Board of Supervisors Special Meeting - Legislative Forum   12/1/2025

Welcome.

I'd like to call together our special session which is the priority of our legislators on December 1st here at 10 a.m.

room 241 and right off the back door.

We've got Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Mike Pruitt of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea

I also want to call attention to Mr. Richard

Jefferson, Jeff Richardson, our County Executive, Mr. Andy Herrick, our County Attorney, Chief Assemblyman Kilroy, Director of Economic Development at the table, Senator Dermott, Deputy Director of Planning at the behind.

I'll mention David Bump, who is in the audience.

He's with us at Jefferson Planning District Commission.

We'll hear from David.

I'd also like to welcome our alma mater police officers, President Officer Enzo Girozari and Officer Lauren Daley, thank you for your service today and everything on our behalf.

But mostly, I'd really like to welcome at this point, our delegate president.

Amy Laufer of the 55th House District.

Welcome, Delegate Laufer.

I'm honored to have you here and I look forward to a conversation about our priorities.

I hope we'll be joined soon by Delegate

And we're also joined, thank you, Tracey Epper, legislative director for Senator Drew Gaines.

We're unable to be here today, but you'll be representing him and we appreciate your presence.

Thank you.

I would love to give all the background and all the honors, but I think we want to get right to it because two hours goes very quickly.

Thank you, Supervisor Andrews.

This is the rough look at the agenda, and I'm going to transition to the podium.

Amy Herrick, the County Attorney, and Kevin McDermott and I will take us through some slides and then there's plenty of time for discussion throughout.

If you have a burning question about anything that we're going over, please feel free to ask a question.

Don't feel like you need to wait.

And I'm excited to be talking about AstraZeneca.

and really an update on the Rivanna teachers project in the context of the AstraZeneca announcement earlier this year.

And we wanted to take a minute as part of the legislative forum to go over some of this with you all.

Many of you were able to join us at the announcement event itself and you've certainly seen some of the news articles.

But we wanted to sort of recognize the support that we've had at the state level on the Rivanna Futures Project, which has been many years in the making, but really positioned us to be successful for AstraZeneca.

And we thought it was important to just recognize that a little bit today.

So this is a graphic from the Rivanna Futures work that we've really kicked off in earnest in 2023 that you all have seen before.

It sort of lays out the context for the county's land acquisition directly adjacent to Rivanna Station, which is

Military Installation in Albemarle County.

That is the operating location for the National Grand Intelligence Center.

There's a Defense Intelligence Agency presence here and support teams from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

And that's in the areas labeled number one, two, and three.

There's a private office building that is located directly adjacent to the secure perimeter there.

That is office space that's used by the mission of Rivanna Station.

And then there have been, for a very long time, all of this undeveloped property around

Rivanna Station.

Several years ago the county, really in partnership with the state, the Veterans of Defense Affairs Secretariat, a real focus on this being the only military installation in the Commonwealth of Virginia that has land available for expansion surrounding it.

Every other location in the Commonwealth is either surrounded by development or surrounded by water.

The defense sector is a really critically important one for the

Virginia Economy, and so it was of keen interest, really driven out of that office.

We talked last time we were together about this idea that the Rivanna Futures Project was locally driven, state supported, and federally shared, so much bigger of an opportunity than just Albemarle County, and there's a lot of things to say about that now.

So state supported.

Staff have been invited to participate in annual briefings to the GMBIC.

Many of you have joined us at those briefings over the years just to get sort of a state of the property and the mission set there compared to other military installations in the Commonwealth.

Rivanna Station has flown a little bit below the radar because of the nature of the work that they do there and so it's been really important to sort of raise awareness through those

General Assembly Military Veterans Caucus meetings about the work that they do here in Albemarle.

You all have been very supportive with state budget requests introduced in 2024 and 2025 towards Nevada future site readiness.

And while state budget requests have not been successful through the end of the process, we think a lot of that has raised a lot of awareness about the opportunity.

And we have been successful in getting $11 million

in site readiness funding from the state, from the entities listed there, which have really enabled us to advance the work for property development that, again, has positioned us really well for the AstraZeneca opportunity.

I just really wanted to take a moment to say thank you for the support at the state level in helping to bring this vision that has felt multi-decade to fruition so quickly.

And so this is an update to that graphic.

This is showing where AstraZeneca will be located as they complete their development over the next several years.

It's a total of 82 acres of the property, which is incredible.

The earlier version of this graphic had this area labeled as 30 acres.

and this was a combined 55 acres.

Through the process of working with AstraZeneca to site their facility, we've sort of re-looked at how we conceived what areas are developable and what areas are not developable.

We had originally conceived this area in particular as being perhaps office, suited for office type uses.

manufacturing footprint is much different than office and so we've learned a lot along the way on what's possible and so you'll see the total developable acreage has increased significantly and we'll be focusing on making sure that AstraZeneca lands successfully on the timeline that they have identified for their facility to open.

as well as what the future for this Land Bay 25 and this now Land Bay 55 look like and that's some of the exciting work ahead.

This is a concept, early concept, for what the AfterZeneca facility will look like.

This is the office building that will be sort of the front door to the facility.

There's a lot of green building principles sort of hidden in this picture.

There's laminated timber construction.

Lots of opportunities for daylighting.

They have a real strong corporate commitment to sustainable building practices, and we look forward as they refine their designs to being able to share more what that looks like, but really living the value of sustainability through their built environment.

Just some of the numbers that we're excited about.

It's one biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus.

They're actually locating two manufacturing facilities within that.

It sits on 82 acres.

There will be 600 direct new jobs associated with the facilities, primarily manufacturing jobs.

But as you might imagine, HR finance-type functions will be located there as well.

They're estimating 3,000 construction jobs that will last several years to build a facility.

and Prep the Land for it.

And then, AstraZeneca, from their own experience in other places, has a multiplier of every job they create directly.

It indirectly creates five jobs, and so their number is 3,000 indirect and induced jobs associated with what they do there.

The minimum salary for these jobs is $125,000 a year, which is just incredible, especially given that so many are manufacturing jobs.

And the capital investment by the company on the property will be $4.5 billion.

I talked a little bit about green building.

They do have a corporate commitment to carbon neutral operations in the next several years.

They'll be working on-site to site solar panels on top of roofs, some ground solar panels as well, and then any additional energy that they need to power the facility.

They're working with their energy provider to get green energy out of their production portfolio.

and then they also have a big emphasis on closing systems as part of their manufacturing process.

We highlight this information because one of the first cuts that they made when they were looking for a facility in Virginia was communities that have a commitment to sustainability and Albemarle County made it through that cut very strongly because of some of the work that the Board of Supervisors has led on climate action, biodiversity action, etc.

The two facilities have two different production types.

One is a biologics facility, the other is small molecules.

You can see just a little bit of information about when they plan to open and the types of buildings that will be associated with each.

And that's what I have on that.

Again, really just wanted to make sure that you all have the latest information on the AstraZeneca project and to thank you again for your continued support.

Hello, I'm Kevin McDermott.

I'm the Deputy Director of Planning here at Albemarle County, and I was asked to talk a little bit about transportation funding in Albemarle County.

