interacts with your community?

It's

It may happen, but it would happen without us if it happens.

Oftentimes on a supervisor's run for office, we're asked, how do we partner with the city?

So economic development is a good example of a great partnership that we have with the city.

And when I saw it, it was a Green County's economic development person was there.

And just the casual, it wasn't like, oh, good to see you, JT from Albemarle.

You know, reminding, I mean, it's real.

There's a real connection that's happening.

And if we think that economic development stops at our county border, either moving into the city or out regionally, then we're in trouble.

So that's the opportunity for the next five years.

How does that networking and partnerships that you've built continue to expand and grow

and even beyond the TJPDC six counties, but into that whole region nine.

Because we all have people, while the business may be located in Albemarle, not all the workers are living in Albemarle.

So that dynamic, and what's the report that they're doing?

Is it the SEDS report?

The SEDS.

That shows you your movement of where the workers are going.

Opens up your mind to go, oh, you can't.

If the EBA can't pivot and move and try to try to match the speed at which business is working with the with the complex dynamics of the businesses and where the workers are and how they're moving day in and day out, then wow we don't we have nowhere to go.

So I love that you guys have a handle on that and it's not something you can put in a report or you can say or do but

I think some of the things that you've brought forward that you could call successes have proven that you've got the right relationships established in the community and the region.

So kudos to the team for that.

And it's like, okay, how do you take that?

I mean, Project Enable 2.0, but how do you take that dynamic and make that 2.0?

Well, I can say one thing, and I don't know whether the members of the Board of Supervisors are aware of this, but we did actually this summer

had a joint meeting with the Charlottesville Economic Development Authority.

We were going to give reports from some of these organizations.

As we said, well, let's why have them do it twice?

Let's get together.

I mean, it wasn't a meeting like this where we were talking about things, but it was a chance.

And it was really easy.

It actually just sort of happened.

We got lucky.

I think they had a date that worked for us.

I think I would just get back to our very first presentation that was on Rivanna Futures.

And how does that presentation and the work that we just saw with the conceptual engineering and the design and all, how does Rivanna Futures and that work inform our strategic plan and our strategic priorities going forward?

Because I think we have to look at how that endeavor informs our work.

in the next five years.

And that's our strategic plan.

So long as we're talking about opportunity areas, I'm going to revisit a bullet point that I know I recited so many times during the campaign.

I worry it is not clear to me if our economic development hand and our education hand are always talking together as well as they could be.

Namely, we are really leaning into career technical education in the county.

We are having a whole high school model that leans into a career technical education model down to specific

partners in the private sector.

And it's interesting you say that because I just remembered my very last meeting as the EDA liaison.

The EDA had a discussion, and Nandy's nodding her head about how to make sure that we're looking at high school, PVCC, and the university.

and the Education and Network Force Development, because that certainly is critical to the work that we're doing.

And Jeff, you've leaned in, so I'm going to... I appreciate, again, I share a couple of points.

We just, this Board of Supervisors just approved our Chief Operating Officer, who's here this evening, Christy Schifflett.

She now will be serving on the PBCC Board.

And we were very intentional in going to our Board and asking them to consider her for this position.

One of the things that Christy does is she, Supervisors Human Resources,

strategic planning and embedded in our strategic planning is one of our goals is workforce

We were very intentional in coming to the board, recognizing, PBCC, we've got to be a closer partner to PBCC, and they've been just like this.

We would love to partner with you more.

And then the university piece, it's interesting because next month our Board of Supervisors City Council will be together for our first

and the University will be a part of that meeting, if for nothing else, to talk about the infrastructure work that we're continuing to do with the City of the County and the University.

And anybody that knows me, I'm going to bring it back to high school.

Right.

And their new center model is all about career pathways and

And I'm sorry, Trevor's got his hand up, but I have one more point.

And I was just going to say, tomorrow when we go to St.

And so we're very excited about going there and really learning about that intelligence campus.

specifically, let's talk about the partnership with the universities.

