Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   5/7/2025

Good afternoon.

I am pleased to call to order this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors on the 7th of May, 1 p.m.

in Lane Auditorium in the McIntyre Office Building.

I'd like to note at the dais we have Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, myself, Jim Andrews representing the Samuel Miller District.

The quorum is present.

We're also joined here by our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Andy Herrick, our Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Also, let me please welcome, among many here, the two police officers who are on duty, I guess, today, as Officers Caden Painter and Tavon Richardson, we thank you for your service and

And I now ask that you join us in a moment of silence.

Board, our first action, of course, is to adopt a final agenda.

I'm looking for a motion.

I haven't heard of any suggested changes.

So if there's a motion to adopt the final agenda.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Our first item is a brief announcement by board members.

And we have our order, of course, for the day.

Thank you.

The only announcement I have is that this weekend, Mother's Day weekend, is the Arts and Crafts Festival in Crozet, the 36th one, and both Saturday and Sunday, 10 to 5, and hopefully people will go.

Maybe it won't rain, but I want the rain at my house, but I hope it doesn't rain in Crozet.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

I have nothing at this time.

Thank you.

No, thank you.

A few brief announcements.

Now that it is summer, I would like to just remind everyone in the audience that it is a great time to visit our local farmers markets.

Most of them are open on Saturday.

The Scottsville Farmers Market is open at the Scottsville Pavilion every Saturday and has a wide variety of things.

But additionally, there's quite a lot of Scottsville district farmers who sell at the Ix and City markets, because I think they can probably get a little bit better prices up there.

and so for that reason I would invite you to not just patron our incredible farmers markets here in the Scottsville district but also in the city because you're still supporting Albemarle County businesses.

Additionally while I'm talking about the

Jim of the James.

I would like to make sure the audience is aware that May 14th is going to be the Scottsville Board of Supervisors joint meeting.

So that's the 14th at 7.

And that is actually going to be in Scottsville on Valley Street in the historic Victory Hall.

Additionally, this is actually not in my district, but I'm going to exercise a little bit of privilege as a comic book nerd, as a big fan of indie comics.

So, National Comic Book Day was this Saturday, and we were very excited to be able to celebrate one of Albemarle's own Hello Comics, which has been nominated for an Eisner Award.

The Eisner is kind of the Oscars of the comic world.

It's mostly for writers, artists, publishers.

But every year, they do offer one spot for the Spirit of Independent Sales for an independent comic book shop.

And Albemarle County's Hello Comics, which is in the Rio district, has been nominated this year, which is an incredible honor.

Additionally, I would like to just share briefly, so I was one of many members of the community in Albemarle County, I know because they identified themselves as such, who joined our congressman for one of his second telephone town hall.

I mention this in part because there was a caller from my district, from the Scottsville district, who called and expressed some concern about something that I'm sure other people in the audience have concerns about and that we will touch on later today.

and that is the tax burden she's facing.

She shared concerns about her local real property tax burden and she shared it because we don't always know who the right person to bring our concerns to.

She shared it to our congressman.

So I would mention this because she brought this up.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some way that we could have tax relief for the elderly and the disabled?

And I was sitting there on the phone

There is tax relief that is available for the elderly and disabled.

Please just literally throw it in Google.

Call the front desk in Albemarle County.

There are so many people who are falling over excited to help you get hooked up with the tax relief that you deserve.

if you are a qualifying person who is elderly and disabled and is having a hard time making real estate property tax increases.

It's something we actually revisit every year to make sure that we appropriately raise the qualifying amount for that.

We've done that already this year to make sure it's actually hitting as many people as possible.

So that is available.

Our congressman made a response to this, noting it was probably a local issue, but also that this is something that he is engaging to try and reduce overall costs in federal government as a way to keep tax bills down.

And so I reflect this to the community.

That is not correct.

A federal cut done as federal cost saving does potentially reduce your income tax if they actually reduce the deficit, which is not always what happens.

It's not actually what's happened

My lifetime.

Reductions in federal taxes actually are likely to increase the demand for local services because we are not getting contributions from that.

We have talked about several times how we are benefiting from the FEMA safer grants.

And that was a major way that we hired the significant expansion of fire and rescue staff that we have.

That is federal money.

If there are cuts in federal services, we would have had to have done that entirely using our own money, which likely would have been realized through personal property taxes.

So it is helpful to always remember

that this is all part of one big continuum.

If someone is trying to sell you on the excitement of, oh, we're cutting taxes at the federal government, so now you'll pay less, that might be true on your income tax bill.

But again, hasn't been in 20 years.

But what is going to happen is your local government is going to have to step up to foot the bill more, and that is actually going to come and get you.

So I just raise that up for you all because we're talking about taxes today.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

And I just want to piggyback on what Mike said.

Thank you very much.

And the true, the accompaniment to that is it's the same thing for the state.

When I was first elected 28 years ago, the state paid 70% of public education.

They are paying now 30%.

I'm sorry, reverse that.

The state was paying 70% of public education, they're now paying 30%.

So we are picking up the difference between 30% and 70%.

It is unconscionable.

And that is why our bills for public education are so high, is because the state is no longer paying their fair share.

So when the state reduces your taxes, it comes right on down to the community.

whether it's schools or services.

And so we have double hit, Mike.

We have the federal government and we have the state.

And your insurance providers.

That's a good point, too.

Didn't mean to get on my high horse there.

Mike got me excited about this.

Well, I have more mundane announcements for the day.

One is just to remind people that the Ivy Solid Waste and Recycling Center is continuing with their collection days and this Saturday's appliances, next Saturday's tires.

I encourage people to use those services, those free days.

I also want to just make a shout out to a SWAC member, the Solid Waste Alternatives Advisory Committee has a student member that's now Zachary Landsman and he just won one of the UVA Sustainability Leadership Awards.

He's a PhD student, co-founded Junk Lab Z which recycles lab materials into furniture and he won that award and I was quite pleased to hear about it so I wanted to make sure we made note of that.

And that is all I have.

Any further?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much and it truly is an honor for me to be able to read this proclamation.

So Police Week is May 10th through the 16th.

whereas in 1962 President John F. Kennedy signed the first proclamation recognizing May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which it falls as National Police Week to pay tribute to the law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and to voice our appreciation for all those who are currently serving on the front lines

of Virginia.

and police officers throughout the Albemarle County are dedicated to protecting and serving Albemarle County communities, our neighborhoods, schools and families and whereas police officers risk their lives each and every day in order to ensure public safety and enforce the laws of the land and whereas Albemarle County values the courage

and devotion of our police officers as our collective prosperity depends on the integrity with which our law enforcement officers maintain peace and security and whereas Police Week and Police Officers Memorial Day

are opportunities to honor the officers who have fallen in the line of duty and recognize the sacrifices made by the families of those officers and the families of those who continue to protect and serve our communities.

Now therefore be it resolved, be it proclaimed,

that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize May 10-16, 2025 as Police Week and May 15, 2025 as Police Officers Memorial Day in Albemarle County.

and call these observances to the attention of all our citizens.

Second?

We have a motion from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Thank you.

And I understand we have several officers present, but in particular our Major Randy Jamerson, Deputy Chief of Police, here to accept this proclamation and to help us recognize all those present and reserved.

Good afternoon.

Chair Andrews, members of the board, Mr. Richardson, thank you for allowing us to be here today.

National Police Week is a time to remember and honor the fallen officers who have died in the line of duty, as well as those who've made the ultimate sacrifice during their career.

It's a time to express gratitude to law enforcement officers for their service, dedication, and commitment to keeping our community safe.

Let us take advantage of this opportunity to celebrate the lives of the men and women whose hard work, dedication, and sacrifice remain as an inspiration to us all.

Thank you to the board for recognizing National Police Week and all that you do to support the Albemarle County Police Department.

To my colleagues here today and for those serving across our great nation, may God always keep you safe and return you home to your families each and every day.

Thank you for choosing a career to serve and protect others.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

When I was little, there was one Sheriff Bailey.

He was our public safety person and parked himself generally in the area of Baird Show Shopping Center so as to be able to respond in all directions when the call came in during the night.

So we have come a long way, and I think that

I'm so proud of all that you and your officers and department has achieved in that last 70 plus years because it's so important to all of us and I'm so lucky in my neighborhood to have animal patrol people and officers all up and down the roads and just seeing the vehicles out of the front yards is also a wonderful thing, reassurance for everybody.

I think it's so important that we maintain an outstanding reputation that you all have in the community.

That's what people appreciate.

And I will tell you, speaking of taxes, I have not heard any pushback when we said the 3.2 cents goes for public safety, which is police and fire.

I haven't heard any pushback.

They really appreciate what you all do.

We have good public services here, and that's something we hope to continue.

And I just wanted to do a shout out.

Thank you.

Well, Deputy Chief Jamerson, and not to undercut you or the Chief, but the Chair said there were only two officers here on duty today, so the rest of you get the day off.

So I think that's well deserved and enjoy the beautiful day outside.

I will simply say that I am so proud to be a supervisor in a county that has the police force that we do, because of the individuals of who each and every one of you are, but also of how you choose and how you police in Albemarle County.

and the supervisor wants you to know that there's never going to be a political win that blows strong enough to make me feel otherwise.

So thank you all for stepping up to serve our constituents and to protect our constituents each and every day.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Major, for being here and for everyone else who has come out.

And thank you so much for the work that you all do every single day for this county.

I've said before, and it comes up sometimes during the context of budget, right, that

One of the greatest strengths that Albemarle County offers is the incredible professionalism of its staff.

By which I mean, we have people who are the envy of the Commonwealth, folks who are offering an outstanding level of customer service, and folks that are excited to do the work that they do here in the county.

And I think that is true nowhere more than in our police force here in the county.

I've said this before, y'all are the very first arm of government at the local level that most members of our community are likely to interact with.

Rightly or wrongly, people have come to rely and expect a lot from the police.

Y'all have become kind of the first point of contact for a whole range of services that go a lot further beyond investigating property crimes and doing police and speed enforcement.

There is a lot that we as a community have started to expect of y'all.

And that means y'all are really the first line of defense in how we interact with and how we manage our community.

And I think the fact that we have such a supportive community, such a community that is

quality of the police force that we have in this community.

I have citizens that come up to me.

It's not unusual for citizens to come and say, I had a dealing with an Almore County police officer, and while I might not have liked the ticket or I might not have liked this,

They were professional.

They treated me with respect.

And thank you so much.

So thank you to all of you all that are here today.

And I would just point out for citizens that would like to have an opportunity to learn about Albemarle County Police officers and the Albemarle County Police Department, we offer every year, or at least the last several years, we have offered a Citizens Police Academy, usually in the spring.

And that's a great opportunity to learn more about how the office works, how the officers work, and some of the regulations and rules, and what it's all about.

So it's a great opportunity, and everybody should take advantage of it.

And I just echo the words of gratitude expressed very well by fellow supervisors.

I don't want to put my foot in my mouth again with the sense that all of you aren't here for us.

And very much appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Yes, and I'm happy to read this, and I'm looking out in the audience, and I see a lot of our public servants in the audience, so yes.

Public Service Recognition Week, whereas public servants serve Americans daily at the federal, state, county, and city levels, these unsung heroes do the work

that keeps our nation working, and whereas public service is among the most demanding and noble of professions, and whereas Public Service Recognition Week is observed annually to celebrate and recognize the valuable service that public servants provide to the nation, and whereas over 900 Albemarle County local government employees

work tirelessly

made daily by these public servants.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed, we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby recognize May 4th through May 10th, 2025 as Public Service Recognition Week and call upon the Albemarle County community to recognize the significant and important contributions that public employees make to our community.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel with a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Thank you.

And I understand we have several members of the staff here to accept the proclamation.

Jessica Struther, Tax Court, Jay Chaudry, Child Welfare, Margaret Malyshevsky, Lieutenant Liz Gomez.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Nice to see you.

Thank you so much for this proclamation.

