Board of Supervisors Legislative Forum   12/6/2024

County, New York.

District.

So we have a quorum.

We're joined by our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our Interim County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, and our Executive Director of Economic Development, sorry, Emily Kilroy.

And I also want to recognize our clerk, Ms.

Claudette Orgerson, Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris, here.

We're here.

And a police officer who's present from the Albemarle County Police Department, we have Angela Jamerson.

Thank you.

And Officer

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board, distinguished delegates, Senator Deeds, county staff.

Thank you all for attending today.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend Albemarle County's legislative forum for the year 2025.

I'm Andy Herrick.

I'm the interim county attorney, and it's my pleasure to present the county's legislative program on behalf of the board supervisors.

is really a team effort and I also want to acknowledge the other county staff that have been invaluable in preparing this.

I'd especially like to recognize Emily Kilroy, our newly minted director of economic development, as well as James Douglas from our office, among many others from county staff who are present today who have helped with the presentation.

and also like to recognize David Blunt who's the Legislative Liaison for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

We've worked in very close collaboration with TJPDC and David has done great work in the General Assembly representing the interests of the localities of Central Virginia.

So again, thank you all for your assistance in preparing this presentation and thank you again for your time in coming today.

This presentation is divided into three parts.

We're going to start by going over the county's legislative priorities, which are really targeted asks.

County Council.

and then next steps.

We've organized this forum this year to be more interactive, to allow more time for give and take.

So my presentation is going to be shorter than my predecessors presentations have been in prior years.

We're going to hit on some of the high points.

Okay, so there will be plenty of time for conversation again.

So if my presentation seems abbreviated from what's been presented in past years, that's the reason for it.

So again, as between the priorities and the positions, the priorities again are the highest priorities that the county has.

And then legislative positions are positions that the county would take in response to initiatives that may arrive in Richmond.

So we'll start with the priorities.

We have six targeted priorities, and we'll go into depth into each one of these.

The first is to expand the photo speed device authority.

This is an authority that the county has used somewhat during the past year with some success, but we're asking for expanded authority on that.

There's the one cent sales tax option for schools capital.

This is an item that I'm sure is familiar to the delegation.

A new one this year is to expand the offenses subject to property forfeiture to include community threats.

We'll explain that.

We have a couple of budget requests and Ms.

Kilroy will speak to each of those, Rivanna Futures and the Biscuit Run Park Project.

And then our final priority is to study tools to mitigate rent increases caused by multi-family residential development.

So we'll go into each one of these now.

The first of which is to expand the photo speed device authority.

The Virginia Code currently, as I'm sure the delegation is aware, has limited authority for localities to have photo speed enforcement under certain circumstances.

What we're asking the assembly to do is to expand that authority to allow photo speed monitoring devices on designated segments of roads where speeding has been identified as a problem.

I understand that legislation was introduced last year that it may not have gone as far as the county would like, but again this is a priority for the county and we're asking that similar legislation be introduced in this year's assembly.

The next one is one that I understand had more traction in last year's assembly and made it as far as the governor's desk as I understand.

And that would be to amend the code to designate Albemarle County in addition to the other previously designated localities or to allow general authorities statewide for the one cent sales tax revenue for school capital projects.

As I'm sure you all are aware, there are a number of individual localities in Virginia that already have this authority.

Albemarle County would like to be another one of them, whether that be through statewide blanket authority or whether it being Albemarle County specifically designated.

The problem wasn't getting the bill to the governor.

And that problem would probably still exist.

What I would suggest is probably a better source this time.

You got $2.2 billion of budget surplus this time around.

The chunk of that money can be used for construction grants, school construction grants, I think.

And that would make sense to me.

And I'm just speaking as one of 140 people.

But I think that's probably a more realistic source of school construction money this time around.

and then try this on a later date.

But, but I mean, I think this will still go forward.

Somebody had it in the house.

I introduced it, but several people did.

Sam Russell carried it.

And my understanding of the conversation was that he was going to be carrying it again.

And if you want me to speak to the farmer, I didn't know who should be speaking while you're speaking.

Please do.

So I brought up the speak camera bill last year.

That was a bill.

But there's, again, several delegates that had similar legislation.

So we rolled it all into one.

And Mike Jones from Richmond, Delegate Jones from Richmond will be carrying it this year.

And included, like, we've worked a lot about this issue.

And I think I've talked to Jeff about this.

We can go through those concerns later.

I want to go into all the details.

on the school grant thing, because that is a novel way to approach it.

But I will say, because there is a school grant construction grant fund right now, it comes from casinos.

Albemarle did not get any.

They applied and they reapplied and they did not get any.

I get that.

I'm just suggesting that we could read, we could put more money in that fund somehow.

More money would hopefully mean more distribution.

This is a new proposal, and that is to expand offenses subject to property forfeiture to include community threats.

Currently, the Virginia Code has provision that allows a property that has been used in terrorist hoax incidents, bomb threats, or malicious activations of alarms.

It allows for a certain cost recovery, but it doesn't allow, it is capped at $250.00.

What Albemarle is proposing is that false reports to police

and the

The rationale for that is included on the slide.

How are we talking?

Good afternoon.

I don't have a specific number for you.

was reported to me from our department is that it is not a common occurrence, even less potentially prosecutable offenses because some of the threats may originate outside the Commonwealth if not outside of the country.

And with the school division, what they receive, they're either kids involved, and it's really not collectible.

If you give them all the civil penalty you want or all that, make them subject to this, but that's not a collectible amount of money, right?

And if they're out of state, that's not collectible either, to a large extent.

Potentially anything that has a nexus to the criminal activity, anything that can be substantiated to that degree, but it would be against the property and then the only claim would be an innocent owner.

So if the parents owned the phone, which they would, then they could make a claim under forfeiture that they were an innocent owner and then it would be disposed of differently.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the board, members of our local delegation.

Good to see you all again.

So this is a slide that I hope is very familiar to everyone in the room.