It's like... We really do want to make sure that these children that graduate from Albemarle County Public Schools can go to PVCC, that there's a career pathway for them, that they can work in this community, that they don't have to leave, and we want to make sure that we have career pathways for children who have high school degrees,

Thank you, and this also will not be a surprise, but I keep mentioning it because we're not getting where we need to go.

Other communities in our region are using the state training staff of the Workforce Center with already prepared work and coming into the schools

to do the classroom work rather than standing up a whole other FTE at the local level or middle school level or high school level to do the same thing.

And I think that's a good part of what their center model is doing, especially

Yep, absolutely.

I just want to just one more but the thought of this when when I've talked with our peers and partners in the schools about the

It is hard for me not to think that it is asking a lot of a student to take a risk on an opportunity in a very narrow field of education when you are not showing them that guaranteed employment on the back end.

So when I'm thinking what the role of these bodies, that economic belt on us, or any of us important supervisors, it needs to really be making sure that there is some sense of

surety that if they pursue these educational paths that there is a local partner, there's employment partner, there's private sector offer that is waiting for them.

And I don't know that we're offering them that kind of surety right now.

So I just want to emphasize that is kind of my big thought when we're talking about education here.

No, that's OK.

One of the things that I think we've shown over the last few years is also the ability when developments are approved, and the board has been very good about this, is trying to get a development that is not solely residential.

So you've got Southwood, where you've got commercial activities, you've got the Albemarle Business Campus, which had a residential component, which has a business component.

where the jobs are going to be, where the people are living.

So they got that access and that we can somehow continue to encourage that type of thoughtful development throughout the growth area.

So it's not just in Prozeghe where there's such a demand for people to live or down on the south side of Fifth Street and Amont Street Extended where people are demanding to live.

Yeah, so I think the last question is actually a great segue to the next topic area.

I've been thinking the same thing.

I almost brought up the same point.

We do strategically set aside economic engines inside residential areas.

And I also know, like, my understanding is kind of the story of that effort that we've been engaging in is that we have a lot of vacant, commercially-zone properties in those areas.

This came up with Montclair, right?

There's a little sliver of it that's supposed to be in the neighboring development that's supposed to be used for commercial purposes that just hasn't

So when we're thinking what are some opportunity areas, it seems like zoning in those areas is not enough, right?

So when I'm thinking what is the opportunity for these kind of mixed use goals, I'm curious what else do we have to do?

What else do we have to do to actually make those models succeed?

I will just throw out one thing to think about if I just one second.

Because of the oversaturation of that zoning, I mean, for huge rezonings between 2004 and 2008, 200,000 square feet of commercial opportunity, the market isn't there.

So we unfortunately got carried away by their own exuberance, or earlier boards did, and we just have not had the demand to continue.

That's one person's opinion.

All right.

Thank you all.

So the final topic on the agenda is the memorandum of understanding between the Economic Development Authority and the Board of Supervisors.

This document was last updated in 2017 and actually called out in it that when the county adopted its Economic Development Strategic Plan that the MOU should be revisited.

We are doing that now.

And we think that actually in tandem in partnership with the new strategic plan, the revised MOU, if there's interest by both bodies to proceed with that effort, could actually be a nice partner in making sure that that MOU aligns to sort of the future look of what the county's economic development

and Diantha

But to get a sense of direction, a sense of interest by the board and the Economic Development Authority on whether and how to tackle the items that we prepared for you all in advance of meeting.

and I've got on this slide here.

One of the items in your packet was a memo that gave a little bit of background on each of these bullets.

Nicole, I'm not sure how to... She's doing it.

Okay.

Jim, could you please move?

And so today is really just about there's seven seven items for consideration in that in your packet and really hearing from from the EDA and from the board on these are these are the right things to be focused on or if there's any

You know, within a particular topic, you know, in general there's support for this, but you know, with certain parameters around it would be helpful feedback.

And the idea at the end of this discussion would be to just take a sense from the room should staff take the conversation from today and use that to guide what would be a first red line draft of a revised MOU, which then we would work

And just for my own appreciation, my understanding is that these bullet points were developed by the EDA.