Please identify yourself as well.

Lieutenant Elizabeth Gomez, on behalf of the committee and our employees, we appreciate very much the support for the board and their work that we do every day.

It means a lot for us to hear your remarks.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jay Chowdhury with the Department of Social Services.

We are excited about this week's activities, which have included the opportunity to tour our newest park, Biscuit Run, on Monday.

employee snack breaks on Tuesday and Wednesday, and our annual employee picnic coming up this Friday.

Hi, I'm Jessica Strother with Finance and Budget.

So a lot of employees have joined us today to hear this proclamation read aloud.

Thank you.

And Supervisor will make remarks if you just remain a moment.

Yes, thank you.

For 17 years in the audience, and then my 18 years on the board, I have seen so much wonderful work on the part of all the Albemarle County staff in all the different departments.

And I'm so appreciative of all that you do.

Our world evolves every day, and you all evolve with it.

And it's a big challenge, I understand.

Thank you.

I'm going to keep it short and sweet.

Bottom line is we up here, at least myself, we could not do it without you all.

There's just no way we could do our job without the support, intelligence, help from you all.

Well, unfortunately for you all, the chair didn't leave any sort of opening for you to get the rest of the day off, so it'll just be good to do that, unless the county executive has something to add, not to put them on the spot.

Last year, I remember mentioning the work, The Call to Service by Robert Coles.

which is a wonderful book on those who step up to do public service in a variety of different ways.

And this year, again, was flipping through that particular work as I reflected on this.

But each and every one of you is so important to our community.

And Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley hit the nail on the head when she said you make our lives easier, not just because we're dealing with constituents, but because we can enact a strategic plan because we know who we have.

that can put it into action.

So I appreciate everything you all do to help us further the vision of the county and appreciate the effort you have in serving our constituents each and every day.

Supervisor Pruitt?

Thank you all so much for being here, for all the work you do for the county.

I won't go to the incredible effort of repeating myself, because you've already heard, but I think we do have truly some of the most exceptional customer service, some of the most exceptional staff that you could possibly have as a county in this commonwealth.

And I know that's because of the incredible work and talent that you all bring to the fore.

You know, we go through

Peaks and valleys of what the cool, what the sexy kind of career for people who are entering and beginning into their career.

And we've been through a long, dark period where the cool thing for everyone to do is to go be an investment banker, go be someone who works at a tiny Coggin machine making a billionaire a double billionaire.

I truly believe that hasn't always been the way, right?

County government, state government, federal government, that has been an incredibly prestigious thing at so many points in our history and it is something that we see unfortunately sometimes under attack as being a thing to aspire to and I think right now we're at another inflection point in our history, in our culture in this country

where the incredible value, the incredible skill that people who work in local government, people who work directly with people in their community, one every day, that skill I think is starting to become much more appreciated and noticed in the culture.

I think we are on fast track to become the new sexy field to be working in right now.

So I'm excited about the incredible talent that is going to continue to join this county as we move forward.

So thank you all so much for getting in ahead of the curve, right, before all these new kids come and try it.

Thank you.

Supervisor McKeel.

Yes, thank you all for being here and I will point out to the public that you are often here and you're not here just from nine to five.

You work shifts,

Police, Fire and Rescue.

But many of you in the audience may come in at 8 o'clock in the morning.

And when we have board meetings, you're still here until 9 or 10 o'clock at night.

And I think the public fails to realize that.

So we certainly appreciate your work.

You really are appreciated, I think, by the members of our community that interact with you and have the opportunity to really have face time with you.

And certainly we appreciate you because you really make us look good.

So thank you very much for your service.

It really is a calling.

And to be perfectly honest with you, you could leave for the private sector and make more money and not have to possibly work as hard.

But we appreciate you being here.

Thank you and I echo the remarks of my colleagues.

We very much depend upon you and we know we can because you're good at what you do and we're very grateful.

Thank you.

The Board will now turn to public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the Board, other than scheduled for public hearings.

I will and hold on just a minute.

Let me just get myself together here.

It looks like we have no one online and we have four people that are present.

So with that let me read the rules.

Matters on the agenda but not listed for public hearing.

During the time set aside for public comment on matters previously considered or currently pending before the board, other than scheduled public hearings, individuals may address the board of supervisors.

Individuals are allowed one opportunity of up to three minutes to speak at each board meeting.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the clerk's office.

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

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

The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish speaking and the red light indicates your time has expired and you will be asked to end your comments.

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

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

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

Speakers may not share any unused time with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Do not speak from your seat or out of turn, and all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published.

on the Albemarle County website.

Welcome.

Don't see him, alright.

Thank you.

Since you invited me to engage, I decided to come back and engage again with the buttons out of the tables out in front there.

Gary Grant, Rio District.

April 30th, 2025, last Wednesday, board members, one of you said the following during your videotaped 6 p.m.

public meeting, and I quote,

We do not know how, I never know how, anyone's going to vote on anything until I get here, because sometimes we change our minds.

September 9th, 2020.

The same supervisor on the board at that time said the following at that videotaped public meeting, and I quote,

I think most of us, by the time we get there, if we've done our homework, we already know how we're going to vote.

So which is it, Madam Rivanna's supervisor?

Do you or do you not make up your mind about how you will vote on the public's business before getting to board meetings?

At the same time, would you like to apologize to the public and to the board members from Rio, White Hall, and Jack Jouett for what you stated on videotape on September 9, 2020.

Additionally, board, from your public meeting last Wednesday night and from your six budget town halls this spring, who among you deep professionals has tallies to prove how many a lot is when you refer to phone calls, emails, and input from county residents you say are demanding so many services?

This question can also go to your county executive who repeatedly used budget town hall slide number five that he said represented the many services county residents demand from county government.

There were, by my count, 40 different services on that slide, none of which, except for 60 days of police and fire calls, has ever been backed up by an actual number of phone calls, emails, and what your Samuel Miller supervisor calls, quote, informal feedback from Albemarle's approximately 115,000 residents.

And yes, Mr. Chairman, you were correct last Wednesday night when you opined, and I quote, the tax rate is somewhat painful.

Gee, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Karen Mann, I'm a resident of Fluvanna on the Scottsville side.

And first, I want to thank you for mentioning the Scottsville Farmers Market.

When I'm not a pastor, I'm also a farmer and a vendor at the Scottsville Farmers Market.

So yay for that.

I'm the pastor of Sojourners United Church of Christ here in Charlottesville and coming because my congregation and I were deeply disturbed when the ICE agents entered the Albemarle County Courthouse on April 23rd and arrested those two men.

I speak from my perspective as a Christian pastor, but I know that many faiths share our belief that we are called to care for our neighbors and especially for our immigrant neighbors.

In fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that caring for strangers is central to our faith.

My church is committed to the values of radical hospitality, inclusion, diversity, and justice, and our beliefs compel us to work for the beloved community, a community where all people, regardless of faith, ability, identity, race, ethnicity,

or even legal status can experience justice and live without fear.

The actions of ICE in our courthouse contribute to a culture of fear in our community and intimidation.

They deny justice and do nothing but harm our community.

Our regional body of our denomination, the United Church of Christ, is part of a lawsuit against Trump's executive order that reverses decades of protection for sensitive locations that restrict ICE from conducting immigration raids

or arrests or other enforcement actions in schools, hospitals, houses of worship and courthouses.

We believe that raids conducted in churches violate the sanctity of our places of worship, but we also believe that raids in schools, hospitals and courthouses violate the sanctity of our public common life.

These raids are cruel and unjust.

People have a right to worship, to go to school, to get medical care, to conduct their civic duties without fear or intimidation.

You do not have to be a person of faith to believe that all human beings should be treated with dignity and respect.

This is just a basic moral value.

I know that other residents of Albemarle County and the surrounding county's community join me in wanting to know what our county government is doing to protect these sensitive areas in our community and ensure that people can go to worship, go to school, get medical care, and conduct their business in our courthouses without fear.

And so I want to know, have you signed a cooperation agreement with ICE?

Was the county aware of and what was your role in what happened on the 23rd?

And what will you do to prevent future incidents like that from happening in our community?

I'm asking you to demonstrate courageous moral leadership in the face of the xenophobia and racism that is coming out of our federal government and help our community be a place of justice and dignity for all persons.

We are all humans deserving of dignity, citizen and immigrant alike.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Diane Brown, and I believe this is Townes.

Yes, it is.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for inviting me here, allowing me to speak here today.

I want to share with you a letter that I addressed my supervisor, Board of Supervisors, Ms.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley, about six months ago.

preside in the Rivanna district.

I was born and raised in the city of Charlottesville and of course I could tell you when I was little I went to Lane High School and the walls permeated with a lot of controversial stories from that era, but I'm not here to talk about that today.

I'm here to share a letter that I wrote to Bea six months ago.

From the Castle Hill Plantation in Keswick,

to the Birdwood Estate on Garth Road.

Through ongoing research, I continue to make discoveries about both my mother and father's ancestral contributions to Albemarle County.

In doing so, I have come to the realization that descendants of ancestors who were enslaved during the transatlantic and domestic slave trading systems will need a repository to preserve our communal research findings.

I believe that a world-class repository is needed to preserve and safeguard the lived experiences of those individual souls who are often forgotten and excluded from the American history narrative.

An African-American museum that would assign, I can't read the small writing so bear with me, align our communities to

work beyond performative words and move towards a more actionable transformative means of working together will serve as a great way to bring tourism to our area.

I would also continue to invest in Albemarle County's social history image and add to future economic portfolio.

I appreciate your consideration, feedback, and fostering an ongoing collaboration regarding

conversations about this.

I was also a member of the Albemarle County Historic Preservation Committee between 2019 and 2000.

I think it was 22.

And I worked a little bit on the beginning stages of phase one of the comprehensive planning.

But I would also like to include this letter for the record from

some descendants of George Gilmer.

We write in support of the proposal for a museum highlighting regional African-American historical experiences to be located in Albemarle County.

We, the undersigned, are direct descendants of Dr. George Gilmer, former owner of Park Mill, now the location of Penn Park, who enslaved persons to operate his forced labor farm there.

We believe that such a museum is sorely needed to bring these stories to life.

I'm going to try one more time.

Thank you.

Board, we now are up to looking at the consent agenda.

So if the floor is open to a motion to adopt a consent agenda.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes Mr. Pruitt?

Aye Mr. Andrews?

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye Ms.

Mallek?

Thank you.

And we're going to start with our six separate actions relating to the 25 calendar year tax rates, fiscal year budget, pay scales, annual resolution of appropriation, borrowing resolution, and capital improvement plan.

So to lead us in that, we have Mr. Andy Bowman.

and Mr. Jacob Sumner, our Chief Financial Officer and Deputy Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you to the Chair for the welcome and introduction.

We have today action to conclude the fiscal year 26 budget development process.

There are six separate actions the Board will be asked to take today, but before we get to the brief staff presentation of those requested approvals, I'm going to ask the County Executive to walk through the highlights of the budget that the Board has reviewed through their numerous work sessions, public town halls, and various public hearings.

Mr. Bowman, thank you and members of the board, thank you.

I think we are at the final step in the process of the consideration for the fiscal year 26 budget.

I would like to take an opportunity at this moment to look back into the audience at the many public servants that represent all the departments and just recognize what a wonderful team that we've got.

And for those of you that are still here this afternoon, thank you very much for your work on the budget.

Thank you for your work through

the department's hard work back through the budget and finance team.

Our budget and finance team I believe is here today with us and I'd like to recognize all those folks for it's a very long and demanding process and you folks have done just tremendous work to be responsive to our board, to be responsive to the county executive's office and I'm very grateful for that so thank you very much.

Board, I'll try to be as brief as I can, but this budget has been a lengthy process that's got a lot of moving parts.

And I'm going to take a couple of minutes just to highlight our budget and talk more in detail about some areas just to make sure that there's no final questions from board members as you make your final considerations today.

