Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   2/5/2020

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you very much.

Okay board, first item if we can adopt our final agenda, provided there are no items to be pulled from consent.

And if not, if we could have a motion?

I don't have anything to pull.

I just wanted to add something at the end of the meeting for discussion.

Sure.

And I have to quickly wrap my head around it.

I'm sorry I was distracted.

We prepared, back before the first of the year, drafts of letters to go to the members of the General Assembly around biscuit-run funding.

You look like you want to say something, Greg.

Not related to this.

Okay.

I just stopped because we look like this at each other, and I can see your body language.

We prepared drafts of letters to go to our General Assembly representatives around our request for $5 million for Biscuit Run.

Those letters are sitting there.

They just have not been sent.

They need to be changed slightly, and I just wanted to put that on the agenda at the end to discuss quickly.

So if we could add $5 million for Biscuit Run discussion.

Sure.

And then I know that I forgot we have to officially do this number 19, which is proposed lease of space for the Office of Voter Registration Election.

We're going to remove that from the agenda just with new information.

The only item I did not get into the deadline so for discussion would be if we want to communicate about the cost to compete bill which Cree has in there that has gotten no support from us yet so I've circulated that a little bit.

That'd be good.

A handful of adjustments.

Any others?

Motion to approve the agenda as amended.

Ms.

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer.

Yes.

Ms.

Price.

Aye.

Yes.

Very good.

We have an approved agenda.

I'll take this time to introduce those with us today.

We have Officer Dana Reeves and Officer Eric Risling with us today.

Thank you gentlemen and some others as always with some other items.

Let's see, behind us we have Doug Walker from the county executive's office, our county attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, of course the supervisors, our county executive, Mr. Richardson, and our board clerk, Ms.

Borgeson.

And that'll bring us to brief announcements by board members.

I have a couple of things.

They actually are connected.

I had a couple of conversations over the last couple of weeks with parents of special needs children, in particular those who have autism.

And there were two principal things that I think have come out of that.

One is the significance of our school system here, both within the county and in the local area, being able to provide the level of education that we can.

One parent I spoke with from a surrounding county,

Because that county is not able to provide the educational needs of their child, the county has to pay for that student to be transported to Richmond every year under state law.

So the expense that is being used simply for transportation is money that would be lost to the educational system.

And so I'm really pleased that we do as much as we do here.

and the second one actually is the mother of a young man at my church named Jake who has done artwork and I've got a calendar here which I'm going to give to the clerk after the meeting today so that others can see and as I looked through this

I was reminded of the movie Temple Grandin about the young woman with autism who has made such a significant contribution to the cattle industry.

And it just reminds me that every person has a way that they can contribute and we need to continue doing what we're doing and do even more.

to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that each of our residents has the ability to be a contributing member.

And like I say, I just am very pleased with what we do here in Albemarle County, which helps our families and the entire community.

Thank you.

Other announcements?

Just a little update from the Crozet Master Plan.

Last week we had the first meeting with the marketing person who was very skilled and very tuned in to conversation with the large number of citizens who turned up so we're

very encouraged about what she and her company from Birmingham, Alabama will gather up for us.

Last Saturday was the faculty open house and performances, or Sunday, all afternoon at the Crozet Arts, and I just want to

make sure the board knew this is one of the two lieutenants who used the old Crozet Elementary School.

The Crozet School of the Arts has half dozen or more studios, theater, dance room, music room in the lower level of the annex and then the field school uses the upstairs and they share use of the auditorium.

But it was really wonderful to hear and meet these instructors who teach people all over the world and perform in all sorts of

First-rate symphonies and things like that to share their gifts with the community.

This coming Saturday is Second Saturday.

You've heard me speak about that before.

And that is all the art galleries and studios all around Crozet.

who have special events that happen on the second Saturday.

So their motto is little town, big art and they have a symbol of the train and it's really beginning to generate a lot of activity throughout the restaurants and business communities there as well.

At the Historic Preservation Committee last week, the members of a court square study group from the city came to meet with us and to say that they are getting energized again to redo their proposed draft for changes to the historic sign on the side of our courthouse.

The committee declined to give them feedback right then, but asked please to see the drafts when things are written so that people have a chance to actually see something first before any comments are made.

So that's the plan on that.

Very good.

And I'm going to hold mine until the consent agenda, just because it's more relevant there.

I just want to say one quick thing that I know that the board already knows this because Siri sent an email out to let us all know about the attendance at the recent Yancey Community Center community night and they had roller skating in the gym and bingo and

And just to follow up on that, it's really hard to find places to roller skate these days.

I didn't know you were looking.

Well, I was going to say, I remember going in roller skating and having a great time over at Greenwood.

I wasn't even sure that Greenwood was still open to it.

I'm going to take the grandkids over there some time.

Our granddaughters had their birthday party there and it was such a blast.

It is fun.

I haven't done it for years there, but that's great to know.

I neglected to say something that was really, really important.

I was carried away.

And that is I received a phone call yesterday from the administrative clerk at the Alcohol Beverage

people, ABC people in Richmond to notify us that the applicant for the Camp Champion limited brewery license has been withdrawn and is now completely dead.

I said, does this mean that it's coming back later?

And she said, no, absolutely not.

If someone chooses to open the application again, they will have to start from the beginning.

So she said, please share with people.

There will be notices that are sent out to the 77 people who were planning to come to the hearing, but they will be receiving a letter again with this information.

I just received my change of location meeting today, which was arranged 10 days ago.

It was great news.

Yeah.

Well, I saw the email.

Are there any others?

So that will bring us to proclamation and recognitions.

We do have a proclamation this afternoon celebrating Black History Month.

And she may have a special person to accept it for her today.

So with that, I will read this, and this is in the form of a motion.

Proclamation celebrating Black History Month.

Whereas, Black History Month, celebrated during the month of February, originated in 1926 to recognize the heritage and achievements of black people in the United States.

And whereas, since its founding, Albemarle County has imperfectly progressed towards its mission of enhancing the well-being of all its residents.

and whereas, following the Civil War, 52% of the local population were freed and soon thereafter established a vibrant community of black-owned farms and homesteads known as Union Ridge that stretched across three miles connecting present-day hydraulic Georgetown and Woodburn roads.

And whereas,

Isabella Gibbons established a school for freed people in Albemarle County upon her emancipation at the end of the Civil War, and Reeves Minor and Jesse Scott Sammons were long-term educators of the Union Ridge Grade School, established in 1886.

Mary Carr Greer was instrumental to its expansion when it became the Albemarle Training School in 1893 and served as the first and only four-year high school for the county's black students until 1959.

and John Gibbons Shelton, principal of the Albemarle Training School, also ran and edited the area's black newspaper.

And Dr. George R. Ferguson was the first black physician with a sustained practice in Albemarle County from the early 1900s until 1932.

And whereas

The substantial contributions of Albemarle County's black residents to the county's history have not always been adequately recognized.

Now therefore, be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby acknowledge the importance of celebrating

Black History Month as an opportunity for all county residents to recognize the social, physical, and cultural contributions of black Americans and to reflect on the complex history of Albemarle County in order to create a stronger and more resilient community in the future.

Signed this fifth day of February 2020, Ned Galloway, Chair for the Board of Supervisors.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes Ms.

McKeel?

Yes Ms.

Palmer?

Yes Ms.

Price?

and say some remarks.

Before I grab it, I would like to take this opportunity to let the board know that we spent this morning delivering the traveling soil exhibit to the Defense Intelligence Agency and were able to present to them information about the board's community remembrance project as a part of their celebration of African American History Month this February.

So I'm just letting you know that your soil exhibit is

continuing to penetrate into the broader community and another opportunity to thank the board for its continued investment in the community remembrance project.

I'll just add that all the work that Siri and the department and the community at large are doing, we will have a whole new cast of characters and history to recognize next year, next February, because there's much more storytelling going on.

Thank you, Siri.

All right, Board, that will bring us to from the public.

Matters not listed for public hearing later today on the agenda.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Now is the time where we invite members of the public to provide commentary to the Board of Supervisors for items that are not listed on the agenda.

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

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

A yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish your comment.

A red light indicates your time has expired.

We would ask that you conclude your remarks if the red light comes on.

When you come to the microphone, we ask that you first bring the microphone close to your mouth so that all of your words can be both captured and heard by those who are in the room and watching live stream.

We ask that you state your name and if you live in the county, your magisterial district.

Please address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

If you have brought written statements or other supporting documents, we ask that you leave a copy with the clerk so that that can be included in the record.

If you represent a group or organization, you may ask others present to raise their hands and be recognized in order to expand your remarks.

If a speaker does not use all of your allotted time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker.

Speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during each public comment period per meeting, and back and forth debate is not permitted.

We ask that you not speak from your seat or out of turn, and we also ask that persons in the audience raise your hands to indicate your support or opposition and not make noise from the audience.

We ask that signs are permitted in the meeting room so long as they are not attached to any stick or pole and do not obstruct the view of persons attending the meeting.

And again, all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

We have put reserve seat markers on the first three seats and the front row on your left and so I'm going to call out the first three names and would ask that those individuals come up and take those seats just so we can expedite the process of people speaking.

Randy Rogers, Judy Schlessel, and Kent Schlessel.

Hello, my name is Randy Rogers.

I'm the Manager of Community Services at Java, Jefferson Area Board for Aging.

One of the programs that Java provides this community is insurance counseling.

This is a free service that's part of a federal program called SHIP that provides unbiased advice to people who are on Medicare.

Java has also added ACA counseling to this program.

Java's insurance counseling is here to help people understand their health insurance options so that they can live a healthier and more financially secure life.

Though this is a year-round program and we are helping people as we speak right now, I'm here to update you on what we did this last fall during Medicare's open enrollment.

Now if you're not on Medicare, you may not know what open enrollment is.

And if you are on Medicare, you may not understand what open enrollment is.

But between October 15th and December 7th, every Medicare beneficiary is given the opportunity to look at and change their prescription insurance or their Medicare Advantage plan.

This is important because every one of these plans changes things about them every year.

So what may be covered one year under your plan might not be covered the next year under your plan.

I do hear all the time from people say, well, I like my plan this year, I just want to keep it.

Well, that's not an option because you're going to get next year's version of that plan whether it works for you or not.

And so it is important that you sit down with one of these Medicare volunteer counselors who are vetted, trained, and tested, and supported

and the two of you worked together to get your information into medicare.gov and make a decision about what's the best plan for you for next year.

55% of the people we counseled this year needed to change plans.

Those people were going to pay too much for their insurance, too much for their prescriptions.

So we helped them and by helping them we saved them 1.7 million dollars.

The average person who saved saved about a thousand dollars, a little more, and it's not just a financial issue because if you can't afford your prescriptions you're not going to take your prescriptions and now it becomes a health issue also.

We increased the number of people we saw from the previous year from about 2,300 people to about 3,300 people.

And in Albemarle County, we went from 1,040 people to 1,643 people we helped.

That's a 58% increase.

That increase, some of the factors was we opened another office, we had a second office, our mobile went to a lot more places like ANSI, and we also did an aggressive advertising campaign for this.

and the people of Albemarle County really responded to this and in the end, they saved 1.1 million dollars on their prescriptions for next year.

So, I just want to thank the volunteers that make this possible and I also want to thank you guys for the support that you give us to make this program possible.

My name is Judy Schuschel and I am a resident in the Rio district.

I'm also a member of the Rio 29 CAC.

We all know that there is a plethora of development that has taken place and is planned for the Rio 29 Belvedere corridor.

All of these developments with such rapid growth are putting a strain on our antiquated infrastructure.

Please come on a journey with me.

The year is 1770 and we are friends of Thomas Jefferson.

Our social circle includes James Madison and James Monroe.

Jefferson probably enjoyed making the journey by horse to socialize at the Donlora Plantation, resident of Dabney Carr, who married his sister Martha.