The primary focus and sort of the priority budget amendment from Albemarle County this year would be the state budget support for the Rivanna Futures Phase I site writing as well.

This is an item that we brought forward last year at a larger scale.

And so it was looking at sort of the full

University.

and you can see it would have a small extension of the existing terminus of boulders road which ends right at the dotted line as well as the sewer and water lines to serve those sites and the grading to make those sites what we would call sort of pad ready.

We are in parallel pursuing state and federal

Park.

As we continue to refine our estimates, we're able to substantiate more than $11 million worth of effort to bring this to the next level of site readiness.

But this is the package that we've put together for the purposes of the General Assembly, and we appreciate the time that you all took this summer to come out and see the property and receive a briefing from us with a little bit more detail.

We continue to be really excited about this project, but more importantly, so do a lot of

Hub, with really common, wealth-wide significance, and so we're really excited about the potential there.

The next slide is a video, so I'm going to tee it up before I click it because this is where we might hit an IT problem.

So earlier this week on Tuesday, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance

serves the intelligence and national security professionals in the country across all of the branches of the military and the 18 intelligence agencies that fall under the director of national intelligence's purview.

They focus a lot of their professional development events and learning and conference events in the national capital region, the greater DC area.

occasionally have events outside of there in what they sort of recognize as hubs for their partners and their members.

And so Huntsville, Alabama, they've done conferences in the Boston area.

We were incredibly excited that they heard about all the good things that are happening in our community and decided that it was worth an effort to explore what an holding an event here would look like.

So it was Tuesday at the board's head.

We started working with them in earnest over the summertime and I had asked what's your what's your goal?

How many people are you hoping will come to this event here in Charlottesville?

I know you're taking a little bit of a risk and and they said you know 200 would be a real stretch goal for us and we are so excited to say that there were over 300 people in the room on Tuesday evening a large percentage

County.

We had two-star general in the Army and members of some local leadership at Rivanna Station sort of talking about all the innovation opportunities, the priorities for the intelligence community moving forward and how this community can really be a piece of that.

Not everyone who was invited to the event was able to attend, but Senator Cain

with your invitation to speak today.

I also would like to thank the leadership of Albemarle County.

Without these efforts, the establishment of the Intelligence and National Security Innovation and Separation Campus wouldn't have been possible.

Finally, let me thank all of you for your contributions to our national security, whether you're actively serving in the intelligence community or supporting the important work being done at Rivanna Station.

As a former governor and current senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, I've had the privilege of helping Virginia's role in our national security ecosystem grow over the years.

This campus offers a glimpse of what the future of that role will look like, presenting incredible opportunities for Virginia's world-class academic institutions and industry partners to join government agencies and drive the innovation that supports our intelligence community.

These critical partnerships will only deepen in years ahead and will serve as an example of what Americans can achieve when we collaborate to solve our nation's most complex problems.

This same spirit of collaboration is what drives my work to implement the Australia-UKUS partnership, also known as AUKUS.

Virginia will play a critical role in supporting the partnership, and innovation centers like Rivanna Station will be crucial to fulfilling

and commitments we've made to our international partners.

I look forward to incorporating our allies into our innovation ecosystem as we continue to strengthen relationships with some of our closest nation partners around the globe.

As we increase coordination and enable the exchange of information, resources, and human capital, I have no doubt that we can contribute to a more secure and prosperous future for the United States and the world.

Thanks again for the opportunity to speak to you today.

We rest easier at night because of the men and women who serve in and support our intelligence and national security communities.

I offer you particular thanks as a member of both the Foreign Relations and the Center on Services Committees.

I look forward to what the future has in store for Rivanna Station and the innovation acceleration campus and I'll continue to support the efforts.

The second budget amendment request that the county has put forward, we hope is a start of a good conversation with the General Assembly moving forward.

The biscuit run park you are probably familiar with.

You may or may not be familiar with how the county came to be in possession of that park or at least of that park.

So several years ago, biscuit runs

County, the intersection of Route 20 and Avon Street is the future entrance.

It was originally slated to be residential development, then the Great Recession happened, the state purchased the property and the intent was to turn it into a state park.

The state had it for a couple of years.

They did a master plan for the park to program the park and then there was no funding available at the state level to actually advance in that plan.

The county said if the state would lease the park to the county, the county would be willing to take on development of that park and so the county has done so.

We are very excited to be celebrating the opening of the park next Saturday.

So December 14th,

Park that we've talked about for many years will come online.

This is another project that it's locally owned, but locally leased.

But we believe has real regional significance.

So this park is large enough and has enough amenities and is attractive enough that we really do expect folks to come to the community to access this park.

The county has invested $14 million to date to develop the entrance

County, and

This is a project that is not currently in the county's adopted CIP, but it is a real amenity and part of the regional significance of this park.

The full build out of the park has a circulator trail that would go around roughly the perimeter.

This would be a section of that future full perimeter trail that would be ADA accessible, and it would connect Biscuit Run Park to a new park that will open in the next couple of years that's part of the Southwood

Home Redevelopment Project.

That's the Monican Indian Nation Tribute Park.

And we think this is a really wonderful project that is worthy of state consideration for partnership and support.

Now, it wasn't two years the county had this property.

It was eight years.

Eight years.

Because in 2000, 2008 years the state had it.

In 2009,

and the property was acquired at the very end between the election and Tim Keynes leaving office.

The property was acquired and by 2017, nothing had happened.

He emailed me and said, what can we lease the property?

And I leaned over to the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and I said, what do you think?

We got that done.

That was in February of 2017.

By January of 2018, we had a ceremony with Terry McAuliffe who was on the way out of the office to basically turn the property over.

This is great.

I'd love to see a walking trail from downtown Charlottesville to Fifth Street Station out to Biscuit Run.

The vision for this originally was a regional park and to get more local governments involved.

Local governments don't always work together.

And I don't know why that works that way, but it does.

But I'd like to see more investments from other local governments in this because they are going to benefit.

