Board of Supervisors Joint Meeting with Charlottesville City Council   9/17/2024

I'm pleased to call to order the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors with the Charlottesville City Council.

I look around and I see that all six supervisors are present.

So the quorum is present.

Thank you.

I call the city of Charlottesville.

Before we start, I think we should just go around the table and say who we are and our roles so everyone not only hasn't been able to watch it, knows.

And if that's all right, we'll start at this end, is that right?

I'm Jeff Richardson, I'm county executive for Albemarle County.

Michael Keefe, Charlottesville City Council.

Diantha McKeough, representing the Jack DeWitt Magisterial District in Albemarle County.

Ian Wall, Deputy County Executive, Albemarle County.

Good evening, Jody Falardo, Community Development and Director.

I'm Lauren Hiltbrand.

Thank you.

I've got to mention that also we have with us our Interim County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our Board Clerk, Clodette Borgerson, and yes, our Madam Clerk, Keena Thomas, and also

Leeds to say we have Lieutenant Angela Jamerson and Master Police Officer Dana Reeves from the Albemarle County Police Force here.

And thank you for your service today, tonight and every day on behalf of the people here.

Also, attention to welcoming Collette Chiggy, the senior vice president for operations and state government.

Thank you for being

We would like to thank the county for hosting this gathering.

It's been, I guess, four or five years since we've done it.

And I think it's really important that we get together to talk about what we have in common and how we can move forward together.

We do a lot of this at the staff level and at the elected official level.

Just thinking about the last 24 hours had less.

30 minutes at a meeting with Anne, a workforce meeting last night.

Ms.

B and I were able to welcome what 70-80 tourism people along the whole capital region to our area of Mount Alto.

And so we are doing things together every day.

And so we're doing a lot of things already, but it's good for the public to do it, but to get

everyone in the room together.

And by the way, to get 11 schedules together and staff, that took a lot of work.

So thank Sam and Jeff.

I know that it took a lot to make this happen.

So thank everyone, staff, for making this happen.

So we're looking forward to this dialogue and how we can continue to work together and how we can move forward together.

And so thank you.

County, and

and the City

University, and others, and of course I want to recognize the critical significance the university plays in our community, particularly in the work we do together on community safety, welfare, and resilience, and both influence

County.

We have issues and opportunities.

No, no geographical boundaries.

So, we succeed as a community and I'm glad we get to celebrate that and build on it tonight.

Jeff and I had to decide if we were going to come up here or not.

Build a little formal or a little more

So you can see me because I know some of the folks in the back can't necessarily be able to see us.

But I want to start by just simply saying good evening to the council board supervisors, our distinguished guests and members of the public.

Thank you for this opportunity to brief you on a couple of critical matters.

University.

The things we want to talk about is just our collaborative relationship specifically as it relates to the revenue sharing agreement and the partnerships that we have between the two jurisdictions.

In your packet, you received a substantial amount of information from us, and I just want to go over a little bit about both of those things, and Jeff is going to add his perspective on the same items.

In your packet for the revenue sharing report for FY24, this

County on a regular schedule.

I asked the budget director to ensure that that document gets released in August of each year.

You received that packet for months last month.

I just want to also point out that we recognize that this is

is an interesting part of our relationship.

Don't be honest and acknowledge that.

And I'll just say that we are committed to making sure that the funds are used wisely.

That is what our intent is.

And we focus that on general operating and capital projects.

This FY24 report represented $15 million focused on parks and recreation, transportation, poor services and regional public safety, housing, employment and workforce programs along with landfill and recycling services.

We projected the city exceeds mutual benefit investments by another roughly $5 million.

And in that sense, I think we, we feel that we are being good stewards of the resources, all resources that are entrusted to us.

Also in your packet is the partnership support.

It was a very substantial substantive report.

I think both Jeff and I expressed how excited we were when we actually took a moment to look at all the different things that we were doing together.

The partnerships report solidly frames the quality list of projects that we're working on together.

These projects support our shared priorities and they are foundational to our high quality of life for both residents in the city and the county.

I am most appreciative of three specific areas that I wanted to highlight in this comment to you in regards to community safety, emergency management, and transportation.

Albemarle,

University.

Our director of human services, Mr. Graves, asked me this morning to extend our heartfelt thanks to the hearts team for your assistance in helping us launch Anchor.

It was a great opportunity for us to leverage your expenses, so you know you can learn how to do some things and we picked up after that.

It was a great opportunity for us to then help to define our path, so we do appreciate that.

is an area that I acknowledged that the city had fallen a little behind and it was important for me

County, and

County University.

that we are interested in doing this together.

We can all do it individually, but we are definitely stronger together because as we know, our geographic boundaries are very hard for people to understand where they start and where they stop.

So I think it's important for us to not forget that.

The last area is transportation planning, which shortly you will hear a great deal about.

It's important for our council, so therefore it's important for me and our team.

We think that planning is a critical element where we have not necessarily had the great focus that we needed.

We have fixed that.

We've hired a transportation planning manager.

We're adding additional resources in that space, and we're not just talking about transit anymore.

We're really talking about multimodal priorities and we want to make sure that we're ready to collaborate wherever that needs to be, especially as we activate climate action.

So it's important for us to be nimble.

So I want to thank our respective teams for their continued collaboration and professionalism.

I would like to personally thank both the City Council, the Board of Supervisors, and the University of Virginia team.

specifically for the pleasure of working with you.

You all have welcomed me in my first year in this seat.

Thank you for your remarks this evening.

My name is Jeff Richardson and I'm the County Executive for Albemarle County Government and I'm going to take a few moments to share thoughts about this meeting this evening with a little bit of a look back over the seven years that I've been, I've had the pleasure of serving Albemarle County Government.

I am in my seventh year, I'm wrapping it up with Albemarle County and I can say unequivocally right now it's the best it's been.

What exactly do you mean it's the best it's been?

Well, if you look at our agenda, our agenda is really a lot about partnerships.

And it's focused with our city council, the leadership from the council and from the board of supervisors, and emphasizing the need for us to get back together and examine.

What are we doing?

What are we doing well together?

and how are we working for the betterment of our community?

It's really an investment for me.

It's an investment of time to build relationships and building those relationships helps to build the trust.

City Manager and I, we meet every 30 days and that's been the case since Mr. Sanders took over as City Manager.

We check in in the time that we have every 30 days at a personal level.

That's where we start.

How are you doing?

He asked me how I'm doing.

We ask about our families.

then we move on to general follow-up which has to do with commitments, commitments that we've made to each other, commitments that the organizations have made to each other, and then finally we'll talk about the opportunity for partnerships and what are our problems and how can we help each other.

And it's been that way since the day you walked in as city manager and the emphasis for our work together has made it one of the most important meetings that I now work on on a monthly basis.

I would talk to the board today and just emphasize look at our partnership report.

I'm not going to go into any details, but our staff is here to answer questions.

Our partnerships oftentimes maximize the value of our shared service delivery at the lowest possible cost.

I want to say it again, it's about shared service delivery at the lowest possible cost.

When I got here seven years ago, I realized quickly that there are a lot of partnerships in our community.