All of the slides that are in front of you today have been in front of you.

They'll be in a little bit of a different order based on some of the comments that I'll be making.

This is fiscal year 26 balanced on these tax rates.

The two top, which are real estate and personal property, represent where the tax rate increase recommendations came when you received the manager's budget back in February.

Real property moving ahead by four cents.

and Personal Property being restored to $4.28.

And you've had past discussions about that rate, which stayed at $4.28 for I believe about two decades.

The board cut this during the COVID pandemic because of the unusual nature of that pandemic and what it did to use car prices.

Last year, we restored it partially.

We've recommended that the remaining recovery of that be put into place to go back to $4.28.

Food and beverage and transit occupancy both stay at 6% and 9%, respectfully.

So if we take a second and just remind the public and the board one more time, the four cents on real property taxes, we've recommended to the board for consideration that the

The heavy weight of that, 3.2 cents or 80%, will be devoted to public safety, core service delivery.

Core service delivery in public services, it's about $10 million next year to pay back FEMA grant-funded firefighter positions that we've competed

competitively gone after since fiscal year 21.

I'll talk more in detail about that.

It also is about new police officers and fully funding our public safety pay plan to maintain workforce stability.

Four-tenths of a penny devoted to public schools.

This is over and above, and I'll talk more specifically about the total amount of new funding that is in this budget, but an additional four-tenths of a penny, which is 1.2 million.

in fiscal year 26, that brings that total amount for schools to 14.3 million, which represents a 7.3% increase year over year.

And then finally, affordable housing.

All of these areas have gotten a lot of attention during the budget work sessions, but affordable housing, four-tenths of a penny, which is, for the first time ever, consideration of ongoing funding, 1.2 million that would be devoted to affordable housing.

And that's where the four cents goes.

if the board approves that for next year.

This is probably the slide that we've leaned on the most over the last several budgets.

As the board knows, we do budget annually, but it's responsible to do multi-year budgeting.

We do do multi-year budgeting.

We're forecasting out

expenses, revenues, and all underlying obligations.

What are our out year obligations?

Many of which are tied to core service delivery board and so it's responsibility of local government to provide these services for the safety and welfare of the public.

that we work with every day.

I want to outline a couple of things on when we look at multi-year budgeting and we look at fiscal year, in this case, 24, 25, and 26.

I want to talk for a minute about the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail.

renovation funding to improve facilities conditions.

It's for the first time in 50 years.

So a lot of these investments are once in a career.

For me, a 30-year career.

So you're looking at investment in our regional jail partnership with cities and counties.

And you're talking about renovations where there have been no renovations to the facility for 50 years.

Emergency Communications 9-1-1, the county's operational cost share for that service next year will grow to $5.3 million annually.

And I'll underline to the board that is core service delivery, but also it's in partnership with the City of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.

That partnership has been alive in this community for a long period of time.

We have three independent police departments, Charlottesville, Albemarle, and the University, but somewhere along the way someone said, let's save some money by housing all of these folks under one roof and you're going to provide services at less cost and it's going to be a higher level of seamless service and when you're calling 911, seamless service is important.

Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

Next year we will devote 2.9 million dollars that will go toward recycling services, solid waste, household hazardous waste disposal.

This board is good about advertising these days that are provided to our county residents all through the county for these types of services.

These services cost and we pay for those services back through Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

And finally, Jefferson Madison Regional Library.

Our service share for operations next year, $5.9 million.

And these are services that are provided to the citizens and community members of this county.

So that's just an example of

obligations and ongoing operational cost that we provide in order for the services that are provided to the community and I would underline that in a lot of these cases we are partnering with other agencies, the city, the university, in order to hold our costs down, okay?

I've shown you this several times as well as Mr. Sumner and Mr. Bowman and that is we will forecast out five years and we talked about this last fall.

We talked about it going through the winter, early planning for the budget, and we showed about a 3.1 gap from expenses to revenue going into next year.

That equates to about $13 million.

So much of the gap is driven by core service delivery.

public safety, the stuff that we've talked about already today.

And then when you go out through fiscal year 30, you see that it grows.

And we are modeling revenue growth and we're modeling what we know to be our obligations and expenditures all through those five years.

So we knew we needed, we were at a time where we needed to address that going in to next year.

So I'm going to dig in just for a second.

You can go to the next slide and talk a little bit more about our obligations and our investments.

Board, you do multi-year budgeting with us and you do multi-year planning with us.

We have a five-year strategic plan.

We've talked about that.

We're about halfway through the five years with this strategic plan.

It embodies our board direction.

It identifies our biggest opportunities.

It identifies our biggest challenge and our problems.

and so much of this and what we do in our strategic plan is also core service delivery.

And what I would say with this budget tied back to the strategic plan, with the emails that I've seen, all seven budget town halls, I've been to six, is that we've heard from the public who have said, we need more than what you're providing.

This budget doesn't do enough.

and then on the other hand we've heard quite a bit from people who have said we need less.

We want less taxes and we want you to cut.

I've not counted to give you numbers on how much what people have said and what the weight has been but it's been significant both with people saying you need to do more than you're doing and others who have said I'd like to see you cut.

Okay?

So

Going back over in summary, again, we've gone after $12.7 million in federal funding beginning in 2021.

These are grants that come in and pay for firefighters on the front end, and then these grants slowly go away.

And so we have hired 57 firefighters over the last four years through this federal FEMA money.

and what this has done is it's allowed our fire and rescue department to maintain adequate fire and emergency service call response all through Albemarle County.

It's allowed us to maintain the necessary and adequate response times and personnel that need to be on the scene to attack the situation.

We've done this strategically with federal funding and it has allowed us to jump start the process as we have seen a decline, a slow but

but measurable decline in volunteer services.

This slide is really to represent the positions that have been added, 57 grant positions, and alongside that, 40 general fund positions that have been paid for totally out of local government money.

These grants have helped service delivery across all areas of Albemarle County.

We shared during our budget town halls that from January 1 to March 8 fire and rescue received 3,488 calls for service.

So we have a very busy fire rescue system.

If Dan Eggleston were up front right now he would say we enjoy having a combination system and that is both paid professional full-time staff with us as well as professional volunteer staff that supplement all through Albemarle County.

The role of the volunteers have been significant and instrumental in keeping the county safe for decades and it's somewhat an opportunity on Public Service Week for me to take a minute to sincerely thank every volunteer, every man and woman in this county that has and continue to volunteer through fire rescue through our volunteer fire departments.

They save Albemarle County taxpayers money every single day.

But these grants have helped us to supplement and maintain service delivery.

And again, I say it's all across Albemarle County.

Okay?

Finally, as it relates to the performance metrics, we do track performance across Albemarle County.

Fire and Rescue, we do a really good job.

It not only informs us on how our standards for service delivery are we meeting those standards, but it also better informs resource deployment strategies for the future.

In our Fire Rescue Department, we do have an outside consultant right now that we're working with that is looking

at our fire service delivery all across Albemarle County.

They'll come back this fall and give us a report on how are we doing, how are we using our resources.

It will be after the budget, but it will help inform us in budget years to come.

We've also recommended funding in the police department.

This board knows that we're looking at hiring six additional police officers.

This would be the most, this would be the highest number of police officers that we've added to the police department.

since fiscal year 16.

We've added 13 police officers since 2021.

In the same time that I shared with you earlier that we've had almost 3,500 calls for service in fire rescue, during that same time we've had almost 16,000 calls for service in the police department.

That's January 1 through March 8.

Calls for service in both departments have steadily inclined since COVID.

I did a little bit of quick math because out of the 15,900 calls for service, 170 have been designated as priority one.

That comes in through E911 as an immediate threat to human life, whether the incident is in progress, just occurred, and it will require an additional officer.

over that period of time on an average, seven days a week, that's about three calls per day.

These six officers will go two more officers per shift and what we will see is we will see improved response times.

We will see second officer response times also reduced.

and we will see the distance being closed between response areas.

We also have the same consultant that will be here and reporting back to us this fall on how are we using our police services through the county and are we maximizing resources for the services that we provide.

These are core services that our community, we believe, needs.

This map really is just to emphasize, and we talked about it during the budget town halls, that the county is 726 square miles.

We cover a large area of both urban and rural area, and distance resource response times are critically important in both fire and police for us to be able to adequately serve our community.

I want to take a minute board and just remind the board and our public about our increased funding for public schools.

Citizens will stop me and say, where are my tax dollars going?

And I will start every time with our relationship with public schools.

Ms.

McKeel said earlier that the state has backed away over the course of time with funding for schools and that she remembered correctly that it's about 30%.

Local funding is now just over 70% for local schools.

We recommended for next year 14.3 million dollars of additional operational money.

That matches really closely to what they've got for the last two years.

For the last two years leading into this year, we have provided them with $27.6 million in new funding for public schools just in operations.

In addition to that, we also are ready to obligate $6.2 million of one-time money for health care costs as they share in our health care fund.

and then finally we also continue to be committed to public schools with our capital improvement investments.

We're in the process of opening next year two new schools.

We're building a third.

We are funding school buses to support transportation needs and finally we believe that we are also trying to match their needs with renovations and maintenance.

We continue to rank favorably across the state with per-pupil funding and low class sizes.

I think we're committed to public schools and I think our budget shows that.

This board has talked a lot about affordable housing.

You may talk about it more today.

You also have a dedicated work session on the 21st of May to talk more specifically about the framing of affordable housing trust fund and what that means.

Really what we're looking at in fiscal year 26 is $5.2 million to be earmarked for affordable housing.

We also want to point out that this adds to the $17 million in housing investment over the past five years.

This slide has been in front of the board, in front of the budget town halls, and this takes a deeper dive into where that money is going.

Two meetings ago we talked about climate action and environmental sustainability.

This board is considering program funding for fiscal year 26 at 2.25 million dollars.

We have had a cross departmental leadership team that's

that has been developed to work advance steps for the next climate action task.

Our deputy county executive, Ann Wall, is here.

And I'm going to move to the next slide.

And I'm going to let Ms.

Wall talk to the board a little bit about what our early work has been in this since we last were before you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Richardson.

Ann Malle, Deputy County Executive.

Board, today we'll talk just a moment about climate action pool funding, which includes $221,000 of existing funding with a proposed increase of $300,000.

We asked the facilities and environmental services staff to go back and to develop some recommendations

on how best to use this funding for current and proposed activities under the climate action pool.

Our focus was on projects or programs that had tangible and definable admissions reductions.

The focus was also on items and programs that were actionable in fiscal year 26.

In the coming months, we'll come back to the board with specifics on the programs,

related to funding levels and timeframes as well as what we believe would be admissions reductions as a result of those programs.

We anticipate using the funds in the following buckets.

First, a bucket about continuing existing programs, the energy resource hub as well as the community

Resilience Cohort Grant.

Those were funds lost from the FEMA grant.

The second is in building admissions reduction, improvements on county buildings that resulted in admissions reductions, as well as residential home energy improvements.

Vehicle admissions.

Programs might include public electric vehicle charging, employee carpooling programs, and e-bike vouchers.

And finally, we would also look at a bucket related to community-based programs, and that would be the community climate action grants.

We see benefits across the board for these programs.

Many have co-benefits.

For example, the residential home energy

Program would allow for continuation of affordable housing.

So I'm happy to answer any questions from the board related to this proposal.

I look forward to the details on the buckets and the extra homework time before we talk so we'll be well prepared.

But I'm grateful that the weatherization is clearly indicated because that is, as you say, keep people in their homes.

Those most affordable homes are often elderly homes with elderly residents and they need help to stay there.

I look forward to your report this fall.

Supervisor Callaway.

Thank you.

Thank you for the public, that is to say the camera in the back.

The main new piece of information here today is this slide that's here, right?

Everything else we've generally heard in the 30 some odd hours of work we've done.

I'm pleased with kind of the direction we're going here.

I will confess I'm being lobbied from two different angles.

