Board of Supervisors Development Advisory Services Work Session   11/16/2017

Carrico, who's on my far right, and then we have John Blair, who is one of the county attorneys, thank you for joining us today, and of course the supervisors, and Norman's coming in the door, that's great, supervisors, our county executive, Jeff Richardson, and behind Jeff, Travis Morris, our deputy clerk, and Claudette Borgensen, our clerk.

Great Norman, glad you made it.

Our first order of business is actually, I want to take the time to recognize that we now have another certified county supervisor.

So the Virginia Association of Counties, VACO, and the Virginia Cooperative Extension Organization offers a county supervisors program.

Yes, it was about 18 months of classes.

Yeah, so it's training to enhance the leadership and decision-making skills of county supervisors in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I know Ann is a graduate of that program.

I'm not sure if any of the rest of us are, but we now know who the really smart people are.

So congratulations.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you.

I'll be right back.

The first order of business then is our action item to rescind the declaration of water emergency and John has prepared you know I'm just I think Doug I'm just going to read John gave me the motion and I'm just going to read the motion and yeah how about that

The motion is I move that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors adopt the attached resolution and rescind its October 11, 2017 resolution declaring a water supply emergency and authorizing the Albemarle County Service Authority and its executive director to impose restrictions and prohibitions on the use of the water supply.

So that would just take a so moved and a second.

Aye.

Before we vote I would like to say something if that's all right.

When we passed this, even if it had started raining the next day, we were told that we were going to let this sit for a lengthy period of time to give the groundwater a little chance to get ahead.

So my question to you, since this seems very abrupt, is what are we dropping back to?

The original wasteful use of water, or are we dropping back to conservation measures without the emergency declarations that says you cannot do certain things?

I would just like to have the answers to that.

And I'm sorry that someone, maybe Doug can help us, you don't know.

Okay.

Because Bill was, I guess, rather overconfident.

everybody would think this was such a great idea but when we were doing the emergency to begin with we did discuss the fact that our whole culture is based upon use as much as you can and throw it away and I think that's an appalling way to look at water use in general so I would really like to have a future discussion about on what we're basing our water culture that might prevent us from getting in this kind of mess in the future

I will say that typically our water usage drops back

now anyway because we no longer you know the plants are pulling water out of the out of the rivers when they're growing and now the leaves are dropped and so they're pulling out a lot less and people are not watering like they were before and so typically the the usage goes back to not that much more than what we were actually doing with the conservation just the time of the year

but they did feel as though because it was this particular time of year and really how well people responded to the restrictions also that it would be an end

I will say they've made some corrections to the flow.

They're recalibrating or figuring out what to do with the Meacham gauge.

They believe there were some problems with the Meacham gauge.

That was in the paper.

I wouldn't say that at this point.

But I think mechanically, the actual gauge may have a problem, and they have to fix that.

So with the leaky gate that

We were letting out a little bit too much with that.

We had a gauge that was probably not performing properly.

And so they've fixed those things or are in the process of fixing those things.

The one thing that I'm a little bit worried about that I'm watching is this idea of renegotiating our in-stream flows.

I don't really know what that means at this point.

That was to reduce the release but the apparent, what they were doing was looking at the total reservoir volume of all of them in order to determine the release into the South Fork Rivanna.

Ann, you really bring up a good point and we had a great discussion at PAC this afternoon about this sort of some issues around this.

Let me suggest this to the board and then we'll vote on this and move on.

But maybe because our agendas are pretty full in December already, maybe in January or February, we could have a discussion around some of the items we talked about at PAC with land acquisition and what needs to happen at O'Hill.

and some of how the pipeline discussion, that might be really good as well as this.

If that sounds good.

And that would give an opportunity to really say some of the things that weren't said today.

We do have some concerns about how we're moving forward.

Madam Chair, could I just follow up on Ann's remarks?

I do think when you look at the chronology of 83, 100 percent, 9, 15, 77 percent, 10, 13, 45 percent, and then also you're aware of the fact that two of the gates have no meters on them.

that certainly all of the gates should be metered but the other thing is when we do have this discussion I think it would be useful for us to be aware of the reporting system within our WSA to their board and to this board and to city council

when levels do drop off and I think moving from 100% to 77% is a fairly precipitous drop in a time period of a month and a half.

So, if that is an annualized expected drop, that's one thing, but if it was in fact an aberration,

then there should be some way in which we are made aware of that earlier on and we can weigh in earlier on expressing concerns because there was a little about this a little aspect about this that the board was kind of pushing RWSA to undertake some action here and I do think I think when you look at this objectively there was an opportunity for maybe reporting to be a little bit earlier

So let's move on, if we can, we have a motion and a second on the table to, and what we're doing is we are declaring the water supply emergency and rescinding, I guess I should say, the water supply emergency.

There was a motion and a second.

I actually voted aye already.

You get to do it again.

Mr. Sheffield?

Yes.

Mr. Dill?

Yes.

Ms. Mallek?

No.

Okay, great.

So the work session today is Government Operations Court Relocation Opportunities and Analysis.

And I see Trevor is already there.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Trevor Henry.

I'm Director of the Facilities and Environmental Services Department.

I'm here really as part of helping to manage the process of working with our consultant through this fall process.

We probably should start labeling like part two, part three on these meetings.

Just for a time check, we had assumed about an hour for this content.

Yeah, we have a late start and I apologize.

Yeah, I don't have my times on here, which is fine, but I would go on and do the full presentation.

Thank you.

Goals for today are to briefly follow up on questions from a week ago and then present a summary of findings from our adjacency study and then respond to questions followed by a closed board meeting.

We looked at this last week, just kind of teeing up the next few weeks of work, which is plenty.

Today is a continuation of that content review with the third part being the adjacency study.

Early December, we will be bringing all deliverables to the board on the 6th with a work session on the 13th, public hearing on the 18th, and then a potential action or direction meeting on the 20th.

And again, what we saw last week, what we're going to see today, these are just parts of the overall picture of information that the board has asked to hopefully get the board in a position to feel confident in some direction later this calendar year.

Looking at a couple of follow-up items from last week.

One was to send out the Virginia Courthouse Facility Guidelines, which our consultant Mosley provided to me that I sent to the board.

And we spent a bit of time talking about secured parking for the judges at our downtown circuit court location in a renovation redesign model.

I went back and I looked at the work that our former architect had done, Dewberry, in that downtown option, and what I found was that the secured parking was really silent for Circuit Court.

What was proposed related to Levy and in the basement.

In working with Mosley, we did a little bit of a concept on what might work.

I apologize for the porta potty in this picture.

This actually is taken from the JNDR side of Market Street looking at the Sallieport and our court complex downtown.

It's the current route in which our sheriff gets prisoners into the facility.