There was no GPS, but he traveled this route frequently, which was down the Windy Road, currently known as Route 53, then on to Route 20.

The roads referenced were unpaid, wide enough for a horse and perhaps a buggy.

Fast forward to 2020, and although some of these roads may have gone from one lane to two lanes in some areas, but with the same basic footprint are now paved.

However, there is much more traffic than in the 1770s.

VDOT has indicated that they keep looking at Rio 29 corridor not only to ease the congestion, but to improve safety.

However, improvements take time and the all important factor, money.

Rather than to continuously approve rezoning requests as separate entities, the board should look at the big picture.

No one has a crystal ball to predict the future, but one thing for certain, Albemarle County, especially Rio 29 corridor, appears to be growing at warp speed.

Is Albemarle County doing any type of outreach to bring businesses into the area so the increased housing can be justified?

Next step would be to evaluate how many residential single-family and multi-family units are really needed.

Aesthetically, the proposed 999 project located in the reference 29 corridor is too busy and isn't the right design for the less than two-acre parcel.

The developer did redesign the unfavorably-looked home commercial entity voiced by the board in September,

This portion of the development will have an entrance onto Belvidere Boulevard

Staff has indicated that this meets the qualifications for neighborhood model, but the plan seems to imply that this is two separate entities with townhomes and commercial having their private entrance and the cluster of homes having their own private entrance.

This does not appear to have any cohesiveness or connectivity between the two sections.

Will the two closely aligned entrances on Belvedere Boulevard be acceptable by VDOT standard and allowing the school buses to pick up, drop off at AM and

without disrupting the traffic flow.

Change is inevitable.

But at what expense should projects be rezoned for approval?

Taking a page out of Dr. Batik's approach, I see.

My name is Ken Slush and I live in Rile District.

I've talked to you several times about the rezone of 999 Rile Road.

Two weeks ago, I urge you not to rezone this property and talk to you about the comprehensive plan.

There are many reasons not to approve this rezoning when it comes before you in a few weeks.

If you review the past four decisions of major concerns about commercial aspects of the property and traffic,

The developer has stated they're working with the VDOT and R-cut is being considered.

I'll discuss R-cuts with you tonight.

My apologies to those who have heard me say some of what I'm about to say.

I research and study R-cuts.

I should mention that for three years of my military career I worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon doing logistical and transportation studies.

Since I last talked to you about R-Cuts, I also consulted a professional engineer who was a senior design engineer on the Bourkemar Bridge and the company was a team member who designed the Bourkemar extension.

As for full disclosure, this engineer is also my son who got an excellent education in the county schools from K through 12 before he went to college.

The information is from the

Federal Highway Administration R-Cuts.

R-Cuts is a very basic form of, it's a U-turn.

There are several different types of R-Cuts, but I'll require additional land for R-Cuts.

To do R-Cuts someplace down Rile Road from Belvedere would be very costly.

The applicant has stated and will quote from the application, will coordinate with VDOT and dedicate the right-of-way needed for future improvements.

The right-of-way that is needed is not owned by the applicant.

Any archive, according to the Federal Highway Administration, will require acquisition of land.

For us, this means more than likely a wide end railroad bridge as well as Rile Road itself.

It will also essentially cut off several businesses along Rile Road.

On the south side of Rile Road, between Bubba Deer and Greenbrier, about 1,000 feet, there are six driveways and one street, now counted Greenbrier and Bubba Deer.

On the south side, there's another six driveways and entrance to a church across from Belvedere Boulevard.

There are so many issues with the ARCA.

The ARCA will probably ruin several businesses along the way, even cause more problems.

If Round Road is not widened at the railroad bridge, all the logical choice is reduction of the number of through lanes.

Not a good option either.

The solution would be very costly to the county in terms of construction and reduction of tax revenue that would not be made up by the proposed developments.

With additional traffic coming with the opening of the center, the development of Belvedere and soccer fields, we do not need additional vehicles for the development.

I urge you to review the FHA document.

Don't make a poor traffic situation worse, and for the safety of the citizens of the county, I urge you not to rezone the property.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Schlissel.

Good afternoon.

My name is Susan Cruz, and I am the Executive Director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative.

Thank you for agreeing to add the We Are Still In coalition letter to your agenda today.

When the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, there was an extraordinary reaction.

Businesses, universities, cities, and counties like Albemarle began making their own commitments to ambitious climate action.

Over 3,000 entities, including Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville, have now made bold commitments to join this coalition and stay in the Paris Climate Agreement.

Communities in particular have an incredible ability to swiftly reduce climate emissions.

In Virginia, 88% of our population lives in urban and suburban communities.

Right now, the Virginia General Assembly is considering a number of proposals to advance climate action.

Albemarle, Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Richmond, Arlington and Alexandria and Roanoke have all set ambitious climate targets and now have the opportunity to band together to demand the adoption of state-level policies to help them achieve these targets.

The Charlottesville Climate Collaborative submitted a letter for your consideration addressed to the General Assembly, which was organized by the We Are Still In coalition, outlining the opportunity for state level action to reduce grid level emissions, increase funding for energy efficiency programs and public transportation, and remove barriers to renewable energy.

I encourage the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to sign on to this letter and join this coalition in what I hope will be the first of many opportunities for climate-minded communities to use their collective power to demand the changes that are essential to help us avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Thank you again for adding this to your agenda today.

Please don't hesitate to reach out to me personally or the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative if we can be of any assistance with this or other matters.

Good afternoon, my name is Putnam Ivy DeCortez and I live in the White Hall District.

I work at the Health Department and I'm also here today with some core partners from Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, UVA Health, and the UVA Department of Public Health Sciences.

We are here today to present you with copies of the 2019 Map to Health report.

I believe they're in the back.

Map to Health is our district's community health assessment process.

Oh, excellent.

You have them.

Wonderful.

The 2019 map to health process focused on health equity across the four map priorities of healthy eating and active living, mental health and substance use, health disparities and access to care, and fostering a healthy and connected community for people of all ages.

The process involved representation from 146 different agencies, organizations, departmental divisions, and community coalitions.

We reviewed a lot of data as part of the process, and you will find more data than you could ever read through in the second half of the report.

We also heard from a community-led diabetes steering committee around preventing and treating type 2 diabetes in communities of color, especially African American and Latino community members.

All photos in the report, or almost all of the photos, were taken by community members as part of photo voice projects across the district, including two projects here in Albemarle County at the Scottsville and Esmont Community Center for Java, as well as the Southwood Boys and Girls Club, and so each photo will have a caption to let you know which project it was from.

So in conclusion, we would like to thank Albemarle County staff who participated in this process and also extend an invitation to all of you.

We are having a map celebration party on Wednesday, March 25th from 5.30 to 7.30 p.m.

at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.

You all, as well as everyone in this room, are invited to attend and we will have a formal email invitation to follow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for the new screen.

Members of the board, Dr. Charles Maddox, Scottsville.

We just heard 100% political appeal to do something with a 0% science.

I'm trying to correct that each time I speak here.

We've had a mild winter so far, so for some people there's the indication of global warming or something disastrous.

Alaska last year had its warmest year ever.

In January of this year, they had their coldest spell almost ever.

Climate is changing.

Weather is changing.

Human activity has nothing to do with it.

2007, I attended the Virginia Climate Action Conference, heard similar appeals to do all these various things based on Al Gore's popularity at the time.

One thing presented was the Lake Lanier disaster.

The reservoir to Atlanta was drying up, proving global warming.

pictures of boats dry, high and dry.

Anyway, we never hear anything more about it.

If you check this January, the reservoir is up to 10,000, I'm sorry, 1,070 feet, one foot shy of full.

But you never hear any follow-up to these things.

You only hear the disaster.

We're having terrible changes in our temperature.

From lower here, you can see the temperature is what we feel more or less at that scale.

This little bumps up and down.

If you blow up big enough, it looks like the end of the world.

That's a good way to have theatrics and scare people.

We hear about the changes.

This is the hottest year.

That's the hottest year.

climatologist Gavin Schmidt, big name in the field and no follow anything.

You try to compare temperature changes of one-tenth, no, one-hundredth of a degree from year to year.

The instruments can't measure that well.

He says these are meaningless.

When you say this is the hottest year in ten, you'd never hear how much hotter.

One-one-hundredth of a degree, so what?

We just heard all these terrible things coming down.

We have to be with it again.

Climate deaths are going down.

Look at that, short and blue.

Deaths from all climate-originated causes are down.

We're going to have starvation.

Food is up.

Look at that.

Food production is up.

The amount of drought.

Worldwide, no changes.

It jiggles over 100 some odd years, but no changes.

These are hurricanes, all hurricanes on top, big ones on the bottom.

No trend up or down.

There's no disaster.

Snow levels up and down some years, no trend.

Here we have nature.

That's a big carbon footprint.

Your one or two EVs aren't going to do anything.

One of the Board of Supervisors members was all worried about the fires in Australia last time.

They've arrested over 200 people now.

One and a half percent burned last year.

25 years ago, 10 times as much burned.

So what's driving your policy here?

It's certainly not science.

It certainly is not science.

So I'm just trying to present some educational facts.

You never hear of facts.

You always hear, oh, we must do this.

Who's the we?

Thank you.

Jamie Putnam.

Sir, can you close your PowerPoint for the next speaker?

Since we're encouraging others, we should.

Good afternoon.

I'm Janie Podarotski, a member of the Rio District and a member of Church of the Incarnation, which is a member of IMPACT, Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together.

I believe you'll be hearing an update on the process of the development of the housing policy later.

I don't believe it includes the draft of the policy.

but I do understand that that draft includes an affordable housing fund which INPCT strongly supports along with any other means of increasing affordable housing in our community.

We hope that all of the supervisors will prioritize affordable housing in this policy adoption and the budget.

IMPACT does not support individual projects, but as an individual member of the Ryle District living in Dunlora, I would like to speak now as an individual in favor of rezoning in the growth areas that have already been identified by the county government.

The Regional Housing Assessment did find a need for increased housing in the area, especially affordable housing.

and although some of the proposed projects don't afford the level of affordability that I would like to see, it does include some workforce affordability of the 80% AMI and above.

Anything that will help at any level of affordability is needed.

In an article recently in one of our local publications, transportation experts reported that the only way to make traffic better on a key corridor of Rile Road may be the one thing that neighbors worry will make it worse, adding more housing.

The idea that people will travel to Charlottesville for jobs from far away

is not going to increase the traffic that is already coming from far away if their housing is here where they need it, close to their jobs.

We don't need to continue to make our neighbors move out to areas that they can afford.

They need to be able to afford to live where they work.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Laura Allen.

I'm here from Seville 100, which is a coalition of local environmental groups and other groups that are concerned about climate action and climate change.

We've been advocating in the area for these measures for over two years now and working closely with everyone available to make that happen in a positive and actionable manner.

Civil 100 urges you to vote in favor of joining the We Are Still In coalition.

I was just in Richmond yesterday where activists from all over the state as well as renewable energy industry representatives turned out to support a full docket of clean energy bills.

The Virginia legislature has shifted and bills supporting energy efficiency measures, renewable energy sources, and climate action plans that are equitable and just are making significant strides.

These plans saw significant support and are currently making their way through the legislative process.

where they will become law, receive funding, and be ready to support your measures that We Are Still In provides.

So the things that you're doing here are bigger than just our county or our city.

They are our state and they are our nation.

So we strongly urge you to join We Are Still In.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Mr. Chair, seeing none, I turn the floor back over to you.

Board, that will bring us to number eight, our consent agenda.

We're not pulling anything.

I do.

I would just like to, I don't want to pull the safety inspection data piece, but I did want to just, I think it's worthy rather than having this information, and it's great to have it on the consent agenda, but I'd like the public to hear a little bit about this.

and I also would like Greg, if he could, to just give us a quick update.

