Board of Supervisors Adjourned Meeting   1/4/2018

All right, well, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us here today on this cold afternoon.

I'm Angela Navarro, Governor McAuliffe's Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources.

And before I have the honor of introducing him, I want to say a couple of thank yous.

So first, I want to thank all the folks in Albemarle County, Jeff Richardson and his whole staff for helping us to organize this here today.

I want to thank all the Board of Supervisors members.

So we have all of the members of the Baltimore County Board of Supervisors.

We have Ann Mallek, the new chair.

We have Norman Dill, the new vice chair, Rick Randolph.

We have Diantha McKeel, Liz Palmer, and Ned Galloway.

I'd also like to thank Clyde Chrisman and the whole DCR team who obviously have been instrumental in all this work.

Delegate Toscano, who will be joining us shortly.

We've got Senator Deeds here in the second row.

I'd also like to thank Senator Hanger who has been very helpful in this process of moving this announcement along today.

And before I introduce Governor McAuliffe, I'd also like to thank our Secretary of Natural Resources, Molly Ward, who just left us.

But she certainly was a visionary leader, and a lot of her work led to the efforts here today.

So the most important person to thank, of course, is Governor McAuliffe.

When we came into office, when he came into office almost four years ago, he told us to be bold, to be creative, and to think big, and that's what this announcement here today represents.

He spent every single day working to grow the new Virginia economy, and the incredible accomplishments that he's made over the last four years speak for themselves.

Unemployment is down to 3.7%, which is the lowest level

In nearly a decade, we've had record breaking investment that he's brought in, capital investment nearly $20 billion.

And of course, he recognizes that protecting our natural resources and expanding access to recreational opportunities are an important component of growing the new Virginia economy.

So we're really excited that the announcement that he'll be making here today.

will only expand upon those accomplishments.

Well, thank you everybody.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sit down.

I want to thank Angela and her great team for helping make this possible today.

I also want to wish a happy birthday to Senator Cree Deeds today.

Folks, it's his birthday.

Delicates of Scott will be with us in a minute.

We were just at an event up in Gordon'sville.

We had a great announcement up there.

It was really fitting for me to be back at this factory there that when I went in 2004, it had shut down for years and they'd lost 140 jobs, a gigantic 180,000 square foot facility.

I went in 2014, we put about 500,000 from the Governor's Opportunity Fund in.

We reopened the plan in 2014, 362 employees now in this factory.

But today was really instructive because they just put solar panels on their entire roof, 862 kilowatts of solar right here in Gordonville.

It's really a great success, so a reopened manufacturing plant, a brand new solar facility, and we've now gone from 17 megawatts of solar when we took office

today to over 2,600.

So we've made great, great progress in delicate discount.

We had to go up in the roof to cut the ribbon.

We had to be up there for about 15 minutes.

I think he was a little cold, so I think he's in his car warming up.

But he will be here very, very, very, very shortly.

This is a great day for us.

Great to be with you, Ann.

This morning we were in our workforce development meeting in Richmond this morning.

Had some great announcements on workforce development, but today is all about the great outdoors, and this is something that's been worked on for many years.

I want to thank the folks who've been very active in working on this.

The parks is something very important to us, very important to me.

As you know, I'm the first Virginia governor to visit all 37 state parks.

Dorothy and I, our five children and two dogs, have visited all 37 state parks.

We've overnighted in most of them.

We have loved our state parks and really, really they are such precious jewels for all of us.

Last year we had 10 million visitors to our state parks.

which generated over $225 million of revenue, and $100 million of that was from visitors from outside the state.

It employed 3,500 people, direct jobs involvement, and created about $20 million in local taxes.

So not only the benefit for families and individuals to be able to go to our great state parks and see them and visit them, but also the economic impact, and that's why we've leaned in very hard on our state parks.

I'm here today to sign a lease, a 99-year lease under the Code of Virginia as the authority of the governor.

I have the authority to sign this lease here for Biscuit Run to have 1,200 acres which will now be used for recreational purposes.