Instead of a tunnel, which Mr. Randolph was suggesting we look at, we thought that maybe building off of that access point, and there's a concept in front of you, that we could expand and add some secured parking inside of the gates, inside of the perimeter of the building that would allow two to three parking spots for the judges.

This is a concept that's

I'll throw a number out of cost somewhere between three to five hundred thousand is kind of what we think but it is something that will firm up and then I would suggest that we can include that in the final report and final costs for the December.

Sound good?

Thank you for doing that.

It's a slightly different task.

So in the downtown option, we would have secured parking under the new, what would be the levy part of the project.

So the general district court would have its own secured parking for judges.

what I just showed would be judges for the circuit court.

So it wouldn't really enable that back and forth piece, but I think how the courts work that probably would be fine.

And then there is a request here, Mr. Randolph had asked me a week ago about bringing a summary of our costs for the J&DR Court construction from 10 years ago.

I'm still getting that in a final format.

The city was fiscal agent.

We pulled our records from our archive.

I want to just compare our notes with them to make sure that what I provide to you accurately reflects those costs.

There were some delays with some issues related to a wall down there that I want to make sure I've captured that correctly.

Was the sheriff's office done with all that security at the same time?

It was.

That was part of the project.

And will all that be in that?

That'll all be in that number.

Because that's a pretty impressive installation underneath the sheriff's there.

Okay.

I want to make sure it is accurate.

Okay, so moving on from last week, unless there are any other comments or questions, today's main content is to talk about the adjacency study work that was done by our consultants, National Center of State Courts, along with Mosley Architects.

From the National Center, to my left, is Greg Langham.

I'm gonna need to look at my notes to read this.

His title is National Court Management Consultant.

Probably need an acronym for that, Greg.

But Greg was part of the team that came on site and did the interviews with the stakeholders.

When we first started this process, the idea of the county really understanding the impacts of a potential relocation, documenting that, potentially looking at additional resources that might help

mitigate that if the board chose to do a separation of the courts.

We felt it was important to bring in an expert nationally that could help us with that because that's not staff's, you know, prerogative or background.

And so we know National Center carries a strong reputation nationally.

They've supported Mosley and other architects in operating analysis both in Virginia and in other states.

and so we thought from a teaming perspective, teaming, Mosley along with National Center was a good combination to help provide this objective analysis and then it's under the watchful eye of Stantec and the support of Stantec and Swan who's still in the audience today.

The scope of the agenda is just a quick update on the scope of the study, why we did it, approach and methodology, feedback from stakeholders, feedback from the public, and then

I think the significant piece of this is the observations and conclusions from National Center.

And again, I think we can get through this material.

20 to 25 minutes will be our goal.

I'm going to hand off to Greg after the scope.

I'm not going to read all the words on here.

The big pieces of analysis that we wanted was to understand how the courts interact downtown, how the county and the city and the adjacent support services, how they all work together.

to really to identify, to document it, to hear from the stakeholders that work every day in our court system.

And then as part of that analysis to also ask that what if question of if the courts were separated, how might the county

to adjust our processes or resources to minimize impacts.

And so that was the main body of work that Greg and his team did.

In parallel with that, we felt that we'd done the outreach to the community in a public hearing last fall, but we felt that this would also be another opportunity for us to gather some information from the public that maybe is not as involved in the courts project

as the folks that are the stakeholders.

And so National Center working with staff, and Greg will go into this as well, but National Center working with staff developed a public, the word we used was survey.

In hindsight, I wish we had called it an information gathering or a questionnaire, but what the purpose really was was to gather high level public attitudes and information about this project or this decision.

It was never meant to be scientific.

I think using the word survey maybe implied that and I know that that created some concerns.

But the intent was that this was just an outreach opportunity.

It was a listening opportunity.

We didn't believe that it would be the only sources of information that would come to the board.

It was just one of

of many in the outreach process.

So just a little bit of background on that.

Greg will talk in a little more detail on the approach and the methodology, and we'll be able to answer questions and certainly take comments.

So with that, I will hand it off to Greg.

Thank you, Trevor.

It's a very important project for your county.

We understand that.

We've worked with counties in the past and we've worked with architectural firms in the past on similar type projects and we're honored to be appreciated here today and listened to and hopefully we'll give you some information that will help you with the very important decision that you're going to be making on behalf of your constituents.

I'd also like to thank, you know, on behalf of my colleagues, Laura Clasmar and Nancy Crandall, who are back in Denver.

They participated with this project.

We like the idea of working again with Mosley Architects, and we've appreciated the collaboration that we've had with the Stantec consultants as well.

On the county side, Trevor Henry has just been excellent to work with.

The approach and methodology.

As Trevor indicated, stakeholder focus groups, we conducted interviews with them.

We combined that with a targeted survey of stakeholder professionals who are involved in court operations on an almost daily if not weekly basis.

We constructed 12 focus groups with the help of the county staff.

That involved 32 officials, representatives, interviewed during a four and a half day period that Nancy and I were back here working with Trevor and his staff.

We had the pleasure of working with Elliot Law from Mosley.

He was a great asset as we talked with these people and got their ideas, got their concerns, got their opinions as to

These options that are being considered by the board as to whether or not the courts should be separated, whether or not the courts should remain in the current court location, we understand it's not only an expensive project, but it's also a very community service oriented project as well.

The objective, again, as we're talking here is to get the perspective about the concerns, the beliefs, the opinions that these professional stakeholders had.

We were involved with judges, clerks of court, law enforcement officers, commonwealth attorney, public defender, legal aid attorneys, and private attorneys from the local bar association.

The survey information and approach continues here with the Stakeholder Republic surveys that Trevor has mentioned.

They were developed in a good partnership with the consultants, county officials, and the effort that we made with the National Center to try to make sure that these surveys, questionnaires, solicited court user information.

from both the public side and from the stakeholder side in a neutral forum so that people felt comfortable in coming in and expressing what their concerns might be, what their opinions might be, whether they be anecdotal, whether they be factual, just general information that we wanted to get in order that we could present a report back to the board that

that indicated here's what we learned from the people who were most involved with the court system here in Albemarle County.

The survey questionnaire was not intended as a vote for or against any aspect of the board's consideration.

Trevor was very strong about putting that on.

We actually put that on the survey instruments themselves so that we wouldn't necessarily leave the wrong impression with those who were responding to the survey.

The surveys were designed to protect the identity of the respondents, to receive high level information, again concerning general opinions, information as it relates to how can my agency as a stakeholder, how can I work best with the two options that are on the table for consideration.

We obtained general feedback.

and we learned a lot when we sat down and we interviewed and then we supplemented that with a survey from the stakeholders.

Very important information about what stakeholders thought about each one of the operations that would occur in each one of the option locations.

Surveys were not designed to be extensive vetted scientific data gathering.

Trevor covered that for the most part.

They were just one instrument, one tool that we utilized in the overall analysis about what are the impacts going to be not only on stakeholders but on the public as well when it comes to providing quality and efficient court services.