It looks like we have, obviously, Bill 130, it looks like, is gone now.

All right, so this consent item just simply states our concern and opposition about taking away car safety inspections.

and on an annual basis.

But we did have some really interesting information that I didn't know and I just wanted to share this publicly.

It is interesting to me that the average vehicle on the Virginia Highway today is 11.8 years old.

and that means that the importance of safety inspections are even more important.

Statistics from Virginia State Police show that vehicles manufactured in 2009 to 2011 or earlier fail their safety inspections 29% of the time.

and some of the other data that we have is that I found interesting.

The state police reported that there were 8,000, no, I'm sorry, 8,209,716 motor vehicles inspected in 2018.

and 20% of those vehicles failed.

And they didn't fail because they had a broken headlight.

They failed because they failed a critical safety inspection.

And when you look at what a critical safety inspection is, we're talking brakes, we're talking not having a driver's seat.

Some of us find that hard to believe.

exhaust systems, which gets to environmental and noise pollution.

A frame is a safety, a critical safety, the frame of the car.

We've all seen cars that go down the road kind of like that.

Fuel systems and drive shafts.

We recently had a wreck over on Hydraulic Road where a van ran into one of the murals and its power steering went away.

It just lost its, so I'm not saying for sure that that was lack of, but you know these things, there is a reason why we have annual safety inspections.

and I thought it was worth taking a couple of minutes to just simply share this information with our public as well.

The one last thing, 2018 United States Department of Transportation study found that Virginia had 9.6 traffic deaths per 100,000 population, which was below the national average.

but South Carolina, when they did away with their motor vehicle safety inspection program, their traffic deaths rose by 29.4% in the 11 years after it repealed them.

Very interesting data.

And I noticed that we are going to be sending, which is great, we've asked the clerks to send this on to our

of the Senate Committee on Transportation, the Director of Legislative Services.

I would also like to add to that, if at all possible, Sally Hudson reached out to me and said she would very much like to see what we have passed as well as the data.

She wants to have the data that we have in this.

So if we could add Sally Hudson directly.

And since we're doing that, we may as well send it to all of our representatives individually.

Yeah, I think would be great.

So moved.

Aye.

Mallek?

Yes.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Yes.

Very good.

That will bring us to our first action item, number nine, special exception, HS 2019-15, Squirrel Path Wednesday.

Good afternoon, I'm Rebecca Ragsdale, a principal planner in our community development department with the zoning division.

And this is a special exception request before you in association with a homestay.

And as I did last time, I wanted to give an overview of the applicable regulations and then talk about the specifics of this request.

So the parcel is zoned rural areas, and we have specific regulations that apply to parcels that are less than five acres in size, and that is that there would be rental of no more than two guest rooms, and that's rentals of less than 30 days at a time.

No use of an accessory structure.

No more than one homestay use on the property.

No whole house rental, and that's rental when the owner or manager is not present.

And then there is a 125-foot required yard from all property.

all property lines.

And then all home stays must comply with applying for zoning clearance, annual safety inspections.

They must be owner occupied.

And then they must provide neighbors a contact in case of an emergency for the owner.

And then parking must be one site.

There's no on-street parking that's allowed with these uses.

So there are four of those criteria that may be waived or modified through the special exception process.

Only the board can approve a special exception request.

And the criteria that can be modified are the number of guest rooms, use of an accessory structure,

on a parcel less than five acres are zoned residential or an accessory structure that was not existing on the date of adoption of the updated ordinance in August.

And then before you this afternoon, the setback reduction.

And then applicants may also request the owner occupancy requirement be waived.

and the factors to be considered in the homestay regulations are that there is no detriment to abutting property owners and that there's no harm to public health, safety or welfare and then the section of the ordinance that covers all special exceptions is also on the screen and that just indicates that the board is not required to make specific findings.

You may approve

approve with conditions or deny special exceptions and may impose reasonable conditions to address any impacts with a special exception.

And the ordinance also requires that abutting owners are notified of these special exceptions.

So in this case, as I mentioned, the request is to waive the minimum required yard of 125 feet and that is from one of the front property lines and then the side property lines.

and I'll show you on the map, it's a corner lot.

So moving to the parcel itself, it is in the Squirrel Ridge subdivision, which is about 25 lots and it's located off of Earliesville Road, near Raya Road West.

And the lot itself, as I mentioned, is a corner lot and the special exceptions are required from the front with Squirrel Path,

the rear or behind the house and then to the left side of the lot.

And neighbor notification was sent in December and we did not receive any objections from the affected property owners.

We did receive two inquiries last week from one of the neighbors and then also someone affiliated with the homeowners association.

I have a quick question.

They just wanted to know what was happening or what the... Yes, so one of the neighbors was calling to understand what the homestay regulations were and the nature and extent of the proposal.

And then the homestay representative, or I'm sorry, the HOA representative was also asking about the homestay regulations in general and what we allowed.

and then also neither one of them said they had a problem with this particular home stay.

It has been in operation since 2016 and they didn't actually know it was there.

Okay, and when you used that word, I just wasn't sure exactly what you were referencing.

and I know we don't mess with that, but it's always an awkward thing for the board to approve something which is then contradicted by the homeowners association.

I wouldn't disagree with that statement.

Well, no, they just change their covenants and do a vote, and they can be stricter.

But if there's a disagreement, they have to go to court, which puts the burden on the HOA to then spend money and do all that stuff.

So there's nothing we can do about it.

For enforcement, they have to go to court.

Well, nothing that I haven't said before, covenants exist independent of our zoning regulations and the zoning decisions.

I guess one follow-up question.

So for your map, give us the math on the setback waivers that are being sought.

No, it's 125 to Pinecone Circle, the other street that adjoins the lot.

and it is about 90 feet to the back of the, from the house to the back property line.

And the requirements for those are?

That would be to Squirrel Ridge, Squirrel Path?

The driveway isn't over there.

So the front is determined by where the lot has road frontage, not where the driveway is located.

So technically the way our ordinance is written, this is a corner lot with two fronts and technically two side property lines, but most laymen would think of the other one as three or so.

It's the one that's opposite Squirrel Path.

that property line that is 90 feet.

And then to the left, the property next door on Squirrel Path is the one that's about 30 feet away.

So it meets all the primary structure setbacks for a rural area parcel.

and then the other sides are 50, 25.

What are the other requirements?

So the 125 applies to all sides of the lot.

Okay, so that allows me to have my second question.

It's a pretty significant waiver if you are required to have 125 and you have 22.

That's not five or 10 feet.

That's a really big difference.

And we're pushing that right on top of the people next door.

So that is a concern to me.

Other questions, comments?

And my question is following up on what Supervisor Malek said.

That's a significant departure, 125 feet.

We were looking at the characteristics of the lot and the ordinance criteria to evaluate it in terms of impacts to public health, safety, or welfare.

And if there was any detriment to the abutting lots, we did not hear any comment that there was or any objection.

Yes, Bart Sobota, Zoning Administrator.

One of the things we're also looking for, this is our second homestay special exception, so we also are trying to get a feel for what the board is willing to modify in these special exceptions to see if these can go to the consent agenda or not.

So depending on if we say, well, if there's no neighbor objection, for example,

It's okay versus no, we're really more comfortable with 120 feet everywhere as opposed to 125.

So we're also trying to develop that criteria.

So as we bring these forward to you, that's part of this discussion.

So from a staff perspective,

I apologize a little bit about the vagueness, but we're also interested in what the board's discussion is and really drilling down into what's the primary objective.

And to add to that, I would say that we've had several situations in some of the neighborhoods, and I can speak personally, where we've tried to, someone wanted to do something, and they actually went around and knocked on doors and threatened and bullied people.

You've told me something that's new to me.

What I was thinking was it was more than just the neighbors

objecting more than just, you know, is it the 125 feet, but it's how the building is situated on the lot also.

When I look at this one, I say, okay, well, there's a

some kind of outbuilding or parking structure there that's literally just about shielding that house from the other house.

Some lots that might be 35 feet from the next, the property line might be less obtrusive than others and the fact that you just got two bedrooms versus however many.

I mean, I'm looking at the whole thing, and I would hate for staff to think that because we approved, because there was no neighborhood objectors, you know, for the next ten special exceptions or something, that that means that

every time there's no neighbors' objections, then we're fine with it.

I would hate for that to be the interpretation.

I'm looking at you guys sort of looking at the whole picture.

And so I just, I wanna throw that out, that I was not disturbed by that, looking at the entire picture and reading the staff report.

you know the bedroom window is right you know 20 feet on the other side and there's nothing in between yeah so as we move through this application one of the things that we did set aside is a few minutes for this discussion about how staff would analyze what we're doing as far as whether or not an item would go on consent

or whether it would be a regular item.

Because I am glad that these folks are doing what they were supposed to do.

But I agree with the thought that I wasn't really thinking about the fact that if we supported one then that was going to mean that from there on.

We are analyzing them on a case-by-case basis.

I have a comment and then a question to Greg.

The comment, I do note that they've been doing this for some period in excess of three years basically since 2016, so at least for this particular situation we do have a bit of a track record.

It's going to depend if they're violating any, for example, if they're violating the noise regulations and they would have to come into compliance and it would be enforced as a zoning violation.

If they started renting out three bedrooms instead of two, they're in violation of conditions.

It would be enforced as a zoning violation, but if there is repetitive violations, the board does have the ability to revoke the special exception.

So that's the three strikes thing that we talked about last year that is in place already, or is it something we still have yet to adopt?

Because it wasn't adopted last time we talked about it.

It is in place.

It is in place.

And this one also has a long history before 2016 of being a rental, is my understanding from the materials.

Longer than 30 days.

And that's probably because of the bypass and then it was, I don't know if it was one of the ones that was for a while by VDOT or not.

It was not, okay.

But that neighborhood certainly was.

I would disagree with the precedent piece of it and agree with the comments that were heard.

Obviously, you're bringing it here, but it's more precedent of how we're thinking about it, not a precedent that all decisions will follow that piece.

I mean, they're going to come back to us individually.

I approach this stuff pragmatically.

You know, this is in my district, and I'm going to treat mine in my district how I thought about this while we worked through the whole Airbnb piece, and who I represent can take care of that if they disagree with me, I guess.

But I'm also pragmatic.

When I hear that they didn't know it was in existence, then it sounds to me like they're doing a pretty good job running their Airbnb and not having impacts on their community.

That's just a very pragmatic view of it.

And since they have an HOA in place who can put more stricter things in place, if they don't like what's going on in their neighborhood, they'll be able to address it as a community.

They can have their annual meetings and they get to have a vote on it and decide how their covenants and restrictions go.

And that's just how it works with the HOAs.

We put these pieces into place.

As Diantha's mentioned, I don't have HOAs in place.

But when you have a place in place and if it works and no neighbors are complaining, then they have a mechanism still to go if they don't like some action we take.

And that's a really good point that Ned brings up because Hessian Hills, Canterbury Hills, Oak Forest Circle have very loose what they call neighborhood associations.

They're either no money a year or $15 a year so they can have a Christmas party.

and so just because you hear that a community has an HOA doesn't mean that it has any legal teeth to it or any covenants that they can enforce.

So it may be that one of the criteria's we would want to look at is do they really have an HOA

that is a bona fide, real legal HOA.

It can't be a neighborhood association.

Yes, as opposed to either what's loosely termed or not one at all, because that does offer a level of protection for the people in the community.

One follow-up legal question.

So if we approve this to become a compliant operation,

that may preclude the HOA from then changing their ordinance and bringing this into... So even though it's already there, they would still have the ability to say, no, you can't do this because we've now decided you're commercial.

It depends on how the rules are written.

The rules, their covenants may already restrict this activity.

or they can amend their rules.

It depends on what the required vote is to make any changes to the rules.

and anything we did would not influence that.

Just because the timing, we could pass this and agree to it.