This makes perfect sense.

and that is, those are my slides.

Just out of curiosity, so if it's ADA accessible, I know that I was on the Disability Commission two years ago and there was money in the state park budget to help renovate parks.

Yeah, we'll continue to look for opportunities.

The Parks Department and our facility and environmental services teams have both been looking for opportunities to bring in different state and federal funds to support different elements of the project.

that brought in some outside funding.

So we'll continue to look for opportunities to draw down through formal grant programs.

We'll look at that one specifically.

And just out of curiosity, with the first one, we had a lot of conversation about my trip to the Walt Island build out.

And I'm just hoping that you're exploring the similarities of those two properties.

That's great.

Thank you for that tip.

This is the first time I'm hearing about this ADA pool of funding.

And I know both the town of Scottsville for a park that they operate and also in the town of Scottsville, Doryer Park are both looking at improvements to ADA amenities in there.

So I would love if your staff could connect me with a little bit more information about that.

Great.

So in addition to the priorities that you've already heard and the budget amendments that we're seeking, the final thing that the county has on its priority list is a study of tools to mitigate rent increases caused by multifamily residential development.

We're asking not necessarily for legislation at this point, but for a study.

And the reason for that is that multifamily residential development is somewhat different than a traditional change in ownership when the complete redevelopment of housing is treated as new construction.

that allows for some sort of rent stabilization to take place.

But when a property is redeveloped altogether, there's no baseline on which to establish rent stabilization.

So what a study would do is, first of all, it would fill an academic void of the current literature.

But it could also explore effective means of protecting tenants following redevelopment while still allowing landlords a reasonable opportunity to recoup project costs.

So those six items constitute the county's priorities for the year.

Have you talked to anybody about this study?

Have you talked to them?

The thing is, we have deadlines, internal deadlines.

So the deadlines already passed for us to put in legislation for requests.

And an initiated study requires the introduction of a resolution.

I'm checking with Jason to see if we can put in, that being said, studies

We're waiting actually to have some word from our leadership about what to expect for study bills You know last year they told us put in a lot of studies in the end.

Yeah, and ask them to take it up

and you wouldn't even require resolutions would require a request so that that might be if you can't get it in yeah that might be something to do and Delegate Coulson staff staffer offered that as well as an option to look at for contacting the housing office and asking them to do some study work because most there's a full-time housing commission

They count towards a bill limit for sure.

Oh, that's good to know too.

So a letter asking the housing commission to take it up and I'm sure they would.

I'm sure they put it on the list.

I mean, I don't know what their priorities are.

So in addition to the six legislative priorities that we had outlined, the county has come up with policy and position statements on account of them scoring a total of 49 different issues that might come before the assembly.

And again, this would address the county's official position in response to any inquiries that might come up.

Many of the position statements are similar to what you may have seen last year.

However, I wanted to highlight for the delegation some things that we either knew to the position statements or revised from last year.

The first seven of these, of these seven, five of them really are for increased state funding or support of the items.

So for economic development, site readiness, for community services boards, mental health services, affordable housing, public schools funding, again the county is seeking increased state funding or support.

As for the other two items on this list, the local authority concerning land use matters,

Again, the county wishes to avoid sort of any incursion into local land use decisions, especially when it comes to regulations of facilities like solar facilities, data centers.

You've had one county in Virginia say yes to Davis Center's no industrial scale solar.

So they're increasing their energy demand by

you know, lots of wattage but they're not doing anything to create the wattage so I don't nobody's gonna come to the board of supervisors and ask you if they can put a solar or put a nuclear plant next door okay so you I want to keep I want to keep localities in the game

when it comes to solar, but you're going to have to be very careful because we've got goals.

We have to meet the Clean Economy Act by 20.

We're going to roof carbon from energy production by 2050 and we have to get it done.

And we want to keep localities in the game, too.

They have been introduced by some of us.

I mean, we're right in the middle of that stuff.

I am anyway.

So we just want, again, local land use authority to be preserved.

Actually, I just want to say about the solar, you know, I think two things that are becoming more clear to me as I've gone to every kind of possible conference I could on this.

One, you know, we are purchasing 60 to 70 percent of our energy that we're using from out of state because we're not creating enough just for our needs right now.

And then the data center thing is happening because we also control like 70 percent of

in the world.

and then also knowing that some of the farmers, this is a way to actually maintain the property in their family, which is really an important aspect as well.

So how we can all work together to come to the goals for the Clean Economy Act, but even with, you know, even just with what we're doing now, you know, that being aside, thinking towards that is a concern going forward.

So I just wanted to mention that.

Very good.

So these next two slides are, again, new items in the county's legislative position statements from last year.

We inserted a line in the digital equity portion.

And by the way, all of these are in the handout that was presented and prepared and presented to you all.

In the digital equity section, we're looking to support statewide efforts to advance digital equity.

In the environmental section, we're looking to include support for sustainable materials management.

and that would include extended producer responsibility legislation.

We have a number of items regarding affordable housing.

Affordable housing is a very important priority to our board and we're looking to support state funding to increase the supply of affordable housing not just in support of Albemarle's Housing Albemarle initiative but affordable housing generally.

We're also looking to have the power for locality enforcement of the Landlord Tenant Act

right now the Landlord Tenant Act can only be enforced by tenants and not by localities.

There are certain provisions of the maintenance code that localities can enforce.

There's a lot of work being done on that front, too.

There's also been work to expand the protections that tenants have if they're introducing any of those claims.

Like right now, they have to put money in escrow.

If it's an unlivable situation, they got to continue to pay that rent, find rent somewhere else.

It makes it really impossible to do any meaningful action against your landlord.

Delegate cousins has bills, but this is another way to go tackle it.

Give someone who has more power the ability to go in and help with it.

One thing that's missing from all those money situations, though, is there's no protection for my constituent.

He was living in a place, the only place she can afford, where she's lived for years, the property changed generations of owners.