As I get started, I just want to make sure that everyone recognizes that

Albemarle, kind of like most localities in the state, primarily relies on state funding to do our transportation projects, and we do that through two major programs, SmartScale, which I'm gonna really focus on in this presentation, and then the revenue sharing program.

I don't have a lot on that because it's a fairly stable program.

It provides every other year $10 million that would be matched with the local amount of $10 million for any transportation project that we select.

That has remained.

Right now there's about $200 million available in the state overall for those programs.

That has not really kept up with inflation.

$200 million does go far, though, and so we've taken advantage of that almost every year.

come close to maximizing that $10 million in state funding by matching with the local match.

But I'm going to focus more on this presentation on smart scale because really that's where we get the significant amount of funding that we rely on for our transportation projects.

All the major projects come out of that program.

So this is some information that came from our Culpepper District Planning Department and what you can see here is each round of SmartScale.

So six rounds we've had and just to remind everybody that in the first two rounds those were annual and then they went to biannually after that.

So really if you wanted to compare apples to apples then

and you would want to add those two, round one and round two together.

Really, I want to focus on a few of these numbers.

What you can see here is the total funding.

This is statewide, what has been requested.

You can see that that number has remained generally similar with a little bit of an increase towards the end here.

and then of course the total funding allocated and once again you see that number it was high in those first couple years and remained generally the same through these last three years with a little bit of a decrease recently.

and the important thing to note about that is that when you look at the number of projects that were funded throughout the state, you can see that number has kind of gone down and this most recent round, the round that was awarded in the FY26 six-year plan, was only 53 projects in the entire state.

So throughout all of Virginia, only 53 projects were awarded money through SmartScale, this primary source of funds that we have for transportation.

Moving down a little more locally, Culpepper SmartScale allocations.

This just shows the way SmartScale is done is it's broken up into two different pots of money.

One is for the high priority projects and the second is for the district grant program.

So the district grant program for us only comes from, we only compete against the Culpepper district projects.

And what you can see here once again is that the numbers have

gone up and down throughout the years.

But the number of projects that got funded in Culpeper remained fairly steady if you were to average those.

But once again, in this most recent round, you see that dropping down to only four projects in the entire Culpeper district, which is very few.

Kevin, do you want us to ask questions at the end?

Or do you want us to... What do you want to do?

I was going to say, while you're mentioning both of those slides, can you help us with the why?

Yes, and I'm actually going to kind of move into that.

I just think that's an important question.

I will say that the Commonwealth Transportation Board is the one who

who identifies the funding.

They're given an amount of funding for transportation.

Overall, first they pull out the maintenance funds.

One of the reasons we've seen these numbers go down is because maintenance costs have gone up.

That maintenance comes out first, and then they divide all the other money up among all the different construction programs they have.

And one of those is the Smart Scale Program, so the high priority project of the district grant program.

So that's why some of those numbers have gone down a little bit.

and so this is Albemarle County.

This is how we have done over these past six rounds.

The orange are the projects that we did not get funded.

The blue are the projects that were funded.

So you can see we're allowed to put in four applications from Albemarle County but also the Charlottesville Albemarle MPO is allowed to put in four additional ones and the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission is also allowed to put in four.

We continuously go to them and say, hey, if you have extra room for applications, could we get some more applications submitted on our behalf?

And that's why you see that we have been consistently asking, putting in about 12 applications every year.

More recently, we were instructed that we should really focus on higher priority projects for the county and for the state through their V-Trans program, things that were identified through V-Trans.

We have reduced that number a little bit.

We only did eight in this most recent round.

We had a good year in round four there.

In round four, the county did actually put in some of our local funds to try and buy down the cost of those projects.

This is a cost-benefit scoring analysis that's done.

That allowed us to get quite a few projects.

We put in about $9 million of local funds in that year.

Other than that, though, we've remained kind of steady.

We've had these couple years, including this most recent one, where we only had one project funded.

This just gives you kind of an idea as to what's going on there.

This is the total amount that Albemarle County has requested for each round.

In round three, I'll just say the reason that spike is there is because we actually submitted

three projects for the hydraulic 29 interchange.

I'm sure you all know that's a really big important interchange.

There were three different proposals for that.

And so that's why that number jumped up.

Each one was almost $100 million.

But when you look at the median amount of all those projects that were requested, you can see that it still remained even until you get in these last couple years.

And that's what it gets to your question, Supervisor McKeel, is that

What we've seen is that the cost of projects is significantly increased in these past two rounds.

That huge jump you see in the median that we've requested is kind of indicative of that.

And then just to give one example of this, this is a recent project that we had submitted.

We submitted it.

The actual cost estimate was done in 2022.

This was two rounds ago.

And it's for a roundabout proposal out on 250 right in front of Western Albemarle.

I don't know if you all know where that is.

This is Old Trail.

And so you can see it was a pretty standard

Roundabout, you have two lanes in most directions with one lane here.

That cost estimate in 2022 was almost $13 million.

In 2024, it was unsuccessful.

When we submitted it, it went up 30%.

And the only difference you can see in that is that we moved the stormwater basin from property that the county didn't own to property that the county did own.

So that was intended to try and reduce the cost of this.

So it just is kind of an example of how we see costs increasing.

And so I think overall what we're looking at here is that although monies remain steady and we're really grateful for the wins that we've had, the cost of all the projects has continuously gone up and so that's really where we're struggling to try and get all of our priority projects implemented.

and I'll also say that just down the road from here you all have probably gone through the 151-250 roundabout that was constructed quite a few years ago now.

That was submitted in around, I think the cost estimate was done in 2016.

I don't have any comments on the Rivanna Futures.

One, just a few weeks ago at Vaco, and now for two years in a row, doesn't really matter the size of the county, whether it's rural or urban, whether it's Northern Virginia or Southwest, everybody's talking about transportation funding, not just the funding of it, but then also the criteria to get things approved.

And it's a problem across the board.

So it's not just Albemarle County.

I think when you have over, in the last round of SmartScale, over 30 billion dollars in applications made when jurisdictions have to limit their applications.

So if you only get four, and it changed the last round of what the MPOs and the PBCs can submit, so the criteria of what they could submit, like Kevin talked about in years past, we max what we can ask through them, can't do it that way anymore.

Because now they can only submit certain types of projects, so now you can't even get your full 12 applications in, right?

So, you know, these aren't fluff projects.

their safety priorities, their economic development priorities, their congestion and flow priorities that match what the state says they want these transportation projects to be.

165 transportation priorities, and we can submit four every two years through SmartSkip.

So, you know, we just had Thanksgiving and I've noticed something in my house.

When I host a dinner for ten people, if six more want to show up, I either have to carve up the portions even further for them, or I have to go get more portions.

I'm going to be a bad host because their pie is a lot thinner than what it was the year

Any applications that we submitted, other than one that was portioned to Pantops that was already in play and had gone through a couple of rounds before, and they're not very big additions, but I think the only reason they got approved is because with the DDI and the other things they've been doing on Pantops, if you don't do these, then you limit what the impact of that project is.