We have partnerships on emergency management services, emergency dispatch, management, recycling, libraries, jails, courts, and the list goes on.

And for those partnerships that exist between the city and the county, I think that there is a shared

County.

We need that capacity because we've got

College Towns, they often carry the reputation as an idyllic place to live.

And when I say college town, I mean the city and the county.

When I talk about our community, it's the greater Charlottesville community, which really ties us together with the city, the county, and the university.

Those reputations talk about cultural vibrancy.

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

both with obligations, opportunities, all of that can be shared.

It also, when I look through the partnerships, the ones that involve the university, I think that is probably where we do some of our best work.

Two-thirds of the workforce at the university, that's two-thirds of 30,000 employees, live inside of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

they choose to live inside of Charlottesville and our county.

I think there's something to be said for the quality of life in this community, but it's a burden on the city manager and the county executive to keep an eye on that quality of life that is in this college town community and continue to work with our boards on the problems that come forward.

So our partnerships, it allows us to provide the services at the lowest possible cost.

It allows us to identify

and I believe that's some of the best work that we can do in this community.

I'm excited about the conversations this evening.

I'm excited about learning for potential new opportunities for us to move forward and look for additional partnerships and the staff of the counties excited to host this meeting tonight.

College.

We're not going to do the board of supervisors has a speaking order in regular meetings.

We're not going to do that.

So we will alternate.

Well, thank you.

I don't have a question, but I do have a comment.

And I just want to pile on to something that

County have on site as well as the

County, New York.

So, Ann, I just want to tag on to something you just said in that meeting today.

I think our colleague from, I think it was from Falkirk County, he, you know, we talked about the successes that we have in this region.

And he said, basically, like, what are you doing?

How are you doing it?

And Ann and I chimed in and we talked about that we're working together

Not necessarily Ann and I, but staff at the city and county level working together to get our residents jobs, not only jobs, but training and end jobs.

So these are the things that go on, again, every day.

I wanted to thank both of you.

I've enjoyed watching you all work together.

I think it's made a palpable difference for the whole both organizations and therefore for the whole community.

I think of

When I tell people what it's like to be on City Council, they're like, well, you have the meetings where people will come and fuss at you sometime and those kinds of things.

It's one part of being on City Council.

But one of the main things I've enjoyed about being on City Council is all the boards and commissions that you get assigned to.

And I think that's where so much of the real work happens.

And I've just enjoyed getting to know my colleagues.

I think about being on the jail board, my

Malick on the water board and all the various boards that you end up in.

It is very, I mean, I know it's a truism, but it's a true truism that

We are really integrated and we have to be integrated in how we think about things.

As I consider what some other, for example, let me just take the example of water and some of our neighboring counties and the struggles that they're having with that topic, for example, I just am grateful for is, you know, I look back on we stand building on the shoulders of people 30, 40, 50 years ago who said, you know, we're going to be partners, we're going to

Just a couple of comments.

I want to thank Sam and his staff in City Council for the transparency on our revenue share.

I understand that for county residents this rises to a higher level than it does for city, for the city folks, but we really do appreciate it.

I read this report and this is the first time that I've really seen a good deal of transparency in the report for our citizens and I really, in our residents, I really do appreciate that.

And the other thing I just wanted to comment on

County.

County.

And I think in my head that's a big deal.

So I appreciate everybody's hard work to make that a reality.

County, and

would add that I hope that our relationship with the third leg of the stool at being in the University also would be thought to be on the upswing.

I think it's increasingly clear that on matters like transit planning, land use planning, affordable housing, that we have three entities that need to be involved in everything.

I will also say personally, just because of the line of work I'm in,

that I am so glad that we finally have the courts project with shovels in the ground and steel rising out of the ground and progress being made.

There was a time a couple years ago when it was not clear that that was going to happen.

Well, I want to echo what some of my colleagues and some of the counselors from Charlottesville have said, since in my much more limited time of service on the board, I've seen nothing but really extraordinary partnership.

And I think that's easily demonstrated by some of the items contained within your report.

It touches very briefly on the therapeutic recreation program.

Just two days ago, one of my friends in constituents who lives all the way down the town of Scottsville.

trucks all the way up to the city to experience those services and talks about as a really life-changing thing.

That partnership allows that and does not have to.

A more fractious relationship would not have a person getting the kind of therapeutic recreation that they need in order to really thrive.

And so I want to just say how appreciative I am of the working relationship we've been able to build that enables that.

I also do want to make sure we've talked about all the things that we're doing

I think we're pretty clear-eyed on what side of the problems we're facing are also.

We see a lot of them on our agenda tonight.

Two thirds.

The university has 30,000 employees at the hospital, medical facilities, and then at the university.

I think that's great.

There's one third of people that are commuting more than half an hour away, and I'm guessing it's not because they really just love living in Flubanna or Louisa.

Although there's nice things out there.

Some of them do.

Albemarle.

driving into the city every day.

That's 10,000 cars on the road that we theoretically could help remove for climate reasons, for safety reasons, for traffic reasons, for economic reasons.

So those are the things that I'm that sort of thing is what I'm looking forward to improving.

I would just say that one of the things that really made

County.

and I think for the community, when I mention that to the people I speak with, they are very appreciative of that because that's what they're also concerned about is health and safety.

And that does make a difference.

So kudos.

I can't speak without slides.

So good evening, everyone.

I'm Alice Rauscher.

I'm architect of the University of Virginia.

And I'm current chair of the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee.

The position of chair rotates among the three entities of the city, the county, and the university.

So I'm joined this evening by first the past chair, Jodie Falardo, the Community Development Director for Albemarle County, and next year's chair.

I'm counting the months, Lauren.

Lauren Hildebrand.

Director of Utilities for the City of Charlottesville, and we're pleased to give you this brief update on the good work of PAC.

So many of you know this already, but as a bit of background, in 1986, with the adoption of the three-party agreement, the Planning and Coordination Council, known as PAC, was established to promote collaborative planning among these three entities.

In 2019, by joint agreement, PAC was reconstituted as the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee

or Lupec.

We haven't yet found a better acronym for that.

The charge to Lupec was broadened to not only include cooperative land use planning efforts, but to consider the environmental and infrastructure issues facing our community.

So this slide shows the membership of Lupec with the positions represented by the city, the county, UVA, and the University of Virginia Foundation.

When PAC was reconstituted as LUPAC, the committee's membership was expanded to include RWSA, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, because so much of our collective planning work depends on the services RWSA provides.

And it's really been a great addition.

In 2023, the committee voted to invite VDOT representatives on a quarterly basis because of the important transportation intersections, this little pun intended, in our collective work.

So during COVID, the committee convened our monthly meetings over Zoom, which admittedly had its scheduling benefits, but we really greatly missed seeing each other in person.

So I think there's much better conversation and much better outcomes when we meet in person.

So the committee went back to meeting in person on a quarterly basis, and it's to those meetings that our VDOT colleagues are inviting.

The committee also determined that the inclusion of regular guests with regional perspectives enhances our work.

So our colleagues from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission or TJPDC regularly attend these meetings as well.