Hole in the Roof, the new young owner says, you don't like it, leave.

And she has nowhere to go.

She's terrorized to say anything or complain to anybody because she's afraid to leave her.

So that's where I'm hopeful that if

There is more authority for a local agency to have a

What's happened to her legislation in the past?

I believe last year it actually made it to signature and was part of a batch of tenant protection legislation that the governor vetoed.

It was contingent on the completion of some kind of analysis on how it would affect

So rounding out the new additions to the county's legislative policies and position statements are these three final items.

The next two of which also deal with affordable housing or housing availability.

The first one would be to support a locality right of first refusal when affordable housing is sold or converted to give localities the availability to step in in those situations.

the second another state study so we appreciate the guidance on state studies to support a state study of rent stabilization or rent gouging protections we're not seeking legislation at this point simply a study of rent stabilizations or rent gouging protections and then finally demerit points for truck violations we've had a number of problems with over length or overweight trucks or through trucks or through trucks violating through truck restrictions and we would look to have those assigned as demerit points not just as moving violations

That's interesting because commercial drivers have such several consequences with respect to every ticket they get.

And the demerit points are, because most drivers don't really control their loads.

one of our former police chiefs said that in just sporadic stops, now 30% of the trucks that they were stopping had critical violations.

Critical violations.

That's just, then we look at all the wrecks we have on the highways and byways that are involved, trucks are involved.

I get that.

The only point I was making is with the demerit points, you're really, you're penalizing the driver for issues that he can't control, he or she can't control.

We're talking about the route that these oversized trucks take.

GPS isn't recommended.

The bar bridge.

It's stuck in the bridge.

So that concludes my presentation and again the summary in nice formatting form and again I'd like to thank James Douglas on our office for preparing this legislative program bulletin that you see in front of you.

So hopefully everything in here summarizes what I just said.

So the next steps in terms of our forum today is again to hear comments from both the board and from our delegation and then to open it up to the discussion that's already begun.

and I can ask if you have any questions pressing before we start, but then I'll go through just letting each of the supervisors add additional comments based on the questions and presentation so far.

With respect to the Rivanna station, the request is a lot more reasonable than $50 million.

But part of the problem is going to be that a lot of people are going to say, you're just trying to put Albemarle County in the front of the line.

because a lot of localities already have site requests in.

And there's kind of a way for them to get that money.

There's a big pot of money for site preparation.

But we're going to try anyway.

I like the idea.

I'm excited about the idea.

Thank you.

I think that you'll hear about the statewide significant

is part of this and I know David Blunt is here and can speak to the fact that Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has also prioritized this, which is multi-jurisdictional for some of the reasons.

and this is really regional and even, as Emily said, this has statewide significance.

In the world of Department of Defense, this is the only site in Virginia that is poised to grow.

So when we take a look at the state's continued support for our military and Department of Defense work, we believe we've positioned

really nice level of growth over time.

In the two-hour proximity to DC, and the fact that this property is on a separate electric grid, which allows for continuation of operation redundancy out of Washington, DC, that really sets this side apart from a lot of maybe the other military-related work that's going on in the state.

So we appreciate your work for us in this endeavor.

We're getting a lot of good conversation out of the federal government right now, and it's very encouraging.

I guess while I've got it interrupted, I also want to say that two weeks ago the University of Virginia announced a $55 million five-year grant for the creation of a national security institute that will be tied to data science, and it will be aligned with the University of Virginia's mission

We were allowed to come and participate in that.

And there's an amazing partnership there with the academic community.

It does go beyond the University of Virginia.

I would just add, going to Wallops Island, I took that tour, most of the infrastructure in Wallops Island, as in the Rhodes Bridge, and even one of their tank facilities that holds much of the fuel.

was supported by state funds.

And it's a very similar type of project.

In fact, most of the vendors now working on Wolves Island are commercial vendors.

Well, there's something that you all know that we can do to make the argument stronger.

I have been totally telling the staff.

The MEI grants.

Anyway, I think it's a compelling argument.

It's a very similar type of project.

Appreciate that.

Thank you for coming today.

I just first want to extend an invitation on December 18th, the Regional Housing Partnerships Meeting at 2.

It's a virtual meeting.

Isabel McClain, who is the director of policy and advocacy for the Virginia Housing Alliance, is giving a presentation on their legislative priorities.

And it just might be something you might be interested in, you know, logging in and listening to where they're at.

But one thing I'd be curious about from the state level, like what some of your thoughts are on some of the housing things that you think the state could do, is affordable housing is not specifically

Bay is dealing with affordable housing issues.

And it's not going to go away.

Our economic report that we received from our team in Virginia Tech that advises our finances was talking about how the local poverty level in our area has actually decreased.

But that doesn't mean people got richer.

We didn't help people climb out of poverty.

We forced them out.

And I know that happens in a lot of communities.

So I'm just curious, like,

You know, not so much so like, well, I'm bringing this bill forward or something like that.

But at the state level, what could the state do that you all would think would be beneficial to that?

No, affordable housing.

You know, when I remember when I was first elected to the Senate, probably for the first 15 years, the only place I heard about housing in Charlottesville.

Now I hear about it everywhere, from everybody and every corner of the state, every corner of the Commonwealth.

It's an issue everywhere.

The largest chunk of state funding for housing is what comes out of the Bayville Health Commission for the long-term supportive housing, about $85 million a year.

It's not enough, but it's more money every year.

But we're going to continue to focus on that from that standpoint.

What the state can do, we created a number of years ago,

Housing Trust Fund to support the construction of affordable housing.

We've never really had the courage to fund it properly.

We've ever had more than $10 million in the Housing Trust Fund.

It's a drop in the bucket.

I've suggested we might want to look at the recording tax.

for land transactions as a source for some funding to go to that.

The hard part is whenever you're talking about raising money, there are very few people.

There are people that like to talk about those things, but there aren't many people that like to support them.