So all this is the same whether it's rural roads, whether it's secondary roads, whether it's smart scale, you have maintenance costs that are rising, and you have transportation projects throughout the whole commonwealth that need to be done that aren't flawed.

And there's clearly not enough resources to get them done.

And it becomes the question of what can you do about that?

Delegate Reed this year at VACO sounded like he was talking off of the same talking points that Delegate Austin spoke about the year before at VACO.

And when I hear a Republican say the same things as a Democrat and they don't really answer the question about what they're going to do about transportation funding, they explain why we're in the funding system.

They seem to understand why we are where we are.

But I don't ever hear any possible solutions of how we're going to fix it other than, well, we've been thinking about trying to figure out if mileage used could be done and how we could do, but people don't want dongles in their cars.

Well that's to me just not, with all due respect, because I've never discussed this with you all, but that's really not a real educated conversation to have when we're barely funding at limited application requests through one program a third of projects that required a billion dollars of local matches.

I've been talking to my colleagues at the TJPDC.

You all should have received a letter, I don't know if you had a chance to read it, about a month or so ago, where all the counties that are under the TJPDC footprint agreed and spoke to the need and the situation that is transportation funding.

And we hope that you all will take this seriously going into this round.

I know there's a lot of competing things.

You are working at a scale that, you know, we all have similar things that we work with.

The hard one about transportation, is this something our citizens come to with this all the time?

and I can't just say, well, we could raise your taxes, I guess, here in Albemarle because that won't do anything about transportation funding because it's dictated through the state.

So I'm hoping you all can speak to that today.

I understand where it's at.

Delegate Reed did a good job of explaining what some of the big concerns are for the state budget, but at the end of the day, it's not an R or a D issue.

This is an issue where these projects aren't going to get less.

Maintenance isn't going to go down.

Costs aren't going to go down.

It's my opinion that we have to find a way to increase the portions and figure out what we're going to do about transportation funding or else the state's really going to languish with unmaintained roads, poorly operating roads, and no way to improve situations that are now critically a problem.

I agree with everything that Supervisor Galloway said.

I just wanted to ask

You said that there's a pot of money that comes from the state.

Yeah, just to switch the roads.

Yeah, so there's a maintenance fund.

I believe that has increased, yes.

And so that's my concern also is that we also have these, I get calls a lot that

VDOT is not maintaining the road or VDOT is not filling the potholes and things like that which that's important also I mean not only the projects that we have that we would like funded but also the maintenance of the roads if that money's going down also that's gonna just increase

You know, dangerous roads.

And I consider it a safety issue also because what's happening is that if we're not maintaining our roads, that is a safety issue.

I think we all agree with what Ned said and we said it very succinctly and clearly.

I would just add that Albemarle County over the last couple of years have had two pipeline projects.

Pipeline projects declare about VDOT, which means that they were projects of state significance.

VDOT

intentionally delayed one of the pipeline projects, which was the Abbey Road or Abbey Road 250.

They delayed that to come back and try to figure out a better solution.

But the Barracks Road pipeline project that was not funded, none of it was funded.

So to add to what Ned said, you have VDOT declared pipeline projects that are

Really important transportation projects based on statewide significance, right, that are not being funded.

Got to do something first.

We've got to make the pie better.

We used to say that when I was on the school board all the time.

We take the pie and we cut it in different sections, but the pie has to get better.

I would just again endorse the points that Supervisor Gallaway made and I would further add it's not lost on me that the caucus is disproportionately represented by people who are serving incorporated cities who

These issues do not fall in the same way and communities that are served by comprehensive transit systems who might not have these issues land on them in the same way.

This year we've seen

A growth in the caucus from communities that are not necessarily incorporated cities, which I think might create a window of opportunity here.

And I would further raise that, you know, that delegate offer specifically.

You are kind of alone in representing a very rural county-specific community heretofore.

Thank you.

Just two quick things to add regarding Rivanna Station.

Years and years of hard work went on behind the scenes.

And timing is everything, as they say.

So when the stars aligned, that was the reason why all of that was able to take that quantum leap forward.

I don't think anybody snapped their fingers and this happened.

And I just want to make sure people understand that.

What we need, in my opinion, is a Governor Belisle's moment here, where he staked his entire reputation on a tax increase dedicated to massive transportation improvements.

And he did not get run out of office.

It was a wonderful success.

And until the recession came along in 2008 and took away 700 million-dollar employees and massive amounts of funding, which was never replaced since then, we're back where we are.

And we have three million more people since he was governor.

I understand, I agree with all the things that have been put forward and it's a real situation that the Assembly will have to face, but hopefully some strong leadership will happen and get some serious changes, not just pushing the chairs around on the Titanic.

Again, comments made by my colleagues on the board.

I'll add one comment sort of on one field and let me know that I've read that housing is an issue throughout the commonwealth and that there would be a certain amount of focus on housing.

And of course when you have development housing development projects in the county, we get a lot of feedback from residents.

And one of the things we hear most common from residents is that, oh, this is going to just ruin our transportation.

because every time we increase it, that's why we have cars potentially on the road if we don't do it right, and we need that transportation to be functioning a little better than it has been.

I can just say that I've gone to many workshops about funding for, and a lot of things are happening.

I could probably just echo, I would delegate reset, so I won't, but I know that this is an issue.

you know the way we fund transportation is through a fuel tax but most of the cars are way more fuel efficient than they were when we started this so and then compound that to the electric vehicles which is part of why there is an electric vehicle tax because we're trying to get

There's a lot of questions about what is the transparency for VDOT.

I've been talking with Delegate Delaney, she's the chair of transportation, about what is this criteria.

There's a lot of ways we could be more efficient.

asphalt recycling, which is something I'm working on, making sure that we can make the road with the same asphalt and actually save millions of dollars, if not billions, and time efficiency.

So that's the kind of where I've been trying to focus my energy on, is how can we do it more efficiently and cost-effectively.

Thank you.

Amy, could I just add to what you were talking about about efficiency?

The Highway Research Council a few years back used a report that suggested that bridges in Virginia at the end of the winter would be washed to rid them of the salt.

and they said the life expectancy of the bridges would be expanded exponentially just to get the salt off of them.

And what VDOT would have said was that they didn't have the money to wash the bridges.

I'm just saying that some of those sorts of things, yes.

And that's another example of what you're talking about.

I was just trying to give you another example.

Well, you know, I will definitely look into this.

If it was in the packet, I would have, like, you know, me.

I would have dove head first.

Yeah, I would just, oh, Tracy, did you want to go?

She's like, no, I'm good.

I would echo what Supervisor Pruitt said, and I think there's a window of opportunity that's happening right now, not to use fluff language, but we have a whole new administration coming in.

So you're talking about frustrations you have felt over the past couple of years.

My hope is that conversations like this, this is new to me, Supervisor Galloway.

I had not heard conversations about VDOT in our meetings in the past, so it's new to me.

I hope conversations like this will make their way to Governor Spanberger and her team.

There's going to be a brand new administration.

I'm presuming a lot of new people in the Department of Transportation and it would absolutely, Supervisor Mallek, be a time where there can be a moment to focus on transportation.