The meetings have shifted from the usual practice during the pack years of each entity giving rather high level, somewhat generic updates about what was happening in our respective spheres.

to theme-based conversations that usually impact everyone around the table.

As you can imagine, themes such as the impacts of new construction or transportation planning generate robust conversations that have more times than not identified issues that otherwise would not have been fully appreciated by all and have led to positive outcomes.

Most of all, we have all fostered an effective collaborative working relationship with each other, allowing for open communication.

So, per our charter, the agenda and meeting minutes are available online to the public within a few days after our monthly meetings.

I'd like to give a shout out to the TJPDC, thank you, Christine, who graciously and generously posts the Lupec documents on their website.

We also submit a bi-annual report to the City Council, the Board of Supervisors, and the leadership of UVA.

So some examples of the theme-based topics are shown on this slide, but I'd like to highlight one example in particular on the theme of infrastructure.

We had all been aware that each entity had some work in the vicinity of Fontaine Avenue, but we didn't know the extent of each other's plans or the timelines for each.

On the docket for the university was the Fontaine Research Park Entry Road, the Fontaine Parking Garage, the Institute for Biotechnology, the Central Energy Plant,

and the Encompass Rehab Hospital renovation, all planned to happen roughly at the same time.

The University of Virginia Foundation was stewarding the affordable housing initiative at the Piedmont housing site on the Moser Drive across from the research park.

RWSA was planning a new 36 inch raw water line across Fontaine Avenue and up Observatory Hill to increase water supply.

The city was planning the Fontaine Avenue smart scale streetscape improvements

and VDOT and the county planning the Fontaine Avenue, U.S.

29 interchange improvements.

All very important infrastructure projects and all with the potential to impact the successful outcome of each other.

So far, as you can see on the slide, we've had five meetings where we have all shared information, discussed our goals and worked out potential conflicts with each other, enabling these important projects to move forward to serve our community.

could you maybe speak to what you one of the more interesting sort of I guess discoveries that you made in one of these conversations with your partners or or interesting like I don't know a connection that was made that maybe would not have happened you hinted on some of that

obviously when you're sitting around the table with a set of drawings or plans in front of you, it's interesting the kinds of connections that will come up.

I think I've alluded to some of these things, but when you broaden the community engagement, when you once RWSA joined the team and TJPDC and MEDOT, you know, it just broadened the ability to have discussions that really went to solving

some conflicts, and that made a huge difference.

I think we have some robust conversations that really get at some sticky issues, and we all know we have to compromise and collaborate in order to successfully move forward with some of these projects.

Wall will present the regional transit authority update.

and I certainly appreciate the opportunity to come and talk to the board's perceived name to talk about regional transit authorities and opportunities that exist in the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

Ben and I will tag team on this presentation.

It is important to recognize that we partnered with the TJPDC.

I'm going to certainly call out Christine Jacobs and Lucinda Shannon and the assistance that they gave us as we walk through and talked about regional transit authorities.

What we're going to do tonight is the agendas on the screen.

We want to spend a little time talking about the history of regional transit and governance structures.

We want to review the role and intense the purposes for creating a regional transit authority, report on work to date and share information from some outreach conversations that we've had.

We want to talk a bit about the structure of a regional transit authority and then provide a little bit of information about draft work plans.

Before we sort of dive into the specific details about a regional transit authority, we felt like it was important to talk a bit about the history, how we got here.

It's important to point out that in this community, the discussion of a regional transit authority has been going on for at least 15 years.

Dating back to 2008, there was a study done that explored the formation of a regional transit authority

which was and the authority was really intended to promote the development of regional transit services.

Transit was seen as an attractive alternative to address increasingly congested roads in the area.

An issue and concern that we still see today.

In 2009, the General Assembly passed legislation that enabled the formation of a regional transit authority.

and the intent of that authority was to plan for regional transit services.

The legislation talked about membership of the authority, how the authority was supposed to be governed and structured.

What the legislation did not include was any mechanism for state-approved revenue generation.

The legislation referred to this entity as the Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority, or as we refer to it as CARDA, and you'll hear that going through the presentation.

Fast forward to 2016.

In 2016, there was a study done called a regional coordination study.

The intent of that study was to examine opportunities for improved communication, collaboration, and coordination between transit partners, and really to talk about matters related to transit.

What resulted from that study was the development of the Regional Transit Partnership in 2017, with the intent that that RTP, Regional Transit Partnership, would really be the interim body before the formation of a transit authority.

So we fast forward again to 2022.

At that point, local leaders came together, local leaders, transit agencies came together, stakeholders came together to talk collaboratively about what a vision would be for transit, for providing high quality transit to this area.

The study really focused on efficient, equitable, and effective transit service in the region and identified short-term, long-term, and extended long-term actions to support this community transit vision.

The very first action called out in that 2022 report was to do a transit governance study to talk about, to think about, to investigate what governance looked like for transit services.

2024 comes and through the work of the TJPDC, the transit governance study was developed.

The goals of that study were to review existing transit governance and identify a structure for regional governance, to identify potential revenue streams for dedicated transit funding that would augment current jurisdictional cost of transit.

That study identified several steps, but the first step that was identified was to enact that card.

Legislation, and that was intended for that entity to serve as a governance structure and decision-making body for regional transit issues.

Other steps to take place were to set up a committee to develop bylaws and to engage partners.

Additional steps included doing a transit needs assessment, particularly for rural transit needs, as well as engaging with our rural partners

and engaging with UVA leadership, specifically about UTS and possible partnerships with the university.

So that's where we are.

We have numerous studies, numerous discussions about why regional transit is important, and we've arrived at a place 15 years later where we've done some work.

We were asked by the regional transit partnership to develop bylaws for a regional transit authority.

So now I'd like to take just a moment and talk about the role of a regional transit authority.

The first bullet up here is probably the most important.

The idea of an RTA original transit authority is to be that collaborative, multi-jurisdictional entity for identifying and solving transit issues.

It's supposed to be a forum to carry out planning work and to really work through difficult shared concerns.

is intended to help recommend regional transit priorities, provide some general oversight over programs such as transit or congested management.

The other bucket of activity is related to planning.

The idea of this transit authority would relate to folks hard, go hard in on planning, regional transit plans for all or a portion of the area, long range transit planning in the area, consideration of service expansions and alternatives.

The other bucket includes funding.

Funding, the Transit Authority could serve as a vehicle for administering and collecting dedicated regional transit funding when available and could consider funding formulas for service in capital.

And the final bucket is around federal and state government.

The Transit Authority could serve as an advocate for transit needs to the federal and state government, primary funders of transit across the country.

could recommend transit priorities to these federal and state partners, and finally the transit authority could be a vehicle to apply for and receive grants to provide services.

So I'll pick up on what we've been working on today.

Once we started working together at the staff level after the adoption of the transit governance study, we basically followed what the recommendations were from that study.

The first thing that we did was start engaging with other localities staff and with UVA leadership to gain an understanding of what their transit needs were, what they thought a regional transit authority could actually do for them.

we engaged with the transit services as well to hear more about how their existing plans might align with coordinating with other jurisdictions and how we might be able to coordinate across jurisdictions to execute those plans.