This is something that we have worked on from day one.

I wanted to get Biscuit Run done.

As you know, this was first purchased in 2009 when Senator Kaine was then governor.

I tried to turn it into a state park working very closely with Senator Deeds and Delegate Toscano and others.

I put $42 million in the bond package to make this a state park.

Unfortunately, the General Assembly did not see the wisdom that we had and did not fund the project.

We were not going to be deterred so we all sat down and said let's collectively creatively with DCR and Molly and Angela and the team and figure out what can we do creatively

to take this to the next level.

We're not going to give up on this beautiful piece of property so we came up with a lot of great new ideas and that's what I will sign here in a few minutes and the good news is that 80% of the 1,200 acres will remain forested.

We're going to protect all the sensitive

natural heritage resources that we have on the site.

But this will now, Albemarle will now run this beautiful site of 1200 acres that will be open up for visitors now to be able to come in and enjoy it just like all the rest of our state parks.

And this is such a jewel.

I do want to thank Molly Ward for her great work.

She's now back in Hampton.

She's the treasurer.

took office on January 1st.

Russ Baxter is our new secretary.

I want to thank Angela and the team.

I want to thank all the folks at DCR.

This would not have happened without the great leadership of Senator Deeds and Delegate Toscano.

I want to thank the Attorney General's Office for the great work that they have done.

This would not have happened.

I have kept the Attorney General's Office very busy over the last four years and I do want to thank

our great Attorney General Mark Herring and his team for defending man restoration rights lawsuits and a few other things we've done but all in the right direction.

I don't see David yet

Well, we'll jump out of order here until David Toscano arrives.

And from the local view, and I made some notes so I wouldn't forget because there's many, many years of excitement over this particular property.

In 2009, dozens of county residents and staff worked with Lynn Crump and Danette Pool, who are here today, from DCR to craft a master plan for this spectacular property.

Our hikes through the woods showed us the mix of natural resources which needed stewardship.

The terrain, scenery, farm roads, and paths showed us the terrific potential for enjoyment and recreation for a wide range of residents and interests.

There may have been a state record for the number of stakeholders at the table.

Now we embark on a new dimension of the park's life, a unique recreation experiment, a 1200 acre park at the edge of our growth area, accessible by foot, bike, horse, bus, in addition to the cars that people use to get to our rural parks.

This central location enables direct connections to our urban neighborhoods to the north and via trails to our rural Walnut Creek Park to the south.

The versatility of the site allows a tourist destination to evolve, providing locals and visitors who come to Monticello, Highland, and the university a chance to vary their own experience here.

Hike one day, history one day, hike, bike, and ride the next.

You could ride a mule in Yosemite, why not here?

Opportunities are all around us and we are eager to get to work.

On behalf of the Board of Supervisors and the residents and visitors to Albemarle County who will enjoy this park, I express our sincere gratitude and appreciation for all the work Supervisor Rick Randolph did to make this partnership a reality.

Thank you, Rick.

To Governor McAuliffe and DCR Director Clyde Christman, please accept also our genuine thanks for your efforts to bring this agreement to life.

Albemarle appreciates the partnership with the state to enhance this unique property for the benefit of our community and the entire region.

Thank you so much and see you on the trails.

And let me now introduce David Toscano who has arrived.

Good afternoon everybody.

So who do I get to introduce?

Oh, I get an introduce you.

Well, it's really a great honor to be here today.

For some reason, they told me to go to the wrong Albemarle County office building, so that's where I went.

So, I can tell you, everybody's really working hard over there.

Nobody was leaving, but they didn't know about this event.

So much for that.

I got to Gordonville okay though.

I was okay for Gordonville, but I didn't get back in time.

But thank you very much.

Very exciting announcement today.

Very exciting development for Almonte County, the city of Charlottesville, the whole region.

There are a lot of things that went into this.

There were a lot of twists and turns along the way and there's still a lot of things that have to be done but I think everybody's very very excited about the prospects.