Stakeholder surveys were distributed to professionals directly involved in court functions.

We had 98 targeted surveys we received in the period of time that we had the survey open.

We had one disqualification.

Public survey as well, we posted that on the county's website.

Through the press release of the county, it was advertised as available to all who wanted to participate and respond to the survey.

It was covered in the county's email.

It was posted on the county's Twitter and Facebook sites.

We had 519 responses and 15 of those were disqualified.

I know there was some concern about how do you disqualify.

Well, a lot of those, we went through a three-step validation period, a validation study, testing, and we determined that a lot of it had to do with testing of the survey instrument itself.

In fact, I think we had one of your board supervisors who was involved with the testing of it as well, and we thank you for that opportunity, too, because that was helpful for us

Let's test it, let's work through it, let's see if it's going to give us the information that we want in a very anonymous, very safe type response process.

Stakeholder survey summary.

We blended that with the interview information that we got from the stakeholders.

And you can see on the slide that we've got apparent here, we only qualified the stakeholder survey by

by function as it relates to the court system.

So if you'll notice down there, we had circuit clerks and we had judges involved in the survey, law enforcement, private attorneys, probation people, corrections, prosecutors, public defenders, and legal aid counsel.

Certainly heard from the Bar Association where they provided information to us about how it would affect the overall practice of law as it relates to whether you go to the Rio site or whether you stay at the current Court Square site.

The first category there has to do with real estate agents or title examiners, those people who are interested in court records, who want to come to the courthouse to obtain records.

It's a very important function.

It's not often thought about, but it's a very important function.

We wanted to make sure that we covered those as well.

The stakeholder jurisdiction, this survey relates to what

Relates to the functions of the people who responded to the stakeholder functions.

For instance, if a clerk of court responded to it, we wanted to make sure that they understood that we were measuring their response as to how they provided services to the entire county, to both city and county.

As you can see from the pie chart,

69.8% of the services provided to both city and county from the court operations and from the stakeholders involved in those operations as it affects the court.

The benefits of option one from the blended stakeholder survey results and the interview, you know, in talking with Judge Higgins and Judge Moore, we talked with Judge Downer, we talked with Judge Barkley as to

How the court itself would be affected by the option one by keeping the courts at the current court square location, the centralized location.

Continuances in court delay reduced as judges and lawyers cover for each other.

That just occurs within the centralized campus of where the courts are now.

People come in contact with one another.

It's easy for the judge to walk down the hall and say, hey, I need some coverage this afternoon.

Doesn't happen that often, but it's very nice to do when there is a need.

And instead of continuing that case or delaying that case, another judge can step in.

The same occurs with the attorneys.

You know, attorneys seeing each other, working with each other on a day-to-day basis on the same campus, they're going to talk settlement.

They're going to talk pre-negotiation.

They're going to talk about how can I keep the cost down for my client?

How can we exchange discovery efficiently, effectively?

It happens.

It's just a normal thing that occurs.

Doesn't mean it would not occur if it were in option five, two, as well.

It's just easier for that to occur in the culture that's established for the court square right now.

The thought and the idea about convenient services, court services is very important to the stakeholders.

When you talk about communication between attorneys and court services, if a person who's walked out of court with a court order for probation supervision can walk to a probation department on the same campus, that person is more likely going to comply sooner with that court order.

It's just a behavioral, it's just a natural behavioral thing if that person can get under supervision sooner, quicker.

Now, can that occur if you go to the Rio site?

Yes, it could occur because you may have a satellite office for the probation department out there.

We're also talking about how can we mitigate the challenges as we go through this a little bit based on our experience and what we've seen in other court locations and in other jurisdictions.

So it's not taking a stance against one option or for one option.

It's just presenting information to you so that you can understand what the impact might be should you go with option one or option five.

Secure transport of criminal defendants is easy to achieve in one court location.

Court square location carries significant historical image.

You're all aware of this.

I mean, we're not telling you something new here.

It's somewhat of a community pride that this court square can accommodate the courts that they have right now and have them operational from the standpoint of a historical background that has gone on with Jefferson and Hamilton having practiced law in this same area.

We were aware of that.

The stakeholders made us aware of that.

it's something that regardless of what you do with the court option you're going to still have that downtown presence of historical basis in which you can take pride in not only just because it's you know not part of the city itself but it's part of the overall county and what has occurred in this historic county.

Challenges to option number one.

You know if I were an investor I'd be building a parking garage because at this point that was high on everyone's list from a stakeholder standpoint and from the public survey is what can we do to sufficiently address the inadequate parking.

The convenience for parking for jurors is not available at this site.

The law enforcement, they have to find the parking place when they need to get to court in order to testify.

Often times, and I was a little amazed at this because I don't think I've seen this, the law enforcement is actually charged for parking in some areas around the courthouse square.

And that was a little different.

I know the sheriff and the county police department aren't that hot on that idea.

Witnesses coming to court, victims coming to court, the public in general.

You know, courts are somewhat of

What they try to provide is good, safe, secure public parking.

That happens in most court environments.

I know that's what you're looking for here.

Unfortunately, in the current location, it needs to be increased.

Now, when we talked with Doug and Trevor a little bit more about how that's going to go, they were aware of that, and they know

and they say the county is looking at the possibility of working with the city to increase the overall parking advantage and benefits for the general public.

We're jumping through some of this because, like Trevor, I too would like for us to give you an opportunity to talk and discuss a little bit more about some questions or concerns you might have.

The new facility plans include enhanced technology.

This is the benefits for option five.

In working with Elliott and with Mosley, we understand that their ability, we understand we know their ability to design a modern court facility is one that would present to you and present the community a safe, secure, and very functional facility.

Within that functional facility would be enhanced technology and the ADA requirements that option one perhaps is not available.

can be made available through renovation, no question about it.

We've seen it in court after court throughout the country where they take historic courthouses.

They're important to the community, renovate them, and they become ADA not only compliant but they've surpassed the ADA requirements and they also surpass a lot of technology requirements as it relates to

Whether you go wireless, whether you have string wire throughout the building, it's just a little bit harder to do.

And I'm sure you realize that because you've been operating out of historic buildings for some time.

It's a little bit harder to do in a historic building, a little bit older building.

New facility plans for improved court security, no question about it.

The separation of prisoner transport or in-custody transport throughout the building needs to be addressed in either location.

In a new facility, it's obviously going to be addressed through the design of that facility, where you have segregated hallways outside of the public site, outside of being able to commingle with the public.

and it's just a better way, a more safe and secure way that the sheriff's department or the police department move prisoners throughout while protecting the public who are waiting to go to trial or waiting for jury service to occur.

Challenges to option number five.

How would it work?

Consider it a separate option.

How would it work?

Public transportation is currently inadequate.

We've talked about that.

The county's aware of that.

It can be improved, and as I understand it, you're willing to look at doing that.