We also looked at developing bylaws for Carto that are in conformance with the legislation and while we were working through that we were trying to figure out well once we set up Carto

going into this first year of its existence.

So first we did some engagement with the surrounding counties.

The first thing that we heard from all of them was we want to know more about our transit needs ourselves.

We want to know how our transit needs interact with the rest of the region.

For some of our partners in the more rural areas, they had some question marks about what that looked like.

There is an understanding both within our jurisdictions and outside of our jurisdictions that there's more planning work that needs to be done as a region before we can get to dedicated funding.

That's what we're hearing from the state and that's also what we're hearing from our partners is we need to come up with more answers to where is this funding coming from and what's it going to be used on.

We've also heard there are opportunities for using this transit authority to go after some short-term improvement

is a regionally significant investment and by having a regional transit authority that lends a lot of credit to us pointing to our investments and saying that you serve regionally significant.

That lets us go after demonstration grants for DRPT for new kinds of services as well as trip grants for things like regionally expansion services or fare free services.

The thing that we heard the most was, you guys should definitely go do that.

Unanimous interest for us setting up Cartel together.

The surrounding counties all want to see how it goes.

They want to see us be successful before they dip their toe in the water.

And between us and between all of the transit agencies, we've all acknowledged that there is this need for collaboration between all parties.

We've been doing that so far through the regional

and then we started looking at what does the bylaws for this need to look like?

What is the makeup of CARDA?

And luckily we have legislation that's pretty clear on what needs to happen with CARDA.

It describes the powers of the regional transit authority, specifically pointing out

County, but it allows for the surrounding counties, Lovanna, Green, Nelson, and Louisa to join as partners as well, and describes other duties and responsibilities related to fiscal and fiscal concerns.

So the bylaws also will include

We also are allowing Lovanna, Louisa Green to join as well as other entities that could join as non-voting members.

Our Board of Directors, as allowed by the legislation, gives two votes to the county, two votes to the city, and then a vote to each additional county that might be going to join.

non-political jurisdictions such as UVA or transit agencies or TJPDC could serve on this board, but they would have to be non-voting members according to that legislation.

County.

The bylaws lay out things like who are the officers, what are the terms of service, who are the chair, the vice chair, lays out very basic things like how are meetings supposed to work, what do you need for public hearings, quorums, voting, when do agendas need to be available.

It specifically points out two committees that will need to be

County.

First is a finance committee that would consist of five members appointed by the credit board itself, and that would look at the annual budget and adjustments for the credit board, but also for the transit agencies and transit funding that is going into transit services throughout the region.

There would also be a technical committee, which is a staff member from each member locality, so basically we're talking about an

that is working on setting up these bylaws.

It also says that we could have an executive director and staff for the time being.

We're considering just moving forward with existing county and city staff and moving forward with Carter with that until we decide exactly what we need the executive director or staff for.

And it also lays out exactly how you adopt the bylaws and what the amendment process is for those bylaws.

So we've been setting up a work plan, figuring out what comes next after we set up CARTA, and generally it conforms with the buckets of the roles of the agency that Ann laid out a few slides ago.

First, it would be setting up CARTA, that's sort of the first part of the general

is set up the board, approve the bylaws, elect a chair and vice chair, set up the committees, get sort of the framework set up.

Continue doing the outreach to the partners who have not joined yet and to our transit service agencies.

We want to sort of get the work started for the planning and start having those conversations early on.

that leads us into the planning work that needs to be happening, which is establishing some regional goals that we share together.

Some of those will come out of existing planning work that we've done together, including the transit vision plan, sort of looking at those and saying, okay, now that we have this regional transit authority, does that change anything about what we said in this plan two years ago?

We can also start looking at short term transit improvements.

What are the things that just right off the bat when we sit down

There are some things that we understand like the trolley does great.

Micro-cats doing great.

These are things that we can start digging into because we know they're successful and we can look for opportunities to continue them going forward.

County.

Part of that is going to be looking for what do we do with funding for this?

We're going to need to immediately hit the ground running, figuring out what we need for the next fiscal year, because as we're standing up CARTA, that's happening around the same time everyone's talking about budgets.

So we need to start thinking about what's the budget for CARTA going into the next year?

What kind of work are they going to be doing in the next year?

Do we need staff for that?

Or is existing county and city staff going to be

Carter is going to pull off an FY26.

While we're looking through that, we'll be working with the RPT at the state level and also FTA at the federal level to look for possible revenue that we could add to those strategies.

As a part of looking for revenue, we're also going to be advocating for these are our needs.

We want you guys to know about it because

is a regional transit authority with these shared needs and hoping that the state and federal agencies will help us fulfill those needs.

Lastly, I'll point to we need to start getting ourselves on the track to getting to that dedicated funding source.

Right now, we are not enabled by CARDA legislation to raise our own dedicated funding for transit through this structure, but we need to talk with our legislative

and this would be the vehicle to do that for.

Our key takeaways from all of this are we have a variety of transit needs in this region.

We have multiple providers.

We have a lot of investment that's needed.

We all recognize that those are all shared needs that we have across our borders.

And we've been talking about this for a very long time.

So we all are pretty aware of that.

The existing legislation that we have gives us a vehicle to be able to address those things.

is a partnership and move on to a legislatively enabled thing that will help us work with the state a little bit better.

In the past, we've had some troubles getting to this.

We've had that 15 years of conversation.

That shouldn't be dissuading anyone from this is a good idea.

That's proof that we need to have more discussions about what we need to do with transit.

This gives us a vehicle to do that.

The last thing I'll leave you with is we did take this to the regional transit partnership in August at their August meeting.

And we're able to get a unanimous endorsement for us to move forward with CARTA and setting that up sometime this fall.

When y'all are ready, we will be happy to come talk to you as individual boards about what that looks like.

Michael?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, as you mentioned, you know, this has been talked about for over a decade, so even though it's still just a first step in a new process, just moving to create a region transit fully, it really is a huge moment.

And two thoughts, one is how Charlottesville and Albemarle could have a unified message and voice in advocating in a general assembly to get legislation allowing a funding mechanism to get approved

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

It was interesting just by accident was talking to their transit director and he relayed how the University of Illinois used to run its completely own separate transit system.

And some number of years ago it decided to merge with their transit authority.

and he said that was the transformative moment for their transit system because in one year it about doubled their ridership and because federal funding is based on ridership, that formed the basis of actually being able to really expand the service.

So I think, you know, I don't know how successful it can be without UVA's participation and obviously that would be a big change that requires a lot of discussion and difficult details.

So I'm curious what kind of

And could I ask a question?

You say the legislation, I take it you're referring to the legislation that currently exists.

Which could be changed.

I believe that they do that there are other jurisdictions.

There are a number of authorities that exist under the Virginia authority.

There's one around the Hampton Roads area.

There's a Richmond one as well.

My sense is that the first step is for City Council and Albemarle County to approve establishing an authority.

And that means that it's going to go back to those two bodies for approval.

That's the first step.

And once we get that, and I'm just, please correct me if I'm wrong, but once we get the authority to set up in

actually meeting.

Then we can figure out the legislative changes we need.