Yes.

With the exception of the final one, that is one from staff.

The final bullet mirrors a process that we already have in place.

What do I go ahead and start?

The first bullet point is really what I think we've talked about and the way I feel is that some of this is more of an administrative process because so often now there's money that will get a grant request and so

The Board has allocated, and if I'm not using the correct legal term, but it's kind of allocated money for economic development, but not specific, go to the Board and the Board will say, yes, that's fine.

Come back to the ADA, the ADA will say, okay, we can now fund this grant.

And so what we're looking for here is

Is there, can you use the EDA as a tool for supporting these things in a little broader sense and say, okay, we're gonna now give the EDA some bucket of money to do a certain thing or certain things and let the EDA make the decisions about, okay, we're gonna give this $10,000 grant or this $20,000 grant

I'm just a part of clarification.

But right now, often times, and JT's that are able to spread the process, they would come to us as for the money.

We'd say, we think this is a good idea.

The Board is opposed to, let's say, the Board would say, here's $100,000 that we want to support, or even a more narrow focused area, say, we want this to support.

That part I agree with.

I'm all for streamlining, so that part I agree with where I'm confused and maybe I'm a little dense is that

A request for money from someone else.

A lot of the state programs ask for local support.

And so I think the mechanism would be establishing a fund.

You're saying yes, do it.

It boggles my mind.

We have a strategic plan that gives direction.

We have a liaison on the board who gets to see and go through all of that stuff.

It comes back to us in financial reports.

This MOU was put together, I was like, why am I not remembering this MOU?

It was put together in my campaign here, so I must not have read this.

It baffles me a little bit that some of the things that the EDA is bringing forward is not already occurring.

So some of the things you're asking for, I'll just say yes, because this is

The board does not have the capacity to have our hands at every weed related to the county.

We hear it all the time in other areas about getting on the board's calendar, getting on the board's schedule.

It's no way to respond in this environment.

We just talked about partnerships and entrepreneurship.

The EDA has conflicts of interest.

They have to file with the state.

So for transparency reasons and all the ethics and the legal legalities, all that's covered.

And we've put you together.

You report to the board, and if the liaison had a concern about something that was going on in there, then they would red flag it.

That's the whole point of the provided the liaisons on top of it, right?

So they have to be, you know, that's an important role for that particular body.

I'm all in.

So any of these things you're asking, I mean, if you need clarification or updated direction, things like that, I think those are good discussion points.

But like the one that says the state code, consideration by the board for the EVA to exercise its special powers under state code.

What?

I mean, yes.

Why aren't we doing that?

Well, say why, Ann, because I gotta tell you that the board, the board, well, it's a discussion, so we, and we're not going in on order, so we might as well start going back and forth on some of this stuff, because it's important.

I don't, I do not need to rubber stamp every single decision that the EDA is there.

And I'm opening it up, but I will say, I agree with Ned completely.

I think as the person whose signature is on this MOU from years ago,

We were starting.

We began the EDA office.

We were taking baby steps, right?

Yeah, that explains why it is.

And we wanted ourselves, the EDA, and the community.

and

opening it up.

Anybody else want to be?

So I think that the VGIP and AFIN, I'm happy with that, the Governor's Opportunity Fund because of the magnitude of the awards.

I mean, we're talking about several hundred thousand dollars.

In my mind, I put that in a separate category as far as having more process.

Ever since

The late 90s, business people have been coming and saying, speed, speed, everything's got to be fast because everybody's doing everything fast.

Well, you know what?

When you do things so fast, you make mistakes.

And that's what my effort has been to avoid making mistakes.

And we've only had a couple, but there have been some where we've invested a lot of money and then the business picks up and moves to the city.

So I don't want to be doing that again.

So while I really respect and admire the effort of the EVA people, I think it's important that we continue some of those middle-sized steps.

And the special powers about owning land and stuff, that's where other communities have gotten themselves in trouble.