One from the head of the Charlottesville Book Library, Mr. Karp, who is asking for an e-bike voucher program.

But also from my husband, who is asking for an e-bike voucher

Dr. Provost.

So I'm pleased to see it's considered.

There's some policy considerations that I think will go into that.

And I'm excited to dig more into this as the funding comes online.

Supervisor McKeel?

I don't have any questions.

I just really, really appreciate staff coming back to us today with more details, because we did add additional money at the last meeting, or next to last meeting, wherever it was in the process.

And it's great to see this so I appreciate your sharing this information.

As I do as well.

I'm almost finished Mr. Chair and I will turn it back over to the board.

It's an additional $1 million that's in our economic development fund, and I believe what's most important that I would say is not so much where we are at this minute, but the work that we have ahead of us.

Again, I've referred one time already to May 21st, where you will, on May 21st in the afternoon, you will receive details on calls for service.

Study through the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia that'll dig more into detail about what the true costs for services are in our community and I think we need to pay attention to that moving forward because of our leaning in and commitment to economic development where it is zoned appropriately in our development area and how we can attack

a balanced and more diverse tax base.

Again, I've talked about the fact that we're 11.3 percent commercial and industry and I would like to see us over time work our way back into the middle teens or even the 16 to 18 percent range

and then I believe that that over time can pay dividends for this county government as we continue to grapple with affordability.

So I think this one million dollars is necessary for our economic development team.

We're working hard in a number of areas.

We appreciate that consideration.

Board, you've been good to our workforce since I've been your county executive, and our team really appreciates that.

I think you are close enough to the work on a day-to-day basis to where you see the commitment of the men and women in this organization.

It's a tremendous team.

They do really good work.

and so we've recommended a 3% cost of living adjustment to our staff.

We are grappling like most employers with increase in healthcare costs.

We are fully self-insured and we partner with our public school system and we appreciate their partnership as we lean in hard to investments in wellness.

One is the recent opening of our two healthcare clinics here in Albemarle County.

We have about 3,600 employees with schools and local government, so we're plenty large enough to support our health clinic, especially with our covered lives and families being just over 6,000.

And so over time, we should see a slowing of growth in our healthcare fund, and that will hopefully give us revenue to do other things with and help us in a wide variety of areas.

So thank you for that continued support.

I do get questions from the public about is the county doing anything to look at cost savings and efficiencies.

I think we certainly are.

We're adding six police officers in the police department but we're also in addition to that cutting almost 12 positions across county government for a net loss of six positions with approximately 800 staff in local government.

We're committed to an additional one million dollars in annual cost savings going into next year.

It is embedded

in the work that we're doing on a day-to-day basis.

It's embedded with our systems modernization work, with our efficiency studies, and how we're utilizing our space, our planning, and how we design our processes to better serve our public.

So I appreciate the work that continues to go on.

I appreciate the board's shared commitment to doing the most we can with the money that we have, and I appreciate this work because this is real work by our staff where there is real cost savings, okay?

Finally, board, just again, I remind our public, I remind the board that we do a lot of stuff.

Local government does a lot of stuff.

We have an ambitious five-year CIP.

This is our capital improvement program.

This is where we take on debt.

This is where we pay for our infrastructure.

and we've got a lot of things that we do on a regular basis to try to positively affect the community that we serve.

I've talked a little bit about this earlier, about the things that we're involved in and again this is just a representation of that.

I did not talk much earlier about courts construction, again that's a generational type of project where I think the county and the city have been working for several

Decades working toward new courts construction and we're in the process of planning for the opening of those new courts soon.

All right?

This is a slide that the board has seen.

It's posted just outside of Lane.

It's a performance metric driven slide of the things that we do every day.

Many of the people that were in the auditorium today, if you had time for each person to stand up and say, what do you do exactly?

You'd see connections back to this board of some of the services and the things that we do every day to serve the Albemarle County citizens and community.

So I'm certainly proud of our organization.

I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that we're already looking into 27 and beyond, so our obligations and our work in the out year funding, the out year budgeting will continue.

We're going to open two new schools in fiscal year 27.

We're going to continue to keep an eye on state funding as well as federal funding and issues.

We have a revenue sharing agreement with the city that should require us to work very closely with the city

and we do on a regular basis to try to do more with less.

We have key partner agency relationships and agreements.

Some of those agreements and costs have gone up significantly and we need to continue to work favorably with those agencies to do the best we can with the money we have.

I've talked about FEMA safer grants and again this board has said continue to watch the turbulence at the federal level as it relates to local service delivery and we will continue to do that.

And so finally, just the wrap-up slide, and that is it's a combination and a balance of striking economic vibrancy, good service delivery from our organization, and really trying hard to lean into our community and listen to their issues, their concerns, and try to respond as favorably as we can, bringing the board options to consider on quality of life issues.

And that's what we'll continue to do.

I believe that's it, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Mr. Bowman, I believe, is going to go through really the six steps, but before you do that, if you have any questions on where we are with our budget, the staff that's here can answer any questions that you have.

I know that I was a little long-winded, but it's been a long budget process.

Thank you.

And board, I would like to go through our order before going through the six different motions that we have to have.

But I'd like to then all those in order and then come back if there are any additional final comments.

But just before starting the motions, we'll look through our order again.

So questions on the presentation?

Or anything related to what's coming.

I'll have some comments later.

We'll go through the motions directly from there.

Yes, I do have a question.

I've been hearing a lot from my constituents who it's not clear to them

If our assessments are going up so much, you know, over the past few years our assessments have gone up a lot, why doesn't that cover the cost of what we want to do?

And this relates to increasing our tax rate.

Why aren't the higher level of assessments, and it varies by district also, even though it's a

I think it's 5% for the whole county, but then it varies amongst districts and areas.

But why isn't that covering the cost?

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, it's a question that I get with regularity from the community.

And it's most oftentimes tied back to residential taxpayers who are looking at year over year over year assessments.

And they're measuring how much their tax bill has gone up, let's just say, in the last four years.

And they're saying to me, that should be enough to pay for local government services.

And I understand that.

And I get where they're coming from.

I think that, as you can see with this budget, there's several things.

We have an extremely ambitious capital plan, most of which is devoted to core service delivery.

When we look at courts, when we look at jail renovation, when we look at investment in recycling, solid waste, convenience centers,

When we look at investment in three new schools, we've done renovations, we've done expansions, but three new schools over a five-year CIP, and that doesn't even take into account the operational money that we'll need to open those new schools.

So I think when we look at the timing of some of these projects, some that have been in consideration and designed for over a decade, knowing that we were going to have to make investments at some point in time, that when you couple that with

Just a significant increase in cost for service delivery since COVID, operational increases, demands for service that have increased, and then on top of that, the decline in volunteerism across fire rescue.

That's difficult for any organization, even with high assessment growth.

It's difficult to cover all of those costs without a tax rate consideration.

I believe that's my answer.

I understand and I know when I first came on the board back in 2020 that a number of these things weren't even, we were looking at them or weren't even set.

So they came to fruition in the last several years, which also involved COVID.

But they came to fruition over the last, what, four or five years.

So that wasn't something, I won't say that we didn't anticipate it or the county didn't anticipate it, but definitely it came to the board making a decision on whether or not to go forward on these things.

which was a good decision because these are all things, as I look at them, these are all things that are needed.

Thank you.

Supervisor Galloway.

I have no questions.

Mr. Chair, it would now also be kind of the appropriate point for general comments kind of on the budget.

I mean, I feel like we have a series of six, and I'm not sure how I would even target them, right?

Right.

I mean, obviously, every motion has the opportunity for comment, but I was hoping that we would do comment either before or after at this point.

Recognizing that other supervisors might do it at a different point, I think I'm just going to put my the budget comments right slotted in here.

And I just want to kind of first,

acknowledged the thing I've talked about before, which is we have frustratingly few levers with which we can pull on to pay for our services.

And unfortunately, the ones that we have been afforded by the General Assembly, by the Constitution of the State of Virginia, are incredibly limited.

All of them are regressive in some way.

And we have to choose between kind of a menu of bad options to find the best option for how we can fund the core services that we provide.

I think this board has done a commendable job of trying to do that.

And we recognize that that causes hardship on real people.

I don't want to overlook that real hardship.

That being said, there's two key points I want to make.

First, it is helpful, I think, that we remember that we are adding four cents today, but this is the first tax rate increase that we have done in, I believe, six years.

and the significant cost burden that people are, well cost burden is the wrong term of art, the significant increased costs that people are seeing in taxes are almost entirely the result of critical market forces.

We cannot control those market forces that make housing assessments go up and that make your tax burden increase significantly.

which we know since 2010 has increased on average across the county by about 46%, which is a little over 3% per year, which is challenging.

And that has been mostly concentrated in the past five years.

That being said, the way that we can engage on rising assessments is something I think this board is trying to do, right?

We have a limited amount of control on the supply side of housing.

And that is what is creating your high assessments, right?

Your high assessments that keep climbing year after year because we do not have a supply that is meeting the demand that we have in this community.

We have an intensely desirable community, a place that people want to live.

And the data shows that we do not have the housing to support that.

If we want to stabilize the climbing assessments, if we want to eventually cut down on your assessment costs, a key part of that strategy has to be making sure that there's housing opportunity in this community.

and we are engaged on all the I think correct ways to try and make that happen and we are going to be discussing even more of them later today but I just want to throw that out there like the critical part of reducing your real property tax assessments is going to come from what we can do on the housing side not what we're doing with the relatively marginal tweaks of our property tax rate and second sometimes we hear

These assessments have increased so much over the past six years.

My assessments have increased 50%, 40%, 30%, 60%.

And there's no change in county services.

Since I have joined the county, which is not long, joined the county government,

There has been radical increases in county services.

So I have a very small list.

I'm sure anyone else here, when we go back around on these other votes, will rattle them off.

But we have opened a massive park, I believe what might be the largest park in the county, in an urban area that is complicated to build in.

And we're going to continue to expand that and continue to operate that.

funded a microtransit service in two of our most densely populated areas.

And a microtransit service is not a cheap thing to operate.

It has a relatively high cost per ride.

But there is a really strong community demand for that.

We have expanded our police forces, both the regular and the combined response, kind of hitting a variety of different community requests for that.

So the more social-sensitive HART team has also been expanded and formed, really, during this time.

We have three new schools while continuing to support existing continued operations and renovations.

We have had to completely start re-evaluating how we provide fire and rescue service with an aging rural fire force that has to be almost re-imagined, right?

Because we do not have the replacement personnel for them, significantly expanding the professional services in the rural community.

And fundamentally, we have a more expensive world.

I think that is a detail that we don't talk about as much.

But the costs for what we do are increasing.

I think one of the best examples we can see is there is a 23% increase in our health care costs, right?

That's not because of anything we did.

That's not because of any choice we made.

It's just the world is becoming more expensive faster than our dollars are becoming more valuable.

There are reasons for that.

They're not reasons that are in the control of Albemarle County, but we know that.

the wealthy are going to figure out how to always become more wealthy and that's going to make things more expensive for us.

And so the last thing is that we have continued to be a employer.

One of the largest employers in the county is the county.

We've continued to be an employer that actually offers pay parity, that keeps up with the rising cost of living.

That can sometimes feel frustrating if you're not employed by the county, but I think that is our duty as a

Progressive as a quality, as a good employer to actually make sure we are keeping up with the cost of living.

Because if you are going to say, oh, well, our housing costs have increased and the cost of our wages haven't, well, then you should believe that we should be making sure our wages are increasing to match that.

So that is kind of my broad, full broadside defense of our existing budget.

Final one on the record, and I will shut up for the rest of these six motions.

I don't have any questions right now, and I'll make some comments later.

And I don't have any questions, but I will have some comments.

Yeah, I would suggest, probably just for the flow, I'll go through what all the six of these motions mean, and then I'll turn it back to the board for action so I can sort of step out of any board discussion or any other questions that come up.