We can figure out what funding mechanism we're going to take to the General Assembly.

Because we can't go to the General Assembly and just say, we need money for transit.

We have to tell them where we're going to get that money from.

What our funding mechanism is, at least that's mine.

And that's not going to happen in two weeks or two months.

It's going to take some work, right?

and which we have done to determine their interest in transit and we know that there is interest.

We know there's a bit of a wait and see.

Let's see what happens.

The other item that the study, that transit governance study talked about was go find some projects, go find some activities to prove that everybody can work together, that we're all in and use that to be the moment that you can prove to

And often our boards when we're starting something new, we talk about small wins.

And that's some of that work that Ben identified in the work plan is what would be, are there some demonstration projects that we could explore?

We heard very clearly from the rural communities, an interest in understanding what their rural transit needs are, is that there's some planning work that we can do together.

Thinking both about what our next steps need to be and also kind of what role university should play.

Councillor Payne mentioned the Champaign-Rivanna transit system.

I want to maybe draw on a best practice that's a little bit closer to home that I know is also highlighted in our packet.

Blacksburg, I think, highlights that maybe a voting membership is not what the university wants.

Best Practice at Incredibly Successful, named in 2019 as the best transit system in America by the American Transit Association, something, something.

And the city and the county pay very little for what is basically a city, what is, not basically, what is a city department, as funded primarily by Virginia Tech and half their ridership is next students.

I just point this out because we should

I don't want us to assume that we know what Virginia wants out of this relationship.

The idea of being a voting member actually might be not ideal.

That invites controversy.

That invites an individual who represents the university that could potentially be a lightning rod because they're voting on a board.

They might want to be a silent partner.

We won't be able to get these kinds of answers to these kinds of questions.

I joke that if you could solve transit by studying something that would be... Yeah, it's remarkable the amount of effort and studies and things that have happened over the last years and so many of them are driven by federal requirements.

I've got to prove this before you know I've been trying to educate myself on that.

I will say that the governance study, I don't know if everyone's had a chance to look at it, it's a very incredibly robust discussion of

as you mentioned, Virginia Tech was brought up in there and places all over the country that Ithaca, New York.

So there's a lot of groundwork that has been done, which we will certainly be able to make use of.

I guess maybe this isn't the right venue to ask this.

Maybe this is something that's still part of the to-do list.

But you know, when I think of an authority,

in actually going from what's talking about, it's one thing to vote on the card, sort of enable that, I get that, but then the next step would be some sort of service agreement, and why can't I go look at the founding documents of RWA or our SWA or the jail board, they're very specific documents where city managers and law

County.

and I'm not suggesting for all these various cameras that are above us, I'm not at all suggesting this is what happens, but questions are things like does Kat become part of this or does John?

These are the sort of questions that I know that people, concerns have been raised or concerns isn't the right word.

Those are questions that come to mind, at least in my mind.

and we have we have some time before we have to address that but there's a lot to be done still but I I guess I would hope that you know we could you know I do want to thank the RTP and the folks who have led the RTP over the last years and sort of keeping the flame alive I hope that we can really sort of let's let's I've seen more progress in this in the last six months and

I do think you bring up a very good point about partnership agreements, service agreements.

As we've talked about CARTA, the formation of CARTA, the approach we took, the approach that was really advocated in this transit governance study was, let's get the organization sort of set.

Let's sort of create the bylaws, start meeting, and then let's do some projects.

There's some low hanging fruit.

Are there some planning efforts that we can explore?

before, and to build some credibility, some partnership between the group, before we go out and tackle the big items like services, like oversight over organizations.

We, and so we purposefully identified that and sort of set that to

And I would just add that that's what we're hearing from DRPT.

and their support is going to be critical.

And our outreach has included the four surrounding counties.

So we have... And they'll be traveling as my understanding as well to the Champaign and Rivanna.

And I just want to chime in as well as part of this discussion.

I've been

is conversating with the fine mayor of Blacksburg.

And it's been a really good conversation because some of the things you talk about and they're doing, they're doing a lot of things together as well.

And I want to get this right, as she said, just like the impact of Virginia Tech on Blacksburg has more impact on Blacksburg than any other place because Blacksburg is so small, Virginia Tech is so big.

The knee of the college in the United States has really impacted them, the growth

of Virginia Tech and the impact on the housing, the schools, everything.

So they're looking at this through the same lens as we are, but it's probably a lot more difficult there, I would imagine.

But they're dealing, they're watching us and we are watching them.

They're going through some strategic planning and doing some things together, but they're still kind of figuring that out down there.

But as we talk about this,

I think that one issue that we will have is that no matter how much planning we do, once we have a plan we go to the state

they you know I'm just thinking about what the one since tax we tried to do for the schools we had all of our ducks in a row we have it's like it it's like we're asking people to do it for the schools and they still turned it down so I think that we need to start that and not I'm not saying we're not saying it's that lobby and that you know conversation with our legislators and in Richmond now because we could do all this and we have this great plan with everything but really with not any

It took them three years to get the legislation through the General Assembly.

The first time they introduced it, it didn't even get it to get out of committee.

The second year, it maybe almost to the finish line, and then the third year it got passed.

So it is very unusual for anything to go to the General Assembly the first year and get passed.

and I will say just to cut and I'm sorry.

The Regional Transit Partnership did have three of our representatives in the General Assembly and a meeting about a year ago to explain that we were starting setting this up.

We were talking about it and this was the way we were trying to move forward.

County,

Albemarle, when will we make a decision that the gas tax is what we want to pursue as the revenue source from the state versus some other mechanism

I just anticipate that as a big decision point.

to get everything going as soon as we can.

Get it formed, frankly.

And hopefully that will happen soon.

And the sooner that happens and the sooner other entities join us, that will give us a more powerful voice when we go before the legislature.

But I was going to ask, do our lobbyists work with your lobbyists?

I think the key would just be to make sure that it appears on both lists

perhaps any kind of light rail in the area that's something I've always they were talking about that when I was in grad school you know I know we have to get everything else straight down first but okay good

Maybe when our new zoning ordinance gets really robust, we have that nice density to really make it worth it.

And I have to say that I just left our sister city of business on France and they have a light rail.

It was, you know, they get a lot of state money.

It was $200.

is a $50 million project for this town about the size of Charlottesville and Albemarle.

And they base their entire transit system off of that light rail system there.

It's a different culture.

I'd like to challenge the notion of allowing the surrounding counties to just be wait and see.

When the TJPDC Commission meets and we've had updates on the regional transit authority, it seems like the eyebrows raised and the eyes go sideways when taxing comes up and then having to fund something.

But if we just go the two of us versus six of us going to the General Assembly, not to mention after Express reaches over to Augusta and Stanton, and we have other jurisdictions locally that could fit into this transit piece,

But I often like to remind our neighbors, our four rural neighbors, is a lot of times Albemarle County gets lumped together with Charlottesville as if we're two urban jurisdictions.

We're not.

Charlottesville is certainly an urban jurisdiction.

But Albemarle County is rural, and our solutions to our rural transit needs will be the same solutions that work for Nelson, Flavanna, Louisa, and Green.

and transit goes both ways.