You either have to take it from somewhere that's already being spent

You know, squeeze that tube of toothpaste to get the money or you'd have to raise the fee.

Raising the fees is tough.

But the state's share is consistent.

The recording tax, the grantor's tax, has a certain percentage that goes to the locality.

So that part is consistent.

There are other things you tap on top of it.

But we could raise that or we could attach a portion of the existing fund.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

where does that go?

You know, my addition as a freshman, I would say is, you know, everything we pass right now by the nature of us having Republican Governor and a Democratic General Assembly is bipartisan.

So the only way that you're going to see any action is to find that middle ground of a Venn diagram of where a Republican would agree and a Democrat would agree.

And for whatever reason in this past session, it felt like all the housing and

I don't know what the Republicans are bringing.

I do know that the governor was very harsh with all the housing legislation that went to him.

It was pretty much all vetoed.

I got one bill through that was like making a landlord have to provide the copy of the lease.

So that being said, I do think that everyone's taking all those vetoes.

They're looking at the veto statements and they're coming back with fresh legislation this year.

I just don't sense your question.

County, and

you know it's so one bill was about if there was a broken refrigerator or a broken HVAC system and it was I can't remember what the bill exactly was and he said you know my problem is that I don't have enough money to actually fix the you know as the owner of the property some of the folks don't have enough money to actually fix the fridge or the HVAC you know and so he's like if we could talk about

You know, obviously we don't want to impinge on the rights of the tenant, but how can we actually have some of the owners don't have enough money to actually fix the property sometimes too?

So could we have some kind of help for those folks?

They don't want their tenants to live in a terrible place, but they also don't have enough money to fix it up.

And so it kind of made me start thinking about how can we help

folks stay in properties and fix up the A-HIP program we have.

How can we make that more robust and more available, even to renters?

And then there was the proposal, which I loved, and I tried to resurrect this year, which was if you have a low income property and you're renting it out, make sure the tax reflects that it is low income and the income from the property is less than the market rate.

which was opposed by a lot of folks but mainly assessors to be honest with you and so I had a call in about trying to resurrect that as a possibility of making sure that when you're doing a tax assessment of an affordable unit that it's assessed at the affordable unit is what it actually is.

Right.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of stuff.

Don't say that.

There is a lot of grief.

But the other thing I had been thinking about in terms of public housing, and I probably shouldn't say this a lot like this, but when we could use social bonds to possibly raise funds to actually fix units, social bonds is a way to give private interests and private money.

to actually fix things or support public entities.

We use it a lot.

And especially in Oregon, they use it a lot for special education, CHIP, all these things so that you get money from the private sector to actually do some public good.

And because you save taxpayer money, because folks are healthier, they actually get a return on investment.

And this is a conference that happens every year at UVA.

And I've gone to it for like four or five years.

So we don't have that ability to use it?

We're not using it currently for that.

And since it's a funny world right now, having to do, you know, and bipartisanship up there.

So like there was a bill, Joe McNamara tried to do it last year.

He pulled it out before any of us voted on it and it ended up being one of the priorities of Charlottesville.

And it's something I'm not carrying it.

So I've not like done a deep dive into it.

But it's something about bifurcating how you tax the land from the actual property.

The reason they're doing it, they want it, is because they want to go to the people that haven't developed what is prime property and real estate.

It could be lots of housing.

They want to be able to go and say, listen, okay, you only have a $50,000 house on there.

That piece of land is a value, potential value of $5 million.

There's actually a Republican who wants to carry it.

are a entirely different reason.

In these rural areas, he wants someone who only has a $20,000 house but is sitting on a bunch of land to be able to say, even though it's really valuable land, you really should only be paying your taxes on your $20,000 thing.

So it's completely different reasons, but you have to find where is that middle space that is going to help out affordable housing in the city, but be OK with someone in a completely different setting.

I'll just make two quick comments because I don't want to monopolize the time but last night Mr. Blunt gave us a presentation on the legislative agenda that the TGAPDC is going to be carrying and it was brought up and there were a lot of heads nodding around the room with the surplus.

We I think all of your six local

will definitely be

I'd like to get it again, but at least understand that it's more first time or one time in nature.

Then the only other thing I'd offer.

In years past, I've just not had a lot of time because of my work schedule to go down and help advocate for things.

I would assume as we continue to talk today, we'll be talking about other things that are priorities for you all that you're bringing forward.

Because usually we just come to you and go, hey, bring our stuff forward, and then we'll go advocate for that.

But I'd certainly be interested in hearing the other things that aren't necessarily on our list that you all will be carrying this year.

that, and I'm sure it's shared with everyone else, that we could help you advocate for that may not just necessarily be on our legislative list.

last year, the state put a lot of money into a new state park in Culpeper.

And when I heard that pass, good sign, I thought, well gee, you don't know that.

So is there any thing floating around about improvements on state parks that we should be paying attention to so that if it gets passed, we'll be able to have some more money come our way for Biscuit Park?

is really interested in just a question of where you catch the energy.

It has about a $200 million backlog in terms of maintenance reserve.

So it's somewhat of a mixed blessing to have to stay apart in your community.

There's an awful lot of work to be done at them, at all of them.

We've got a few on, it usually takes years once the land's acquired to get it developed.

Biscuit Run was the Albemarle County shot.

At that time, it was really Biscuit Run or some property north of town, and Governor Kane acquired Biscuit Run property, and so that's what it became.

When that wasn't moving fast enough for Rick Randolph, we came up with the lease proposal.

I think that it makes sense for us to try to

most effectively.

I participated in the energy series with Dave Marsden this summer and talking about the VCEA and all the religion within the Academy Act and some of the pitfalls that we're now having to deal with.

We're getting all this backlash to localities because we're being accused of getting in the way of whatever this legislation was which passed through with me.

I never even knew about the inclusion that we had to do

Wood.

You either have to do what the federal government is doing or are the highest standards.

Nobody knew what the federal government was going to do.

Well, this was particularly about not having the sale of anything but electric vehicles by 2030.