Because while these are all separate, they are also all related.

So to walk these through very briefly, again, just to highlight the total fiscal year 26 budget, all funds are operating funds, capital, grants, and others is balanced at $638 million.

We have spent most of our time in the 30-some hours of public meetings on the general fund budget, because that is where tax revenue comes in, particularly property tax revenues.

It's a primary funding source of other funds, and that's where the board has the maximum amount of policy discretion.

The general fund is balanced at $474.4 million.

For the public listening, since the time the board's proposed budget in March, there have been changes.

On April 7th and the 23rd, across those two meetings, the board of supervisors took one-time funding from the CIP Strategic Priorities Reserve and allocated it to the three sources at those amounts shown on the screen.

This is reallocation of funding rather than new revenue.

There is a county executive recommended adjustment that I would say is technical in nature that was included in the board's packet.

And this is really we've spent time talking about the one-time transfer into the health fund and the portion of the $6.2 million that's provided by county government to the schools for the health fund.

School staff have requested that $6.2 million be provided in fiscal year 25.

So this is not a change in the amount.

It is not a change in the intent.

It is only a change in the timing.

And so in June, next month, we will bring back a budget amendment as long as part of other changes that we'll bring back for that action.

So that again, no change in the amount or intent, only timing.

Finally the school board is prepared to adopt the budget tomorrow night And we're also included in this updated budget the anticipated some changes one of which I already talked about on the prior slide at the time of the health fund and also a small change Relatively small change in some anticipated state and federal revenues that are being updated and again the school board will take their final action on May 8th

If there are any final changes desired by the board today that they could always be amended mid-year, those are kind of the three sources with the reserve contingencies ongoing in one time and the remaining CIP Advancing Strategic Priorities Reserve that would be available that are not allocated to other projects.

So with that, I'll get to the six actions, first of which is the board is requested to approve the tax rates for calendar year 25 that are funding the fiscal year 26 budget.

The county executive went through these amounts and the basis in detail.

So when I come back to the slide, the recommendation for the board's motion will be on the screen.

And I'll continue to move through these before we take these actions.

Next up is the fiscal year 26 budget, which is the proposed budget plus the summary changes that I've highlighted on the previous slides.

I do want to comment that just based on the timing of updates from when we published the agenda's materials and the preparation of the board's agenda materials in mid to late April, we have provided an update to the board and the clerk to make sure this reflects all the most recent changes.

So attachment B is the proposed budget.

Pay scales, as we spoke about compensation, the board as a best practice approves pay scales on an annual process as part of the budget.

So that has been prepared for both the classified scale and all the related public safety schedules are reflected in Attachment C.

Moving on to next is the annual resolution of appropriations.

Under Virginia code, the budget is just a plan.

The appropriation is the legal authority to actually spend funds.

And so a resolution is prepared to, one, match the budget to enact that legal authority for funding from July 1 through June 30.

I do want to call attention that there are a few examples where the county executive is delegated authority to move funds that are administrative in nature from specific purposes to another.

For transparency, we always report this in our quarterly financial reports.

This is not a change from a prior year, but I do want to disclose that for purposes of transparency.

Finally, this also sets forth, and this is not a change from a prior year, expectations of outside agencies who receive funding.

This is something that community agencies agree to when they apply and will ask to be re-agreed to before funding is released to set expectations of them for reporting and other compliance that may be needed.

The next attachment is probably the longest titled one, but all we are really doing here is allowing the board to fund capital projects with bonds from future bond issuances.

and again, the one that is approved annually.

And then finally, there is the approval of the CIP.

We've discussed before that the capital improvements plan is a five-year plan.

The first year is adopted and appropriated and those projects will move forward.

Years 2 through 5 of the plan are fiscal year 27 to 30.

Those are refined every year.

So we've reviewed those as the planning standard, and if approved, this becomes the planning basis as we begin to build next year's CIP from fiscal year 27 to 31.

So there's still that flexibility, but it does signal an intent for staff to work through the planning and future phases of projects.

Thank you.

Or do we want to have any further comments before making the motions, and we can have comments afterwards?

Okay.

Supervisor Malle.

One question.

On your slide 31.

I think the board may recall at the time of the proposed budget, the school board had about a gap of approximately half a million dollars or so.

So as part of other changes that they have made to balance their budget, which is reduced expenditures and increased revenues, those together all balance their budget.

I see.

Thank you.

Any additional questions?

Then we're looking for a motion to adopt a resolution to set the calendar year 2025 tax rates in the form of attachment A. So moved.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor McKeel with a second from Supervisor Malek.

Ms.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chair, I just wanted to clarify and maybe the finance team can clarify this.

My understanding is that the

The proposed resolution would be the FY2026 budget resolution and the orange sheet rather than attachment B, and if finance staff could confirm that.

Yes, the updated version, correct.

Right, not attachment B, the orange sheet.

Looking for a motion.

So moved.

Second.

Motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Thank you.

Motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you.

Board, our next motion is to adopt the annual resolution of appropriations, and this is in the form of an orange sheet that has been placed at your stations and, again, slightly changed from what was in Attachment D.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor Malek, second from Supervisor McKeel.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you.

And finally, board, we have a motion to adopt the fiscal year 26 to 30 capital improvement plan in the form of attachment F. So moved.

Second.

Motion from Supervisor McKeel, second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you.

And with that, I will turn to the board to make any additional comments.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

So I will just share some things that I didn't do earlier.

First of all, regarding the presentations today, there were a couple of things I wanted to add.

The extra police officers are so incredibly important for that backup, because I have never

Never out of my mind is a case where an officer had to go to a domestic up at Afton at midnight and all alone for 40 minutes.

It was a dangerous situation and anything that I think these extra staff people will make that far less

Thank you.

Thank you.

allow county operations to be so much more effective going forward.

And also, the CIP.

So many things were on this list in 2007.

And I was told when I came on the board in 2008, oh, the courts were going to have to do it.

It's hanging over our head, and we've got to be ready for that enormous expenditure.

Those kinds of things are almost done.

And the 40 years since the jail's been renovated, I mean, these are all very, very important things.

So those are things I've shared with people when they've contacted me.

Just got a phone call, five of one, as we were getting ready to begin today.

Because I do understand that there is a lot of burden on people of all different incomes for the increased costs which have happened.

I will push back briefly to say without stringent rules in place about how new housing will be used, I do not see that it would change the cost of housing or taxes at all.

Over the last 40 years, we have seen that people want to live here and often they return with their pockets full of money from other places and other jobs and the market rates go up because of that.

I've never seen any explanation that will help me understand how that supply and demand works in our particular county.

But as I said, I've heard a lot from people in emails and in phone numbers about the burdens, and I want to explain what I see.

I talked a little about the perfect storm that has happened.

These core services that will be expensive but providing better service to our residents.

The obligations we've had.

I will say from a White Hall district perspective, the FEMA firefighters have been essential to bring back daytime service coverage to Station 4 in Earliesville, which can then back up Station 12 and Station 8 in the urban area, but also reach the mountains in a reasonable length of time.

And also Station 5, where there are now 10,000 more residents than there were 10 years ago, and they're running multiple calls in the daytime.

and the volunteers are still struggling at night.

But I am so grateful, as others have said, for the long time work.

115 years for the Crozet Volunteer Fire Company and they are still going.

But they can't do it all alone anymore.

Every year, new people move into Albemarle.

But for the last 20 years or more, it's been about 1% per year.

So that 1,500 people per year, while it builds up, has not been as astounding as the 4,000 to 5,000 people per year in the last three years.

All of a sudden, we have many more people, many more units, many more people, many more services to provide.

People have asked me, who's living in all these new apartments and things that we see on Route 29 as they go to work?

Well, it's the 15,000 new residents who are living there and in Crozet and all the different districts where there's been so much growth.

But colleagues from years ago were very clear that higher populations mean higher budgets, mean higher tax rates.

We cannot build our way to prosperity.

We have to understand that the cost for residential does not pay for itself.

And I look forward to the future.

further discussion at the next meeting and more details about the $1.39 in costs for every residential unit dollar that is paid in.

And that is, I think, a quite small number compared to the 50 years ago amounts in other places.

is not to me as important as the budget because a penny in Lancaster is $400,000 and a penny in Fairfax is over $32 million.

So it's not so much the rate, it's what the rate has to be in order to get the budget that we have whittled down and worked on and added to in some cases over the last many, many months.

So anyway, let's see here.

And as I mentioned earlier with the Capitol, I do not want to repeat the errors we made in 2009.

And I will say we, because I was not able to get a second on any of the motions to prevent the tax cuts in those days.

2009 and 2010, symbolic tax cuts reduced the availability of $5 million in capital for those years, which could have been $50 million in borrowing, which could have brought about projects

additional classrooms, public safety, sidewalks, bridges, and the Crozet Library which in itself cost $3 million more to build when we finally built it later.

So I do not want to look away from the capital projects which are still in the queue because we are not putting sufficient money into capital to keep them rolling along.

And I've talked about all of that.

So I will stop there.

But I thank you all for your partnership.

I think that the staff effort has been tremendous.

The board of supervisors effort has been tremendous.

And six board members with six different opinions.

And we have worked well to find a place we can meet.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I just want to say thank you to the staff who put together this very, very difficult budget, not only for us, but for the community at large.

It's much appreciated.

This is not easy, but I feel this is something that we need to do in order to serve our community.

Thank you.

I will also echo the thank you to staff for the work.

I mean, the budget is the biggest responsibility we have year in and year out.

I think it was apparent in some of the notes and feedback I received after the town halls that citizens who walked in left more informed than they did coming through the door and appreciated that.

It's not so much that that turns them around or maybe necessarily agrees with any acts or votes that we may take.

but they are better informed as to at least the rationale that is behind it and I think that's important.

I also want to thank citizens who did attend the town halls, who've emailed us, who have perhaps called and or made some comments even one-on-one at different times that we're just out in the community.

I do appreciate and take all of that feedback and put to heart leading up to a vote on the budget.

This is my eighth year and my eighth budget that I voted on and every single year that I've made that vote assessments have gone up It's you know we talk about it more I think over the last three years because frankly citizens have been clobbered the last three years in terms of the rising values But it's not lost on me that values were going up the years before that The offside of it is this year that the increase in the tax rate and adding to that burden

of the rising assessments with an additional piece that we're going to take.

I had to balance against what I saw as the other burden, not to provide the services that we're going to add with these additional tax revenues that we're bringing in, namely the public safety piece.

You can very easily in public safety I think with police and fire use scare tactics.

I've made this comment before where it's like, oh, the big emergency or the big deal.

It is becoming more and more increasingly of concern to me that we're not even close to the big deal and we're past capacity on a day in and day out basis in this county.

and if we do not do or take the actions or the steps needed to provide that service, which unfortunately you don't necessarily see unless you're in the emergency event or in the event, that I think the citizens would agree that even though this burden of increased hitting your monthly budgets

I see that as critical to do to keep all of our, not just our residents safe, but those of us who are serving in police, fire, and all of our first responders.

It is not lost on me that increasing the tax rate makes it less affordable for houses.

It's just fact.

Your higher tax rate, whether it's assessments or whether it's a tax rate that we've now voted on, it makes it more expensive to live in your particular home.

I think that this year I've been pleased with the conversation about tax revenue diversification and I think it is imperative that the board, not just in our economic development work and our AC44 work, but on a regular basis look to what we are going to do.

I love the public speaker today, Ms.

Towns,

She used in her comments, she talked about performative words versus actionable steps.

And I think this is a wonderful place to apply that context.

We have to make sure we're not just using performative words about diversifying the tax base.

We have to figure out a strategic plan and take actionable steps to lower the burden on our taxpayers that's coming from where they live and from their property.

I'll have more to say about that as we're working on the housing chapter today and I'm sure in the next coming meeting when we get into economic development and the economic development plan.

I see this budget as doing some very critical things but there are still a lot of things we're not able to do.