I know my buddy Senator Deeds, I guess it was his birthday today, is very excited as well and I thank you very much for letting me have the opportunity to say a few words today.

I have the honor of introducing of course Clyde who made all this

happened, made a lot of this happen, and he's going to be staying around for a while, aren't you?

Yeah, he's going to stay with the administration, I think, yeah, I hope, yeah, you better, been announced, so you better not leave now.

But he's done a great job, really been a strong advocate for the park system in the state, and really has done a lot to help get this to the finish line.

Thank you very much.

It really is an honor to be here and I gotta start by thanking you because you told me when you hired me four years ago, I can't believe it's been four years, the governor said you gotta take chances, you gotta try new things.

If you try something and it doesn't work, then you need to try something new and if that doesn't work, you need to dust yourself and get up and try again and that's why we're here today because of the leadership of this governor, the 72nd governor.

It's been a pure honor and privilege to serve under you, sir.

I also want to say this because if those of you that have heard the governor speak before you know that he's a man of superlatives but there's one superlative that I wanted to mention today is that we also have the privilege according to governing magazine to have the best governor in the United States of America

and it is amazing the things that we've accomplished over the last four years Governor and I truly will never forget all of the many incredible and exciting moments.

And we're really excited to enter into this partnership with Albemarle County as we were thinking this and I don't know whose idea it was first because simultaneously a few folks came to me and said, you know, we tried this state park thing and we just can't get the General Assembly to bite on it so what if we were to look at working with Albemarle County?

And so came up here and I want to recognize Rick Randolph.

Rick, I don't know how many times you and I have spoken on the phone and how many meetings we had to get here today.

And I want to thank Senator Deeds and Delegate Toscano for pulling together some meetings with folks to get this ball rolling.

I was up here about two months ago.

and you might recall Senator Deeds that my instructions when I went back to Richmond was to develop legislation for you to make this happen and so as I was driving back to Richmond I called Secretary Ward and I said, Molly, Senator Deeds wants me to work on some legislation for him to introduce to the General Assembly to make this a regional park working with Albemarle County

And Molly said, well, why do we need to do that?

Why can't the governor just do it?

So I called up my counsel, Duncan, and said, Duncan, can we do this?

And of course, they're writing the Code of Virginia in section tile 2.2.

The governor has the authority to lease property.

So then then became the challenge of Molly said we're going to get this done before this end of this administration and Governor we're close we're close but we got her done we got her done and so

and I truly look forward to working with Albemarle County.

Several DCR staff here, officials, I want to introduce Tom Smith, my Deputy Director for Operations, Craig Seaver, our State Parks Director, Danette Poole was already recognized along with Lynn who worked on the master plan and one of the next steps that we're going to be doing is working with Albemarle County to re-look at the master plan

and to think what makes sense and I will promise you that that process is going to involve a lot of public input so that we hear from the citizens that we can work together in working with Albemarle County to provide a facility that the citizens need, want and desire and get it open to the public as soon as absolutely possible.

I find it to be a travesty whenever I go to that property and I see a sign that says future state park no trespassing because it's owned by the public and why we shouldn't allow them to be on the property.

So with that, again, Governor, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Angela, thank you for helping pull all this together, and thank you so much.

We have a little bit more work to do, because now the board has to do one little piece of final action, I believe, here.

Good afternoon everyone.

The board is now more in session and my question to board members is do you need more information from our county attorney about the details of the lease?

Right.

Madam Chair, Madam Chair.

May I request that Greg just brief us with a summation of the lease and also a summation of the memorandum.

Greg Kamptner, County Attorney, Madam Chair, members of the board.

I have, as briefly as possible, I've highlighted the key provisions of the deed of lease.

As the governor stated, it is a 1,200 acre piece of property that will be leased for a 99 year term.

The county will have no rent to pay, but we will take over responsibility to maintain the premises.

We are allowed under the lease to use the property as a county park.