That's good.

Very good.

Good to know.

You mentioned or someone mentioned about the other buildings on the property.

So is that something you look at if the homestay was going to be happening in the building that's 22 feet from the property line?

We are looking at things like vegetation in between the houses and the buffering as well.

which is the 22 foot section, that's what that building is.

Okay, so that's where the activity's going to be is in the area that's closest to the neighbors.

And then also on the overhead it looks as if the neighbors have some kind of building there, but that puts them responsible for protecting themselves from something.

So my concern is that the county staff look at the neighbor's property and say well they have this and they have that so we can go ahead and let somebody else not be responsible for those things on the other property.

It brings up the whole zero lot line business.

Whoever got there first gets the rights and everybody else loses out.

And I have just a quick process question.

and we have staff that go on to pieces of property all the time, whether it's to look at a stream or fill outside of what your work is.

Albemarle County staff goes out and looks at it.

Do we cross-pollinate our information?

In other words, if you all go, and this actually came up in a discussion I had with a neighborhood group recently and this is just a good opportunity to ask the question.

Yes, I use us in engineering as an example to fill.

Frank Pohl's group or whatever.

Yeah, okay.

It did come up in a conversation, so now I know what to say, yes.

Last thing I promise.

The tourism zone, which was in place in another location, is that considered to be an important element?

We are going to provide you the comprehensive plan language as it's applicable to certain properties.

In Crozet, we have tourism zone and the specific recommendations about downtown.

For rural area properties, we just have the general language about supporting tourism and allowing opportunities for lodging that are, I don't have the exact language in front of me, but are not of course detrimental to resources or neighbors.

I would think so.

I was supposed to have seen that, I guess, in all the attachments, but I didn't, so that's great.

I just want to do a thank you really quick.

Just thank you for thoughtfully going through this.

I did have a lot of problems with making sure that we took care of the, gave ourselves the ability to deal with bad actors, but didn't want to really keep people who were the good actors from using their property in a way that was beneficial to themselves and others.

All right as it's in the Rio district I'll move that we adopt the attached resolution attachment F to approve the special exception with the conditions contained therein.

Second.

Yes, I have a question.

I don't think it is.

Ms.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Yes.

Very good.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

So briefly, I said I wanted to do a follow-up.

If we have just a few minutes, I want to keep it brief.

because we had most of that discussion already.

I was hoping to pull maybe the next one off the agenda and not have it a regularly scheduled item of consent, but I'm getting a feeling we're not quite there yet to do that.

We'll do a little tweaking on our analysis to see if we can get that clearer.

I think that's the right sense.

So, you know, the first four or five could be stuck in one or two districts.

And if that's the piece of it, I think the first couple in each district should probably be an item so that that supervisor has a little bit more of an attentiveness to it.

I don't want us to get comfortable, but all of them were in one or two places.

when they start coming into other districts, it could be a different conversation.

I would add HOAs on that list, like we've been talking.

I would also add that, you know, particularly in a situation like this where the property had been rented for a period of time that's now going to be converted over to the homestay and there's been no indication of problems, that that tends to look more towards the favorability of the applicant.

All right, very good.

Board, next item, number 10, housing Albemarle update on the housing policy project.

Stacy is with us this afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, my name is Stacey Pethia and I am the principal planner for housing.

And as many of you know, we began updating the county's current housing policy last fall.

We're about halfway through the process now, so I'm here to give an update on what has happened so far.

I did want to give a little bit of background on just the policy work itself.

So our current affordable housing policy was adopted in 2004 as an appendix to the comprehensive plan.

It went through some minor updates when the comprehensive plan was updated in 2015.

And then in July of last year, the Planning Commission passed a Resolution of Intent to amend the comprehensive plan with an updated housing policy.

That decision was really following the release of the Regional Housing Needs Assessment by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

which showed that in the county approximately 10,700 households are paying more than the recommended 30% of their income for housing.

So this was an opportunity to bring in the tools and resources necessary to help meet that need today and in the future.

The process staff is following is really three steps.

The first is community engagement, to go out and talk with community members in Albemarle County, understand their struggles with housing, how it is impacting their own personal lives and their communities.

Once all of that was completed, collecting that information and then working with the stakeholder committee to develop policy recommendations based on the feedback we received from community members as well as the creation of an implementation strategy for that policy.

The community engagement piece really ran through December of this year, so we started in October with three community meetings.

We also provided opportunities for community feedback online for anyone who was not able to attend the community meetings.

I worked with local nonprofits to schedule a series of focus group discussions, which were really focused more specifically on certain sectors of our community, such as senior citizens.

I also attended a number of related events, such as the Rio29 form-based code discussions,

the Office of Equity and Inclusion road shows.

I attended the Rivanna Roll Call so I could speak with some local veterans.

And I worked with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission on their efforts to do a regional housing survey to help inform their regional strategy development.

The discussion topics that were covered throughout not just the three community meetings in October, but also in the focus groups themselves, were really focused around five broad categories.

First was housing in our community, and that didn't focus just on affordable housing, but housing in general.

So what do community members like about housing in our area?

What are we missing?

What are we doing really well?

Then we focused the conversation more specifically on affordable housing to get an understanding of how families and individuals may be struggling today with housing costs and what types of housing we are missing.

So a lot came out of the senior housing is missing or was it certain bedroom sizes that we needed.

We moved on to help come up with a vision for housing in our area and that was really discussions around what residents wanted to see their communities look like now and into the future.

We did some discussions about barriers to affordable housing.

That included individual access to housing that they could afford as well as any resources or policies or programs that we are missing here in the county and may have problems implementing due to, say, state regulations.

And from there we went on to talk about any potential policy and programmatic tools that residents felt that the county could access and implement to help address housing needs.

We heard a lot about a lot of different things related to housing, but there were some really big categories that came out and sort of general themes that emerged.

And one of the big ones is that people that I spoke with really felt that housing has become too expensive for many residents within the county.

and that included very low-income residents themselves as well as people who work here.

So they really focused on some of the new single-family homes that are being built that are being sold for $600,000 and really wondered who actually in the county could afford to live to purchase those.

There was a lot of talk about the lack of accessible housing for senior citizens and persons with disabilities.

A lot of discussion about the need to protect our older and existing neighborhoods whether that was from gentrification or just deterioration in general.

The lack of affordable housing was seen to have wide-ranging impacts on our county.

So it really cuts back on diversity within communities, something that people seem to value.

They felt that it was potentially impacting local employers' abilities to attract and retain workers.

A residence we spoke with really wanted to see a variety of housing types and tenures within our communities.

This was something that was actually addressed for those of you that were able to attend the eighth grade student presentations.

The housing types and diversity of those was something that they really highlighted.

There was a lot of interest in addressing community and environmental sustainability issues.

And then thinking about the barriers that we have to addressing all of their concerns, they really focused on four main barriers.

Those were supply side, and that kind of relates to the fact that we are lacking construction workers in our area, so that's driving up the cost of construction.

Resource barriers, there's an ever-decreasing amount of funding from state and federal governments for housing programs.

policy and program related issues and a lot of that, there was a lot of focus, the discussion focused on a lot of the Dillon Rule and the fact that we live in Virginia and the state legislature really restricts what localities can do to address housing.

We don't have that flexibility to try new things.

And then community-based barriers and NIMBYism was discussed a lot as well as the fact that many people in our communities don't

aren't necessarily aware of the housing problems that people are experiencing and don't have a lot of knowledge of how to fix it.

So once all of that community engagement and outreach was completed, I've been working with a nine-member stakeholder committee.

It's fairly diverse in its membership.

We have the senior community is represented as well as residential developers

local employers, we have someone from the Regional Housing Partnership so we can help create a regional focus.

Homeowners, the homeless community is also represented in all of that.

They have been working together to review all of the information we collected through the community outreach events as well as the surveys that were done.

They have been looking at other housing policies adopted by other Virginia localities as well as cities and counties across the country.

So they have been working to put together policies that specifically address what we heard through the community outreach efforts and then related strategies to go along with those.

We are in the process of finalizing that draft.

So you can see here we are in that policy and strategy development phase, so this puts us at about the halfway mark.

We are finalizing those two documents, which we hope to present to you during a work session with the Planning Commission in April of this year.

From there once we go through that work session we collect your feedback that will be incorporated into the policy documents and that will be prepared for public comment through May and June of this year with finalizing those recommendations to be presented to both the Planning Commission and this board for final approval and adoption hopefully in August and September.

So far I am on schedule.

which is amazing.

Yes, and that was particularly effective when I went to Esmont and I met with the seniors there.

And I think that you would find every neighborhood in every magisterial district you went to visit

That is a story that I've been told twice a year for 12 years is I built this house for $30,000 in the 40s and now I'm paying $5,000 a year taxes on it and I can't afford it at all.

My COLA goes up this much and my taxes go up this much and so that is a major problem for me as far as I think across the county.

How are we going to

not drive them away.

Because when someone's 90 years old, that is not the time for them to be told, oh, by the way, go live in Stewart's Draft because we need more money from you.

No.

I agree.

So I don't know.

It's a dilemma everywhere.

It is.

I mean it's just not to our locality.

One of the things I just honestly right now can't remember where I read it this weekend because I read so much on housing this weekend.

It might have been in your report that one of the big problems is finding things to people to fix small things.

when you're older.

And that is, as I get older and I'm not as good at fixing things as I used to be, I notice the same thing.

Who represents the seniors?

Right, so we have a Ms.

Dersheimer.

Other questions?

I guess I have a couple of comments.

I saw in here, I had to laugh because I was reading this over the weekend, and one of the comments said, convert the mall into housing.

And to be honest with you, I just sent around a great article about a mall that was actually converted into housing for

what I would call affordable housing is a better word for it.

And there was a picture of it and it was really pretty impressive.

I can't remember the life of me, but I send it to all of you all, I think.

It's really an interesting idea.

There's no doubt that a thread that runs through all of this is transportation.

We're trying desperately to work on that.

I'm going to have to figure that out.

I did have just a couple of red flags that I'll mention to you.

I know, but that person should understand that if she has, she could qualify.

That scared me, right?

This information.

And the other thing that worried me a little bit was the crossings.

I've lived in the crossings.

Very concerning remarks, and I get the fact that it's probably one person.

Albemarle County has a stake in the crossings, and I guess I worry when I see the police are there, can't have overnight, well, it's not so much that, but noisy neighbors drink too much, but a lot about the police.

and I don't think I've ever seen a report or any information about the crossings.

Yeah, so I guess this makes me say maybe we should get an update or just, and I'm not asking for a 40 page report, but I get a little worried when I see this and I don't, you know, who's, I don't even know the management.

Well, I guess also the management.

I'd like to know how it's managed yet.

I don't know.

I don't know how many people are there from Almon, from the city.

I don't even know what the what the how many people are there.

I think I've heard at one point and I know we've referenced it a little bit.

But when I see that someone that lives there has these concerns, it just

raises a little bit of a red flag for me.

But like I said, I don't want the staff to have to go back and do a 40 page report.

Well, I think managers can easily supply the information.

Someone must be going over there, and there must be a management of some sort, and just some basic data.

So, by confusion on the 10,700, is that something that's taken out of data surveys or is it taken out of every individual?

Contact as the Orange Dot project is where there are 485 families in the White Hall district that had conversations as opposed to looking at this.

Is there validity family-wise on these numbers or are these statistical numbers?

And it's horrifying anyway.

Even if it was 5,000, it would be horrifying.

So I'm not trying to diminish the number.

So these are based on census data.

So it is general?

It is, yes.

That's across all income levels.

I did not specifically pull out the 80 percent area median income and below households because there are a lot of families between that 80 and 120 percent that are also struggling.

and the only other thing I will leave as a possible discussion for the future.