To my point earlier about the things that you can see that there could still be things out there that residents feel they want and need but won't see us working on

because of the restrictive nature of this particular budget.

And I want to make sure folks know that I think somebody, I won't call out the name, who is a very critical eye on everything that we do and say was appreciative of the fact that we have a SPEAR report that shows us actually reporting out what steps or what actions we have achieved based on our strategic plan.

I think that's important to continue with our budget as well.

Citizens know that I've said to them one-on-one, I'm happy to sit down with anybody in the budget book to talk about the importance of any particular line item.

I think it is contingent on us to prove it.

Are we doing the best we can with the tax dollars we receive and are those tax dollars going to the highest and best use based on our strategic plan?

So I feel that we're doing that with this budget.

I stand behind the vote and obviously I'll be turning to those that had the final say, the voters of my district, and they can pass judgment from here on out.

Thank you.

I've already made most of my comments, but I do want to very briefly thank two groups of folks.

First, all the members of county staff who have been heavily involved in this process, not only in the tremendous hundreds of hours, I'm sure, that went into preparation of the budget before we ever even took a bite at it, but also in the hundreds of man hours that have gone into continued support of this community engagement process and ongoing process.

Boy, how do you go into any one of those town halls?

And there's a lot of staff who are coming in on a weeknight, on a school night, and putting in their hours to make sure our community is well informed.

That leads me into the second group of folks who I really want to extend some appreciation to, and that is we get a lot of voter communications right before today, but we don't get nearly as many

before that, when we're actually making the substantive decisions before a lot of these kind of decision points are already in our rearview mirror, right?

Because there's very little wiggle room we really had today, right?

We've already committed ourselves to a lot of other decisions.

So I want to thank specifically those folks who have been deeply engaged as members of the public in the budget process.

up till now, really throughout this.

I want to thank Sive in the audience, who has been deeply engaged in the process.

I want to thank the members of IMPACT and Livable Seville, who have been deeply engaged in this process.

I want to thank Mr. Grant, who has been deeply engaged in this process.

And I like to be held accountable.

I got elected to be a

political representative.

And that means hearing hard criticisms.

And so that feels like I'm doing my job when I'm hearing that in front of me.

So I appreciate that level of engagement from the public.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

And I do really appreciate, as all the supervisors have said up until now, staff's involvement in work.

I know much of this work happened off hours,

on weekends and certainly sitting in meetings with us into the evening while you also had a full day of work.

And I really appreciate that.

I want to follow up a little bit on what Ned was talking about, because I don't think people were talking about

a significant raise in the real estate property tax.

And I don't think people really have a sense of what our staff has to do during the year and the challenges they have and why we need to increase the number of police officers, increase the number of fire and rescue folks.

I just want to just briefly go through

Our Emergency Operations Center activations this year, we had five.

We had three snowstorms that had to be dealt with.

We had a national day of protests that had to be dealt with through the emergency management response.

And we had a National Weather Service red flag warning that had to be dealt with.

In addition to that, we also had a single plane crash with a fatality.

We had an active shooter incident at Harris Teeter.

We had two shelter-in-place incidents at UVA.

One was an all-day manhunt for an individual wanted on a violent felony charge and a reported knife wielding person.

We had a cat bus into a residence.

Rivanna Reservoir searched for a reported human.

We had a bomb threat and evacuation at Henley Middle School.

We had five significant fires.

We had a suspicious death investigation where two homeowners were located inside their home with gunshot wounds.

We had a monitored and provided appropriate oversight into five area protest demonstrations.

including two at McIntyre County Office Building.

These were just the notable incidents that our Fire and Rescue employees and staff, facilities management folks, had to respond to.

These were just the notable.

and that was in addition to the increase in service calls and the increase in responses that Jeff Richardson went through the higher percentages.

So there is no doubt that our community is challenging, you know, the events in our community are challenging our staff which gets to what I think back up to what Ned said.

We are now past our capacity

and we really needed help, hence the increase in the property tax rate, the four cents.

I also just want to make a couple of other comments if I get my notes here.

Mike spoke earlier about our program for the elderly and disabled and I just want to make sure I clarify that everyone understands those are two programs.

It's elderly and or disabled.

So sometimes I think they, I think people can think if you're not disabled but you're, it can be a little confusing.

So there are two programs.

They're tiered to help folks and we adjust them to inflation every year now.

So those programs are available and people should look into them.

And I did want to just comment

I have to make a comment.

This is my 28th budget.

Even for me that's astonishing, I guess is the word.

And I have seen ups and downs.

I've seen property increases.

And I've seen years when, because of recessions, property values went down, which is also pretty scary.

So we have to think of it from both sides of the ledger because I had for years, my property value was going down to where I was beginning to panic.

And it took almost nine years for my property value to come back up.

That was a lot.

So I'm just glad that I didn't have to sell or go into a nursing home or something during that period of time.

So I think people need to just put a perspective on this if possible.

But I certainly sympathize with folks.

I think most of us have said we do.

I could not sell my house right now and buy another house in Albemarle County for what I would get for it.

I'm in that boat.

So I really appreciate people's concerns.

I'm a retired person.

I really do understand that.

But at the end of the day, the county, we have to provide services that are needed for the community.

And those services are broad and in a wide range and not everybody agrees on what those services might be.

Some people don't want it.

Why would we spend money on parks?

Other people really want parks, so we have to balance all of those requests and needs.

I had someone the other day that said to me, how dare you spend my taxpayer dollars to put a bridge over 29 North for pedestrians and bicycles.

So people have different views of what's important in the community.

And I just will make a comment that

Again, I'm going to go back and stress, when I ran in 2013, our revenue, the percentage of our revenues that were coming in from the commercial side was about 17%.

We are down now to 11%.

That only shows that the

The bulk of those revenues are coming really from real estate taxes.

We have to figure out how to even up that burden.

I'd like to see to be perfectly honest with you.

Jeff mentioned a number, but I'd like to see it up to about 20 or 25 percent.

That would really help people that own property.

But we're not going to do it without economic development to diversify our tax base.

And I hear folks saying all the time, we don't want all those strangers moving in.

We want to build walls.

We want everything to stay the same.

Staying the same is not a good place to be.

The world moves on.

I don't expect my doctor to give me the same treatments he was going to give me 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

I expect my doctors to move on.

I expect our county to move on.

We've got to figure out how to make adjustments.

Doesn't mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but we have to learn to accept some change and make some adjustments as time goes on.

I have another sheet of paper and I'll stop in just a minute, I'm sorry.

I do want to point out that Mike was really correct.

Who you vote for counts, but not just at the local level.

Local level is important, but Congress and the state

are critical because if Congress is reducing taxes and the state is reducing your taxes, then those services that those taxes are paying for come back to the locals.

And that only makes life worse for people in our community because you have to pick up the difference because somebody has to be the safety net.

I can remember following a car into the parking garage at the University of Virginia, an employee at the University of Virginia, and the bumper sticker was this big and it said, raise my taxes, lose my vote.

And I thought, could I just stop her and ask her, who does she think pays her salary?

It did seem a little ironic.

Now, nobody wants to pay more taxes, and I'm not advocating for huge increases in taxes, but at the end of the day, we are a commonwealth, we are a country, and we have to figure out how to have a safety net for folks and how to make the services run.

So anyway, with that, I'm going to stop.

Thank you very much.

Oh, and one more comment.

I see an auditorium that's certainly not full of people, but there are a good number of people here.

I believe I see less than five people, to include the reporter, less than five people that are actually not our employees.

Now, I recognize that there are a lot of people listening probably online, but to your all's point, we need people to get involved as much as you can because I think if you understand the budget and you understand what we're trying to do with the budget, I think that it makes a lot clearer as to why we have a need to have additional tax increase this year

even after assessment increases.

Thank you.

And Board, I just want to echo a support for a lot of the comments that have been made, especially thanking the staff for the hard work throughout all of this and thanking the public for the feedback we've received.

One of the hallmarks that I haven't heard mentioned specifically today is that I think that we've been very transparent.

and the transparency is part of good government and I think it's been extremely helpful if you look through all of the times that we've spent together on this how carefully we've laid out how things work we've got the 300 plus page budget book that explains all of that and with that of course you know it is it is as said painful to increase taxes but at the same time those services not having those every second on police or fire

I very much appreciate feedback, but specific feedback is always best, and so caution people as they look through this and are concerned that as you address the issues

Knowing what it is that you think we didn't fund that we needed to, what it is that needs to be cut from the budget.

Those specifics help drive the process, and early on in the process can help us.

But with that, again, I echo comments of the supervisors.

We know we're looking to diversify our revenue sources and looking for efficiencies, but I think we're doing an excellent job and appreciate all the hard work.

Yes, I didn't want to leave this conversation without actually giving a shout out to our constituents.

They're the ones that called us, they're the ones that emailed us, they're the ones that asked us questions, they're the ones that showed up at our various town halls to find out what was going on.

I feel very comfortable knowing that our constituents feel comfortable contacting us

in finding out answers.

None of this is easy, but at least they take the interest in calling us.

And they have faith that they can call us and get an answer or find out if they have a problem.

We always try to help them.

But I really do like the increased community involvement.

Also, I have told constituents, as other members of the board have, that

We need to increase our commercial development, and we'll do that through the EDA, and that will really relieve the tax burden on real estate.

Once we're able to do that, it's a long-range plan, but we have high hopes that that will happen.

And once again, a thank you to our constituents.

And if there's nothing further from staff, then we'll move on to the next item.

We are well behind at this point on our agenda.

Our next item is a discussion of move safety, Blue Ridge safety action plan, possible action on that plan.

And this is being led by Jessica Hirsch-Ballering, our principal planner for transportation.

and welcome.

Good afternoon board.

I'm Jessica Hirsch-Valering, principal planner with Amaral County Community Development.

I'm joined today by several colleagues, Gorian Gorgievsky of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and John Oliver from Kimley-Horn.

John and I are really here to help answer questions.

Gorian is going to be doing the presentation.

He is going to present

on the Safe Streets for All safety action planning process.

He's going to go over the content of the Move Safely Blue Ridge safety action plan and talk about next steps.

County staff have been highly involved in the safety action plan process throughout, and we're really pleased with the final result, the Move Safely Blue Ridge action plan that's in front of you.

After the presentation, we encourage the board to ask questions, give feedback, and if you desire to give, to request changes to the Move Safely Blue Ridge Action Plan.

If there's no significant changes, you are welcome to use the resolution you have to adopt the plan.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board.

My name is Gorian Georgievsky.

I'm a regional planner at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission working on the Move Safely Blue Ridge Initiative.

Even though this is a regional initiative, the plan is developed in a way that provides specific jurisdictional chapters.

And today we're going to talk about Albemarle County.

Right next to me is John Oliver.

He is the transportation engineer from the Kimley-Horn team and part of the project team.

Today's agenda will include the background of the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, Albemarle County's leadership commitment, the planning process, the emphasis areas in the High Injury Network, public engagement, proposed solutions, and next steps.

Move Safely Blue Ridge is the region's plan to reduce roadway fatalities and serious injuries for all road users regardless of their mode of transportation.

In 2021, a law was signed that became the bipartisan infrastructure law.

That law established the discretionary safe streets and roads for all federal program.

and that program supports the United States Department of Transportation National Roadway Safety Strategy and its vision of zero fatalities by 2050 using a safe system approach.

This slide highlights Albemarle County's leadership commitment.

From 2018 to 2020, 875 people were killed or seriously injured on the county's roadways.

Albemarle County's board recognized that on February 7, 2024.

adopted a resolution to reduce the number of total fatalities and serious injuries by 50% by 2045.

I just want to mention that that goal also aligns with the state's goals.

and also supports them.

This adoption of the plan is going to be a key step in achieving that goal for Albemarle County as it will open the door for implementation funding in future rounds of the Safe Streets and Roads for All federal program.

The adoption of the plan is the requirement for that funding.