So I have heard way too many stories that I know are not going to happen here because we're watching and we're doing a better job.

I just don't understand how we're giving up oversight.

So maybe the experts on the EDA will help us not make some of those mistakes again.

But the idea is that we don't lose any control, authority, or oversight by granting some of these things that the EDA is asking for.

We still own it.

The buck is still with us.

We appropriated money to the manually, and we say that's yours, just like we do with departments and everywhere else, and we have control over that.

I mean, nothing's perfect.

If a company moves out of the county, we can't... I mean, good grief.

We could not always foreshadow that or think about that or have... I mean, that could happen.

But one leaves and another one hopefully would come in.

And some of those places leave go to site.

We don't have spaces for them.

So that's a different issue in some ways.

Like, well, if you had all the spaces and they're leaving, then it's like, all right, what's going on here?

and when we did.

And I agree completely.

And I want to just say to the EDA members, I don't believe you're rushing into, I've watched your work and you're not rushing into or doing anything quickly and fast without proper consideration.

But I will say that Willow Tree is a good example.

And when we, when this was first, when we first started and we signed off on this MOU, we had an agreement with the city and economic development in the city that

We wanted to partner with them so that when businesses outgrew their space in the city, they would notify us so that we could take a look at that in that county and vice versa.

We've got to be partners on all of this because we are community, I'm just saying to your concern.

And to some degree, keeping a business in this community is a good thing.

I should begin by saying I do agree with the point that you and the supervisor Gallaway have made and yet I should be very clear I came into the meeting with a little bit more reticence than either of you did mainly because I'm just thinking about it from a kind of philosophy of government perspective that I think

and a pointed body that is composed of experts from industry.

And even when both of them have high-minded goals, there's kind of an inherent inclination between those, just because of the nature of those bodies, of one toward equity and one toward growth.

And there's kind of an implied and almost implicit tension just with what those organizations would have as a goal that I don't think we can ignore or fully get away from.

And so I take your point, we do still own all of this as the board, but it comes down to kind of a very qualitative thin thing that we're doing that by, and that's that based on direction by the board development, which at some point is how the members of the EDA are just qualitatively interpreting a set of standing documents that we've proved in the past, which is a very kind of mushy

more art than science.

So I guess I would be interested to hear from some of the directors on the EDA of kind of what that process looks like, frankly, from your position.

Because if we are talking about like seeding our rubber sand and handing it over to y'all, I guess I'd like to understand when you're thinking, ah, what is direction from the board?

What is my direction on this?

There are some examples of the city using special powers.

I think it makes sense to kind of respond to that.

I think the MOE needs to be broader, but then the board can narrow it down, like the example I was talking about, that direction of, okay, here's money, here's what we want to do, and that can be as loose

that I keep hearing at the EDA meetings is you've got people who want to be doing something and they want to be involved and they think you want to figure out, okay, how do we aim this expertise at the right area, whether it's workforce, things like that, when the group make those decisions.

And I think you got to decide where the supervisor needs to decide, okay, how much direction are we going to give?

And that kind of goes to the city of Charlottesville,

and the City of Charlottesville's Economic Development Authority when they did the building that was originally the Ninjit Building and also the Charlottesville Billion when those were developed.

And so in both cases the city gave or leased land to the EDA and then the EDA turned around and

and so on, and so on.

developed, in a better way, something that the Board of Supervisors couldn't necessarily do.

But in those cases, the City Council was giving direction to the EDA and said, you know, this is what we want you to do.

In the case of Ninjik, the City wanted to keep an employer downtown, and so they were able to get, uh, kind of, kind of, that's an element at that point, to lease that space and to stay and to put their own money into.

and so on.

You know, they can make decisions to reset a lower price in order to get the people in that the county wants to have there.

And make decisions that it can do things that encourage and do the sort of butt-forward type development that we're talking about.

And those are special powers that they're given to EVAs by state code.

Just to your question, honestly, I don't think about when something's presented, I don't think about what the board of supervisors will think.