And I mean, that was just something Virginia is absolutely not.

I think that that had gone through the legislature and I have missed it.

The bill, the bill of the small nuclear reactor, I voted against it last year and I voted against it because the only place where it's been tried for a land-based small nuclear reactor was somewhere out west

and after that it didn't work.

This legislation specifically said the rate payer has to pay for it.

So the deal that Amazon and Dominion struck is exactly the way it ought to work.

Amazon is going to pay for it.

They're going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the development of a spawning car reactor.

We ought to figure a way, if we're going to have to, these data centers are going to be part of our landscape.

We've got to figure a way to require them to produce their power.

I mean, why should our rate pay, or why should you and I have to pay for their electricity?

They use about a million gallons of water a day.

to just keep the buildings cool.

We should also be finding new ways to construct them so they don't take up so much resources in Europe.

They bury them, you know, where it's appropriate.

The standards that localities can bring in, I mean, with the five applications which were made in Albemarle for solar installation, all five were approved, but they had conditions to protect what they've worked and the community felt

is

of the fellow Northern Virginia who just said, OK, we're just going to have the SEC decide all these things well.

Well, that wasn't what the bill said.

That wasn't what the bill said.

The bill said, and it was my bill.

Well, I was talking about Scholar's bill, but anyway.

It was Scholar, yeah, from Henrico County.

But his was a different bill.

My bill, we're Solomon from Northern Virginia.

So we had the bill, and it basically said that if locality turns it down,

County has first bite at the apple the developer can amend that can appeal that to the state corporation commission now the problem you've got and I got no problem with localities imposing terms and conditions on but the problem you've got you've got some localities in the state that are saying yes to data centers and no to industrial scale solar

That's not Albemarle County, but there are other localities who are just saying no to solar.

You know, we passed a constitutional amendment about 12 years ago that said a fundamental right is personal property ownership.

You get to decide what you want to do with your property, but unless it's solar,

unless you're going to put it in solar.

So it's putting one land use versus another and local governments being the arbiter of that.

I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense.

Particularly when you don't get to decide, local government doesn't get to decide whether there's going to be a nuclear power plant.

I grew up in Bath County.

A large portion of Bath County was basically condemned.

Dominion Power built the largest hydroelectric power plants of its kind in the world.

But then they built four 150 foot wide easements across Bath County, changed the viewscape forever.

And you know what the Board of Supervisors had to say about that?

Nothing.

The Board of Supervisors wasn't requested for their permission to make this major change to the viewscape of Bath County.

I will jump in on that too because that bill, scholars bill did not pass and I don't believe it's coming necessarily coming back in that form.

I think there's some other things that are being broached like having an appeals board, having a regulatory body outside of board of supervisors that could review it.

that being said and I remember you visiting my office I went to the local counties get together that night I heard the data about how permits are always pretty much accepted is only like a 98% there's like a 95% acceptance rate over 70% anyway yeah but

Albemarle,

Brown distributed solar, trying to increase our cap from one megawatt to five megawatt, trying to make it so that we increase the percentage that we require Dominion to put solar on already disturbed properties, landfills, rooftops, parking lots, trying to be responsive in that way.

But then I also hear things that it's just frustrating things like the fact that

We try, right now we have a requirement that 35% of these solar projects come from these third-party providers, our solar companies, right here, our economy.

Somebody tried to do a bill that said, let's make that the floor.

That's not a cap.

You can go beyond that.

More than 35% of our projects could be by these third-party providers.

Dominion said, well, we can't do that.

because they look at all the difficulty they have with permitting unreliability.

We can't give them these projects and then introduce instability into the grid.

But then when we have the things that say let's make permitting easier, we get pushed back from the same people.

So it's like at some point it just is like it's a it's a balancing attitude.

So I don't want to hold back that we're trying to we're trying to take it into account and I'm on county cities and towns if we're trying to take it into account.

But at some point it's

And you are in the special interest dilemma right now, just like the home builders in 2016, they got rid of all the proffers and said it was all, you know, the fact that housing wasn't available was all the fault of local governments.

And so all the money that they were having to pay.

I want to take some of our priorities that we talked about at the beginning of them and kind of put them in additional context in case that is helpful both in kind of understanding how they came to you and also as you kind of socialize them to your peers and I want

Duck here.

And this came from me originally, so I want to kind of carry the water, kind of explaining this odd bill request.

That's the community threats bill.

So, to put this in its context, earlier this year there was a terror threat at my gym in my district.

I then

responded to this

at different places of learning that we've talked about.

We did at some point get a figure that county staff provided to us and it was I think one or two dozen per year was what we're looking at in different distributed threat attacks or different distributed threats that are made against buildings in the county.

And this is a fairly low boil.

What I would point out is I just read a story coming out of our neighbors to the south in North Carolina, Haywood County, where they're recovering from Hurricane Helene and there was some misinformation promoted by a YouTube channel where they were claiming that County was standing in the way using by not abolishing code provisions

County.

County Attorney.

can weed and we feel deeply, I feel deeply powerless in our ability to respond to this and we have not even had the kind of truly disabling concerns and I'm concerned that the current shape of this environment makes it so that local governments being sufficiently old is disabling to the local government because that can get its way into social media and that can result in these truly

and

DeFy, and we recognize I think it's important because we had a conversation about this, that it's not a great solution, that it doesn't feel very satisfying to scratch that itch, but I just want to kind of provide that backstory of

where this really strange looking bill request comes from because I think it's a very important issue.

We just couldn't skin that cat with what we were able to put together.

But I think it's something that really needs to be brought to the General Assembly's attention because I still feel quite powerless on how I would deal with these kind of issues moving forward.

I just want to say thank you for sharing that because I have to say that I was like I don't understand where this one is coming from and you know the rise of misinformation, disinformation and the results of that just continue to increase so it's kind of like I appreciate you sharing and you know the pizza gate and all these other I mean these are very it can be fatal

And I appreciate what Mike's saying too, because I think it's only going to get worse.