Before I talk about the planning process for this project, I want to acknowledge the project team who besides DJPDC represented staff from all of our jurisdictions as well as VDOT.

Their feedback and collaboration was very valuable.

in developing not just the planning process, but all of the components in our safety action plan.

Through these components, we identify the issues and opportunities.

We establish priorities and develop strategies that led to the development of the draft comprehensive safety action plan.

All that supported by three rounds of public engagement.

Ultimately, this entire process serves as the foundation for development of the final plan.

I mentioned the period of 2018 to 2022.

That refers to the crash data for this project.

That crash data is structured around 13 identified emphasis areas, which are the key factors that contribute to fatalities and serious injuries on the county's roadways.

I want to mention that these emphasis areas use multiple risk factors, and what that means is that if somebody was driving under the influence, had a roadway departure, and was not wearing a seat belt,

then they will be categorized in all three emphasis areas.

But the ultimate goal for the emphasis areas was used for the project team to get their information about safety needs and potential solutions.

Another strategy that we developed was the high injury network methodology, which serves as a map that shows the highest concentrations of crashes that resulted in fatalities and severe injuries.

So from 2018 to 2022, 72% of those crashes

occurred on just 7% of the county's roads.

Just for your reference, the tiers that you're looking at on the map are ranked by the severity of the crashes.

So Tier 1 would be the most severe crashes and Tier 4 would be the least severe crashes.

I mentioned the public engagement for this project.

That was a crucial element for the development of this plan because the public feedback was very important, very valuable.

We did that in three rounds, from which two were with a survey.

In round one, we identified the region's issues and opportunities.

We went out to where the public was and asked them what are the issues that they think

they face every day on the roads.

In round two, we followed the same steps.

This time, we engaged in strategies.

We asked the public what are the types of solutions they think would be most valuable for the development of the project and to reach our goal.

We're currently in the round three of engagement, which is the review of the draft safety action plan.

Some of the key locations that we visited in Albemarle County to do our public engagement include the Rivanna, River Fest, the Albemarle County Farmers Market, and the Church of Our Savior food pantry.

I want to thank all those places for enabling us to do our outreach for this project.

We also conducted a roundtable discussion with farmers and ranchers from the region with the help of the Virginia Farm Bureau.

The goal for that was to seek feedback on transportation safety including farm vehicles.

So the next part of the presentation is the key part that we're going to be discussing to that and that is the potential solutions.

Again, I want to acknowledge Albemarle County staff and VDOT for their continued collaboration and helping us brainstorm through all of the solutions that we're going to discuss today.

So we have seven spot-specific improvements.

These are high-risk intersections within the county.

Some of them were site visits that we conducted for these projects.

So the first one is the I-64 and US-29.

I do want to acknowledge that for this

location.

The proposed solutions are to close the U.S.

29 northbound left turn lane onto I-64, add warning flashes and transverse rumble strips, conduct a speed study to create a reduced speed limit zone.

But I do want to acknowledge that VDOT has an ongoing effort for this location, so these solutions would be temporary until VDOT comes with their project.

The next location is going to be the US-29 and Greenbrier Drive.

For this location, we're suggesting to relocate the transit stops at pedestrian crossings and implement adaptive signals.

The project 3 is US-29 and Woodbrooke Drive.

The proposed solutions here are to remark lanes on the Eastern Woodbrooke Drive at pedestrian crossings and implement adaptive signals.

The next one is A4, US 29, from Woodson Store Lane to Rabbit Valley Road.

The proposed solutions here would be to construct arc cuts on Store Lane and Rabbit Valley Road, extend the left and right turn lanes on US 29.

The US 29 and Airport Road, the proposed solutions here is to implement adaptive signal controls.

The next two, the Old Trail and US 250, as well as Hydraulic Road and Lambs Road.

So these were added with feedback from Albemarle County staff and we recognize that the data supports these projects.

But the proposed solutions here are to add pedestrian signals and

Fazing for US 250 and Old Trail or implement a module roundabout at that location.

In hydraulic road and lane, this would be to upgrade the crossings implemented LPI, which is leading pedestrian interval, phasing and to reduce the turning radii and implement no turn on red.

The next category of potential solutions are the systemic improvements.

These could be implemented across the entire network of the county and they include the edge line treatment, central line rumble strips, curved delineation, and high friction surface treatment to deal with roadway departures and then advanced warning signs and markings at intersections for driver awareness.

The candidate locations for these safety potential solutions are documented in the safety action plan.

The last category that I want to talk about today are the policies and programs.

These are non-engineering solutions that could be implemented through various partners.

We have several categories and example solutions here identified, but there's over 30 in the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan.

These examples include red light cameras and intersections, high visibility saturation, patrol for impaired driving, and to update appropriate speed limits for all road users.

As I mentioned, with the adoption of this plan Albemarle County will be eligible for applications in the future State Streets and Roads for All program implementation funding.

There's currently one round ongoing with applications deadline at the end of June and there's going to be another application cycle in fiscal year 2026 but the availability between the two rounds is two billion dollars.

This safety action plan will also help with smart scale application, the highway safety improvement program, and revenue sharing.

The project team also plan to do an annual update on the Move Safely Blue Ridge website to further refine our crashes with the data and then to refine our strategies in the future as needed.

Through the adoption of this plan, Albemarle County would be able to provide and create a safer and more efficient transportation network for all road users in the county, not just living in but also traveling through.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

We will go through our order and for questions and also any concerns one would have before considering the adoption of the plan.

Thank you and thank you very much and I apologize that until I got to town today I was not able to download the 50 megabytes because that does not work when you have three megabytes down in your broadband.

But I will catch up.

Quickly, adaptive traffic signals at Airport Road, can you help me understand what that is?

I will refer to Mr. John Oliver when it comes to the engineering part of the project.

Yes, ma'am.

So all of these signals up and down 29 are owned by VDOT and operated by VDOT.

Adaptive traffic signals is just using more up-to-date technology that can change the timing live as traffic changes.

The more we know we can do to address congestion, the more we can reduce some crashes, right?

If there's a queue in front of you, you're more likely to have a rear-end crash as opposed to if you have more green time.

So adaptive is just going to change with traffic patterns as opposed to having, you know, timing from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

that flips to a different timing.

But it keeps the sequitization, which is really, really wonderful right now.

And I'm especially thankful of your comment about the

Appropriate speed limits because that's a struggle and I'm interested to talk to Goryan later about what VDOT's comments were about that because it's very difficult to get them to reduce speeds even when going 55 in a country narrow road is not appropriate.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

If you could go to slide 12, please.

OK.

Well, the red light cameras at intersections, we're mainly talking about 29, correct?

That's the major focus of everything?

And that would be one of the things we could do, adding red light cameras at the intersections?

OK.

Yes, this will be through law enforcement.

And are you doing studies of any other areas other than 29?

Right, I mean, looking at this plan, it wasn't just 29 that was identified as a road with issues.

We took the whole entire crash data for Albemarle County and developed that through the high injury network, so we could look at other locations through the systemic improvements, if that makes sense.

Right, well you have a map and that's the one that shows all, yes,

Right, that one.

I mean, 29 is the major area.

But there are other areas in almost every other district where there's high impact or crashes and that.

Well, phase two would be the implementation funding.

And as I mentioned, through the adoption of this plan, so the systemic improvements that are outlined in this plan would be used across the entire network.

So we don't, I don't think we have any like specific intersections for other areas in this plan, but the locations for which I can't think of them right now on top of my head, they are identified in the safety action plan that were part

So I'm going to flip to the systemic improvements.

So none of these immediately address traffic calming and speeding.

Speeding, as we heard, is a large concern.

As a design engineer, one thing we want to do is physically, what can we do to slow down traffic besides a sign alone because we know there's limited

the limited things we can address with just the signs.

So, some of these other systemic improvements to address speed could be some traffic calming.

Okay, thank you.

That's all.

Yeah, I don't have questions.

I appreciate the work of all the different jurisdictions that were involved.

I know the transportation staff and the PDC working to bring this forward.

Yeah, I think as have had the chance to speak to this or get reviews on this over the years at the MPO, the traffic calming, even if it were on the radar, you can't commit yourself to what a community may not vote for.

So if you want to cross a speed hump, you've got to have that community vote and have petitions to meet that.

So you can't put that in as an innovation and a plan if you don't have that piece done.

So I like that this stays at the things that we can just implement.

I mean, your rumble strips, your edge line treatments, things like that have proven to work pretty well in deterring some things that otherwise would become unsafe.

Having just that little rumble strip at the center line or on the edge calls you to get back onto the road.

A lot of the other interventions here, I think what is also noticeable

is that getting these type of things in, if we were successful in the planning grant, will happen over and beyond what we typically can do.

We don't typically do this stuff in our own transportation planning unless it's part of a smart scale that we win and then it's just within the defined area of the smart scale application.

But when you're talking about doing some of the pedestrian things like on Hillsdale or Greenbrier, I'm sorry, Greenbrier and 29, these are things that we won't have on our radar because frankly they're too far down on the list.

and we have bigger things that we're going to try to get after.

I know looking at some of the other jurisdictions that I would have suspected it's the same for them.

That they're going to be going after the big ticket items that we have to do through revenue sharing or six-year plan, the rural roads, rustic roads, smart scale, et cetera.

This will allow us, if we can get these dollars in, to really put some high-impact type things in areas that the data say, you know, identifies where they're needed.

The last comment I'll make is that one of the offshoots of this is a new grant is being put forward that the MPO just voted on and the TJPDC voted on this past week, or past two weeks, between UVA and Honda.

So it's going to impact all of the six jurisdictions again.

The study area is going to be

restricted to the MPO, which is primarily the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle, but the data will be owned by the PDC and available to all of the jurisdictions because they're the grant, the person seeking the grant.

End of the day, this is going to, there's no cost to the localities.

Honda and UVA are the ones putting forward the matching monies to do this and it will be doing

Without getting into the full extent, I can send information later if you want to learn more.

But it's going to do really high level analysis, even with virtual reality and putting people through situations to determine how pedestrians and bikers think about interacting with something.

So you know Mike, being the young guy he is, has better reflexes than I do.

And he might make one decision when he approaches an intersection.

whereas I might make something different.

They're going to study all of that and at the end of the day to be able to determine all right how can we design intersections or treatments for places other than just picking off picking the book off the shelf that has here's how you design

an intersection in an urban area.

Now it'll be well defined by more enhanced data from that.

So I think that's something y'all will be interested in, but the fact that we'll be able to, they're going to actually be studying Albemarle and Charlottesville areas so that we can learn more through this grant.

It's been done one other time in Ohio.

I think it's something that both transportation staff and all of us will be interested in as they go through with the study, provided they win the grant.

It sounds like they're afraid we'll get it, but we've already taken the action to put it in the deadlines in June.

I just want to say that roundabouts are also traffic calming.

I wasn't even thinking of... We have to understand that these are things that they went to each jurisdiction to fall within line of what the grant application said relative to what potentially could be available through their implementation grants.

But don't look for projects in this particular grant.

They're outside of the scope of what the grant can do and or fund.

I have no questions other than to just challenge Supervisor Gallaway's estimation of my reflexes.

I will have you know I've been run over on four separate occasions as a pedestrian or a cyclist.

Holy cow, you need to stop walking and biking.

Not in Albemarle County.

Knock on wood.

Let's get rid of the VR stuff.

First I really want to just thank Ned Gallaway because Ned's participation on the MPO and down at TJPDC brought this

Study to our attention so that Alomarle County could actually participate.

So I thank you, Ned.

I don't remember if it was my brain that's like, I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but it was a couple of years ago.

So anyway, but I do want to thank Ned because I didn't even know it was out there, and Ned brought it to our board, so that was great.

I found this study fascinating.

I found some surprises in it, but a lot of it was what my gut said was really going on.

I mean, we get that sense.

And the area, certainly, you identified made perfect sense.

Just a couple of questions.