So it's not just their folks coming in to work, but if there's a transit stop at the Walmart in Rockersville, I would think that their businesses would love to know that people are getting off of a bus and before going into their car, they might go and shop and that has revenue implications for those places.

Same could be said of Lubanna, Nelson, and the reason.

So I get why they want to do wait and see.

If I were sitting on their board, I'd be

If they want this to come to fruition five or ten years down the road, we should already be making the case that, hey, a coalition with you included that goes to the General Assembly will front end the work, will front end the funding to get this to start to happen, but we need your help to be able to get the code, the law, whatever the words are in place now.

If we wait to do that for four or five or ten years, we've probably already missed the boat and we're spinning wheels.

So whether that's elected, so they have to take that on, whether that's staff that has to take that on, I don't know.

But there's a lot of success that they have seen, especially when the two PDCs met, and they talked about how, I am saying it right, the Athens Express, right?

They time and have changed their bus schedules to meet with employees, schedule with the shift change over at UVA of the health system.

and they're thinking of adding another line on, if they haven't already, because of the demand and how well and successful that's working.

That's a powerful story for Louisa and the Green and Flubanna.

So that's something that I would challenge, whether you say, yeah, okay, get to work, or all of us figured that out, that we don't wait and see for the wait and seeers.

Let's get the wait and seeers a little bit more engaged at a different level.

If the reticence is truly funding,

and that's put off to, they can wait and see on the funding piece, but we need advocacy help now.

I think that's something that should be out of the gate, what we're going to.

I truly think the General Assembly reacts when they see, you know, if a Charlottesville and an Albemarle goes and lobbies this General Assembly, oh, shocker.

It's the political dynamic.

But when you see a Fluvanna, Nelson, Green and Louisa together with a Charlottesville and an Albemarle, throwing an Augusta and a Stanton lobbying together,

then I think different animals start to play and you might be able to get a little bit more movement happening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, and I would love to see this happen before Daisy starts to play.

Yes.

I was waiting for you to say that.

So while we're loading the presentation, I'm going to give you kind of a little bit of a background.

So, uh, CHAC engaged a consultant to help us work through our transition plan.

So I want to give you a little bit of background.

So for about 16, 17 months, Kat had a consultant working with us to pull together what we would call a transition plan for our community.

With that effort, we came back to City Council on February 27th of this year, and they adopted the alternative transition plan for us, which got us

to our carbon-neutral goals for the city by 2050, we have in our plan that we will potentially get there by 2040.

With that said, we are going to look at two potential pilots, which has battery electric and hydrogen, because there are no hydrogen providers or users on the East Coast.

We found one that was as close and that was the Midwest and that was Champaign-Ribanna.

That's why I was chosen.

All right.

The primary objective of the trip to Transfand New Jersey, or for abandoned, was to visit the MTD, which is the Mass Transit District, to observe their ground-breaking hydrogen fuel cell technology up close.

We've been talking a lot about, for the practical purposes, would it work for us?

So we were able to go and see firsthand whether anybody was making that new technology work firsthand.

So we took a pretty big group with us.

It was about 15 people, 14 of them were government officials.

There was one reporter because we had three elected officials.

Mayer-Way, Counselor Payne, Counselor Snook, Supervisor, and RTD, RTP Chair, Chair Diantha McHugh was also in attendance.

And I think what we learned there is that it's not just us that are looking at how to make transitions, there are

larger transitions.

There are larger transit systems that are making these transitions all over the world.

And the comparison that I want to bring to everyone's attention is they're both very similar to what we chose.

Champaign, Urbana, and Charlottesville.

They both have universities.

They're very vibrant.

And there are a number of challenges and they're both looking at trying to make these transitions with cutting-back technology.

The services that were provided by MTD versus Charlottesville, many of them are very similar.

We do, both of us do fixed route service.

Both of us have kind of a branded line.

They do kind of a nightline fixed route service and we have a downtown trolley service.

They also do paratransit service.

We do paratransit service through jobs.

They have a surf ride program, which is very similar to our micro cat program that we're doing ride share.

They have a sea chart.

Land Service, and then we have, they have a university routes, they have football routes, they have services they do for the high schools and the middle schools, which is a very important point here.

We do services for our schools also, but it's just primarily for the elementary schools and the high schools, but we're trying to transition a portion of them on the middle schools and high schools to our fixed routes system.

So when we looked at the service comparisons between us, both systems were put together or founded in the 1970s.

One was actually 1970, which was NTD and we were founded in 1975.

Service population is 135,000 versus 80, basically 80,000.

They have 114 buses versus our 48.

They have 26 routes and we have 12 routes.

They do 9.5 million unlinked passenger trips a year and we do 1.3.

We're going to talk a little bit about that because we want to go a little bit deeper.

And when we looked at the real comparison and peel back the onion a little bit here, they're 9.5.

7.7 of it is actually associated with the university.

So if you take that away,

their number is very close to what we're doing on our side of the house.

It's very, like, 1.3 to our 1.3.

So we had a luncheon with them.

We got an opportunity to have really robust conversations.

I think this is the time where we, the group had an opportunity to ask all the questions they want.

And I would say Councillor Payne did a wonderful job in questioning up and down the

the chair of the executive director of MTD.

His name is Carl Gannett.

He's actually pictured there with the glasses on in the ball head.

Him and his team came in and laid everything out for us.

And when we go back, we will actually structure that conversation.

So it is a little bit more focused

County.

that conversation, which was scheduled to be about an hour, lasted two and a half hours, and probably could have gone longer.

We actually had a break because we wouldn't have made the tour, which was scheduled for two o'clock.

So there was a lot of information they provided to us.

Everyone in the room walked away, I believe, with a better understanding of how they got to where they were.

And then we were able to see firsthand what their technology really looked like.

So in getting to them, we were taken to their transit center.

That was by mistake.

It worked out to be one of the better things for us.

We got to see how their operations happened.

So there was one of their transfer hubs.

We were picked up at the transfer hub by MTV and taken to their facility.

We were able to see their hydrogen production, which is their electrolyzer components, their fueling stations, and then we actually got to walk through their facilities.

They have covered facilities.

in Champaign, Urbana.

They said temperatures can get to 20 below.

So it made perfect sense for them to have their buses inside.

And they're generating 420 kilograms of hydrogen daily.

They have a fleet right now of 12 hydrogen fuel buses.

And based on the conversation that we had, they're going to increase their capacity for storage and they're going to be up to between 65 and 90 over the next couple of years.

So hydrogen startup cost was a major component that we talked about a lot.

It was about $20 million at that time.

And the fleet comparison, their current fleet is one to 10.

They are planning for battery electric and hydrogen.

They put the hydrogen model up front.

because they thought the conversation where battery electric are not a one-form replacement for diesel.

They wanted to give more time for the technology to mature before they dip their toe into the battery electric center.

They are going to put battery electric into their model.

Now, most of the transit agencies that I talk to, the directors, they're not doing a one model fleet.

So they're not going all 100% battery electric or 100% hydrogen.

There is a mix for reliability and redundancy purposes.

So, actionable items that we took away from that is, we thought that it's possible for us to potentially adopt hydrogen

County.

is just a little bit ahead of us.