Additional staff may be needed.

If you're gonna operate two court locations, additional staff will be needed.

The three agencies that we talked with in the stakeholder interviews that represented that additional staff would be needed were the Sheriff's Department with five additional deputies, Commonwealth Attorney with two additional deputy attorneys, and the Court Services Director indicated she would need either a half or a full-time position in order to cover another court location.

Court security costs may increase.

That's typically through the modernization of equipment.

But at the same time, those court security issues may

You're gonna have a safer facility perhaps and you can still have a safe facility here.

What is normally designed into modern day court facilities is one entry screening and one entry exit.

Mosley is aware of this.

They've done courthouses like this and this is what we would say is the best practice when you get to designing a new facility as far as court security is concerned.

Attorneys may face more schedule conflicts, the cases could be delayed.

Now that can be addressed through scheduling, and that can be addressed through case management that the judges take on themselves, that the clerks of court take on.

that would allow for specific dates and times for attorneys to report to court so that they can conduct their business at that court without having a conflict at say their sister court that happens to be 15 minutes away.

So it can be done.

It can be done through technology, through the sharing of IT records, e-filing records, where you don't have to have that constant search for paper in order to determine what's going on in this case and who do I need to talk to to either resolve the case or find out what's in the best interest of my client when it comes to a plea negotiation.

Attorneys and Judge peer coverage opportunities can be reduced.

Well, we talked about that earlier where it is very convenient.

The crossing of paths of attorneys are going to resolve cases a lot quicker than not.

But being able to resolve those cases through access to Internet and e-filing is going to increase the overall efficiency of how that information is shared, utilized, and what they do with that information once they get it.

Jump into the public survey real quick.

This first slide here, pie slide.

indicates that people who responded to the public survey primarily lived in the county as opposed to the city, which I think you would be most interested in.

Eighty-seven percent lived in the county.

Twelve to thirteen percent lived in the city.

This is not to skew the results by any means, it's just information that we thought would be important for you to know when you start to consider what are the benefits and what are the concerns of each option.

Public participation or public participants' connection to legal or court community.

Again, we thought it was important to know if the responders to the public survey either work within or closely with the legal community or the court system.

154 or 30.6 said yes they did, 350, 69.4 said no they didn't.

Again, we think that's important that most of your public respondents do not have a connection with the court system, direct connection with the court system, but seek services from the court system as they need it.

Summary of public survey results.

This was just an example about what we learned and what we're passing on to you as how the public thought the convenience of the downtown location worked best for them.

35.4% said it was very convenient, 27.1% said it was inconvenient.

And it's just a bit of information, a bit of knowledge that means something to you as you go forward and start looking at which option you think would be of best service to your constituents and to your communities.

actually you have different so you have very I'm just trying to look very inconvenient and then inconvenient and somewhat convenient and very convenient okay I got it okay yeah so you need to look at oh you can aggregate them yeah and then yeah even after you do that it's somewhat polarized because it's very close to convenient and inconvenient yeah

Summary of public surveys there.

The next slide.

The first most important, as it relates to this question eight that was asked, deciding on the court location is maximize the court operation efficiency.

That's not uncommon for the public to think, you know, your courts can run better, your courts can run smoother.

Quite often, though, it doesn't depend on the location, it depends on how the courts are internally managed, and that's something that we want to make sure that you understand.

Courts can be managed regardless of the location.

They can be managed through improved processes, best practices, and they can still provide a very good quality of service regardless of where they're located.

We see it throughout the nation, separated and centralized court locations.

The second most important thing, parking, obviously.

When people come to court, they want to come to a safe, convenient parking location so that they can walk into the courthouse so that it's well lit at night.

If they come out of the courthouse, they feel safe in going to their cars.

The third most important one was the project cost.

and probably that does not surprise you.

Most of those responding to the public survey said, yeah, we're concerned about the cost.

We want to know about what the cost is.

We want to make sure that the cost is going to be worth the building or the location that we get.

This slide basically covers most of what we talked about already in the way of parking traffic congestion.

That's the key concerns for option one and option five is the inconvenient location that we just discussed.

The general observation conclusions here from the National Center.

How option five could work, provide additional satellite space for court services, court offices, that doesn't necessarily mean additional personnel, but it could mean additional square footage in that office so that a central office can send out to

Rio location are representatives of their court services.

Whether it's going to be probation, whether it's going to be drug treatment, whether it's going to be your OAR people so that they at least have some satellite office that they can work with clients coming out of the Rio location if it goes that direction.

coordinate schedules and calendars between the locations that's a judge clerk function develop case flow management procedures to avoid court delay again that goes back to the judges in court taking an interest in how the court is run working with the court and working with the you as the county along with law enforcement and the attorneys within the bar association and determining this is how we're going to make this court efficiently work whether it's in

Downtown, Charlottesville, or whether it's in the county at the Rio location.

Improved transportation, public transportation, we mentioned that.

Other consideration for option five are, you know, I had additional resources required to minimize the impact.

That's personnel that the Sheriff's Department and the Commonwealth Attorney are talking about.

You're talking about an IT investment.

because if you're going to share electronic records, it's going to be, regardless of the location, you're going to want to do that in a very effective, efficient way.

IT is becoming the way that records are shared, that information is shared, regardless of what government service you're about to present.

You do it through technology.

It's very possible that

The court locations themselves for any option, the use of electronic records, the use of a website.

There are courts in the nation now that are going to website solutions, website court determinations.

It's not about people practicing law without a law license, but it's about people who are willing to pay their ticket online.

It's about people who are willing to perhaps participate in online mediation.

All that effort to bring in technology so that people can use technology to their advantage

Can I ask a really, really quick question just in this?

Is this IT transformation, is it, are there any other impediments other than cost?

It's primarily a matter of cost, but it's also a matter of culture and accepting it within the courts, and that's on both the side of the attorney and both on the side of the court itself, accepting the idea that we're gonna be dealing with, instead of a paper document, we're gonna be dealing with an electronic image.

I can say that that cultural change at the hospitals has been, has already, but that's a good example of how hard it can be.

It's an excellent example, yeah, where you get doctors.

Has to be done, but it's very difficult.

The hospitals went through that change a few years ago.

Yes.

Before we leave that, the wayfinding signage is very important regardless of either location.

Where do people go in order to get the services that they desire?

Where do I report to in order not to have the court delay my case or continue it to another day?

That's just necessary for you to do.

And regardless of whether you have technology or not, people are still going to want to know how do I get to where I need to go in order to get what I need or what I want.

Overall conclusions, we're hopeful that the stakeholder and the public feedback that we're going to be sharing with you in the report, you've seen a draft report of that, we're still looking at how we can make that better, how we can improve that, how we can make it more understandable.

We're evaluating the terms of the impact on court operations throughout that report.