So I would encourage you guys to continue to do the advocacy you're doing on it at the state level.

And then I don't have

I mean I would just be honest I don't have much more to offer on the transportation.

I don't sit on the transportation committee.

It's not typically my wheelhouse.

I would have to get prepared.

What I can offer you is that Amy and I sit on finance and we did just do the finance retreat and they gave us the predictions about what they're seeing next year.

So I'm happy to share that with you all the slides that we got about the transportation and then I can just tell you that the pie is

The pie metaphor almost doesn't even work anymore.

The pie is all kinds of messed up right now.

You know, we got federal things happening that are making the pie having to get split up in ways that don't even make sense.

And so, you know, the work that I've done, and I know if Senator Deeds was here, he would echo it, has been so much on the Medicaid front.

It is just such a big chunk of the pie that my conversations haven't really been on the transportation front.

I'll have to say I hear you because it was loud and clear and it was repeated by all of you that VDOT is the frustration and that your projects aren't getting funded and that our roads are not being kept the way that they need to be and there needs to be something done.

And I would just mention too, Highway 81 was a major project that was really siphoning in a lot of funds, which is kind of closing, we're in the closing stages of that, so that was a major effort, and that was multi-jurisdictions, and that was really the rule aspect was to make that a safer highway, and I know a lot of funds have been

you know, specific to that.

And then of course we were trying to extend rail up in Northern Virginia into the Fredericksburg, Stafford County.

I will also add finance is one area that I do actually anticipate there being a bit of movement.

You're talking about finance as taxation and how we give revenue for our state and I do think there will be movement there.

It's going to be the first time that there's been kind of an administrative change.

There's going to be majorities in place.

There's things that can be done to kind of right size the taxation in Virginia that could make it so that

I think people, regular people are not necessarily being taxed more, but we are having more revenue generated.

Thank you for carrying a message back to Senator Gates.

We'll turn it back over to Mr. Eric.

So good morning.

I'm Andy Herrick, the county attorney.

It's a pleasure to be with you all this morning.

And I'm going to be going over in just a few brief slides the county's 2026 legislative program.

Before I begin depending on that, in addition to Ms.

Kilgore, I'd like to thank our legal services coordinator, James Douglas, and David Bond with the TJPDC for their work in preparing this year's program.

What we did this year is we reorganized and restructured our program to hopefully make it more succinct and easier for folks to present and to discuss.

We replaced a series of nearly 50 legislative positions with a series of priorities and principles.

And each of you should have on your desks in front of you the county's legislative program.

And I'll walk again through very briefly in a few slides the priorities, the principles, and then the positions as well.

So among the county's priorities, we have four basic priorities, three of which have to do with proposed amendments to the Virginia Code and one of which is a proposed budget amendment.

The first of the code amendments is to enable localities to enforce the Virginia Landlord Tenant Act.

and that is because what we're finding is that so many tenants find themselves in substandard housing, have the issues, and don't have the resources to enforce it.

What we're asking is for the enabling authority on the local option for localities to be able to enforce this act to allow the localities to take upon themselves the ability to enforce the remediation of substandard housing conditions.

We're also asking for expanded authority to use photo speed monitoring devices.

This is a repeat request that has been made in prior years.

Right now the authority for photo speed enforcement is limited to construction zones and school areas.

We're asking for the authority that localities have the ability to petition for the ability to have that in specific other areas as well.

Our third request is for a referendum on a local option one cent sales tax for school construction, school capital projects.

I'm sure that the delegation is very familiar with this request.

We've been very pleased to have your support on this in the past years.

As you know, for the benefit of our audience, this is a proposal that has made its way, has been approved, as I understand, by the last two sessions of the General Assembly and then vetoed at the gubernatorial level.

Obviously, we're going to hope for better results in the upcoming session, but again, this is an important priority to the county that we'd ask the delegation support on this year to allow localities to have the ability.

Again, it's not necessarily an automatic tax increase.

It's just allowing localities to decide for themselves to have a referendum for this one cent sales tax.

And then finally, we're asking for a budget amendment to enable the construction of a trail in the county's Biscuit Run Park, specifically a request for approximately $1.5 million.

Again, we were very pleased that this request made it through the assembly this year and unfortunately was vetoed.

Again, we would renew this request this year.

Biscuit Run Park, as the delegation may be aware, is a state-owned property that the county leases.

The county is simply seeking to enable the state's vision for the development of this park.

The county has opened the park in limited areas in December of 2024.

As we continue to develop the park, we're looking for the state to join us in investing in it and looking for the delegation's support on this continued funding request.

So those are the four priorities that you see in the first few pages of the legislative program.

It's then followed by a series of principles and again we tried to slim down the extended list of positions that we had and just have legislative principles that would articulate in broad brush strokes what the county seeks.

increase enabling authority, the ability to enforce and support our strategic and comprehensive plan, expanded local authority related to land use and taxation, providing state support for mandated activities, especially education, and promoting environmental sustainability.

And you'll see that we have in the

We did it at the same time.

So we both advanced the slide.

But this is the next slide.

So we have this series of legislative positions.

So in addition to the legislative principles, we have behind it a series of legislative positions.

And we managed to slim that down again from about 50

physician statements in the prior year to just 28 this year that's organized into the same general areas that our legislative principles are.

They're grouped by broadband and the internet, economic development.

We have several in this third category, growth management, environmental protection, land use, and transportation, health and human services, housing, local government finance, and public safety.

And again, just seeking to avoid unfunded mandates at the local level and increased enabling authority.

So that's just in a brief overview of the county's legislative program, again, that should be at each of your desks.

Yes, let's hop in.

1% sales tax is going to be brought again.

I'm not going to be the patron.

I don't believe Walter.

This is going to be the chairs of education.

It's going to be the same people carried it in the past.

I anticipate, can't promise anything, but I anticipate it would pass.

It passed with over 2 thirds of the vote of the General Assembly.

I anticipate it would pass through Governor-elect Spanberger as well, because typically something that has 2 thirds of the vote of the General Assembly would be approved.

So that one, I'm feeling good about.

I'm going to have a win, hopefully.

I will let you talk about photo speed device monitoring, which you've carried a bill for them in the past.

I will jump in before I hand it over with the Virginia Landlord Tenant Act.

Today's the deadline for drafting, so I did not put that in for drafting, but I could do that.

And then we can talk, Supervisor Pruitt, and we can talk about how that's happening.

I have a different thing, which is coming out of home, and one other advocacy group, which is about having the warranty of habitability via affirmative defense for nonpayment of rent if someone brings suit against a tenant.

So a different thing, but same wheelhouse.

And so let's just talk.

I will raise, so this has been in our position before, rather than our priorities.

Previously been a bill brought by a delegate to the Price.

And I have been assuming she's bringing it again, because she's very passionate about it.

So I don't think it needs to be put in for drafting.

OK, great.

Well, then I'll stick with mine.

I'll check with Price to make sure that she has it done.

And then that one should be in.

Yeah.