I've heard that a lot of our existing lots which were designed to be used for affordable houses have been purchased by builders at greatly reduced prices and then they just sit on them and are waiting for somehow the requirement to go away and they're not going to have to build them after all or

that they're apparently they're counting on the fact that the county will not be able to deliver a purchaser ready to go and therefore with a quick turnaround they'll be able to sell them as market rate which means that as we all know our current plan has big flaws but I did not know that there were

A large number of lots that people who build affordable houses would like to be able to get, but they're not available because they're so easy to hold onto because of the reduced purchase price and therefore reduced taxes and everything else.

I'm sorry to jump back in again, but just a comment because you listed the older neighborhoods and deterioration, which is definitely true, gentrification, which we worry about.

But I would say that this goes back to what we were just talking about in the previous piece.

What we're seeing in these older neighborhoods and what we've been concerned about is we're losing affordable housing to short-term rentals.

And this is certainly part of the discussion for the Crozet Master Plan is how our planning staff and working, hopefully Stacey will have a role in this too, to work on overlays that talk about size and scale of houses and some way to be able to allow

Workers' houses that were built in the 40s owned lovely lots big enough for gardens, but the houses are 1,000 square feet or 800 square feet and the most desirable location in town.

That keeps me up at night knowing that someone could come in and just buy 50 of those and it would all be over.

so I don't know the magic of that but I do hope that there's a way that other communities have shown the way and or our very skilled planning folks will figure out a way to work on those overlays so that we can protect them because the little community of Crozet has four different neighborhoods with lots and lots of those units in there where the fruit workers and the

Acme workers and lumberyard workers used to live.

And I don't want to lose them.

Would it be possible to put in there, if someone buys an affordable lot, a developer, with the time stipulation that you must build within two years?

or it reverts back to the county, something like that.

Is that a possibility?

And also if you're a purchaser of a affordable housing home that you have to be the primary resident.

I don't know.

The General Assembly made us extend all of our special permits by seven years a few years ago.

And we had a project on hydraulic that was approved back in the, I think it was the

late 80s or early 90s and they're just now talking about building it and it was approved.

I think the latter suggestion is a possibility to expressly require that the qualifying household be the primary occupant of the property.

With respect to the other, we would need to look at that.

I think it is requiring a developer to build something within, using that example, I can think of North Point and other projects,

And I think we should allow

flexibility because if something happens economically, the company goes bankrupt or something.

But I mean, there should be some flexibility in there.

But if they're just holding on to hold on, helping other regulations go away, that shouldn't be.

But maybe we should include that you have to be the primary.

You buy it, you live there.

It's not to be rented.

So just a trend question.

There was a recent article in our local paper about how the trend now is for smaller houses.

Just anecdotally, as you look around anecdotally, as you look around the county, a lot of houses are being bought and then expanded like crazy.

I'm astounded at what some of the sizes of, you know, like a 3,000 square foot house is now becoming a 5,000 square foot house bought for, you know, something that was a somewhat of a reasonable price.

And now, so what is, as you're going around looking at things and talking to people, what is the trend in Albemarle County?

everything that I heard through this engagement process was for smaller homes they want smaller homes with smaller lot sizes and not these giant mansions

Those are the people I spoke with, the people that are buying the smaller homes and turning them into 5,000 square foot mansions.

I'll throw in a little tidbit and that is there were more neighborhoods with large houses planned in Old Trail until the recession and the jumbo loan difficulty put a stop to that very quickly so all of those were downscaled and the hottest ticket now for the last three years has been a thousand square foot cottages on

very small lots, everything to the north of Henley.

They put in dozens and they are selling before they start to build because it's just exactly that size point that people want a small house they can manage and vacuum quickly and a little bit of grass to play or park your bicycle and be ready to go do something else.

So I hope that that is working.

The other thing I'm hearing just from community discussions is in places where there are larger, older homes

and large lots and that what they really don't want to see happen is tearing down that lovely iconic house that's been there since 1800.

But perhaps as the generations change, there would be a way to allow that to become three units that would be invisible as three units and a wonderful place for people to live and close to town and have all the amenities.

But they're not in some new apartment building.

They're in an old house.

Stacey, when I see the additional comments under the notes section, like Diantha alluded to a couple of them, were their notes captured on beyond just what was thrown out or was the exercise where these were, was it like a post-it note exercise?

Did we just grab the question?

I mean, some of these I'm like, oh, I wonder what the answer to that was.

and did anybody capture it?

You know, like the ones I wrote down or can the county earmark land, not just knowing the answer, but how that question is answered is important to me.

You know, how will county funds solve a zoning issue?

It was a little bit of both.

So those questions, the ones that you just specifically identified, came up during the community meetings that we had here in the evenings.

We didn't give any specific answers one way or the other, but we did talk about how there are areas across the country, other cities and counties across the country that have been able to identify

Land that they owned, the county or city owns that they have been able to use for affordable housing.

And so it was really just the, it really meant that we would need to sit down and really look at our inventory, what would be appropriate for housing, making sure it's in the right area, and if that is something we wanted to do.

Well I did just hope it's, if the conversations around some of these questions haven't been had, we need to get those conversations to happen and then, I don't know if that could happen at the housing partnership, if that's, continue with your process and that's that, but you'd hate to see some of these questions just thrown out there and then not discussed or answered at some point.

Now, obviously, I'm honing in on the resource piece, so the resource barriers is one of your main barriers.

You had that as number two, and this was on page six, topic four.

So, you know, I look at your timeline, and if we have a fully approved policy update that will not just inform our policy recommendations, you know, that's kind of coming into play in August, September.

And I guess timing-wise, that would be good for the next budget cycle.

But since we know that's the timing,

you know we've been putting aside surplus funds into a housing fund for the last couple of years and at some point if we're going to have an ongoing strategy which we all knew this policy was going to help us help inform what that would be the conversation of do we continue with the process of just using surplus funds when they're available going into

and so on.

Are we ready to start having that conversation this budget cycle and not waiting for the next?

And I don't know if that's an appropriate question for you to answer today or perhaps in one of our work sessions, because I would imagine you're going to be back during our budget time for different pieces.

But when do you have any reaction to that?

When should I start thinking about knowing that this is going to inform policy decisions?

We all held off on talking about ongoing monies until we had information.

We know it's coming.

but we're all smart enough that we can start thinking ahead so that we have the monies available to us so once the policy's in place, we can get to work as opposed to then waiting for another six months and then to the next fiscal year.

My personal preference is talking sooner rather than later is better but I'm also looking at alternative funding.

My concern is that if we relied strictly on like the city does, they take

developer cash and lieu payments from their affordable housing program.

That goes into their housing fund and then they allocate so many millions of dollars each year from their CIP budget.

My concern from that was always that local funds, good times and bad times come and go.

I would prefer not to have a housing fund that relied strictly on those funds, but to find alternative sources.

That said, anything you could do to contribute to a fund now would be appreciated, and it could be used.

I think we could pretty quickly come up with some guidelines for how a housing fund in the county would work if that's the route you choose to go.

Some decisions would need to be made as to whether they were grants or loans or a combination of both.

and what our priorities would be for those funds and if they would change annually every so many years or just set them out right up front.

Well I think it's worthy of a further discussion as we go through the budget this year to start talking about that and it may be something that we just have to consider because I understand that there's not

It's not in place, we don't know what it is, but we know it's coming.

So, oh, go ahead.

So I know everybody up here knows this but I feel compelled to ask the question and say it is that we are currently putting quite a lot of money into affordable housing with the Southwood redevelopment and as you're writing up these policies and whatnot it would be kind of nice to understand how

The whole Southwood investment kind of plays into those So we can compare I mean it's one thing we we're already doing And we've already committed a significant amount of money to it.

The project itself really fits within many of the categories of recommendations the stakeholder committee is making.

It really covers affordable housing in general for lower income households looking at revitalization and preservation.

So it really hits a lot of the boxes that they are looking at.

It's close to transportation.

So that will fit in nicely there.

I will have to go back and look at the recommendation.

Yes.

Well, you did.

I came earlier several months ago with the anti displacement policy.

I just need to get the guidelines back to you guys to to approve those.

But that's ready to go.

And I think when we get into that budget discussion of how much money to additionally put in, I think we just need to make sure we recognize that that is a substantial amount of money that's in there.

I think it's important for the public to know.

I mean, I know everybody up here knows, but I think it's important to continue to get out there to the public.

That's actually one of the recommendations the stakeholder committee has made and as well as many of the community members I spoke with was we need to do a better job at communicating what our activities have been housing wise, how much money has been invested, how many units we have had.

I'm done.

And this is maybe a question from up here.

Did I interrupt somebody?

No, you're good.

A question from up here, but obviously cities and counties are different in the state of Virginia.

You worked in the city, so you have, I think, a sense, certainly more so than I do, but

My assumption has been, and I could be wrong, that because the city of Charlottesville is a city, it has the ability to pull down more federal dollars for affordable housing, perhaps, than we do, that we're more in the box of competitive grants.

And I think that's important for the public to understand.

So the city automatically, and maybe I don't want to overstate this, but the city automatically gets federal funds because they're a city for lack of a better definition.

And we have to go out and have, we are dependent on competitive grants that we may receive, we may not receive,

and we don't have control on who makes those decisions and how much we get.

It is true.

The city is an entitlement community when it comes to CDBG and home investment partnership programs.

So you're correct.

They get a chunk of money and it's not huge, but it's good to do community projects with.

Most of that, the home funds are definitely used for down payment assistance.

In the city.

And some rehab projects with AHIP.

The CDBG funds, they really focus more on community improvement, but you are correct.

They get a chunk of money from the government each year.

I will have to check into that.

But it really is important for the community to understand that because we live in very different worlds.

Any final comments, questions?

All right, I think we're good.

So our next item, number 11, Perrone Robotics Crozet Shuttle Closeout Report.

And I believe JT Newberry is going to give us, or Doug, an introduction, sorry, or both.

And I'll let them do the introductions.

Thank you, JT.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive.

I'm going to do my best Roger Johnson impersonation today.

Roger could not be here, but his team is here, and so we're glad to support the team in providing a kind of closeout report on Project Knight Rider.

For those board members who were here at the time, you may recall the Project Knight Rider, whether you were or you weren't, the Knight Rider kind of moniker.

It kind of hearkens back to the TV show where there were some human characters, right?

Michael Knight and some non-human characters, Kit.

the autonomous vehicle.

And so as economic development likes to use its project names to be a little bit obscure but also be clever and make a connection, that's where Project Knight Rider came from.

As projects are revealed, then obviously they change the orientation, but it's nice to kind of harken back to where this came from.

At the time, my job here is to just tee this up.

We have a team of project partners including Paul Perrone and Brad Sheffield along with Kevin McDermott who will speak to the summary report.

But just to acknowledge to the board where this got started in a conversation that Roger had with Paul

as part of a business retention and expansion visit.

We call them BRE visits as part of a fundamental part of our economic development program to meet with existing businesses to find out kind of how things are going, what their needs and interests are, what their opportunities are, and then that

conversation in that context, right, there was this opportunity kind of revealed about an interest in trying to be a little bit more visible with the Perrone Robotics work out there at the Barnes Lumber property in Crozet.

At the same time, the Barnes Lumber Project was in motion and there was already identified a challenge with satellite parking as that project moved forward and so with the test track that Perron Robotics has out there, with the parking issues that were apparent, they kind of came together and said, well, I wonder if we could do some type of shuttle

Parking Using Autonomous Technology.

Okay, so NSTEP's Jaunt, all right, with its own interest in advancing technology as a possible solution for its public transit services.

And so the partnership then emerges with the county, Perron Robotics, and Jaunt putting together this pilot project with its autonomous character kit, Tony, excuse me, Tony,

that you have now seen.

And this is the report on the pilot project that the board supported that was implemented back in July.

It's now finished.

So with that, by way of introduction, you'll have to tell Roger later how I did in his behalf.