Yes.

If we look at the landscape, it's going to get worse and we'd rather be prepared.

very briefly these probably won't take as long but for some additional context on the biscuit run request this is my neighborhood and I think an important part that shouldn't be lost is it's not just a recreational element you kind of highlighted this it's an interconnectedness element because of how some developments develop with you know the scale and utility hookups that are required

What you have is a really, really deeply siloizing effect in the Fifth and Avon community, where people live a stone's throw across from each other.

I can literally throw my spoiled vegetables and hit a neighbor behind me through the woods, but to walk there takes 20 minutes.

Something that this project does is it connects

County.

And there's a broader vision there that does involve the city of Charlottesville as well because you have a trail from basically from the downtown mall to Fifth Street Station to Biscuit Run and introduce a whole new population segment of the population to Biscuit Run and to an outdoor experience.

the not the rent stabilization study, but the study for tools to mitigate rent increases during multifamily redevelopment.

Media Attention, but is really just symptomatic of a broader issue.

Especially when you look at our community, most of our affordable units, a significant portion of them were built using federal dollars, the low income housing tax credit, which normally comes with a 30 year period of affordability, after which these units already need to be redeveloped and they are no longer required to be affordable.

Most of ours were built during a construction boom in the late 80s and early 90s.

in a term of affordability soon or just half.

These go on the market.

They didn't get redeveloped and they get redeveloped in a way that is going to capture as much money as possible.

There is not really a tool we have here.

What we could do is, I mean, we could try and compete with these $60 million bids, but frankly, I can't compete with the $60 million bid.

And even what I would say are very bold rent stabilization measures that other states might use don't address this problem because rent stabilization doesn't attach to

County.

and especially in my area.

And I know in Ann's and actually everyone's area regarding the rural roads.

There's increasing accidents, deaths and everything because of this.

And we work with VDOT trying to get the speed limit reduced and that doesn't always work.

In fact, usually it doesn't work.

They do studies and they say, no, everything's fine.

But that is a real concern.

Residents in my area for Gordonsville Road have gone to the extent of they're now pulling money together to hire off-duty officers to patrol that, to be able to give tickets.

That's how desperate they are.

Someone, I got an email yesterday regarding in a half hour period, seven illegal oversized trucks came through in a half hours period.

was one of these small two-lane units.

We're all familiar with Gordensville.

Right.

So that's a big concern of mine.

I'm hoping this year with William Jones with his information that works there.

The other thing, once that sells tax, we're all in favor of that.

And of course, Rivanna Futures being a priority.

and if you can think of any other way that you can give us the locality's permission to raise revenue, we would greatly appreciate that.

And it could all be a referendum and ask the populace, do you, the people in the community, do you want to be able to raise extra revenue?

That would be a very good tool for us to have.

I've got just a three o'clock.

This is going to be a tough session.

We have a budget surplus, but the governor's going to insist a portion of that goes to some sort of tax cut, and he's probably going to want an ongoing tax cut.

And candidly, there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that are looking at some sort of tax relief in light of the election.

that just be realistic you know I'm of the view of the $200 check doesn't change too many people's lives but some people it can be a significant benefit too so we're gonna be looking at that but I think also that the school construction is an idea I think we had a JLARC report two months ago that said that that at least two of our institutions of higher education

County, and

for me, from what I'm, I will chair the Commerce and Labor Committee, I'll chair the Health and Human Resources Subcommittee of Senate Finance, so I'll be up to my elbows in Commerce-Rated Energy Producing Regulation and also

Health Care.

Let me just play out a warning.

We've got an incoming administration that says they're going to cut $2 trillion in taxes, $2 trillion in spending.

I'm not really sure what that means, but you can't do that unless you attach Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare.

In 2019, we passed legislation to expand Medicaid in Virginia.

That was part of the budget.

but included in that was that we would pull that back if the federal government ever dipped below 90% share of the cost of Medicaid expansion.

That's throughout the country.

No, there are many states that have that.

There are six states that have that.

Six.

I thought it was more than that too.

But I was schooled on that by David Toscano.

What I'm saying is we can't

You know, the two trillion dollar cut, even a trillion dollar cut, is going to affect that.

And there are, the health insurance, health coverage for hundreds of thousands of Virginians will be at risk.

We have a $632 million shortfall right now in Medicaid spending, Medicaid funding, and a large part, you know,

A lot of this information is more than you want, but 70% of the Medicaid funding in Virginia goes to 25% of the people that receive it.

They also receive Medicare.

So we're getting older.

As we get older, we spend more money on health care costs, and the state spends a chunk of that.

and so everything's at risk.

This is a short budget, but a short session, but we have a whole lot to deal with in a very short period of time.

Your input is critical, but time, don't sit on information or ideas, get in touch with us right away.

My experience is, and I think these

is critical.

You talk about localities, think about it this way.

1940 was not that long ago.

I realized nobody in this room was alive then, but that was a couple generations ago.

The two largest counties, most populous counties in Virginia in 1940 were Pennsylvania and Wise.

Our economy was different.

Our economy was resource-based and manufacturing-based.

And something happened in 1941, World War II.

After World War II, our economy has been controlled by the military-industrial complex by defense spending and by the growth of Northern Virginia.

Galloway just said that you guys would like to help us.

Thank you, though.

So last year I had a bill about leaving unattended firearms in view in cars and, you know, vehicles with a civil penalty.

And I'm going to bring that up again.

And actually one of the police department, police officers actually talked to me at the Rosé fair saying that this would be a great film.

And I said, huh,

I have that bill.

So if you feel compelled, I would love testimony about the dangers of that.

And we know already that 52% of, you know, crimes are committed with firearms that have been stolen.

So this is just a way to penalize irresponsible God ownership.

and I'm also, I have a dam maintenance bill that I'm proposing.

I don't know if you guys saw, but green right now is in a situation.

There's over 1500 dams just in the 55th district.