And I think one of the things that people don't understand is the amazing staff that is behind the economic development.

The whole organization, the work they do prior to any meetings is just really impressive.

So when they come and they present something to us, they say, this is going to fit into the board's plan.

This is how.

I mean, once again, Diantha and Bea have been in the meetings and they don't present anything that's not already going to flow.

So when we were presented with something, you know, we're looking at what is the economic impact, what are the jobs, the cost, the investment, how many people does it reach?

Once again, like with the lab space or like the pasteurization, mobile pasteurization track for all of the B

People who are producing honey, right?

Reducing the cost to do business.

All these little things, they've done all that research in that back end of it.

So that's what we're able to focus on.

The fact that, I mean, to the most part, I don't think you've ever presented anything once again, you guys have been in the meetings, that it's not already in line with the board or they wouldn't bring it to us in the first place.

Processes, you know, our focus is on the the overall economic part of it, not your comment was you said a thin document it's a thick document because it all goes down through strategic plan and budget programming then project-enable and it's if you think of every department that comes forward

I give a lot of credit to Mr. Richardson for this over the last seven years because that's that becoming a high-performing organization that you can draw all the threads and if you can do all that then the board can have faith and confidence in the people that they're working under that constraint and then you just have to make sure nobody goes outside of the balance and that doesn't have to come to the board for a vote because you have staff doing that type of work and you guys being cognizant of it

I will say, to Ann's point, it is a legitimate concern because it has happened in other places where the EDA has gone off and done a bunch of things.

But I think in those cases, the EDA was off by itself, just doing its own thing.

If they did, they weren't doing their liaison.

What was your original phrase then?

and so on and so forth.

and specifically of Rivanna Futures in being able to work with other entities because we as a board are constrained.

I have complete faith in the ADA and I do see it as getting rid of some of the excess that we make them go through the extra steps.

We also have the powers of board to, if it's not working out,

changing things or reeling things back in.

I mean, we can do that.

Look at the MOU that was written in what, in 2017?

I read that thing.

It's like, oh my gosh.

You know, I'm getting, no, it was just beginning.

You know, I'm not, you know, pointing fingers at anything.

It's old.

It's dated.

Yeah, it's dated.

It's old.

And I thought, you know, and the way things are moving so quickly, maybe MOUs need to be redone every few years or something.

Well, I don't want to confuse anything I've said as the objective being speed of turning something around.

We have to be able to have speed to react and turn things around.

Yes, but that's not the bigger point.

We have expertise.

We have people that know their stuff.

And if the board has this on their agenda, what's that taking time away from that could help us improve other things

and so on.

We haven't heard from Mr. Andrews on this.

Thank you.

I'm listening and I appreciate the complaints that are being made.

So I am in agreement that the idea of at least limited appropriated funds

Board.

The bigger questions for me are later bullet points like what is meant by the clarification of the ideas involved in public-private partnerships and supporting local entrepreneurial ecosystems.

But particularly in the public-private partnerships section, I think it talked about advising staff and opportunities and assisting in long-term administration.

And I saw those as really different and different from what's going on right now.

I think we're going to make those decisions today, but I think they are things that fall within the EDA's purview because the county attorney can correct me if I'm wrong, but because we don't have a housing authority, the EDA would potentially serve as the housing authority.

The Board meets to decide is that something that they want the EDA to be spending its time and resources to want that EDO office to be spending time in that area.

Workforce is sort of the same way.

I think it's a little more economic development.

Jason, although housing is really important.

So I think that's something the board needs to think about in terms of its direction to BDA, which is not so much an MOU issue.

I guess it could be.

But is that something you want the EDA to spend in its time?

And do you want the Economic Development Office to be spending time on housing-related projects?

You know, I want to clarify what I said.

sitting around and waiting for our agenda for two months later when we have time on the agenda.

Efficiency is a better word.

Thank you.

Well, the workforce development one here seems to be of all the things that were there.

That was the one I went, oh, that needs work.