And I want everybody to refamiliarize yourself with the requirement that this property is subject to open space related recorded covenants.

So there are some restrictions that show up in the lease that are intended to preserve the integrity of those recorded covenants and make sure we don't run afoul of them.

Section 5 has riparian buffers established within the lease area, 100 foot riparian buffers on each side of the streams.

There are some exceptions that allow certain things to happen and one of the keys is particularly to get from east to west or vice versa is the ability to have a stream crossing with a road.

It also allows trails within the stream.

or Perry and Buffer.

The governor also mentioned the requirements of preserving the forestal cover so the deed of lease requires at least 80% of the 1,200 acres be maintained in forest and the other part of it is to assure that we don't run afoul of the

Open Space Covenants.

There's a limitation on the amount of impervious cover.

Think of the asphalt and rooftops.

Because this is such a large piece, we're talking about somewhere between 55 and 60 acres maximum impervious cover on the property.

recreational use restrictions, golf courses, and permanent spectator seating is prohibited.

Speaking with Parks and Recreation, they looked at that.

There's no issue with no concern about not being able to have a golf course, and they can have temporary spectator seating, and that will satisfy Parks and Rec's needs fine.

Invasive species play a role not only in the deed of lease, but also

in the memorandum of agreement.

And so under the lease, we're not allowed to purposefully introduce invasive species and there's an ongoing obligation to work with the state to maintain and eradicate the invasive species that are found on the property.

Natural Heritage Resources, exhibit C of the originals, I don't have that in the copy that I have, identifies the Natural Heritage Resources and those are not to be disturbed during the term of the lease.

Roadways, we will maintain the established roadways that exist on the property and for any new roadways we will obtain consent from DCR prior to there.

Skipping down to item number 12, improvements.

Any improvements that take place on the property reflecting the collaboration between the county and DCR will require DCR approval.

And they have agreed to not unreasonably withhold

their permission and the deed to that paragraph goes into what is and what would not be considered unreasonable withholding.

One of the key things is that it is reasonable for them to withhold permission if they determine that what we were proposing would violate the terms of the open space covenants and that's probably the big thing there.

and skipping down to 16, accepting the premises as is.

So we've agreed to do that.

DCR has also represented that there are no changes.

to the condition of

maybe on the next slide dealing with the toxic and hazardous substances.

Our responsibility and potential liability lies only if we allow or we actually release toxic or hazardous substances on the property.

Going back up to paragraph 17, county will not assign or sublet the property without their DCR's prior consent.

There are some exceptions listed and one of those

if the county, if the board were ever to decide to have the or a second Parks and Recreational Facilities Authority take over maintenance of that particular park.

Nothing is planned at this point, nothing's envisioned, but there's just that, we just carved that out upfront so that there wouldn't be any dispute down in the future.

We do have insurance on the property.

I've been working with Lachlan Lee, our risk manager.

We do have a certificate of insurance that's been prepared so that the DCR is added as an additional insured for the

commercial general liability portion of our policy.

There's a little error, I received it about an hour ago.

There needs to be a correction made to it, but I spoke to Duncan Pitchford, the AG's attorney, and said that's fine.

22 deals with the environmental contamination issue which I talked about and you can see that I was reaching about quarter to four and I didn't underline the introduction to paragraph 24 termination of the lease this was something that was we did negotiate so the

DCR, if they decide to terminate the lease, they have to give the county two years prior written notice and there was a question that came up about the improvements that the county may install on the property over the next 99 years and so DCR agreed to reimburse the county for the value of the improvements.

the appraised value of the improvements at the time of the notice or the amount of the county's debt obligations for those improvements existing at the time.

And the termination provision for the county allows us to give six months prior notice to DCR.

That's it.

Those are the key provisions of the lease.

The memorandum of agreement has a number of provisions.

These speak to how the county and DCR will work together, what some certain expectations are.

Probably the key provision was

DCR providing assistance in updating the master plan for the property.

And they've agreed to work with us, work with the county to update the master plan.