You could send out one of those quick surveys.

Thank you members of the board for having me here today and as was just mentioned where we started with all this

what I'll do is I'll just jump right to our sort of an overview of this for those who may not be familiar with some of the details but we put our kit our retrofit kit that we call Tony to navigate you into this neighborhood electric vehicle that you see behind you there

This is a zero-emissions, all-electric vehicle.

We had solar panels on it to help recharge the vehicle.

But what's unique about it is what's inside, and that is the fact that there is software and sensors mounted on board to make this vehicle drive completely on its own, completely autonomously, driverless vehicle.

And we outfitted this vehicle.

during the period of, there was a 90-day period that started in July after a launch event that I think many of you all were invited and came to.

We also had a couple celebrities there like Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, amongst some other folks who helped kick off this event in Crozet.

and we operated the shuttle for 90 days.

We also brought it down to a major, really the premier autonomous vehicle, i.e.

AV conference down in Florida where we garnered a lot of attention.

People were just blown away by the capability that was imbued in this vehicle and that went a long way as I'll describe here shortly some of the results.

We did have a safety operator on board, even though this is a six-seater vehicle.

We had someone in the front seat who also really acted as an ambassador to answer questions.

He, as you'll find, didn't have to touch the steering wheel or brake or throttle for any time during the public operation of this vehicle.

The vehicle drove completely on its own.

It operated over multiple routes.

We had a little demonstration circulator within Old Trail.

Then we began to run it from Old Trail to the downtown Crozet business district and then from the downtown business district into

We captured some of what we gathered as we operated the vehicle in our report, but generally riders were enthused by the fact that they could take this

We had students who were over at the high school who want to get to their ballet class in downtown Crozet.

Could we run the shuttle for them?

sort of special requests that we got, but we did stick to these demonstration routes during the duration of the pilot.

And as you probably are aware, there was a lot of favorable media coverage of it as well.

And that brings us to sort of the results.

These are all good zeros.

There were zero incidents, number one, zero safety disengagements during the operation of this vehicle, and zero emissions.

And the zero safety disengagements are very important because when you look at competitive and other shuttle, autonomous shuttle activities across the U.S., you'll read things like they disengaged 30% of the time,

They had to take over as they were driving through intersections.

We didn't have to do that because of the capability, the level of autonomy of this vehicle being able to handle roundabouts, poor weather conditions, the traffic conditions in which this vehicle was engaged.

One of the goals of this project, as was mentioned, is the economic development aspect and we're extremely thankful for being able to engage in this project because I can tell you as a company in this space, which is very, very competitive,

And in fact, just in the last year, there's been sort of an explosion of projects across the country and the world that are talking now about autonomous shuttles when there were just really a smaller handful a year ago when we first started talking about this.

but we were recently selected and as a direct result of this project members from the Jacksonville Transportation Authority rode in our shuttle in Florida.

We were awarded a major contract down at what will become certainly the nation's largest public autonomous transit operation if not one of the largest in the world given the ultimate vision of the program as they're going to be

Also, they've already made public that this is a half a billion dollar operation that they're going to be deploying down in Jacksonville, Florida.

And we were selected over the competitors in our space.

And again, that was a direct result of those members riding in this shuttle.

and not to mention the fact that we also over the last six months secured contracts with two Fortune 100 companies, one a logistics company and one an entertainment company whose names you would know are under NDA but these are big companies and it's certainly been a feather in our cap and these are all

Early stage projects that are the downstream opportunities are thousands of vehicles.

So there's a large revenue opportunity.

And as you also may know, we're doing this in the midst of a capital fundraising effort to try to raise $20 million for a Series B round.

And the interest level from investors has been extraordinary.

We intend and plan to stay here in Albemarle County, grow our business here, have our headquarters here, and this has just been a tremendous boon to that because we could demonstrate this in our own backyard economically and for the world.

We've published a report, a link to which is shown there, and I believe all of you may have a copy of.

And I just want to point out some of the milestones that you'll hear about, and you may have heard about other shuttle activities taking place, again, even in the Commonwealth, Northern Virginia, and other parts of the country.

This is the first autonomous shuttle that has operated on public roads for the public in Virginia.

So it's a first here in Albemarle County.

Given the level of autonomy, and this is hard to quantify because there are no really refined definitions as to beyond what's called level one, two, three, four, five levels of autonomy, what it means to be fully autonomous.

But given the level of autonomy where we're operating through intersections and roundabouts, it was really a first for the U.S., we believe, because again, most of the other programs that were doing this had interventions of the vehicle where they had to manually drive it for large portions of the course.

and again, zero safety disengagements meant that our safety operator slash ambassador in the driver's seat really had nothing to do but to talk to people and that he did and so this is really technically, if you might want to call it, a level five autonomous vehicle since there was no human intervention during the operation of this vehicle.

So these were significant milestones and I just want to close my portion of this by saying thank you board members very much for having the vision and the and the decision-making prowess to help make this program happen and also to the Economic Development Authority

and many of the individual members of the county, certainly Roger Johnson, Kevin McDermott, Emily Kilroy and all those who helped along the way make this happen and certainly John and Brad Sheffield and Chris Rollin who played a major part in making this happen for us and for the county as well.

And he's ass.

He's ours, as the crozations say.

Find him the money.

Get the fire hydrant done.

Don't let him get away.

I presume Tony was transported to Florida.

Thank you.

Just a comment about the first of these next steps before Brad steps in to make some comments.

One thing is clear is that as a community development function and our planning work is that the time is now for us to be taking seriously opportunities to incorporate autonomous technology into our planning.

We're not exactly sure all that that looks like.

But this is what we do as community planners and what we do in support of your work in the planning space.

So whether it's a comprehensive plan or master plan or small area plan, then you would expect that we are going to be incorporating elements of autonomous aspects as it relates to autonomous transportation into that work.

Real quick before I touch on the other bullet point you see in front of you.

There's a good number of things that I think John learned from this process, but the two that were fairly profound was that autonomous technology will go hand in hand with electric vehicle technology.

That is undoubtedly where all that's headed.

So for John or any transit system to really

expect to adopt any autonomous technology, they better also be planning to adopt electric vehicle technology, which is what gave partial birth to the Ford Transit passenger all-electric vehicle that we launched just recently.

We know that we've got to start understanding the logistics of operating those type of vehicles.

The other thing, it kind of touches on what Doug was just mentioning, and that is from a community planning standpoint,

How you operate an autonomous and, just in general, an electric vehicle on a continuous basis is very different than how, as a consumer, as an individual owning their own personal car operates an electric vehicle.

When you're an individual, you own a car, you're parking it in a parking spot, you're charging up overnight, during the day, grocery store, whatever it is.

And from a continuous operation standpoint, you don't park, you just keep going.

It's not just package delivery, municipal services.

Think about it.

There's a good number of activities that are just, people are just moving around the community on an ongoing basis throughout the day.

The charging operations of that is what needs to be figured out because I think the businesses, the community are going to look to the county to help provide guidance of how that gets integrated into future land use planning.

We're already starting those conversations with developments like Stonefield and Woollen Mills.

Jaunt is working with them to try to figure out how do we get that right infrastructure in place to allow for us to connect to those places with our future electric fleet on a continuous basis.

So it's a pretty intriguing thing for us to know that this is where it's headed and that we're trying to make sure from an operational standpoint we're ready.

One other thing that's kind of coming up is that as we look at exploring how we operate an electric transit vehicle, at the same time there are definitely grant opportunities to still explore this autonomous electric vehicle effort.

and so we're pulling together based on our previous efforts with the USDOT grant proposal that some of you might remember from about six to eight months ago.

We're kind of building on that to carry forward the idea of partnering with Perrone, the county, and Jaunta

figure out how can we bring the two efforts, the autonomous effort and John's electric vehicle effort and continue it forward.

So we're going to be talking with the state with VDOT and kind of walk through this proposal and this idea with them and kind of see where it heads.

So I think you'll be hearing more about that.

And without a doubt, the federal government is still going to continue to put grants out looking for innovation in this area.

All right.

I do.

I would like to just brainstorm out loud a minute.

Sometimes that's dangerous with reporters in the room.

Go on back.

I'm certainly not an autonomous or a transit expert by any means.

I did have an update, and this is relevant, around the next round of smart scale applications for funding the work around the hydraulic intersection.

and what the update said to me was that there's a, VDOT is intending to circle back around and try and figure out, as part of that work around hydraulic, the Zan Road Bridge, which is a bridge we've talked about building from Stonefield to the other side, which is in the city, that really would be economic development, really bring our communities together, very positive, for both the city and the county.

and their work right now is to try and figure out how to control the cost on the bridge.

and get a maximum benefit so that it might be a success for SmartScale.

Having said that, we do have $18 million left over that we could use that has to be used for part of 29 North projects.

So we have that $18 million.

And I guess where I'm going with this is, we've looked at that bridge as vehicular

and pedestrian and bicycle, multipurpose.

maybe what we ought to really start thinking about is more, rather than a big, large bus, maybe an autonomous vehicle and what that, if putting an autonomous bus like Tony on that to connect people from one side to the other would reduce

I'm just brainstorming here.

I don't even know what I'm hardly talking about, except it does seem like that an autonomous vehicle like you have with Tony could run people back and forth.

We would need to plan for a big cab bus.

It might reduce the cost of the bridge.

And I'm not talking about taking out pedestrian and bicycle, because that's critical.

I'm just brainstorming a little bit.

Is that kind of, maybe the cost would be the same.

I don't know, I'm just asking if there was any thought along those lines.

Or you have any reaction?

I'm trying to get a connection and trying to get some access and to figure out how we can do this and this is would be a really cool way to connect people yeah I think I think it's a great point that we could bring up to the Department of Transportation I can't remember what the the weight was on Tony but on the Avenue shuttle but I imagine that we could build a bridge with something like that that would be

Less expensive.

Less expensive and there's the possibility because you do get extra benefits in smart scale scoring for transit if you put transit in there that we could get those extra points in a smart scale score.

Well, I can tell you that the neighborhood electric vehicles like the one that was operated in Crozet was about 1,100 pounds.

And they have two-seaters that are six, they have two four and six-seaters.

And I would mention, too, that our retrofit kit and what we're doing in Jacksonville is actually going in a 19-passenger electric transit van that's ADA compliant.

So it's vehicle-agnostic.

We'll circle back with Chip and the Department of Transportation folks that are organizing that

Oh, that was it.

So are there any other comments or questions here?

I'm happy to take.

It's not a public chance for public comments, sir.

I'm sorry.

There are no further.

Did you have any other things you want to throw out there?

We're thrilled to hear the success of the project.

Thank you again and just here to answer questions.

And if there are those in the public that want us to hear something, we would encourage you.

We also public comment tonight and then you can always email the board as well.

The remarks.

So thank you all for the time today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Paul.

OK.

Thank you, Doug, for coming downtown.

We'll have the first of three presentations this afternoon.

The first is the Department of Social Services fiscal year 19 annual report.

And Phyllis, are you taking us through this?

Oh, Jenny is taking us through this.

I was going to say I was looking, I saw a different name here, but I didn't see you right away.

Sorry.

Good afternoon.

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

I'm Jenny Moore and I'm the chair of the Department of Social Services Advisory Committee.

I always have that problem.

Today we have Phyllis Savitas here with us and she's the director of DSS and then I also wanted to acknowledge that we have one advisory board member that was able to make it.

So thank you for your time, and I'd like to go through and highlight some of the information in your annual report.

On page two, we have the letter from the advisory board.

and we have the theme of contributing to and serving our community and we wanted to highlight our commitment to the county's public service covenant that we will provide every customer with an experience that is professional, empathetic and responsive as well as our commitment to improving the lives of our customers.

Our tagline continues to be listening to the need and working together for solutions.

I'm not going to go through every single thing and then Phyllis can answer questions.

Moving on to page three, the KPIs.