We almost had it passed last year, but it was going to have 18 amendments on the House floor, which people felt pretty strongly it was not a great idea to open up 18 different amendments.

I would say two concerns about this.

One was many of the localities actually had a lot of their revenue stream was coming from the speed cameras and trying to make sure that that is a fund that doesn't feel usurous and that we make sure that it's funding like walkability.

There became like a whole group of subtext of what projects could be funded with a speed camera.

violation.

And then the other one was the idea of tracking so much information about people.

So this is still a question of how long can the, as we're using more technology to, because we have not enough workforce, et cetera, and some of these roads are too difficult to actually patrol, what are we doing with the information

that is collected, people that haven't violated it and making sure that their privacy is maintained.

So there was a bill, I think Charnell had that last year, on how long you could keep the information and what it could be used for.

So that's still somewhat of a concern.

I think Charnell's bill kind of helped with that, but there's just a lot of parts, especially right now with the Federal Administration and how they're monitoring citizens and the concern that this might be potential to be used for that kind of monitoring.

I talked to Delegate Seibel.

She's still putting it together.

She's working with Delegate Delaney, who is the chair of transportation, making it a bill that feels doable to us.

And we weren't the only locality that wants this, just so you know.

It was widespread.

A lot of the folks are really looking at it for pedestrian safety beyond school zones, but also they have a lot of high traffic roads that are retail and a lot of fatalities.

But ours was very specific to rural roads with a certain criteria that were locally driven.

which we're still trying to make sure her bill contains that.

I could put in my own but I know what's going to happen is we're going to try to make it one bill because, you know, it'll be too confusing unless I could get some rural folks to jump on board with me.

That might make a compelling argument for it but Delia Seibold is definitely, she, and we were working very hard

So I guess I know I heard from you all how many violations you have within like the first month is several thousand.

But it's gone down.

So actually, in that regard, it works.

Changing behavior.

Yeah, it changes the behavior.

So in that regard,

Actually, that was my argument, was we see that it changes behavior.

It actually reduced, you know, so, right.

It's a balancing act, you know, with all the other things that we're talking about, the revenue stream and then the monitoring.

So I think generally those three issues and they mentioned like Delia Price, on the Senate side the one-cent sales tax is typically carried by Senator Mike.

So we'll make sure that he's putting that in again this year and it's back to that it'll be signed.

In terms of those bills that are typically carried by other people, then we'll just make sure that Serenite signs on as a co-patron and try to help if we can with that.

Obviously, he carried the Biscuit-Robbage Amendment last year.

It was wiped away.

It felt a little personal.

It wasn't the only one of his to get swept away.

Obviously he will try for that again this year.

The budget situation is much different than it was last year.

We've already talked about it.

increased demands with Medicaid on top of K through 12 benchmarking.

There's just a lot of financial pressures outside of the hits that we're getting because of actions at the federal level.

I'll be putting in the Biscuit Run budget amendment as well.

And I think you did a great job reminding everyone that it's actually state-owned.

It is.

It's really fulfilling their obligation to some extent.

And I will just say, because I've got to, you know, it's not, having a paved, walkable path is important for so many segments of our population.

I just always think that when I had my two young children, how I could only go to pathways that had that so that I could push them on a stroller.

So any opportunity we have to expand that, I'm fully behind.

And I should have mentioned, Senator Deeds was fully intending to be here.

They scheduled a education subcommittee meeting of Senate Finance and Appropriations.

In case nobody was aware, there's a lot of action in the higher education space.

We're happy for him to be here.

I mean, he was going to be sort of a problem on the kind of meeting.

But anyway, so he's in Richmond for that meeting.

But I guess the popcorn hasn't been delayed to January, so... We appreciate you being here.

I just want to mention thank you very much for your support actually on all of these.

We really do appreciate that because those are all very meaningful to all of us.

Regarding the photo sweep cameras, thank you again for, you know, I'd love to be able to get this across and I understand the privacy aspect however way I'll know there is no privacy.

But whatever they do come up with regarding not keeping the information and such, that would work.

It's a way for us to keep our rural roads, not all of them of course, but certain rural roads safe because it's easy to have the police enforcing the rules in our urban area.

Not so easy in the rural areas.

There's no place to pull over cars.

We don't have the force, the police force, to be able to be out there everywhere.

But yet we continue to see crashes.

We continue to see fatalities.

And this is a way, in the long run, to save money.

and wherever you want to put the money.

I know there was a state literacy fund.

That was like two years ago, which I understand actually doesn't go towards literacy.

It goes to the general fund.

So I was really happy about that, but wherever they choose to put it for additional safety for our residents and everything would be, I think,

Probably, basically whatever you can get passed.

That would be great.

Yes, appreciate that.

The future's work has really taken a ton of staff time and the partnership at the state level is just absolutely amazing.

So thank you so much.

The job creation that we will see from this project will be transformational for our community.

We're a lot of families wondering what their kids will do when they graduate and how they would ever get back to this community that the work that is now going on with the job creation and we will see significant job opportunities in the next five to ten years because of the

An anchor tenant that we now have with a high compatibility with private sector and the DOD work that's going on out there.

That's something that I didn't want the General Assembly to know because this all started with our strategy to retain the DOD defense jobs and we have been working very, very close with the Department of Defense and they are very happy.

with the compatibility of what they see and the growth that they see at this campus.

So thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity.

And of course, years from the rest of the board, how we want another one of these.

I do want to identify David Blount again.

I would just say, going back to the 1% sales tax,

There's been a really good concerted effort by a lot of folks the past couple years to work that legislation, local governments, school boards, and then their parent organizations, the VMLVECO, the School Boards Association, the Superintendents Association, so I know that will continue and again hope that we can

get that one across the finish line this year.

I would add one thing also on the speed camera legislation.

I know one of the things that was part of the bill last year, and I think this goes back to the revenues that are being generated in certain localities, that there was some amendments proposed at one point or probably more than one point in the process that would have taken those local

I think that the idea of having them go into some local fund for certain enumerated improvements or projects or whatever that are safety related is good, but I think there's been too many instances in the past where we've seen locally generated revenues go in the opposite direction and we do not see that this time around.

I don't know.

Thank you.

So some of these are going back to where we were talking a few minutes ago.

Just one example of how important the tenant changes would be is when you have a tenant who has no other option but to live in their 50-year-old mobile home at the Leakey Route and is afraid to complain that the tenant owner has already said, we don't like it, go.

They have no option.

It's nothing for her to do anything about money to do a process.

It's that there is no option for her, period, in any case.

And I just thought sometimes a little small story is helpful to persuade.

On the speed cameras, it is ironic.

that people who, the perception in the countryside when we see general lawlessness everywhere on the roadways.

Grandmothers having trouble going to their mailbox because somebody is deciding to drive 80 miles an hour on Earliesville Road.

There is no way for enforcement to deal with that.

And what has been said to me numerous times has been, so these people in the legislature want to just be able to speed everywhere and they don't want anybody to know.

That is what people are thinking and this us and them mentality.

The people who are citizens feel like they're totally left out of this process of hearing by the people in the General Assembly or the governor or whoever who is refusing to let any local government make a decision that might positively impact the quality of life of their residents.