Either facility, and I hope you get this idea that it's not necessarily where the court's at, it's how they manage the information that they have and how they provide that managed service in an unbiased, impartial, under a rule of law that's going to make the determination about whether or not a court is successful.

Um, questions?

Well the concerns, many concerns reported can be mitigated and we talked about how electronic filing can do that.

24-7 access to a court system through the internet is becoming the way that the courts get most of their clientele, give them the information they need.

That's primarily how those who seek records from the court are going to, or instead of going to court, they're going on the internet in a secure site in order to find that information.

and I worked as the Clerk of Court for the U.S. District Court for the state of Colorado.

We implemented electronic case filing and you would have thought that we had done something that the devil couldn't do.

And clients and attorneys have 24-7 access to their court files.

Much of the concerns have to do with what people get used to in a jurisdiction.

People are very comfortable in this jurisdiction.

People have been working the way that it's been working for years, for decades, and people are used to dropping by the Commonwealth Attorney's Office and saying, you know, I'd like to see that filed.

You know, and the Commonwealth Attorney is

They are interested in getting this case resolved.

They're interested in talking to the defense attorney.

That case file is brought out.

They take a look at it.

How much more discovery do we need in this?

It could very well and it could be as time goes on fairly dramatic but there's still going to be a segment of society who want to come to the court to have their day in court.

who believe that it is necessary for me to see a piece of paper that the judge has signed off on and ordered my child support to start happening, start occurring.

It's a personal thing at that point.

Yes, that's correct.

So we say focus on the best practices, that's a court responsibility, but in the long run it's your responsibility to provide a courthouse from which those best practices can be determined and can be applied.

I guess we wanna open it up for just questions.

I'm sorry, it's just one more question just associated with what he was talking about.

I saw something come across our email recently that said that, I can't remember, it was like 96 or 98% of cases now are settled before they go to court.

Where do you see that going in the future?

I just thought that that was a pretty incredible and I know everybody says they get called for jury duty and then they get called that morning and told not to come.

Probably two to five percent of your cases are actually resolved by jury trial.

Fifteen to twenty-five percent actually go to court trial.

The rest are negotiated out.

and that's gonna continue to be how courts operate regardless of how they get their records, whether it's electronic or whether it's paper.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing because if you clog the court with that number of trials that could not be resolved via negotiations with attorneys sitting down with attorneys and saying, this is in my best interest of my client, is it in the best interest of your client,

and they resolve it either on the courthouse steps or they resolve it over the internet.

It doesn't make any difference.

Those types of cases are still gonna be resolved.

Mediation is doing a lot of case resolution right now, the process of mediation where people sit down around the table and make the determination rather than the judge determining.

Well it is cost pressures to a certain extent, it is.

But it's also time pressures too.

I want to get this on, I want my life to start over.

I want to continue, I want to get out of this bad marriage.

Whatever the issue might be, how it can be resolved,

Let me just ask other questions.

Rick, want to start over here?

Mr. Langham, can you give us an example of a client that you work for where the courts were downtown and they moved out of downtown?

I'll give you a personal reference, Mr. Randolph.

I worked in Arapahoe County, which is a suburb of Denver County.

I was the court administrator there in the 18th Judicial District for several years.

We had a historic courthouse downtown.

The court had outgrown it.

The court was looking at location sites in the county.

They moved out of the city and they built a new courthouse out by the county airport where land was cheap.

But fortunately, they did not cheap out on the construction or the design of the building.

And the building is still up and functional.

In fact, it's been added to.

Okay, it's a follow-up question to that.

It sounds like you've kept in touch with that community and you're well aware of the changes that have resulted after that decision.

Initially, there was because the District Attorney's Office or the Commonwealth Attorney's Office was right down next to the courthouse.

The District Attorney's Office then had to operate two offices, one downtown in Littleton, Colorado, which is where the historic courthouse was located, and then one outside in Arapahoe County.

Eventually, the Commonwealth Attorney moved to the primary out of the city office space just because it made more sense at the time and after the city bought the building.

There was no need for the District Attorney or the Commonwealth Attorney to have an office inside the city as long as they were in the judicial district or the judicial circuit in this case.

Three years later,

the Bronco football team built their training camp and their exercise camp right next to the courthouse and it's a you know regardless of their record right now they did win two Super Bowls from that location so

OK, so another follow up question, if I may beg the indulgence of the board.

Thank you.

I have a question for you.

In terms of the surveys, I understand on page 7, your presentation, you pointed out that the surveys are not designed to be vetted scientific gathering instruments.

I'd say they were reliable for what we intended them to be, which is just general information.

We also talked with the county, we talked with Trevor from the standpoint that if we needed to do a scientific

vetted type survey that took more resources, more time, that took the qualification of respondents that we would be willing to do it, Stantec can do it.

There's a variety of ways that you could make a survey more scientific if you were going to feel comfortable about that, if you wanted to measure the pulse of the community,

I felt like we generally measured the pulse of the community as to what do you think the concerns are about option one?

What are the benefits about option one?

That's all we were trying to do is just measure opinions and say what do you think about, can you operate here?

Could you go to court services here?

Could you make this location work?

You don't have any concerns about the fact that as you pointed out on page 13 of your presentation that approximately 86 of the respondents did not live in Albemarle County and yet you're hired by Albemarle County to help advise the board to make a decision about courts that the county will fund and that the county will improve if they stay in the city therefore that you had

56 people responding to the survey that lived in the city or elsewhere.

We didn't look at it from the standpoint that that was a liability.

We looked at it from the standpoint that the county, at least in our opinion, they wanted an open process so that regardless of whether you lived in the city or whether you lived in the county, people living in the city are going to come to the county courthouse to get court services regardless.

of where they live.

Do you feel when we look at the survey group for the clerks you indicated in there that both jurisdictions were surveyed?

Is that not problematic in terms of the validity of the survey results if in fact clerks from the city of Charlottesville and that staff were asked to respond to a county survey where one of the options is to move the courts out of the city?

I would be very surprised that anyone in the city would vote

Well, again, we looked at it from the standpoint that regardless of where you lived, where you resided, that you would still be going to a county courthouse for a certain level of jurisdictional service and that you would not be limited to only coming to a city, a general district court city courthouse at the court square.

I mean, you go there to pay your traffic ticket, yes, but if you

If you were a plaintiff in a civil suit, you would go to circuit court.

Mr. Randolph, can I just clarify, are you referring to the stakeholder survey?

Yes.

That is a specific process that was targeted to get to the information that I believe the board wanted, which was what are the impacts by separating the courts.

So those impacts weren't looked at as just county impacts.

In order to really understand that, part of the scope of National Center was to interview and to assess the city side.

So we didn't differentiate between the clerk of the court for the circuit court versus the city versus the county.

We felt that it was important for us to, and I say we, it was really the National Center in Moseley.

County staff was not part of that process in order to maintain objectivity.

but we felt that it was important as part of their process that they do that due diligence.

