Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   8/6/2025

Supervisor Andrews.

Hello.

Would you please state your location and your reason for remote participation?

I am on Gistrick Road in Sorrento, Maine for a personal family event.

Without objection, if the clerk will call the roll.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

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

Everybody okay?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

I am looking around to see if any supervisors have anything that they would like to add.

Thank you.

Jim, okay.

I'm fine with it.

And the clerk will call the roll.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

And I think everyone has the order, so I will start with announcements from Supervisor Pruitt.

I will not email you or conduct business related to my campaign from this perspective.

I think there was one other thing I wanted to say about this, but I forget what it was.

We can come back to you if you think

Thank you, that's all I have.

I have to ask, did you get the right size putter?

Supervisor Mallek.

Thank you.

I would think that would be interesting for neighborhood associations.

They just would love to have clusters of people who can get together.

I'm going to mention it to several that I know.

That's great.

Supervisor Andrews.

Thank you.

And with that, did you think about what you were going to say?

And I apologize to the public in the meantime if I am not as responsive as I would hope to be.

I'm just curious.

It's mid-September.

Thank you.

And Supervisor Pruitt will read it in the form of a motion.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, endorse the values of inclusivity and cultural appreciation and encourage community members to participate in the wide range of Soul of Seaville festival activities from August 10th through August 17th.

Would you call the roll?

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Yes.

That's good.

You can't hear me?

Yep.

OK.

Thank you.

And I know the supervisors probably would like to add some comments, so stay where you are, and I'll turn to Supervisor Pruitt.

Thank you.

Best in Black Seaville is actually I organized the award ceremony as part of solo Seaville this year.

I got to see if there's anything I need to vote for Deja.

I want you to say it again.

So the big day is August 16th that's at ICS but we have programming all week August 10th through 17th we have some satellite events but three of the four of the events will actually be at ICS so I would check out their lineup on their website okay and that's August 16th mm-hmm from when to when from four to eight pardon four until eight four to eight okay I just wanted everyone to hear that thank you very much Kalila all right supervisor Malek

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

And again, congratulations, and thank you for being here.

Come back to see us.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley will read the rules and introduce the speakers.

and our first speaker today is Peter Krebs.

Thank you so much.

Our next speaker is Stuart Overby.

We want to make sure we hear you clearly.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you.

And if you have anything you want to share with the board clerk, feel free to do that.

And our last speaker is Denise Tanner Belfan.

We call the police and the police tell us that there's nothing that they're able to do because legally because they're working on a school building that the ordinance says that they're able to do construction at any hour.

All right.

So moved.

Second.

Would you call the roll?

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Thank you very much.

What's she doing?

the county that the board approved funding initially for this program with ARPA funds and so this is to continue that partnership through at least the next year or two and the funding again will ensure services continue and staff recommends that the board approve fully funding both programs today and that is the end of my presentation and I'm happy to take any questions

Thank you very much, and before I ask the supervisor to see if they have any questions or comments, I want to let you know that as the sitting chair today, I am awarding you a promotion.

because our note said assistant director of housing and we all know up here that you are the director of housing so my official duty is to give you a promotion.

That may have been my fault when I put the thing in the promotion is recent so I may have still called myself assistant.

Supervisor Pruitt.

I'm curious if there's any match funds from the city or from PHA itself or either of the, because there's another partner involved, not just PHA, right?

I believe there is, but we would have to confirm that.

That's all I got.

How successful was that program?

They help connect them to security deposit assistance or other types of assistance they have, so it's a pretty valuable service.

All right.

This is for, is it weatherization or is it cost to help pay electric bills?

No, it's to make homes more energy efficient.

And that's from the PHA side, not the county side.

So no, those are county residents that were served through that program.

Your office, for example.

So we actually refer them to the housing navigation program to help with that.

And that's a lack of authority to do that or decisions?

So that is their specific role.

Thank you very much.

Supervisor Andrews.

Thank you.

I got an update of that this morning.

That's even better.

entertain a motion to approve the full amount of funding being requested.

So moved.

Second.