Medicaid applications continue to be a challenge.

We still receive applications from the processing center at the Department of Medical Assistance and they are already overdue.

Applications can also be delayed as we are awaiting a disability determination.

on page 4, Workload Measures.

We'd just like to point out that as a reminder, these are based on antiquated case weights developed in the early 2000s and updated in 2008.

We were hoping that the state would complete the updated Workload Measures Study this year.

However, the contract with the vendor expired prior to completion of the study.

As you can see from page four, our areas of most critical need are benefits and foster care and adoption.

On page five, I'll skip page five because we'll have a separate report from the Bright Stars program.

On page six, I'd like to draw your attention to the graph at the bottom right.

This imminent risk of placement graph shows the outcome of family partnership meetings for children who are at imminent risk of placement.

While the family partnership meeting process can be labor intensive, it is a way for everyone to come to the table and have a role in the decision making process for the entire family.

On page seven,

The child welfare team continues to work hard to find alternatives to foster care, but when children do enter care, we strive to find permanency as evidenced by the number of finalized adoptions.

This is shown in the graph at the bottom left.

In the fiscal year 19, we also returned a total of 13 children to their families.

On page eight,

This is the number of eligible households, individuals for SNAP, and this correlates with the low unemployment rate.

TANF continues to be the program with the lowest number of clients, but this year we were changed from Group 2 to Group 3 agency, which means we can offer a higher benefit.

Page 9, emergency assistance is largely affected by how cold our winter is and how hot our summer is.

That's quite common sense.

And the auxiliary grant, we continue to struggle with finding a facility that will accept the auxiliary grant funding.

And I could elaborate on this, but I won't do that at this time.

On page 10, our new strategic plan has a goal which states to increase the number of DSS customers who obtain employment in high demand, high growth, high wage industries targeted by the county.

The career center and VUE have a critical role in helping us achieve our targets in this area as they are the workforce services experts in DSS.

on page 11.

Child care, we are proud of our staff's effort to work with our clients to find providers who can and will accept the child care subsidy funding.

Medicaid has been an area of significant growth due to Medicaid expansion.

And note on the chart on page 12 that shows the additional number of uninsured patients at UVA Hospital due to Medicaid expansion.

Our long-term care applications have increased significantly over the last two years primary reasons include increasing increase in the aging population and a focus on aging in place page 13

adult services.

Like Child Protective Services, we decided to demonstrate the numbers of referrals versus the numbers of validated referrals.

Unlike CPS, APS often struggles with being able to intervene since adults have the right to self-determination.

In other words, if an adult has capacity, they have the right to refuse services, and we must respect that.

and I'll add on to that just short briefly.

I know we're on a timeline, but I've worked as a social worker and it's kind of embedded in us to always try to help.

And one of the hardest things is to walk away from someone who needs help.

But it's very important that we respect an adult that understands the situation they're in.

They understand that they have the capacity.

We can try to offer services and they have the right to refuse those.

and it's very important that we do walk away, but as a social worker, it is one of the most difficult things to do.

On page 14, the graph shows how many vouchers are being used in specific locations as well as the general mainstream voucher.

We issued approximately 51 new vouchers in the fiscal year 19.

on this page also language assistance, and we continue to present information on the numbers of customers we see with limited English proficiency.

On page 15.

I'd like to highlight the revenue that is brought into our community.

The column on the left is the total amount of revenue that is brought into the community.

Like this is definitely a page that's worth spending more time on than I have with you today.

And then page 16, it's important to highlight the information in charts and graphs and data sets but it's essential to remember the importance of bringing the human touch to the work that we do at ACDSS.

We have included acknowledgments and personal stories and I encourage you to take the time to read these.

We do appreciate your ongoing support for this department.

They perform a valuable service to our community.

There's so much here.

I'll ask one real quick.

You said there was an auxiliary grant, I think you called it, that you would expound on, but you won't at this time.

Do you want to take a minute?

Expound on it?

Well, having worked with, I worked with adult services and, you know, being able to find this grant allows for adults that don't have the income to stay in assisted living facilities, which are

very, very expensive.

And in this community, when we have someone who qualifies, when I was working for the department, we really had one main facility that was a placement that would accept the auxiliary grant, because essentially they're accepting a lesser amount than they would get for a private pay.

but we have these individuals in our community and we need to find these placements for them and so those partnerships are really critical that we are able to find beds and even when we were having more success with places that would dedicate a certain amount of beds to accept this grant, it's still like juggling all these balls in the air to get everything to line up right for the person to move into this facility and for the funding to be in place.

and just changes in the area have made it so that there really is a lack of these beds and you know even when we had some beds available to us oftentimes what that results in is looking at places way outside the community and so you have families who have you know no longer able to take care of a partner and they need to move them they would want to move them somewhere you can come visit them

So I think that that's a real challenge.

I mean, ideally we would keep those members in our community and it would be less disruptive for them to make a change that really is a hard part of life to go through.

And so even back when we had more beds available in the area, we were always looking also outside, even hours away.

and so then you have potentially elderly partners and family members that they're going to have to travel to see their family members.

I really feel like there's a collaboration that we could come to with

So I know, Phyllis, you talked to Stacy with the housing policy because she said this.

Not specifically.

It's part of the entire package of trying to find more affordable housing.

The issue with the auxiliary grant is that the amount that an individual is entitled to is smaller than the facility

is willing to take.

And so the housing committee can't really impact that.

It's an eligibility program.

I will say that there is a budget amendment in the General Assembly right now that proposes an increase to the auxiliary grant amount, and we're really hopeful that that passes because that would certainly

to help be more attractive to some of our facilities.

Do you want to send us the bill number?

And maybe some of us could.

I'm happy to.

But I just need the information.

OK, I'd be glad to.

That'd be great.

Especially the budget things are hard to find.

Yeah.

I just because the auxiliary grant was a state either federal to state or state only money.

And in just the 12 years that I was working with Mountainside, the state cut the amount that they were providing.

So the Java had to raise

$2,000 per person per year for a month.

It was a $2,000 a month shortage.

So it's an astronomical amount of money that had to be raised in the community.

And there were 44 beds, as I remember, Jenny, when it was sold.

When it was sold, we on the board were told that those people were going to get to stay.

I can tell you from the Java board perspective, right, they have been allowed to stay.

The bed doesn't stay.

And that was just a really great example of a partnership we had where

Well, one other part of the history is before 2010, both the city and the county actually put in $40,000 each into the auxiliary grant program because a lot of these people were our former employees who outlived their resources.

And that went away and there was a sort of re-scrambling of the Java budget to make it as good as it could be.

But unfortunately, the majority was not there to do what was right.

If I can ask a question, do we have something similar to when we build a new development and we ask for a certain percentage of affordable housing?

Is there something that when the, because we do have new retirement, assisted living places being built, could some units be set aside, maybe there are not deluxe so to speak, but you know,

adequate and good and nice but a certain percentage that that we could use here that we could encourage that or allow them to build a little bit more to encourage that to have a few extra units that would be covered by this?

I mean that that's kind of my idea that we've talked about a little bit and Doug Walker's been on that and I think there's a lot around that surrounds that that we need to figure out.

I mean they are businesses, they are trying to make money,

But that I guess along those lines that is a brainstorming.

That's something like what you were mentioning or variations of that is something I've thought about.

I do know that I just recently toured the Blake, which is over on Rio Road, with George Ray and Julian and I toured, and that's a new assisted living, and then they also have memory care, and they're separate parts of the building.

But they, and I can't get into the details too much, but I remember when we were talking about the units and the price of the units in one bedroom and two bedroom,

Well, it would be wonderful if the Commonwealth would say, as part of your licensure, this is part of your obligation, which other states do.

Other questions?

Oh, I do have one quick question, but this is more maybe for Phyllis.

And Phyllis, you can tell me if this needs to wait and this is part of some other report we're going to get.

Albemarle Social Services was not, the state was.

And actually we did a lot of work last year to respond to surveys and a lot of my staff were involved.

We got notice, I don't know, a couple weeks ago that, and it was quite sudden, that the contract that VDSS had with the vendor expired.

And so everything came to a screeching halt.

So needless to say, disappointment is the understatement of the... Yeah, because if I remember correctly, if you just looked at the workload, there was a real concern around the workload for your employees and many, many positions that possibly could have been needed.

And I just remember thinking about, hearing about the workload study, I had it down here and I just wasn't sure what happened.

I think you might be talking about the child and family services review that the state went through behind the feds and we did not pass it.

Exactly.

And what I'm saying is, how can we help you?

I'm very disappointed if that study has just gone away.

or think about it maybe.

Let me think about that.

I'll do some research on that.

Very concerning.

and I mean, this is a question for Jeff, I guess, just for the new board members too, just to know that we will, you know, we'll have a chance to read through this, but we'll see you again during the budget period and we'll be discussing that, so we'll have another opportunity is what I'm...

And you're absolutely right.

But I still get back to if there's something we can do around that workload study that has just now collapsed.

And maybe the time to do something is when the General Assembly is in session.

That's right.

Other questions or comments?

I will make the one comment that I've, the one thing I always like to look at is that we're moving into Target for your good financial steward of resources, which I wanted to see that money spent up by this department, and you're moving in that direction from the previous year, so I know that there were a bunch of different factors that made the big percentage last year.

and some compression, not compression, what am I thinking of, the rollover of staff.

But I'm glad to see that that's getting closer to the target there and don't want that to go by without making the comment that I see that improving.

Thank you very much.

I just wanted to add one more thing, and I know you're trying to stay on track.

We meet on the second Tuesday of every month.

I think you all get an email, and it may have our topics, but I think once since I've been

A member, we've had a supervisor show up, so I would just like to encourage you all, I know you're busy, but to come if you can, and you can look through what topics we're covering, but every single presentation we get is amazing.

I just I really wanted to thank Phyllis because a lot of what we see is employees coming to her, coming to their supervisors, and then their supervisors coming to her with these creative innovative ideas and she listens to them and and it's just it's a really amazing group to be a part of it's an amazing thing to witness and all the presentations are really great but we've had a few that absolutely stand out as

Thank you so much for reminding us of that.

I remember a few years ago I asked that we be on the mailing list and I do not remember getting anything last year.

Maybe that's just my imagination.

But could you just make sure we're on that list with some information?

I know I've had

And if you can see the topics and pick and choose sort of things that are in your wheelhouse.

I think Liz is right, it does kind of fall off our radar screen and we don't realize that the meetings are happening.

We were getting some emails for a while, and I think that might have dropped off last year, because I just don't remember it.

Reinstate that.

You all meet at 3.30 on the second Tuesday?

Second Tuesday, yeah.

All right.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

The next item, we have our Bright Stars Annual Report.

Good afternoon.

Hello.

As an educator, I'm not used to having to speak in a microphone.

I have that teacher voice.

I'm Carol Fox, and I'm the Bright Star program coordinator for Almonte County Department of Social Services.

And Tyler, who is the DSS specialist for the Bright Star unit and the Family Support unit, is giving each of the board members, and we're going to practice one of the first rules in kindergarten that we learn, and that is how to share, because we have a basket for each of the board members, but not for the county attorney or the county

So we're going to share.

So but I want to thank Tyler for her extraordinary work.

She joined us in September and quickly acclimated and then has been just a tremendous support in pulling together the annual report as well as today's presentation.

So I've also known her since she was five.

So it's been kind of fun to watch her grow up and then see her blossom into this position.

So she's interested in a future in social services and child welfare.

This afternoon I have the pleasure of sharing with you the many successes of the Bright Stars program during the 2019 fiscal year, as well as provide you with a glimpse into the work that's being done in the classrooms and by the dedicated and hardworking family coordinators.

I'd like to take a moment, as I said, to recognize Tyler.

and also for the unbelievable support that I have gotten from the administration, from Phyllis and Alice and Mary's not here, I don't believe, but they have just, in helping me acclimate and navigate some significant challenges that our program has gone through and just really been an amazing sense of support, so thank you both to you.