So National Center's method is both survey of these targeted groups and then follow up with the focus group interviews which again consisted of both city and county.

Well, thank you, Trevor, for that explanation.

Just two more questions and then they'll be done.

Under the survey for district and circuit court judges, option five, the advantages are cited.

I was struck by the fact that so many of those remarks were conditional.

They were conditional such as additional parking needs could be addressed in option five.

Modern technology and facility infrastructure could be accommodated.

Court security could possibly improve, but at an additional manpower cost.

So from the district and circuit court judge survey that is in there, there's so much conditionality.

And then on the disadvantages, the availability of sufficient public transportation is questionable.

yet the fact of the matter is that this board has talked actively about establishing an RTP and that one of the goals of that RTP would be committed to providing transportation under option five.

and then also a statement is in there Albemarle County would have to continue to maintain county owned buildings on the current court square site.

No, the county could reserve the option to sell them to the city, sell them to another party, but the certainty of what the county would do and then the conditionality is remarkable in that section.

I'm just struck by that.

I was also struck overall on your stakeholder survey that public transportation rated is difficult, very difficult in going to either one of the locations, but the public seems to be unaware what the board's talking about in terms of the RTP and the delivery of enhanced public transportation capabilities if we do decide to exercise option five as the course of action.

that would be part built into it.

We would never think of locating the courts there without having the transportation infrastructure in place to support it.

And I was also struck on the stakeholder survey that parking was rated as very easy or easy by only 49.5% of the survey respondents

to Option 5, they clearly did not understand that part of the motivation by members of the board in looking at Option 5 was expressly to assure that parking would be available at Option 5.

So, I just, I want to make the public that's listening right now aware of the fact that these survey results we have to take with a huge grain of salt.

and I'm concerned about some of the phraseology and conclusions that are drawn in here.

But thank you very much.

I've used too much of the board's time.

Just as you prepare the final draft of the report, there are some things that perhaps you can amplify to help me or help others who might have the same questions that I have.

So you talk about the public transportation.

But if you're a county resident, there is no public transportation to you to downtown.

So who the riders are that you're addressing is an important distinction because there are different ways that people have to use to get here.

So it looks accurate probably that city residents have pretty good access to public transportation to the downtown court.

But that is not the case at all for county residents now.

So that's just something that we need to be careful how we're characterizing things.

I was trying really hard to stick with apples and apples whenever possible and that was a big one that turned into an orange real quick.

Some of the other things that are a little, I guess, information is scant on my point of view.

So are all these court services which are now being

described as immediately available to people at Court Square, are they right there in the building?

Because the only one I'm aware of is Legal Aid, which is 10 blocks away, which is not a walking distance at all.

Would it be helpful to overlay maybe the downtown and where those services are?

Is that something that

And also you could add, I don't know if you've asked them, but you know they may be ten blocks away, but they would they may need additional attorneys if they're doing two sites.

Well that's the convenience of the attorney.

I'm talking about the person who has no way to get there except walking.

and that's the people that are residents are the ones that are residents in my mind who need the court services and how are they gonna be able to get services from the people whose job it is to provide them.

So that's a different frame of mind in my perspective.

And so the other thing I would love to be able to learn and it's not immediate, doesn't have to be right now, is how often are these sort of modifications to process that are described in the charts

Oh it's great when everything's right close together because then we can do these early termination meetings in JNDR.

Is that a once a year thing?

Is that a daily thing?

I don't have enough familiarity with the court to understand and maybe in your written report you can give us some information about that because

that's an important distinction for me knowing how often this is happening.

I can't imagine, frankly, an attorney, knowing how hard it is to get on my attorney's docket for a conversation, I can't imagine that they're sitting around with their door open waiting for people to drop in and go over court cases.

That's just not reality.

And people have to make arrangements ahead of time to say, are you gonna be there at 10 o'clock and can we have five minutes to talk about this?

It's not reasonable to think that people are just gonna walk over.

and that seemed to be what was described in the chart that I just had a really hard time understanding.

I think when what I'd like to see if you update the summary or take into consideration new factors is just the key thing here is the administration of justice it's are the people who are arrested treated fairly the people who are as you say an unhappy marriage they served to the best way possible

and I feel like some of the conclusions don't really address the seriousness of this.

Parking, it seems like, you know, we're talking about parking and I think people use parking as kind of a generic traffic hassle factor kind of thing, so when they're saying I don't want to go up to Royal Road, it's a lot of people I know just don't like to go on 29 North, it's just

unpleasant, and it doesn't matter how many parking garages we build up there, there's still going to be an issue of people wanting to get a closer parking space and that kind of thing.

So, you know, we know the city has just bought a piece of property.

They're going to, at 7th Street, that they're going to, right adjacent to the courts, that they're going to build a 300, 250

Car Lot, and they said just as recently as a few days ago that they're offered to give us, sell us whatever, rent us 100 spaces is available.

That offer still stands.

I would like to have the summary talk a little bit more about things like the Public Defender's Office, the Commonwealth Attorney, something that's close to my heart, the Court Appointed Special Advocates, CASA,

that's down right next to the court square.

They handle, mostly volunteers, handle over 200 children that have been taken from their homes and put in foster care.

Talking to them, they would have tremendous difficulty transporting kids and volunteers up 20 minutes, 30 minutes away to appear in court to find a new adopted home.

can provide us

and that, I'm not saying a decision by the end of December, certainly we would think some sort of direction, but at some point the consultant can't make the decision for us is all I'm saying.

And I don't think that you can spend, you could spend a year getting us more and more information and the truth of the matter is at some point this board has to give direction for the next step.

based on the best available information.

And I'm not saying that there isn't something else that we need here from your report.

I'm just saying that I think we have to be careful on getting, asking for so much when

You could spend a year coming up with reams of information for us.

That's just my thought, and I understand what Norman's talking about, and Ann and Rick and Liz, I get all that.

You're looking at it and what my takeaway from this right now and I'm certainly still looking at the information but what you're saying in my opinion looks like depending on how it's handled either location would work there are lots of variables and those variables are what we have to look at and make a decision about.

and certainly we have our attorneys and we have the judges, but as Ann says, we also have our Almore County residents and that's what we have to look at is some of us may weigh one of those groups more heavily than another group.

I think you're directly on point.

We saw our scope in working with Boseley and with the county and with Stantec is interviewing stakeholders, getting information from the public, passing that information on to you.

You know regardless of whether you think the surveys were scientifically inept or not, it was a general information collecting process that we went through.

that we were searching for opinions and searching for the thoughts and the ideas of those people who were most involved in the court process without reviewing that overall court services.

We don't know if your people feel like they've been treated fairly if they are ordered to pay a parking ticket.

I think there's a kind of a simple way to address some of these court services things that I would like to suggest that doesn't take work on your part.