And I am all, I'm not opposed to adopting this at all.

I think it's a great idea.

I just want to ask a couple of questions.

Red light cameras.

We have two in school zones.

Oh, I'm thinking speed cameras.

I'm reversing them in my brain.

I'm sorry.

So we can put in the red light cameras.

Yes.

OK, thank you.

It's the speed they don't like because of the, yeah, I got it.

Sorry.

So smart scale, we're talking, you all were talking about smart scale, and I understand the difference in what we're talking about there.

The signalized lights are wonderful.

So when we're talking about this grant, and it's multiple counties, so the city of Charlottesville has agreed to participate in this grant.

Yes.

Yes.

So what we've had in the past is, I'll just say it, you know, Charlottesville was supposed to signalize some of their lights ten years ago, or eight years ago with ours, and they haven't done it yet.

So this is, I'm just thinking, because those are some of the challenges that we have at our borders and at our intersections, which are some of what you're naming here when you look at the city and the county.

Exactly, and that is not necessarily outlined in the document, but it can certainly serve as a collaboration between the county and the city to implement that.

Yes, okay.

I don't think, I have some notes, I had lots of notes here that I thought, but I'm not going to belabor it.

I just think this is

A wonderful report.

Data is always good so that we can impact the areas that we need to and look specifically.

And I really do appreciate the look at the region because we all drive from one area to another pretty seamlessly.

And so we have to fix one area here if we're going to really impact the whole region.

So that's great.

Thank you.

I am very supportive of this and I also had in my notes to thank Supervisor Galloway because I know that you brought it to our attention in the first place.

I think it pays double dividends to us in the sense that not only will it help our

SmartScale applications and revenue sharing make stronger proposals, but also that it makes available additional funding for these kinds of projects that wouldn't come into a SmartScale project, as you said.

So I appreciate that it's a focus on safety, not just on congestion.

So much of the time we talk about congestion, but really safety is key.

I was just going to make a comment.

When we have congestion, though, we have safety problems.

Mr. Chair, let me make one last, just to clarify, but you came up in talking about the city and the lights, so two comments.

The Regional Planning Grant was an effort by all six jurisdictions and it was a way that each jurisdiction, since they did the match, it cost them less if they would have done it individually.

The implementation grants has left each jurisdiction to decide if they want to go after.

Now you would think that they would.

because the plan to get the safety planning was really part of the work to do all the data collection.

So to utilize the lower amount to get that information, it really doesn't make sense to go forward with the implementation study, but it wouldn't be a regional implementation grant.

This planning grant could branch out into six different implementation grants.

based on what they put forward, then winning the grant, you would think if you win the grant and successful, then it's not your local dollars.

There might be some match to be able to do some of the things that you talked about.

Yes, sir.

And just to clarify, the match is going to be 80% federal and 20% local.

Oh, OK.

That's promising.

Thank you very much.

If there are no further questions, we can move on to a recess.

We do have to adopt the plan.

We did say that we were going to roll in favor of it.

Second.

We have a motion from Supervisor Galloway, a second from Supervisor Mallek.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Yes.

And now we will take a recess and if I'm looking at that clock, I would say a quarter up.

Welcome back.

We have a work session next on AC44, draft housing chapter, led by Tori Kanalopoulos, principal planner with Stacey Bethy, talking about housing.

The board is going to make the comment that this is preceding a discussion in a couple of weeks on the housing trust fund.

So we'll have more discussions on this.

We have a limited amount of time this afternoon to try to complete what we can.

before we go into our closed session.

So please take it away.

Good afternoon, supervisors, and thank you for the introduction.

Again, Tori Kanalopoulos, principal planner on the long-range planning team, and joined by Dr. Stacy Pethia, assistant director of housing.

We'll be sharing the presentation today on the AC44 draft chapter for this topic.

So we'll start with a quick summary of previous board feedback from phase two on this topic, share an overview of what we've heard from the community on this topic, share a brief overview of the chapter and some of the things that are included, share our upcoming schedule, and then have a couple of focus topics for the board's discussion.

And that's along with the rest of the chapter and general comments on the chapter content and objectives and actions.

So I'll share these again at the end of the presentation, but these are the two questions that we're asking for specific board feedback on.

There are some recommendations related to the first question from a land use standpoint about where we should encourage higher density housing, but we wanted to ask for board input if there should be more detailed direction in the comp plan.

So that's for looking at future area plan updates and applying land use designations to the future land use map.

So that could include applying the middle residential land use category to more locations.

So we've heard that for activity centers and mixed use areas, those are good places for more housing.

But we would like to know if there's other factors that we should be taking a look at as well.

And then given some recent development applications, we're looking if we should have information in the comp plan that would help guide review of projects that come in that are for affordable housing that are outside of the development area boundaries, such as a proposed manufactured home park.

So again, that guidance is not in the comp plan now, but we're asking for feedback on whether it should be included.

So looking at previous board feedback on housing, we heard that there are more strategies needed to encourage missing middle housing types and smaller housing units, which also supports aging within the community, to encourage housing in activity centers and employment districts as shown in the development area's land use chapter, and to preserve existing housing units and prevent displacement, and that includes manufactured home parks.

and then also addressing concerns with property maintenance and ensuring property owners maintain rental units.

We also heard options for implementation could include using county-owned land for affordable housing and land banks and land trusts, that we need to make sure we have data and metrics to track progress over time and then noting the overlap with other chapters and comprehensive plan topics like economic development and transportation.

So these are the community input themes that we heard during phases one and two, and that includes a strong need for a variety of housing types at a variety of price points, including for household sizes that are getting smaller, first time home buyers.

and aging community members, having more multifamily housing and accessory units, and then looking at housing affordability in the rural area.

There was generally feedback that we should focus on maintaining existing units, but there was some community interest in other types of small-scale housing.

And then coordinated planning for housing, land use, transportation, economic development, and parks and recreation.

And again, that overlap with walkability and how we lay out our neighborhoods in the development areas.

Also heard about the importance for maintaining existing homes and aging in place, including smaller units and units that have elevators and accessibility, the need for assisted living, especially in places that are walkable and that have transit, and then helping people maintain their homes with weatherization and energy efficiency.

and how those topics also tie to climate action including places to charge electric vehicles and then again how we lay out our neighborhoods and how that can improve walkability and other transportation options.

So the goal of this chapter overlaps with the AC44 framework.

And those four sections are shown on the screen.

So again, the significant overlap with things like economic development, the ties between jobs and housing, climate action, transportation, and affordability.

And then noting that housing is a foundational community need.

There are seven objectives in this chapter.

So I won't read all of them.

Many of them are also within Housing Albemarle, which Stacey will talk a little bit more about.

But it includes increasing the overall housing supply and a variety of housing options, the overlap with activity centers and land use, preserving and maintaining housing, and addressing unmet needs for people that are living unsheltered.

Good afternoon.

Excuse me.

Really, housing staff worked with planning staff to really make sure that housing Albemarle was directed, really reflected in the comprehensive plan.

A lot of the work we did was to consolidate, just to make it easier to read.

The housing policy itself is about 100 pages long, so this really kept the main goals behind it and consolidated some of them to make it work better.

And the Housing Albemarle will be adopted into the Comprehensive Plan as an appendix when it's adopted.

I'm going to have to look up there because I forgot my reading glasses, I'm sorry.

Really, the Housing Albemarle really identified several priority activities to undertake after the policy was adopted, and those are reflected on the screen here.

The county staff has really worked to achieve several of those.

One of the priority activities was to increase the number of permanent supportive housing units within Albemarle County.

That is currently underway now in the Vista 29, formerly known as Premier Circle.

And looking over the activities that have happened to date, staff have really accomplished about

40-ish, 30-40% of the activities listed in Housing Albemarle, those have been removed from the comprehensive plan as they are already in play.

And so what you see here is what is moving forward within AC44 itself.

Some of the new activities that are included in this chapter, but not directly included in Housing Albemarle are ties to Housing Around Activities Center, providing more detailed guidance for area plans and updates, including missing middle housing.

adaptive reuse of existing buildings, transforming old commercial spaces into affordable housing or market rate housing and placing a greater emphasis on climate action within the housing chapter.

If you remember, Housing Albemarle really focuses strictly on affordable housing and so looking at households earning incomes at 80% AMI or below has been the focus to date.

Thank you, Stacy.

And then just looking in a little bit more detail about the overlap with the other comprehensive plan chapters for transportation, making sure housing is connected to daily destinations.

The Planning Commission talked about transportation last night, and that chapter will be coming to you all soon.

But just noting that looks a little bit different in the rural area and the development areas, but is still needed for both.

And then for land use, having those future land use categories, which recommend different housing types and then how we designate those on the future land use map.

Thriving economy, of course, housing is where jobs go at the end of the day, so having housing for that variety of spectrum of needs.

And then community facilities to support development and new housing.

So just a quick look at the schedule.

The planning commission discussed the housing chapter on April 8th, and then we had a lunch and learn for both housing and community facilities chapters on April 24th.

Transportation, as mentioned, that was discussed by the commission last evening and will be coming to the board on May 28th.

We also have an in-person community meeting on May 22nd at Journey Middle School.

Then there's the cultural resources chapter going to the commission on May 27th and to the board on June 4th and there will be a virtual lunch and learn for that topic in June.

So we like to include this slide toward the end just for folks that may be listening and encourage them to go to the website at engage.albemarle.org slash ac44

That's where all of the chapters are being posted and there's opportunities to provide feedback online.

And as mentioned, events like the May 22nd transportation event will continue to be posted there.

So these are the two discussion questions that we are asking for feedback on.

I'm happy to start with those and then also leave time for feedback on the rest of the chapter, especially the objectives and actions and happy to take any questions.

Thank you.

We'll go through our order and address both of the questions on the slide, if you will.

Then we'll come back and go through the actions and objectives and other comments on the chapter.

So to start with this idea of, again, factors to analyze in the case of outside development areas and in the case of inside where activity, other locations.

OK, so I was looking in my email for this in advance, but I didn't find it.

So the first one is in the growth area, when we do the master plan updates that are coming, then

I guess somewhere in here you made a comment about the middle density.

That was part of, was told to everybody when the Crozier Master Plan was done that this would be generalized growth area everywhere else when that was adopted.

So that's high priority because that's what everybody's already been told and I do hope that that will be continued on.

But all of the other EG's, I mean I don't have anything I guess in addition to those except

Nowhere are we talking about the way that environment or green space or something can be woven in.

So we're not just creating a concrete jungle, but actually maintaining what natural features we can in order to make the places desirable to live in.

And then for the second bullet.

The reason historically why public water and sewer has been essential is because on very small lots you cannot have a well and septic, well and septic, well and septic without having calamity.

So I don't really have something in addition to what's historically been done

A lot of the staff report on an earlier application talked about all the things that were I think important to the future residents there in addition and somewhere in the staff reports

that was talking about modular housing as opposed to manufactured and how that is the element that I would hope would be emphasized because it allows residents to have equity as opposed to just be stuck in an exploitative situation.

Supervisor Rapisto-Kirtley?

Yes, so as far as number, the first bullet

The activity centers and mixed-use areas are you talking about?

I think Supervisor Mallek brought it up.

Are you talking about in the development area or in the rural area?

Yes, the first one is focused on the development areas.

OK.

I agree with activity centers and mixed-use areas, transit walkability.

One thing that I think is important, but I don't want to limit it to that because maybe there's a suggestion that comes up in the future area plan that we haven't even thought of now.

Maybe there's a new way of constructing some kind of a home or tall apartment buildings that we're not even thinking of.

But what you have written there is

That sounds good to me.

Outside the development areas, that I think would, at least for me, would almost have to be on a case-by-case basis.

Once again, I agree with sewer and water is the driving factor.

So if you have a group of

If you have a manufactured home park or a large development area, medium development area with a number of units, you want to be able to provide that water and sewer.

So I think the water and sewer is actually going to be driving the train, so to speak.

That's it.