I mean, that needs, that could be its own work session between these two and a lot more just that particular item.

So I'm walking in today when I don't think we're going to resolve the workforce development one.

The business attraction one I think you guys are doing.

So what I think that may just be more validating practice that we've seen occurring over the last seven years and getting that cleaned up.

But workforce development is

As somebody pointed out, or it was pointed out in maybe the summary that said workforce development, was that the one that was outsourced to basically other?

So it was called out that it was basically in project enable.

It says that's the, you know, we're going to rely on outside partners to handle workforce development.

So we don't even have, I mean, that was our way of going, well, we won't worry about that.

So I guess we need to worry about that, or we have to decide if we're going to worry about it and if we are, what are we going to do about it?

Yeah, I think one element of the workforce development piece is some economic development offices provide direct services and our practice has been in the county to work to support partners who do that work to deliver those services directly.

I think the earlier conversation that you all had around workforce and education was

Diantha McKeel, Diantha McKeel

and so that's a form of workforce development working to be that convener to help connect where the job opportunities are and where the educational upskilling can happen.

Service delivery is one area and then working with partners to do service delivery is another area and I think a little bit of

Bucket that Human Services also holds.

I know they run their career center.

I guess I get, with a few of these things, I have flags go up of saying, are we duplicating processes that are elsewhere in the county?

I guess I'm not clear what the value at is necessarily.

If these are things that aren't being done, I can think of people who are doing these things.

And maybe I'm speaking more out of ignorance than anything else.

ready to be corrected, but I was under the impression that a lot of the rules that you describe are currently housed under human services.

And I can think of an example in the Commonwealth right now of an EDA going off the farm into something that is tangentially related to economic development, trying to get involved in homelessness services in a certain city that I won't name.

knowing nothing about it and not having any conversations with the continuum of care.

And when we're talking about their EDA's role in workforce development, the EDA's role as a pass-through and move of a housing authority, I get concerned about those kind of possibilities happening.

This often tends to think of these doctors or high degrees.

A lot of workforce, including mine, we need labors.

And we still need people to do labor-type work.

And the business doesn't run without it.

You're not going to get somebody with a four-year degree.

to run an excavator or a forklift, right?

And you still need those job functions to have your business grow and there's a lot of people.

So I think that having affordable housing that also gives a workforce that is close to businesses who need their skill sets

in addition to that.

So I think there is some tie-in.

You're not going to get a better advocate for a workforce development and PVCC and investing in education, but I think there's an element to that.

People need a place to live and they need a place that they can have their families grow up and they want their kids to go to good schools and they want these things.

Emily, I'm concerned because it's 7.30.

And I'm the official timekeeper, sort of.

So I'm looking around at the board.

Do you want to continue the conversation right now?

Can we continue in a little bit?

I don't know if anybody has any hard deadlines, but it is 7.30.

So are people comfortable with it going on for another 15 minutes or so?

Since I guess we have a, there is a next stage deliverable that is a consequence of this meeting, which I'm guessing is a first draft of an MOU for us to then give feedback on.

Raise your hands please.

Is it fruity?

So I'm probably the wrong person to ask.

Ms.

I think the good news is that the next step would be to draft a document.

I think I do hear that there is interest in having read all now the 2017 MOU and having seen the discussion that the EDA put forward as topics for it to explore in a future potential MOU draft.

I believe that we have

and so on.

So I think we've covered a lot of

I would say sort of big picture direction.

It's always hard when you have to take that and actually draft a legal document.

That translation can be a challenge.

What I might suggest is that there might be an interim step that we can consider, which would be rather than trying to draft the actual agreement at this point, maybe the way to do it is to come up with a document of full of points or, you know, open my world, be your business terms without worrying about

that says, here's the things that we think ought to go in the MOU, here are the things that may need some further discussion, and that we were not worried about exactly what the, not worried about the wordsmithing of it, and then that may allow us to figure out, okay, here's some things that the board can just talk about them.