Without objection, would you call the roll?

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Andrews?

All right.

And I got your title right, I'm sure.

Thank you, and any questions?

Supervisor Pruitt?

I'll wait to see what my peers have to say.

Supervisor Mallek.

The status quo would just continue through the winter, even though our permit to keep the gates there expires in October.

And if we move forward, we're not going to, I don't think, have a battle back and forth between them.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews.

What are the plans to measure that?

For my part, I think this is a wonderful project and I'm very supportive of it.

Help me out just a little bit with

It talks about public art, play equipment, and these are just examples, but you all are looking at, assuming that we approve this, right, you are looking to, and could you just talk a little bit about what the future might look like for the public?

Can I see what you're holding up?

It's from the master plan.

Okay, yeah, those are examples of facilities that can be done either, again, through CIP or through... Kevin's behind you.

There you go.

I think that those are meant parking issues are mentioned in there but there's a lot of things that are mentioned I think that are really more further down the line that we might want to look into the immediate needs or parking and access right now I think.

But obviously there are other basics that have to be addressed first, but I couldn't let it go without at least mentioning it.

Are there costs associated with making permanent our removal from the VDOT road system?

And then if we get that, we would come back to the board to talk about how any of those improvements would be funded at that time.

Or are we having an engineer say what it would look like?

We are hiring an engineer to address what they think our needs are, what that design would look like, and give us cost estimates.

It sounds like it's getting at that.

I think it's really the necessary next step.

Or not a build-ready, but a proposal solicitation ready blueprint that actually shows.

We're looking at 30% is what we're going to try and get to so that we can determine if we want to invest, how much additional money we want to invest in the actual construction final design.

Any other?

All right.

If you would call the roll.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

All right.

That's great.

That does seem like a long time, though, in 2004.

Remember.

I want to make sure you're all done.

I just thought about this so I hadn't prepared anything in my head in advance.

One of the items that you could consider you could take your 15-minute break and what you could do is you could slot item 17 presentation on biophilic cities by Mr. Ellington which is supposed to start at six o'clock and then that's going to get you 15 minutes of extra time this evening on a long evening and

If he's available, that would be great.

He can be teed up and ready to go, and provided that Mr. Herrick.

If there's no objection to the board's rearrangement of the agenda, if the board's in agreement with that rearrangement of the agenda.

I really think data centers is high enough interest that I don't want to start.

Sure, sure.

Thank you.

We're live.

We'll introduce our presenter.

Interesting.

Good.

Welcome.

There you go.

Coming up.

Thank you.

Supervisor Pruitt?

So can we actually go to the previous slide?

Sure.

Is there a significant additional deliverable other than the recurring monthly call and the narrative that looks like biannually?

That would be in the works.

It does not seem like we've thought coherently about how we want this to be realized, if it's going to be a core strut of our mission, where it should be housed, where it should live, where we should think about it moving forward.

Well.

And Mike Ann is coming up.

And if you think I'm mischaracterizing this.

But I do believe that that climate leadership team is helping really to provide more, as we would call leadership intent, broader supervision, discussion about key climate efforts and projects that we are undertaking.

What is the periodicity of that meeting?

I'm sorry.

Of the climate leadership kind of roundtable that's interdepartmental?

At some point, we'll figure out the right cadence for those meetings.

Maybe slightly more robust, but they don't have any devolved powers from the state.

The only comparison I have is the neighborhood associations in Arlington have their own funding and a tremendous amount of decision making, but I don't know what this, this is a different county, so I don't know exactly what the details are.

Anyway, just some musing for my MBA student.

The city's term here, you know, you have, yeah, Arlington, it's a loose term, you know.

All right.

I don't know.

and you know go start that as a baseline and then you know do some rigging on our side following intervention.

Wall is going to speak.

that we want to look at.

All right.

Supervisor Mallek.

Thank you.

All right, Supervisor Andrews.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You've been participating in our events and coming to our meetings and I just really appreciate that.