So I'm just trying to give you some arguments you might find useful in the

I understand the financial constriction of the federal changes, etc., but when you add up even some of the tax credits given to corporations who are fully wealthy and invested, like data centers who pay $4 million an acre in Prince William County, they don't need a billion-dollar tax credit from the state.

So that's something else for you finance wizards to put in your pot and think about.

Are we really using our tax dollars generated for the local Indian state in the most appropriate way?

I think y'all are all pretty well sold on what our key priorities are.

The only thing I would want to do is maybe, like Supervisor Malek was doing, equip y'all with some more stories and arguments for the road.

So something I know on the local enforcement piece.

A critique I hear of this sometimes is that, oh, localities can already do this.

They have code enforcement powers.

And that's true.

We can condemn something.

The thing I always raise for people is that the experienced reality for the harmed person is radically different there.

And we are not in a position where we would want to.

Institute Code Enforcement and substandard facilities because what is the reality for the individual tenant is actually worse.

They not only have this experience of living in a substandard place, but then they're suddenly evicted functionally because their home is condemned.

This gives them the opportunity to receive recourse, to have an advocate who is seeking potentially injunctive relief, potentially a remuneration for them, which is something they otherwise don't have meaningful

The Biscuit Run piece, I always worry because the phrase that you see there is park.

It connects a park to a park.

And I know I mentioned this last year, but I would raise it again.

Currently, Biscuit Run connects several upper-class suburban neighborhoods that are siloed in their development.

It connects Mill Creek, Lake Renovia, and Mill Creek South, which all

otherwise can't access each other but now can through this trail network and they can reach the trails.

We're also building the Biscuit Run Greenway, which will connect it up to the Rivanna Trail and walking paths into Charlottesville that will also connect it to Boxcroft.

What none of this does, though, is connect it across the river to Southwood, right?

The key thing that this is doing is connecting the Southwood community into that walkable network that allows them to actually access this because currently they're only, if you were in Southwood, you want to access the Rivanna Trails or you want to access Biscuit Run, you either muck it through the river or you go all the way up

Fifth Street, a sun exposed really harrowing kind of walking along side cars going 60 miles an hour and this creates a walking path that connects those neighborhoods and like really builds neighborhood and community in excess and last kind of

I've talked with Executive Richardson on this.

The shape of the transformation and continued investment in the AstraZeneca work, but also Rivanna Futures generally, is really hard to get your head around.

I grew up in upstate South Carolina where we actually do have a really strong comparison point.

When I was little, the ARC and local stakeholders worked to have a massive investment in a BMW planning career.

which had knock-on investments up in Michelin relocating their global headquarters which then led to significant financial institutions relocating a lot of operations and the end knock-on and also like the Port of South Carolina built an inland port to support it.

The end knock-on jobs were in the tens of thousands and it created a really vibrant middle class where I grew up that did not exist there.

It was a deeply poor area.

The transformation ability of this is really extraordinary, and that is really the only comparison I can think of along the eastern seaboard for the scale of transformation I think we're looking at that this facility can offer.

First, I want to thank you.

for your willingness to call us back.

and to reach out to us.

You all have been really, and Tracy obviously I'm including Credence because he personally is not here.

But you'll pass it on to him because you reach out to us and you say, what does this mean?

How can we help you?

And you respond, I think.

Thank you very much for that.

And I want to just agree with Mike on what he just said because it really is critical

Well, I agree with everybody that's been said here today.

And I want to just move to a couple of things that I would point out.

And certainly the Landlord Tenant Act is really critical, especially for those of us that represent these older neighborhoods that don't have HOAs.

We're trying to keep the middle class in those neighborhoods sometimes and affordability.

It's not uncommon for us to hear from folks that come to our meetings and talk about this specific problem.

Our constituents are reaching out to us based on concerns that they've run into.

But moving on, I would also just like to point out that we hear a lot from our constituents in our community about biosolids.

Yeah, Isaiah would say sludge, but a nice name is bio-solids.

And that would not cost the state any money if you would just cast a permission, right?

We're not asking for you all to spend a lot of money.

We're asking for permission to help our constituents.

with the application of biosolids.

So think about it through that lens because we have lives at almost every meeting or certainly at many, many meetings we have constituents coming to us with concerns and many of us have expressed those type of concerns about the application of sludge, i.e.

biosolids.

And then I just would move on to stop extending the sunset provisions

for certain development approvals.

Again, that doesn't cost the state any money.

I know that there is a huge lobbying effort in Richmond every year or every session when this comes up to not extend further those provisions.

I'll give you an example.

On Hydraulic Road and Georgetown Road, there's a corner there, and it had an office building approved in 2004.

Because of this disability, the developer didn't, and I don't know how many times it changed hands, it may have changed hands, but nothing was done on that property until 2022

Now in that amount of time, that whole area changed completely and what we would have approved, we might have approved that in development, but we would have approved it in a different manner than we were forced to allow the developer to build because it was a two decade old project.

So looking at sunsetting those provisions for certain developments and not just allowing

because this is really causing not enormous number of problems but it does come up occasionally and the developers know that they can just put it off and put it off and put it off and then get back to that approval and the whole surrounding of the area will have changed.

And then the only other one that I marked here

was the demeritful points for truck violations.

That is a high priority for, I know, for our police department and our safety folks.

So thinking about that, again, doesn't cost you all the state money to do that.

But talking to Chief Reeves and some of the folks, if you needed to, but I know just from the police advisory committee that that's a high priority for the police.

Just to point out a few others that are maybe wouldn't cost the state so much money, but would give us permission to do something.

Thanks.

Also, thank you very much for being here.

We really appreciate not only being here, but we appreciate your support.

You have been

Very supportive of everything we do in Albemarle County.

We consider ourselves I think special because what we're focusing on here

We're interested in helping people with our landlord tenant act.

We want to help people.

We want to save lives, save crashes, and that's the photo speed camera.

Our rural roads.

We don't have any room.

You have two cars.

There is no extra roadway.

Once you go off there, you go into a ditch, you go into a tree.

There's no way.

And it's also very dangerous for our police officers without photo-screen cameras.

It's very dangerous for police officers to be able to pull someone over, two-lane road, and then you've got a mile back up also.

The photo-speed cameras are really integral to being able to keep our area safe and our officers safe also.

Very supportive of the one cent sales tax, of course, because we're supportive of education.

Very supportive of our schools and of education.

That's going to be a game changer, just like Barbana Futures, just like Astrid Zeneca-Coming has

County Executive Richardson has said, it's a game changer.

So we look for opportunities.

We don't just sit back and expect you to give us everything.

We look for opportunities where we can work with you to make our community safer and better.

And Biscuit Run, that's a quality of life issue for all of our residents, especially the ones in Southwood, if we can make that connection, which hopefully we can.

But once again, thank you very much for being here.

We always appreciate working with you, closely with you.

Thank you.

I'll be interested to hear what y'all's priorities are, what you're going to be working on, in addition to what we've talked about.

I'll just share a quick on-photo speed camera as a quick anecdote, and then I'm going to make a comment just because I can't help myself, so it's not really for you all.