Supervisors can talk about themselves to try to reach some consensus on, hear some things that the EDA could follow up on and do that first and that might allow some discussion.

In my experience it makes it a lot easier to then write that legal agreement if everybody's a little more on point with those terms.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Well, I'd like it because when it comes back, then the supervisors

can get their own thoughts on each term out there.

I mean, obviously, at some point, the consensus will be found, or that each supervisor would then be able to make sure their points are made.

And I think this discussion has allowed us to do that.

Because we really have a good discussion.

We have great information.

And I would encourage, as we get that information before maybe we start that, we can always reach out to staff,

developing local businesses.

And there was definitely, I don't know if it was prohibition is the right word, but the idea of going out and finding businesses and bringing them back to the community was something that was not in place.

It was discouraged.

Discouraged.

Now, I don't know whether we want to say, you know, we want to just focus on part of the industries, that would make sense.

But I think that's what that question means is

The Economic Development Strategic Plan was silent on that activity area.

So it was, Mr. Long indicated, business retention and growing local businesses is the first goal of Project Enable, but business attraction is absent from that document.

And so there's been a sense of, you know, that then should not be an activity that the EDA and the office staff work on.

and, you know, we started the conversation today on Rivanna Futures and some of the opportunities that that presents for the county.

And so just thinking about those two things together, some direction from the board on the interest in business attraction efforts.

Yes, Mr. Long, I'm going to get in.

We're going to try to reach its potential, which is what we want.

We're going to need to think about that, seriously.

So, Jim, are you, we heard, I saw the nodding of the heads here around Don's idea.

Okay.

Just wanted to make sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

The comment about service delivery for workforce, taking that into the economic development.

Department of Labor in the state is passing through $3 million a year to the local workforce center.

And if those programs are not aligned with the business needs in the community, that money is going to stop.

So it's duplicating

will think about doing more collaboration.

I mean, the county's putting in some funds into the local locality funding that's called to support things that are outside of what the state can bring down.

But that is a amount $300,000, so it's from all the counties put together, so that's not a huge amount.

But I just want us to be aware that the federal pass

They are not becoming if the locality is not perceived in its training and its schools, education, especially this governor and for the next year.

They are really serious about the fact that school departments have got to get involved with the technical training that is being considered.

So I just really want to emphasize that before people leave that we're not getting into something that is going to be

something that the county or the economic development office really needs to do.

And this is attraction.

I'm focusing on the target industries.

It's really important with lots of car bills.

I can live with that.

Rivanna Station, the support that the county had was based upon defense sector there.

It was not based upon other businesses that have nothing to do with defense as far as other

So this is where my brain is going right now, but I'd like the idea of the bullet points to think about, because there's a lot to think about.

So, Emily, Jeff, are we comfortable?

Yeah, so thank you all.

I think, again,

These conversations can be hard.

It's hard to have a conversation with so many people.

But I think we got a lot of themes out of what you all talked about today that will put us on the right.

I think it is a really great foundation to sort of launch off both the Economic Failments Strategic Plan workahead as well as the MOU workahead.

So we will work

And we're going to talk over the next couple of days to sort of pull those things together and start drafting a term sheet.

To help us on that MOU.

And then on the Economic Development Strategic Plan, this is just a first check-in with you all.

We expect to be before you both.

The one thing we didn't mention was the last bullet, but I think that's been part of our process and I can't imagine that there's a lot of pushback on the administrative feed.

I mean, I'm just saying we might need more information on how that would play out.

This is separate from the fee that's already collected on the minibots and things like that.

Now it took ten years to get a job.

Yes, and that's consistent with the Albemarle Broadband Authority.

And I just wanted to make sure, because that was the only thing we really didn't mention at all.

Okay, so I think we're good.

I thought this was a really good discussion, and the EDA meeting is adjourned, and we're still on the calendar for next week, so the EDA still hasn't...

And again, I thank everybody for their patience, their great discussion tonight.

This was really wonderful.

And I'm going to adjourn us to August the 21st, 2024, one o'clock, Lane Auditorium.

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