Many of them are private owned and some are municipalities, but this is a dam maintenance bill that would allow for municipalities and private citizens to actually access funds to either mitigate issues or even research them.

Love help with that.

I'm going to carry the bill for the public schools on their procurement.

They're trying to do procurement with more entities to, you know, maybe get a better price.

I'm also, well, I do have a solar bill about agriboltaics, working on that.

And also an address protection program for anybody that has, you know, a

I'm an intimate partner if you have a case against someone that if you register your child in the public schools that their address remain.

And I do have two recycling bills, possibly a third.

One is on waste tires.

I become the recycling person, but trying to create an entity where we have a pipeline of folks that are picking up the waste tires and actually take them to the recycling rather than throw them on someone's property.

So there's going to be some kind of record of that.

And then mattress recycling.

We're going to do that one.

That's great.

I think that's a huge bill that'll probably need some time, but I'm going to bring that back.

We submitted all of those for drafts, and then I think I'm going to submit a bill we just got today about maternal health care monitoring with telehealth.

I do have a couple of budget amendments.

Muncher.

Yeah.

I will tell you, so it was gonna go through.

This is gonna be the bill.

And then it was dying a slow death.

And then our Senator Deeds text me, he's like, no, come back, come back, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it.

So I rush up there, make the argument, and then they just killed it in front of me.

Yeah, so I have a lot, and actually, Mike, I did put in, I did put in for drafting your study bill.

So, some is still in flux.

We are past the drafting deadline, but I put in extras, so there's still some shuffling

County.

I have a lot of criminal

Anywhere where that's not actually reality, those are the bills that I'm trying to tackle.

One easy one is access to counsel.

Most people think that if you're a defendant, you have easy access to your lawyer.

That's not true.

Most average citizens believe that probably should be true.

You should be able to meet with your lawyer.

Those are the kind of bills and the fixes that I'm trying to make.

I have an education bill that I don't, I'm a former school board member.

I have an education bill that is around tracking and trying to make sure that we have or pushing our students to do more.

So it's going to be using the fifth grade and the eighth grade SOL scores for math.

I'm working with UVA on this and the equity center and automatically enrolling them in the most advanced math class that's available.

It's opt out versus opt

and if you score professional higher, you're put in them.

I'm excited about that one too.

That's a personal interest.

has some things around peer recovery specialists.

I have a firearm bill, a UVA firearm bill.

I carried it last year.

It's been carried many years.

It gets vetoed.

We respond to the veto.

So the most recent one, the governor vetoed it and said, and just for quick background, guns are not allowed on UVA, but it's like an administrative thing.

It's like hot pots are not allowed on UVA, but if you have a hot pot,

they don't come they don't arrest you in fact they really can't even do much besides like you know tell you not to do it and you can go to like a committee to talk about why you had the hot pot guns should probably not fall into that same category and so police yeah so it's actually a bill that's supported by university police chiefs because it allows them to take and have an appropriate remedy when someone notices that someone has a firearm which has been a problem yes governor vetoed it and said we have very unique

College has spread throughout a very diverse state, and so one size solution doesn't fit everyone.

And so my bill, to speak to local control, is that, well, let's make it permissive then.

That way, the locality that the college can decide if they want to opt into having it be illegal.

So, well, we'll see if it passes.

But it's directly responsive to his veto statement, so we'll see.

I have some energy ones so I've mentioned them quickly I was trying to do I'm trying to work with distributed solar and expand the use of that and then I'm not gonna I have a lot so what I would offer to y'all I try to meet with everyone this year my office is open I have I think one more office hours before session starts I have a town hall which if any of y'all come I'd be happy to have y'all come sit up there with me and it's usually just like a round table

I'm having cookies and conversation tomorrow, so if you want to get cookies and hot chocolate and go to the library, but I'm trying to make myself as available as possible if you do want to talk about anything.

And Supervisor McHill, I can definitely send you a list.

the speed cameras because bringing a violation, there has to be an officer that had witnessed it and be part of that.

So that was active litigation, which I don't know where it is right now.

But I know that's going to be some of the opposition to the speed camera bill because that's kind of the current statute is that there has to be someone that had, you know, witnessed the violation to come.

So I'm not sure what that is.

And I do believe that if they do have the right to go to court, then there's an officer that does come that says, yes, I checked this, I checked that.

Wasn't that already taken care of with the red light camera?

I just thought it was shocking.

Delegate law for us, as she was walking in the door today, since the implementation with the turn on date was October 21st, Trevor talked to the police department and since October 21st,

But I will say as shocking as that number is because that's my hood and I'm on that road all the time.

I am seeing a a driving behavior change.

which is what we wanted, right?

And anecdotally, I'm just seeing it.

And if there's data between the two morning and afternoon, like what's the occasion of speeding

that to me would be an argument that should happen.

We can't do the General Assembly restricts us that it's not a full on fine.

They don't get to merit points against their losses, which is all bullshit.

So I'd love to know the rationale, but someday that's a state general assembly thing that's like, all right, I mean, I get it.

I know what some people would say.

But speeding through a construction zone or a school, you should get points against you.

And I don't care if you were driving it or not.

If you don't want to pay the fine, then

And I love, I went off on a little tangent of a CJ PDC meeting.

This is one of my favorite emails to get when people complain about our speed camera system because they got busted speeding in the school zone.

So by all means, send us those emails.

Yeah, because I drug my memory that meeting on the 18th that you wanted us to attend, I know we both opened our calendar.

I didn't see you put it in.

It's 2 p.m.

and it's virtual.

It's a regional housing partnership.

But it's virtual, so it would likely be recorded too, and you can access it afterwards.

But there'll be some other presentations that day that you don't have to stay there for all the, you know, the sequel stuff, kind of coming to origin.

Sorry.

I got worked up on the speaker.

I know.

Don't speak.

You know, I learned long ago there's nothing wrong with having nothing to say unless you insist on saying it.

Thank you.