Providing us with a map as someone has asked and suggested but also asking the different court services to provide us with a one paragraph or a one pager on how

they operate.

Do they operate inside the court?

Do they have people come to their office?

How do they approach the different things?

So let them do the work.

I think, excuse me, I think it goes back to what you were talking about.

Is it Dill?

About CASA, a very important... Birthday hallway.

Outside service that does good work in the community itself and works with the attorneys well and works with the court well for the benefit of children.

But...

You know to find out what they do it's best as you say to go to them directly and with the layover of their location if it's in the proximity of the centralized court as it stands now

I mean, you've got the general district court sort of working as a combined court now, working with the county, working with the city and hearing all types of cases.

How that's impacted by the services within court square, within the perimeter of the court square is very important.

So I think it's good to ask that type of question.

So let me just, Norman are you?

I'm done.

I want to make sure now.

And Liz, just a minute, because you've had a chance.

Let me ask Brad.

Brad, do you have any questions?

I just want to make sure.

So one of the issues is cost.

We've gone over that a lot.

And you said that it can work in both ways, both locations.

But you've also said the sheriff's department said five more Commonwealth attorneys said two more personnel.

Court services said, or I guess that was the clerks or something, said one more.

and then we have the sort of you know not clearly identified public transportation issue which has a cost

so I'm not sure if there was, there's a lot to go through so I'm not sure if you tallied up all the different additional people that were listed in here or if we just had those eight people but I'm trying to get a handle on the additional cost of moving it.

I also don't have any idea on a bus service whether it would be serving our urban ring

people, because obviously we don't have much in the way of buses going to the rural areas.

How often would you have to have a bus?

Would it be every half an hour?

What's the appropriate transportation for that kind of a situation?

I'd like to sort of get a better handle on the costs of moving.

I also, not that this is just a comment,

is that if I have a speeding ticket and it happens to be in the city, I'm going to go to a city court if I want to just not pay the fine.

If I'm a city resident and I'm out in the county and I do something, then I've got to go to a county court.

And my understanding is that there is

a number of times where we have an individual with multiple, you know, multiple things they are being accused of, some of which are in the county and some of which are in the city and they're combined, the district attorneys will decide, you know, which cases to take.

This is what I've been told.

so there's an awful lot of overlap and I think it's really hard for us to say we're only going to look this kind of goes back to the survey of only talking to you know the city residents versus county residents there's so much overlap because our

because our jurisdictional lines are really varied.

I can respond to the operating costs.

What was identified through the interview and survey process has been accounted for.

and the modeling that Stantec will show on the option five will include that.

We're just assuming that that would be part of the increased operating cost, so that would get modeled there.

I'll have to take a look up on the work related to the transit.

I just have no concept of what that looks like.

Brad, do you have any questions?

It's funny that y'all were talking about the public transportation.

It was a question of available public transportation to either location to try to understand the importance of that.

In general, I guess

Yeah, it's just odd that it has taken such a front seat in some of the discussions even just today.

And I guess I'm just curious about where the origin of pushing it, but not pushing it, bringing it along with the discussion has come from.

Because I would be, because it's more in the front row, I'm curious to know how many people use transit to go to court or use court services.

Just curious, I know that we struggle with gathering that information just in general.

I'm pretty pretty confident that there are no numbers that are available at this time and it's probably going to be resources the county has to invest to find out how many county residents are utilizing public transportation to come to the court.

So that's something that I would caution that

Yeah, that too.

The people who work there.

And there you go, you're distinguishing the difference between a court user and a court employee or staff.

And that's important because you asked the question about how much service you would need.

That tells you right there the differences in the service.

So before we go down too much of a path about public transportation I think it's important to try to figure out why we're talking about that versus to me something like congestion you know what is county users causing that level a level of congestion contributing I guess is a better word put it to that area so when of course you bring up transportation my attention will always be perked

So I guess it probably should be clear to staff about how far they need to go with some of this transportation related stuff because it is a rabbit hole.

When you talk about option five, having the right information about who's already using a vehicle to access option one is vital to knowing where they're coming from and where they're going to.

Norman, you mentioned that people might not want to go up 29.

Well, if a portion of them are coming from the Forest Lakes, Hollymead area, that shifts that modeling behavior.

So it's just something I paid attention to.

I, of course, am the one who had the biggest issue with the survey approach, the public survey approach.

I wouldn't characterize as helping you all as much as criticizing the approach.

And my intent is not to criticize the professionalism of what you all have brought to the table.

I think the direction you've been given and the effort that we took on was not the best approach to this.

So, I've been in the eye of the hurricane of how things like this get misused.

I mean, just two years ago, you know, people are misinformed and they take percentages as statistically valid information regardless of what text you have in there that tries to sway them differently.

Without a doubt, I understood after the phone call that we had that this was more subjective, measuring attitudes and perspectives.

But when we start putting percentages on paper, people start thinking it's statistically valid.

So I would suggest that we offer direction to staff to actually generalize that information, the public survey information.

Avoid the statistics.

Avoid the percentages at this time.

It's fine to say that a majority of the respondents did this or there was a consensus on this.

That is, to me, I think that is a more appropriate approach when you're trying to say that there is not a statistical valid nature of the respondents.

I preference all this with just the fact that this is a huge project and I think everybody's agreed to that with that kind of magnitude it comes with a lot of attention and I would caution that if we don't kind of steer this survey statistical conversation in the right direction we're setting a precedent for others to use this as a basis to say

Hey, no, this is not statistically valid, but it gives you a general opinion that could really affect a lot of other conversations in the future.

So I am more than happy to accept any outcomes and percentages if they are statistically valid.

That saying being said, I would love to see us make that investment.

I think it's worthwhile.

I know when we were talking about this on the phone a while back that it would be costly, but I think that's something this board needs to weigh as far as what is the value of

Doing a statistically valid survey.

And the statistics world will probably rain down on us if we continue to say scientific and statistical and interchangeable terms and that they are two different of the same approach, they are two different aspects.

So,

I don't know what steps we need to take to examine possibly going down that path and what time it takes, but it may be something that this board needs to consider.

If it is not, I still would hope that there's consensus to maybe pull out the percentages and just focus on general language for what you all are considering a general subjective input of the public.

I think that's about all I had written down.

It was just in the news media that Cole Hendricks was asked by some media person.

Let me make it clear that I may be wrong and you all can correct me, but I think there was only one actual offer that was made about parking and that was almost two years ago when we offered

to buy out the city's portion of the 7th and Marcus Street.

And we were told no.

That is the only legitimate written offer that was made that I have seen.

So I may be wrong, but I think it's important to make sure that there is no confusion about parking offers.

There may be parking discussions, but the only written offer and the written response that has been received is that time in February 2014.

and the compromise that we had that was option two that would have allowed a parking garage to go up down here for parking that would have provided parking for ad infinitum time period was rejected.

That compromise was rejected.