They announced that they are going towards hydrogen about six and a half months ago.

So if we are going to get in that queue, we would potentially still be the first.

Being the first potentially provides a different level of funding opportunities for us.

We'd love to take advantage of that.

But everything that we're contemplating is really potentially expensive.

We've talked to that model.

We actually had a meeting just yesterday about the infrastructure needs to make any of these models happen.

It's a phased approach to pretension look at.

There are short term and long term goals and actual items that we're trying to get done.

But all in all, to make zero emissions a reality here, there's a tremendous amount of infrastructure that needs to be put in place.

So, wanted to give you a little bit more information about there's a number of write-ups that were done, where there was shocktubs, and there are websites that we can look at.

But I want to also bring you there, we have in our strategic plan that we are going to use battery electric and hydrogen.

That continues to allow us to have an opportunity for funding opportunities, discretionary grants, whether it's the federal or state.

So, we didn't want to shut off anything.

But I think when we go back, we'll have an opportunity to talk more about how their model and their structure and how they have dedicated funding plays into how they continue to expand their service model.

So conclusions highlighted that basically hydrogen technology is real.

They are the first transit agency in the country to have articulated hydrogen electric buses.

They got a special grant through the Department of Transportation with the fans, FTA.

They are looking at potentially adding more articulated buses to their model.

And that articulated bin means that they're basically taking double their capacity for ridership.

And we're hopeful that at some point in time, we'll be able to introduce hydrogen buses here.

The goals for the City Council to us are we're not buying any more fossil fuel buses after December 31st.

of 2027, so January 1st of 2028, we will only be able to buy battery electric or hydrogen vehicles.

With that, any questions?

Yeah, it was a great, great trip.

It was a whirlwind, like, you know, one full day at the end, but it was worth it.

It was worth it.

I think one of the things I really got from it, in addition to that, even though they were in, committed to hydrogen, they were only, you know, they didn't want to put all their eggs in one basket.

I think that

They mentioned, was it Alcock, Indiana, that had all of their buses battery, I believe, and it went down, the company went out of business or something, and they were just stuck.

So, I don't know, any transit system wants to be all one thing, you know, technology.

Just to piggyback on what you said, and I can't remember exactly, Garland, but they were talking about somewhere,

3070 or 6040 model.

And I don't remember which.

I will just say for everybody here, though, that the group that's going in October consists of Charlottesville, Albemarle, the school systems and the university.

So there I think 22 people are going.

I think you said it one point 22.

So it's going to be great.

At some point, though, it would be wonderful if we could have a

I hope we're sending them some really, really great gift baskets at Christmas time for all of them.

and also the impact on the

that hit.

So when the source that we're using is zero emissions for us eventually.

I'll just say, I'm guessing I probably entered that trip as the biggest hydrogen skeptic, but it was very informative and I definitely left feeling way more confident than when I went in that hydrogen is something that transit agencies should be seriously exploring.

It was very interesting to see Champana Urbana actually made it work and I think the big questions will be

Sturridge long-term at scale along with transportation when and where hydrogen hubs get built out but it is clear there are transit agencies that it will work for and it should be explored so I'll just say that

I hope, you know, I won't be on the second trip, but I hope maybe there's an opportunity for them to talk in more detail about that experience of University of Illinois joining, because those ridership numbers to me are just like transformative in terms of the success of the agency.

So they're the only game in town out there.

So they're a little bit different than we are here in the sense that

They're trucking a lot of their hydrogen in.

They're producing hydrogen, but they're also trucking it in.

And they're going to truck more in because they're turning up the volume on getting hydrogen vehicles in the house.

So they put in an order, I believe you said, of 25 or 30.

They put it in this year.

So that will arrive in 18, 24 months.

So they're going to go from 12

I do know that answer.

We'll be able to answer that.

I can answer that.

I ask that when we go back.

Or I can actually send that question to Carl on his team.

They've been wonderful.

So we've been communicating with them even since we've been back.

OK, thanks.

Because I just know you could tell me any number.

And I'd be like, OK, that's reasonable.

I would imagine that they're

They're computing.

They seem to be very good at it.

So I would imagine that they're computing what is the loss to their climate gain by trucking it in, but pushing themselves farther, maybe even faster is compensating for that.

But that absolutely was one of the types of questions that I had because my assumption was that if we were to go this route, we're going to be trucking it in as well.

And I know that there will be some who will be opposed to the idea of trucking it in.

not specifically came up because I was kind of hooked up on from the presentations on whether the colors of hydrogen, whether it's green, blue, whatever.

Pink.

Pink, yeah.

And so, as I recall, Carl said, you know, like, they don't get, they don't, that they don't care about the color.

They're not hung up on the color because right now,

Yeah, I think we just don't know.

And I will say, I think my memory is correct, Champaign-Urbana was, their hydrogen was used with renewable energy, and they have the advantage of their on-site with solar, but Chicago also has hydrogen

And I did a quick Google, because I have access to the internet here in front of me.

And it says that fuel cell electric buses typically carry up to 40 kilograms of hydrogen and consume about 25 per day.

So a capacity of 125 kilograms can fuel firebuses.

And they're a producer of 420.

So interesting note, the day that we were there, their electrolyzers had to work for three days.

And they actually had the

Trillium, the agency that actually helped design and build their electrolyzer was there.

He did a wonderful job of explaining all the nuances and features of the equipment.

We were just lucky that he was there.

I'm going to ask Carl, can we bring him back for this group?

But he was wonderful.

He was very patient.

Like I said, we were only supposed to be there about 35, 40 minutes.

We were there an hour and a half.

So this day, which was supposed to be about two hours, turned into about a five and a half, almost six hour day.

I was just talking transit.

I love this stuff.

But I'm not sure the group that was with me was going to love this stuff.

And they had seen, they were more, they were more into it than I was, which was wonderful.

But I found their mix, their goal is very similar to ours.

They're going to be zero admission by 2040.

They're going to have 50 battery electric buses and 6800 buses in their first charge.

They're looking to expand their services and

Yeah, so you mentioned battery electric and hydrogen.

I mean, I understand them wanting both, but I'm talking about now most transit agencies now are trying to do a dual for the purposes of the grid goes down.

Other questions or comments on this?

The only other thing I will mention is, just because I was on the trip and all that, it is really interesting for folks to recognize that the university that we're talking about, Champaign-Urbana, is one of the internationally well known and the gold standard for engineering schools.

Yeah.

Just to say, right?

Yeah.

57,000 students faculty that use their system on a daily basis.

Wow.

Thank you so much, Garland.

Thank you.

Yeah, I own this or any other.

Actually, a question still about the bus situation.

Right now, I know we have certain federal grants when we buy a bus.

We're only covering like 4% of it or 6% of it.

It's the same grant pot.

So it's discretionary $5307 money right now.

The interesting fact is that grant pot has not, I mean, it got bigger, but not like 50% bigger.

It got like 30%, 20% bigger over time.

So for scale purposes, diesel bus costs us about $524,000.

County.

I'm continuing just a general discussion.