And that's in paragraph five if you're looking for that.

There's no dollar amount that's included in the memorandum of agreement.

What the parties have agreed to is to cooperate in the development of the modifications to the master plan.

and that's probably the essence of it.

Very good.

Well, thank you.

That's great.

Before I read them, I do want to note the amount of commitment, of time, effort, legal insight that Greg and his staff provided on this process and did an exemplary job representing the best interests of the residents of Albemarle County.

and of protecting the interests of Albemarle County government in this process.

I do also want to acknowledge the amount of staff support outside of the legal department, Doug Walker, who really pulled the team together and that involved

Is Bob still here?

He's hiding back there behind Doug Walker.

But Bob and his team, Trevor, you probably had a hand on this as well.

I'm sure Dan Mahon, of course, who toured me out at Biscuit Run, just a lot of people.

What does it take for a county to acquire a state park and a lease?

It takes a community of people working together.

and the last thing is we couldn't have gotten here without the support of the board and I really appreciate your commitment to understanding this unique opportunity.

It ended up

with not quite the amount of money we hope for for the county to be able to open it.

But I'm delighted that Clyde is going to be remaining at DCR so we have somebody that we can continue to work with.

We have David and Kerry to work with on the General Assembly.

and I do also want to note the fact that Chip has left here.

We did try going the regional route at first and that wasn't going to work, but Senator Emmett Hanger's support right from the outset was pivotal because he's the person that said, you know, Biscuit Run should be a regional park.

and he and Senator Deeds talked about that and that got us thinking regionally at first and we really tried energetically to do that.

We made a good faith effort here to have this park become a regional park.

and it just wouldn't work out because of a lack of interest of two contiguous counties that also had parks that they were looking to open and the city just felt that they had enough on their radar at this time that they really couldn't entertain the possibility.

The city was asked about this so it is as though the county chose to go it alone here.

but we did try as best we could to think about this from a regional perspective and when that was no longer a viable approach why we came back to looking at this as an Albemarle County Park so there are a lot of people that made this happen today on behalf of the citizens of the county

some of them are up here, some of them are in the audience, some of them are still at their desks working at three minutes after five but we wouldn't have gotten here without all of those people and people in the state level and Clyde you've been a great partner to work with I've felt a certain degree of withdrawal symptoms

And I've not had any communication with Clyde for two weeks now.

And what's going on?

And if I can just jump in and acknowledge the great help I had from our people with expertise to help craft the final language of the

of the lease.

Bob and his staff, I was driving, I think I was driving Bob crazy asking him to calculate impervious cover and Trevor and Blake provide some great insights on building standards for the improvements and Mark Graham, who's not here, but I don't see Mark, but Mark also provided great assistance and Doug was

involved corralling us and keeping the four or five of us who were directly working on the lease moving forward.

I do also want to note that Jody Saunders, who was my partner in driving over the mountain to see how Waynesboro did their reception for the governor, we had an opportunity to figure out how to do it better.

and I think this did work very well today.

So Jody, kudos to you and people in public engagement, Emily, all of you that made it happen.

Thank you, thank you very much and for Chief Lance and Major Jenkins for being here to ensure that we had a police presence as well.

So I'd like to move that the board adopt the resolution to approve the deed of lease.

Mr. Dill?

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms. McKeel?

Yes.

Ms. Palmer?

Aye.

Ms. Mallon.

Mr. Gill.

Yes.

Is this done?

I just want to say one thing really, really quickly.

I think that some other people have already thanked Rick for all the work that he's done, but I think the board really was incredibly impressed at the time that he put in and the effort and all the really attention to detail in bringing that information to us and presenting it.

in such a way that we could all accept and understand.

You did a great job.

Next time we want you at the microphone, you're going to have to be lassoed to take up there, I guess.

That's great.

And we are to come back.

We're not their journey to anything special, just our next meeting.

Next meeting will be a regular meeting all the time.

Thank you, everyone.