Tuesday morning I drove down to Virginia Beach and then returned Wednesday.

And what was striking to me is that there's not a lot of construction between here and Richmond.

There's none except little maintenance kind of things.

But between Richmond and Virginia Beach there's several big projects going on.

and what was, and I've made that drive a lot of times and it's like as soon as you get past 295, get into that running east, you're like oh these are my peeps, you kind of get locked into a flock of people that you're going to be driving around for two hours and you're at your peril if you try to go faster than them or slower than them, you just got to kind of go with the rhythm of it and the last time I made the drive I don't recall the photo speed cameras being there in the stretch between Richmond and Williamsburg and it's there now and there's several

spots both east and west where that photo camera's in.

And with what I've experienced, it was crazy to me.

And I'm not even talking about the non-construction zones, because there's construction in the bridge, there's construction coming out of the bridge, and there's construction points between Williamsburg and Hampton and all of that.

And people were just doing what they do in those other construction zones.

And as soon as you hit the photo speed camera thing, everybody started to space out.

I was having a fun little time talking about being userist.

I was having a great time when somebody would speed past me.

I was like, oh, more fun.

I will tell you that at your level when you say user is that people think this is a money grab.

This is my comment I can't help but say.

I will take that argument on with any person locally that's going to come and complain that they sped through a construction zone or a speed camera and are complaining that we're doing a dollar grab.

I love that conversation.

It's my favorite complaint to receive as an elected official.

And my one answer to them always is, don't speak and we won't collect any money from you.

And that's what we want.

So I would hope that I understand why they think, you know, all is a concern of ours that it's a money grab.

I don't buy that as legitimate argument.

And until we start mandating

and limiting people from putting doorbell cameras in their doors now.

The privacy thing's really starting to just wonder, oh, everybody else can put cameras up, but local governments and the government because the government's doing something bad.

Well, how many of those folks have doorbell cameras?

Every retail place you go into is allowed to have a security camera, and why?

to protect people, to protect assets.

That's what we're doing here.

So I understand and appreciate those arguments, but we're asking for a local authority.

Let us take those arguments on with our local constituents and they can decide to throw us out if they're thinking we're invading on their privacy or being userates with their fines that they're paying for speeding in school zones.

Just going to echo what's been said and appreciate your being here.

I appreciate what you do every day.

For example, I know you all came to the SWAC meeting and heard about environmental concerns there.

I know you've been to, you know, throughout the community and so it's more than just this sort of meeting, but I really appreciate it being sent to your meetings throughout the community all the time.

I can, as Supervisor Galloway mentioned, today's the day we put all our bills in for drafting, they're due.

I'm sure we have a suite of bills, I will just say two, many of the same things, affordable housing, all those two big ones are PBM, so pharmacy benefit manager reform, I anticipate being

There being more reform.

I passed a big bill last year working on that.

And then Board of Visitors Governance for our university.

So that would be one that's affecting us locally.

But there's a lot of work that's going on there.

And I'm going to be carrying an omnibus bill to kind of restructure that to hopefully make it a more transparent.

and I would argue fair process in the future, better for our public universities and how they're governed, keeping autonomy in our state for our own state schools.

That's what I'm working on.

Happy to talk about that if that's the interest of any of you guys.

And I'm looking forward to a great session.

I hope I'll see you all there.

And since I haven't stopped yet, I will just say that y'all have done a great job.

I've been to many of these.

I've also been on the other side of the table because of the school board I presented and I appreciate the pared down packet.

I appreciate how well this was run and I appreciate how informed y'all are at what you're asking for with a really

Cohesive message.

So I just want to say that this is clear.

It's clear to me what you're asking.

I appreciate it.

And I will take that with me to Richmond.

Hopefully we can stay in touch.

We will stay in touch.

I want to say the same thing.

Like this is fantastic.

I love getting it beforehand because I do move through this.

So some of the stuff I'm working on is back to SWAC.

I have

I'm really trying to get recycling going across the state.

I'm putting in a bill that I know I won't find its roots yet, but it's called Circular Economy, which is trying to effectively recycle as much as possible.

but I'm also going to do my recycling bills that are one-offs so that I think I have buy-in for one of mine this year so it might get through the finish line.

I do have another Board of Visitors bill I've been carrying for the past two years which is staff and faculty on the board.

This year we're going to add a voting component because of all the things going on.

I'm also working on biosolids, PFAS, with local authority for testing.

You know, I'm also, you know, there's just so many different things.

I'm the chair of the Disability Commission, so I'm carrying two bills for the Disability Commission, trying to get transition counselors that we already require at K-12, trying to make sure that the higher eds have a program to offer in that certification area, as well as we pass the Blue envelope bill, which is

Anyone with autism can have this envelope in their car and it's basically handed to the police officer when they're pulled over, gives them all the information about kind of what their nuances might be as they interact with the public.

I'm trying to actually change it from blue envelope to be what it is so that people know what it is.

And then we're trying to do a couple of, you know, the Guns and Cars Bill, working with the Senate on that.

It was a civil penalty, maybe moving that a bit farther than that.

I'm working on a threat assessment with the K-12s for using red flag laws and threat assessment together so families can know about the red flag law.

What else?

I touched on the PFAS and a couple of other things with agriculture.

I also have a pharmaceutical bill talking about the Federal Qualified Healthcare Centers and their relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and trying to improve that.

You guys are the first ones to get this all done.

I guess the city too.

Sorry, you'll like the first one, but you did get it done before the deadline, so that's heard something because that has not always been the case in the past.

If I could just give you a quick preview on what I think is going to be the top topics.

Energy.

Just so you know, I think energy is going to dominate.

Another big bill that's going to come through that maybe would affect y'all, I don't know.

I'm about to go to the Commission tomorrow.

retail marijuana market.

There might be some real movement there this year coming forward, just so you know.

But I think energy is going to dominate the day with data centers being a big component of that.

Yeah, I have a transparency bill on PJM, which we tried to get through last year, but other states have passed it now, so there's a lot of effort in trying to do some, you know, at the Water Commission, I'm also on the Water Commission, a presentation was given to us about data centers collecting their own water from their impervious surfaces to close the loop for the water that they need, which I think is

A compelling argument to be mild, honestly.

Yes, I totally agree.

I would actually just turn that to y'all because we have you guys right now.

Do y'all have a position on data centers that you'll have?

We're not touching it because I'm curious because it's a complicated thing and so you don't have to say, I don't want to catch y'all off guard, but I would be curious to know how y'all are feeling about it because I will say what we're contemplating on our side is

You know, data centers are here.

They're concentrated in Virginia.

We're the biggest concentration in the world.

They're probably not going away.

And if you're pushing away for environmental reasons, they actually probably will just go right over to West Virginia or somewhere that doesn't have the same protection.

So it's more how do we regulate them in a way that protects what we care about and makes it so that our own energy, like the average user, our rates are not being impacted and artificially raised by a business that's sucking all the energy and profiting off of it.

That's how I'm looking at it.

Would love to know how y'all feel about it.