I know that one of the things in our packet is a discussion, just an item about the work being done in Virginia Tech that's already been mentioned, collaborating with county, cities, and University of Virginia Tech.

I was just going to say I hope everybody had a chance to read the article that was in the packet about the model that Blacksburg and Virginia Tech in Roanoke County are participating in.

We had it in our packet.

It's a very interesting model.

It certainly is a model of cooperation and strategic planning.

and the Champagne-Rivanna Transit Model also encourages us to think strategically for our community and even our greater, you know, our larger community, but certainly our community in Albemarle, Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.

And I would love to have a little bit of a discussion about interest in looking at not that exact model, but if the people at this table

are interested in a further discussion around what a strategic model of cooperation between Charlottesville, Albemarle, and the University of Virginia, to include them, might look like and how we might get there.

I'm certainly interested in the study to find out the impact that the students have.

That was a big takeaway in that article as one mayor spoke to earlier about the impact the students have on services there, but it is a very different dynamic.

So understanding what that might be, in conjunction with, as we've heard Mr. Richardson and did work with the airport board discuss our

and one sort of zooming out just a little bit with Mr. Richardson and Mr. Sanders.

What was it that prompted you to, I mean, is this just something that you heard about or is a very interesting article and it was being driven by a guest by the university in that context?

How did you hear about it?

Daily Progress in May.

I've heard of that.

And it came at a time where we had been in discussions with the University on our emergency management planning to involve public safety, our election security planning, where we're working together for the fall.

Within the last year, the University of New

University.

And so, I mean, I found it to be fascinating.

It may, again, I think one of the board members said this may not be a framework that we're interested in.

But, you know, when we think about

College Towns and the economic vibrancy.

We've seen reports on just the regional economic engine that the University of Virginia is, not just for Charlottesville and Albemarle County, but for our region.

And there's amazing work that's going on at our university right next door.

And the opportunity to maximize and capitalize partnerships and relationships, I think it's a good time for us to take a look at that and make sure

University.

I would add that for me, I saw the article in the Daily Progress as well, and I put that on our list even for us to talk about too.

It's like, okay, Jeff, what is this?

Maybe we should look at something like this.

Mainly because my tenure in this seat, I've just been asking a bunch of questions.

I feel like I'm good at that.

I asked a lot of questions.

My team probably just stopped asking so many questions.

I ask a lot of questions and a lot of what I've been asking in the three years that I've been in the city has been really trying to find out what have we done in the past.

So to your point, I've asked questions like when have we done community planning?

together because we've done a bunch of plans since he's been here, James has been here and I've been here.

But when are we going beyond just the boundaries of the city?

Because the city, county, university, we're linked whether we like it or not.

I think we like it.

But I think it's important for us to look for those moments of where we overlap and we've been

We've been doing more and more of the overlapping, but I don't know that we have slowed down to really just kind of take stock of what does that look like?

What does that feel like?

Where are we going?

Let's try to plan out a little bit more of that.

So as I've been asking the questions, I've been trying to figure out how how can I feel better about making sure that I'm just not so singularly focused on the city of Charlottesville.

I don't want anybody to send me an email tomorrow saying they hate the idea that I'm not just thinking about the city of Charlottesville.

I think it's important for me to always take stock in the region.

it's important for me to not lose sight of what's happening around me influences what happens to me so I think that's what I would offer as kind of what my interest was but and we have so many agreements we we have a lot of agreements we still don't have all the agreements that we need in some places and some of them date back a long long time ago and just because they've been around for a very long time

doesn't necessarily mean that they're perfect for today.

And I think this even opens the door to taking a look at some of those and questioning what's different today.

The county has grown up, I think is a fair way to say, and getting bigger and more things are happening.

Are there things that are of interest today that weren't even thought of at that moment or weren't even a part of the agreement back then?

I think that's part of the question.

I had a quick reflection at that, that's okay.

I have worked at the university for 20 years and it's been a great place to work.

I graduated there, graduate.

And my work experience, my career such as it's been, the first years were in the industry for Proctor and Gamble for a number of years and then I worked at the university for about 20 years.

When I first came to work for the city, to help the city as a city councilor, I guess the thing that I was really struck with was just how lean the city runs.

I'm assuming it's the same in the county.

At the University, a million-dollar project is really kind of a modest-sized project.

County, and

I've really had to sort of adjust my thinking in terms of how do we, because when I think about a community like Charlottesville and Albemarle County, and as I think over the last three years of people coming either emailing me or talking to me or

more sort of poignantly when they come to our meetings and sometimes they're happy, but many times they're not.

The needs that are reflected back to us in our community, you mentioned the fact that this is a well-educated community.

It's a community with really great values, I think.

The things that people want us to do, at least in the city, whether we talk about housing, we talk about punching above our weight and all of these things.

People want a lot of us.

They want us to do a lot of things.

And, you know, I'm not an economist and I've not, you know, gauged all this.

This is just Brian Pinkston's gut sense of things.

But I just feel like we're like 10, we perpetually 10 to 15% underfunded, at least in the city.

Maybe that's the legacy of, you know, years and years of low tax mantra in the early 2000s.

I don't know.

County.

We appreciate paying taxes, but that's how we build the community that we need.

So, I don't know what future partnerships might look like with the university or with the county, but I really applaud this regional approach.

As you mentioned at the beginning, Mr. Richardson, how do we solve these problems with the least amount of

and so I again it's a nut that every year at budget season I'm just again reminded of the challenge it is to meet the needs that our community has with the fund sources that are at our disposal and I hope that we can figure out ways to

to meet the gaps that are there.

So I'm really glad to have heard many things about this.

And I think, leading back to the transportation working group, which was something you're prior to

I don't think any of those options are different.

Obviously, many studies need to be modernized, updated, or whatever, but I know a lot of thinking over many years, and certainly going back to way before 2010, talking about how other college towns have unified transportation.

I've heard many people in the United States talk about how important it is that we not run three or four or five systems.

however many tens of thousands there are in College Station, Pennsylvania, they've been doing that since the 70s or 80s, maybe even longer.

I'm thrilled with Blacksburg, good for them.

So I think others have shown the way, and I really hope that the right players will be in the room in all the various partnerships around to be able to get us to a new stage.

Because it really makes a difference who the winners are, places to be.

and into the partnership.

So I want to respect everyone's time.

Micah, did you want to have one quick comment?

I'll be brief, but I want to be a little bit more explicit in that when I read through

the framework that was used in Blacksburg between Virginia Tech and their city government.

You know, I would definitely be interested in pursuing, as soon as we can, a similar kind of body where we can actually have iterative conversations across UVA, Charlottesville and Albemarle.

I think we heard just tonight, I would want to study as well, but I worry if we'd wait for a study

and

University, the University of Charlottesville, Rivanna University, Rivanna University,

So that's my perspective.

I think it's clear we need to pursue that kind of framework if UVA was willing to engage in it.

I really appreciate you saying that.

So I think

Me, what I'm hearing is to ask staff to take some deeper dives and conversations with Albemarle, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia at the table and then come back to us with how that might play out and what model might work best for our community.

One in 2018, number three in 2019, one in 2020.

Yes.

Okay, any other comments?

Comments?