I will say though I agree with Brad on the transportation piece that it really does take us down into a swirl and it gets to what I was really trying to say and not very well or maybe.

But I don't think any of the consultants can make the decision for us.

and there are a lot of things that the consultants certainly don't know.

For example, we are aware that TJPDC has a study that shows that, and I'm not sure exactly of the year, but certainly within the lifetime of this court, these courts, 2030, 2035, that every entrance into the city will be gridlocked.

You don't have a way of knowing that.

I don't expect you to know that.

That's what I've seen the studies that show.

They'll be rated F. And you probably aren't aware that on Rio Road, we just spent in this area and along all of our, in Albemarle County, we just spent $230 million in transportation improvements to make sure that our constituents and our residents and our communities' traffic is moving.

We have 6,000 parking spots out on 29 North that are sitting empty.

Or no, I'm sorry, 3,000, excuse me, I doubled it.

I take that back, 3,000.

Having said that, I can't expect you to know that.

That gets into part of the subjective that this board has to take in, and we can't ask you to come up with all of that and deal with all of that.

That is virtually impossible.

So Liz, you have something else you want to say, and then I think at some point we probably need to wrap up.

And we may want to think about a survey.

I don't know if you want to talk about that tonight.

I'm just trying to be sort of the timekeeper.

While I'm still allowing plenty of discussion for this, I don't want to shut everybody down, but I do think we've had sort of a round-robin.

Just one really quick thing.

And we're not asking them to provide that.

I do want to just say one thing on what Brad said about the city and the only written offer.

I completely agree it's the only written offer because when they came out and said that they would build the garage was the same time that we said we're going down a different route.

So the only thing that was written was some council saying something to the newspaper.

So if that is something that will make a difference in this decision, I think we should ask the city if they are willing to put that in writing.

No, but I'm saying, going back to what I was saying, they don't have that background.

And we can't expect you to have it.

That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, and that non-written offer by the city is still, as best we know, on the table because the county said to the city, we don't want to explore this any further until we've looked at all of the options in terms of the best location and for the county residents and for the administration of justice in Albemarle County.

whatever they have on the table that should still be there.

And this pause happened when they rejected our compromise.

That's correct.

Okay.

it's good it's a possibility you know it is the parking is the issue that's a totally different issue okay are we good anybody have any last and then we'll kind of wrap up here I just have a couple of wishes after we release the consultant then I just had a couple things on Trevor's to-do list yes and that's good so I was trying to get back to Trevor because I think Brad was right about sort of wrapping up here and seeing where we are okay

Where do you think we are?

The takeaways were some great feedback.

I was trying to keep notes and I will try to summarize what I think maybe the immediate actions are.

One is a map with an overlay of court services support kind of in the campus region.

Norman had talked about maybe drawing kind of more in the summary of the support services, kind of what they do

Just for, given that it's already 250, feels like quite a few pages, I think you were just saying more of a paragraph, Liz.

I just don't want us to, yeah.

And then Brad's suggestion, not sure if it's direction or where the board fits on it, which is,

As it relates to the public survey information, kind of pulling out, making that more general, pulling out the percentages, you could still talk about, you know, majority, minority, I mean you could still characterize the feedback, but just pull out those percentages.

Is that something the board wants us to do?

I mean given the fact that we really, everyone's heard this evening this is not a scientifically valid survey.

So percentages can easily be misleading and misunderstood both.

So as the consultant referenced the divide that's there in terms of perception.

about advantages, disadvantages.

I don't see how you can do that.

Now the only thing I was wondering is just what...

The one thing that I was wondering, which I don't know how hard it is to do and maybe I'm just being silly, but when you say bus service to a court system, does that mean

and I look at Brad because he probably knows.

Does that mean every half an hour?

Does that mean every hour?

I mean, when we've been talking about buses to this point, we have not been, you know, when it services neighborhoods and other things like that, we haven't

My thought is to first find out the origin of where the desire to explore the relationship comes from.

If it comes from the court system, then they do have a better understanding of who's accessing it from public transportation.

The judges were one group that mentioned that pretty strongly.

I just don't know.

I go back to it's going to be an investment to find an answer.

It will be an investment to find the answer of the traffic impact of the courts as well.

Madam Chair, the last one was about a scientific survey and whether that should occur.

What I would suggest is a consultation with staff, and then as we come back in December and present at a work session, we could provide that information as what might make sense, cost and scope, and how that might then could be used by the board.

I'm not sure I'd commit to it.

Okay folks, anybody else have anything they want to add?

And I really appreciate it because you went through the material, you gave us a great report in my opinion and I think probably the board agrees.

We had a little time challenge and we made it so that my hat as the timekeeper is happy because it worked out beautifully.

I think we're all happy right now.

I appreciate it.

Thank you Trevor.

It was great.

May I list two or three things for Jeff's list?

Sure, I'm sorry.

I don't know who's going to do this.

Things I've heard about that are access to court issues but not relating to the new process but today.

So there's been a change in the last year about the spaces which used to be reserved for our county officers and they've been taken away and given to somebody else.

I don't know how we can get that fixed, but I think it's not right to have our guys parking at Water Street and walking all the way up there.

It takes a lot too much time, and it's ridiculous.

I actually have heard about that too.

That's a real concern.

I've recently heard about the jurors, which you already addressed.

There's no handicapped parking that's reliably available for jurors, for anybody to use.

That's something we can address right now.

what I wrote down on one of these page of the option one page about safe secure parking and that drew my mind to

when the parking is far away from the court it's that unsecure walking when you have all these combatants hopefully not physical but sometimes they are having to go along here so that that's not secure even if it may be three or four blocks away it's it's different than what I heard described that I really like the sound of so

I have heard the sheriffs and the police officers say that they've really been cut out of the parking within the last few months and that's very concerning.

It doesn't bode well for cooperation.

Madam Chair, I move the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 3 to discuss and consider the acquisition of real property located in the Route 29 corridor where discussion and open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the county.

and under subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds in the Route 29 corridor and where competition or bargaining is involved where, if made publicly initially, the financial interests of the county would be adversely affected.

Aye.

Mr. Sheffield?

Yes.

Mr. Dill?

Ms. Mallek?

Yes.

Ms. McKeel?

Yes.

Mr. Randolph?

Aye.

I sent out a copy of the letter that is going to go to CACVB.

electronically.

You all saw that and just wanted to let you know that I'm planning on sending it tomorrow unless I hear any concerns right now.

Is that good?

It's all good?

I responded to you.

And I just haven't had a chance.

I've been in meetings all day.

I just want to make sure before I send it.

Okay and the city will be dealing with it on Monday and sending it on Monday.

So we're in lockstep.

With that then, if there's nothing else urgent, I will adjourn us to November the 29th at 12 o'clock in room 241.

That is our legislative luncheon, where we'll be talking about our legislative packet, so everybody knows.