We had looked at different options and we basically said we looked at 40,000 square foot as a

for particular locations in the development area as something that should be approved by right meeting the conditions that we would expect for a clean operation of a data center and that anything above that would require going through the board supervisors and doing a special permit process and that's where we've landed and I would say that we landed there in part because

I would add, and Jim framed that really well, and I want to give Jeff a minute to come in.

The data centers are one of those things that are confusing.

We get all these emails constantly.

No data centers.

There are data centers existing that people aren't even aware of that are here.

and so it's a tricky topic to talk about because we're not, what we're talking about is certainly regulating all of them in some way or another but the mega data centers are what people are really concerned about.

But I have many many constituents that didn't even know we already had data centers in our community.

So it's a little tricky when you talk about it.

But I would like to give Jeff a chance if he wants to say anything.

I did, because I wasn't sure if the board was going to ask me to take the lead or if you would.

I don't have really anything to add.

I would look to Ms.

Kilroy in economic development to ask her if she has anything to add that we may have missed.

I think Jim did a nice job of framing it out.

I think this is one example of many of the things which are going to be facing you this year in the new membership and also the majority is totally taking away local authority to make these kinds of decisions whether it's utility skills, solar location,

The 1.5% increase in units every single year, the Schuyler's bill will be coming back, I understand.

And when you already have 12,000 units in your pipeline two days, adding more when we don't even have the ones built who are already approved is a concern.

So I hope that you would please keep local authority in line for all of these different aspects because

And when our citizens come to us and say, why aren't you doing something about XYZ, they're really disgusted to hear that we don't have the authority to make the kinds of decisions on the ground that affect their lives every single day.

And so I just want to share that with you all.

And also, thank you so much for your work on the Motor Commission.

I was interested in hearing them meeting the other day and look forward to their progress on that.

Last, lots of work on

I'm part of this PJM, which at the moment I cannot remember what it stands for, but it's a consortium of all the states that are kind of sharing electricity and we have literally a weekly meeting and I think one thing that's happening with the data center space is bring your own capacity is something states are looking at so that if a data center wants to come online they have to bring their own capacity, which has its own

You know, pros and cons.

But we did have four governors signed on to that, including Governor Youngkin and the governor from Maryland, Pennsylvania, but now New Jersey and Virginia have different governors.

So I think there will be some discussion about if that's a path going forward.

Sure, so unlike the House of Delegates, at least as of right now, the Senate has bill limits again this year and they made them even more complicated this year for some reason.

You know, the limit between either 15 or 10, 15 to 25 depending on when you get them drafted and filed.

And then we can have a couple more for commissions that you sit on.

Sarah Dietz's list of bills is continuing to evolve and shift based on new things coming in or things going out, so making new space for something else on the list.

But generally speaking, you can have bills again in the energy and data center space.

criminal justice reform, gun violence prevention, and again higher ed reform to reduce the politicization of those boards.

At some point we'll have a specific list, but right now there's a lot of yeses, nos, maybes, and then everything just keeps shifting as we continue to add, subtract.

He sits on the Commission for Energy Electric Utility Regulation, our sewer, our cure, and he may carry some bills coming out of that this year and obviously chairs the Behavioral Health Commission and they have a whole

Thank you.

It creates... It complicates, but also makes things better or a combination of the two.

On the data center piece, just because you mentioned the bringer of capacity, I would raise this concern because my travels outside of Albemarle, it comes up with some frequency and it's something I've had to start listening to.

Is that this kind of sit-set odds with

The Clean Economy Act in that it strongly incentivizes specifically natural gas fired plants because that's what is going to be easiest for that sole developer to build without having to acquire a huge amount further.

for solar or the extended timeline for nuclear, which then, in addition to making it much more challenging to hit our clean economy goals, it also potentially has a greater likelihood of passing down costs to individual rate payers because gas prices can be incorporated into rates without going through the corporation committee, which is not true of other types.

So I just raise that as a

internally because I'm pretty sure it's my first year working for Senator Dean, so it would have been the 2002 session.

He actually carried a bill allowing localities to ban the spreading of the flood.

and it received so much attention that the agriculture committee set a special hearing in the evening, a two-hour hearing just for the one bill and it was standing room only and I ended up having to walk back to the parking lot in therapy because I couldn't stand in my shoes anymore but anyway, that obviously wasn't successful in 2002.

Walking back in your bare feet, that was memorable.

What is a new issue is now we know about the constituents in it and nobody would agree with that in 2020.

And a lot of today's a little bit deja vu all over again.

Yes, it is.

Did you have anything additional?

Diantha, I have a resolution for you, but we're sitting over debating because Cree's not here.

We want him to be here when we give you the resolution.

So we can wait.

Is that why you were?

Yeah, that's why I was here.

Is there anything else you're happy in?

We would love to read this for you, if you would like.

So this is a joint resolution, and it was patroned by myself, by Delegate Lauper, and by Senator Deeds.

And would you like to read it, Amy?

Oh, you can read it.

Well, it's for you, Diantha.

Whereas, Diantha McKeel has served the Albemarle County community for nearly three decades, including 16 years on the Albemarle County School Board and 12 years on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

And whereas, a native of Stanton, Diantha McKeel pursued a career as a licensed nurse and spent many years working in the gynecological and cardiology departments at the University of Virginia before retiring in 2015.

and whereas in addition to her work in healthcare, Diantha McKeel spent 28 years in local government beginning with the Albemarle County School Board where she provided outstanding leadership to the students, faculty, and staff members of local schools and whereas Diantha McKeel was first elected to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in 2013,

Representing the Jack Jouett District, a primarily suburban district located just northwest of Charlottesville.

And whereas, since every election after her first, Diantha McKeel has run for office and has received more than 95% of the vote in both 2017 and 2021.

and whereas during her tenure in local government, Diantha McKeel improved communication and coordination between Albemarle County Public Schools and county government and was an advocate for issues related to education and whereas Diantha McKeel further enhanced the quality of life in Albemarle County by supporting economic development

improvements to transportation infrastructure and public transit and advancements in affordable housing.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring that the General Assembly hereby commend Diantha McKeel for her outstanding service as a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and be it resolved further that the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution or presentation to you, Diantha, as an expression of the House of Delegates' admiration for your personal and professional achievements.

And I will just note...

I know there's no that this will forever be in the history books of Virginia.

It's been passed, but there's so much that can't be said on a page and everything.

So I remember meeting you, one of the first people I ever met when I was going to run for school board.

I know you have been such a passionate advocate for students.

We've all seen it.

We're sitting right now on your task force to bring dental health care to students in the Landsland campus.

I just want to add a couple of things.

I love every minute of it, the good man and the ugly.

But I want to just say that I'm going to hang that proudly beside the General Assembly to say the proclamation that you all passed from my husband in 12.

So we're going to have a wall with Wally McKeel and Diantha McKeel, which is really special.

In Cree, you all weren't here in 12, but Cree was a part of that.

that proclamation as well.

So I thank you very, very much.

We'll hang it tonight.

Thank you.

We will adjourn.

The board adjourns on December 3rd, 2025, on PMA 241.

Thank you.