That's thanks to wonderful leadership.

they're doing a lot of work as I go to the meetings as a liaison around climate change and just to say that as we're doing this work if there are occasions or opportunities to include the staffs climate change folk I mean the school's climate change folks would be a great connection perhaps because maybe they can get some help too.

and so one of them could directly be related to education and making sure that everyone is aware of you know not just because there is a distinction between biophilia and you know that's human nature connection whereas climate action is more reduction strictly of greenhouse gases but they're complementary you know and there's a lot that can benefit both so I look forward to you know upon direction from the board potentially looking at indicators that could track that.

Jim, are you nodding your head?

I just want to say I've worked with you on the EDA here.

I know we all have worked with you.

We think you belong here, so you need to move on back and join us.

It's a true honor.

That's the wrong supervisor.

Sorry.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you, Ned.

I am in Fort Myers, Florida with my family.

Congratulations.

Would the clerk call the roll?

McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Pruitt?

Aye.

Mr. Andrews?

Absolutely.

Just one second.

There you go.

Bill Fritz, Development Process Manager with the Community Development Department.

And you can take it away.

and Jacob Summers is going to give you a presentation now.

And with that, I'll turn it back over to Bill to walk through the rest of the slides.

And with that, I'm going to end my presentation and try to answer any questions that you have.

The existing are the ones that we determined during phase one.

In April.

And now you're coming back to us with changes to phase one, which is phase two.

Correct, and just so where we started with that is during phase one there was direction from the board and the Planning Commission about what to look at in phase two and that's how we started doing this work for the phase two regulations.

That gives you the chit that you can come back again.

But I guess, is this something we see in other ordinances in peer localities?

So that's one that we're still working a little bit on also.

That's all I have.

I'm assuming that you would like staff to respond to your concerns or questions.

If you think that my big normative concerns are appropriate for response.

We were asking.

Oh, I was answering questions, sorry.

Well, we are answering questions, but at the same time, asking staff to respond to the concerns and questions I think is appropriate.

Sure.

But I think they need the questions, so.

knock-on costs to consumers, especially if there are upgrades to the grid that are required?

And I can't say anything beyond that, really.

And I know that our peers in the GA, I think, are currently grappling with this exact issue, trying to require that they not have these knock-on costs, but it's stalling out.

The bills were to assure that they did not pass on these higher costs of the new infrastructure to the residential consumers, but none of these bills succeeded.

I talked about

Those were, I think, the two things that could be formed into substantive questions.

Ned, you're there somewhere.

Let's do a check if you're able to hear me.

Yes, we can.

of existing businesses.

We've had some conversations with other jurisdictions, the water authorities there, and the information they're giving us is that their actual experience is that data centers are consuming water at a rate equal to or sometimes less than comparable sized office buildings.

So they require less water, or they can recycle the water that they would use for cooling.

And then do we have any sense on electrical?

No, we don't.

I think that's right, yes.

So they, in their modeling, they're already doing those kinds of things.

Do I have that right in the way I'm thinking about that?

Once that equipment is obsolete and needs to be replaced, the replacement equipment comes in at a higher value and then that depreciation schedule will be reset at that 25% of original cost.

But when we think of machinery or the things that get taxed this way throughout the rest of the county, what's the majority of things that are being taxed business-wise that would be similar to this type of expense?

And so that is a separate category in and of itself too.

We're taxing all of their computer equipment?

So anything that, you know, those registers, everything used in their electronic inventorying system would be accounted as part of that business tangible personal property, and even really the racks that are housing the inventory as well.

Could be.

Yes, sir.

We're dealing with this reality now in terms of the depreciating assets of what we tax, things get replaced, and then the value restores and we tax, and we just have to account for that in the course of doing our financial plan.

That's correct.

Was the idea, well I'll just ask the question, what was the idea behind the tiers again or the rationale?

You start seeing that size building over and over again.

And I would say too that the idea behind having tiers is that perhaps some property is smaller or it's adjacent to residential development at a density that you can't really, you know, appropriately build a larger data center and be able to offset the impacts.

So that's one area where we could have some definitive impact on it.

You hit it nail right on the head.