So while the program certainly provides a focus on learning and the school readiness skills such as letter and number recognition, what we know from experience and also from the research is that in order for children to be available for learning these school readiness skills, their needs need to be met first.

So we often say in the world of education, Maslow before Bloom, which referenced Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Bloom's taxonomy of learning.

Falling into this is the social-emotional domain, and one of the primary focuses in preschool, in addition to learning those school readiness skills in the academic domain, is the ability to self-regulate, the ability to calm the mind and the body and to position oneself to be ready to learn.

So in your baskets, you have what we call fidgets and I suspect after sitting for hours and hours and hours and hearing people speak at you, these things may pique your interest.

So you have pipe cleaners for twisting and bending and they also are used in the classroom to help the children learn to use fine motor skills and begin to, they can form letters out of them, shapes.

Lots of color work can be done.

You also have mandalas that we use with the children for them to color, help them slow their breathing, get regulated and increase focus.

Prands and colored pencils because we like to offer choice.

and it gives the children a sense of power and agency over their own decision making.

There are stress balls in there that are filled with rice so that in addition to exerting the physical pressure it also helps children increase their fine motor skills so that again they are ready to hold a pencil, cut, scissors.

You all have those skills so just have fun squeezing.

There's thinking putty in there and that is the new generation of

So silly putty, thinking putty is what we would know as silly putty, but it's great in terms of, again,

that find motor acuity.

And then bubbles just because they're fun.

So I hope you enjoy your basket and these are things that we use in the classroom but we also our family coordinators use these things when they're visiting with their families to help them help to help the families help the children learn their self-regulation skills.

So now on to our report.

So in terms of hitting some of the highlights, this current year, not the year that I'm reporting on, but the current year that we are in, marks a pretty extraordinary number.

It is the 25th year of the program.

The first classroom opened in 1995.

To date, 2,280 children have been enrolled in the Bright Stars program.

And that's not just

That doesn't mean that we've only served 2,280, which I shouldn't even put the word only in front of it, because each one of those children has a family and has siblings that the family coordinators support.

So that number is really pretty astronomical, but if you just think in terms of the classroom, there's been 2,280 children who have cycled through the Bright Stars preschool classrooms.

This past fiscal year we served 186 children in 11 county schools and we also were able to serve 13 children through our mixed delivery private placements and we worked with Java, their preschool classroom, and we also worked with the International School of Charlottesville.

and we were able to do this through our braided funding with not only BPI dollars but also through the United Way and Early Childhood Special Ed as well as Title I funding.

The Bright Stars classrooms continue to be very, very diverse learning environments, which is what we want for children.

7.5% of more children in the Bright Stars classrooms are African American or Latino than the overall student bodies in those same schools.

English was not the primary language of 6.7 more students in the Bright Stars classroom than in their complete overall student body.

And approximately 40% of the children are dual language learners.

77% of our children came from homes that lived with at least one biological parent.

35% of those were single parent homes.

and 89% of our children are eligible, not necessarily receiving, but are eligible to receive a free or reduced meal at school.

In terms of our activities and how can you not just look at his face

the one eating the apple and the other one whose face is just all scrunched up at the probably sourness of it.

But some of the many activities and experiences that fall into our program focus on aspects of family well-being including family support and ensuring that children receive adequate and health and dental care.

We continue to have a partnership with Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, their community benefits program that provides a, this year they provided $3,000 so that we are able to get children to the dentist for the first time or often times we have children who have significant dental needs and we're able to help offset some of those costs.

to encourage the children's natural curiosity and learning.

The children often engage in field trips, very hands-on kinds of activities, and we also encourage the families to participate in those field trips as chaperones or volunteer in the classroom, attending parent-teacher conferences, coming to school for special events, stopping in to have lunch, donuts with dad, you name it, we've got it.

In terms of our alumni, we continue to see a significant need for serving the alumni, the children in grades K through five, and in some cases, the relationship with the family extends on into the children in middle school.

So the goal is always promoting self-sufficiency for each family, connecting them with community resources, and also continuing to foster that important relationship between the home and the school.

and that continuity of care and support provided by each of the family coordinators is really a key element of the program.

Preschoolers' ability to identify numbers and shapes and patterns.

You can see our results there.

In the spring this past year, 70% of the Bright Stars children met the minimum standards for numeracy skills compared to only 17% in the fall.

So that's a significant gain from 17% to 70%.

and we see that those gains continue for the children through third, fourth and fifth grade.

Albemarle County Public Schools has changed the way that they've switched to more of a growth model and so

For the next year or so, it's going to be a little bit tricky to compare apples to apples as they transition in the way that they are reporting student growth.

In the end, it'll be wonderful because it's more of a growth model, but over the next year or two, it'll be a little bit trickier for us to continue to look at how the bright stars are doing until it all realigns.

When you're looking at their literacy skills, the Pre-K PALS assessment is the assessment that is used across the state.

And this assessment looks at alphabet knowledge, recognition, letter and beginning sound awareness,

how pictures and words work together and the students by the end of the preschool year 76% of the children had passed their preschool their PK PALS and

while we are not quite at the state average, the state average is 88% and we're at 76%, so clearly there's some room to grow.

But I think certainly focusing on the gains and the skills that the children are learning is more important than worrying about are we exactly where we need to be.

We're always going to be trying to learn and grow and improve that.

In terms of the long-term academic benefits, we know from our data that the benefits continue well into those critical SOL years, so third, fourth, and fifth grade.

We continue to see those long-term benefits throughout their elementary years.

In terms of family engagement, again, this is a really key component, something that our family coordinators focus on extensively.

And we know that family engagement is a significant indicator and predictor of long-term success in the schools.

And so we look at things such as attendance at parent-teacher conferences, open house, back to school night.

We ask that every family member attend at least four of those events each year.

and we work with the families to help that happen.

Transportation, arranging for if children are not, older siblings aren't participating in the conference, we have somebody who might be able to provide some childcare on site so that we can really try and remove all of the barriers that families might encounter that prohibits them from participating in things at school with their children, which is what we would like to see.

and so again we know that that level of family engagement is just a key component in long-term student success.

Personal and social development, a very positive correlation between children's early mastery of those developmental skills in the personal, social, emotional domains and with their success in kindergarten.

If you ask a kindergarten teacher, they say they don't need to come knowing their letters or their numbers or their colors or their shapes.

Can they interact with other children in prosocial ways?

Can they begin to solve problems?

Can they share?

Can they work independently as developmentally appropriate?

So when looking at the growth the children make over the course of the year, this is a significant area of focus in our classrooms.

In terms of our parents' satisfaction, our parents continue to be very pleased with the program.

Ninety-nine percent of their parents report that their child is better prepared to enter kindergarten having participated in the program, and that 93 percent report that their child and family benefited from participation.

This next page is

staggering to look at.

And there were some other graphics in the report, there are other graphics associated with this that I removed because I really wanted to focus on this.

And that is that number of 60.5% that is transferred over.

And the tremendous support that that indicates that the Albemarle County community, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors has

and trust and faith in the quality of this program and the continued financial support.

And so it's just with tremendous gratitude to you all and to the community that recognizes and continues to support this critically important work that is done at the preschool level.

Without it, in fact, the question was asked, could we have a preschool program without VPI funding?

I said, I'd love to see that you try and figure that out, because I don't see how that could happen.

So just we just thank you tremendously.

And so while you take a moment to reflect on the program staff and that those beautiful children in that picture, I wanted to share someone earlier said something about the human element.

I wanted to share just sort of a funny story that the family coordinators drafted.

It just sort of speaks to how they think and

Plan, and it's just fun.

So this is a family coordinator's attempt to save money.

The event is a December family night including a potluck dinner, holiday crafts, songs and games for the family.

The dilemma?

How to spend less money.

Then the coordinator won.

Okay, we need ham biscuits.

I'll order those from Giant.

That's hassle-free.

Yes, got it.

But $49 per tray?

That won't do.

That's not being a good steward of the county's money.

How can I spend less money?

I know.

I'll buy the ham, I'll cook it myself, and I'll put it on the biscuits.

Sounds much cheaper.

The county would be so pleased with my cost-saving measures.

Family Coordinator 2, because we're a team and we work together, says, I'll take the ham home and I'll bake it.

Wonderful.

6.30 p.m.

Family Coordinator 2 calls Family Coordinator 1.

Ham's in the oven, but the oven's exploded.

can't keep cooking the ham.

8.30 at night, family coordinator one picks up the ham, gets it from coordinator two, gets it home in her oven at 9.15.

Okay, it's got to cook for about two hours.

I'll check again about 11.30.

Looks like it needs about 15 more minutes.

I'm going to lay down for just a few minutes, read the latest social work journal.

Just a few minutes to relax until 3 a.m.

Wait, the ham's still in the oven at 350 degrees.

Ham's been cooking for almost six hours.

The ham's burning.

The oven's smoking.

The house is gonna stink forever.

6.30 a.m.

Coordinator stops at Giant to buy a precooked ham, pre-sliced ham for family night on her way to work.

The cost of spending less money, first ham purchase, $13.

Replacement oven for the coordinator, 600.

Cost of electricity for cooking a ham for six hours, 125 bucks.

Cost of the second ham, $21.

Cost of the adventure and the lessons learned, priceless.

That is our year.

I just got to know $125 for six hours worth in an oven.

Wait, we just sat around.

Too expensive.

We just sat around.

But it just, the family coordinators,

just they're always thinking about, OK, well, how can we do this?

Oh, I'll just buy it and I'll I'll cook it and I'll put the biscuit.

I didn't mean to.

I've got a couple of comments, and I was really, just really moved by the visible progress that is shown each year from fall to spring.

But even more than that, the way it continues through the fifth grade, which is your normal alumni category.

And when I thought about the impact, the positive impact that this is having on those children,

I couldn't help but think that last summer I went to Farmville to the Moton Museum where they were commemorating the 65th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education, the 60th year of shutting down the schools, and the 55th year since they opened, and the impact on those students who lost

the rest of their education because it wasn't just those students.

It was their families and their children and their grandchildren.

And what you're doing here is reversing that.

And instead of having the negative impact, you are giving these children and their families and their children and their grandchildren a future that they would never otherwise have.

You're welcome.

It's easy to do when you love your work, and when our application came out the middle of January, in a span of like two days, I think I did like five interviews, and I was so sick of myself by the end, but one of the messages that I really wanted to get out there is that

is what you're saying.

Yes, we're impacting these children's lives, but we're impacting their families, which impacts the community.

And it's generational.

And so we know that trauma is generational.

It really is, and you're breaking that cycle of poverty.

And then the second thing is for the staff, I'm not going to be sharing my basket with you.

I am going to share it with my grandchildren.

I don't know that my daughter is going to appreciate the balloon with the rice when the dogs get it, but we'll let her deal with that.

Thank you.

Just, I guess just a little bit of history and I don't want to belabor this too long, but it is good for Donna speaking to this program.

Bright Stars was actually started by county government.

because we had a county deputy executive, Roxanne White, who was adamant that this community had to address some of the challenges we had with our preschool children.

And that's why we get the report rather than the school board.

I just think a little history here is kind of nice for folks.

So rather than the report coming to the school board, which you might think it would be the normal place, it comes to us because it is a county government program.

and of course we work in partnership with the schools and the program is shared with the schools.

And the price, the money paid for it though just and I know you know this very, very well but I just have to say it in case our new board members don't know is that the mandate for the county schools is K through 12.

That's right.

and we are the only locality in the state of Virginia that the preschool initiative is run through the local government but it's with such pride each with all that is happening at the state level and nationally as well but particularly at the state level with Governor Northam's budget proposal for early childhood

I'm involved in monthly meetings and it's always just with such great pride when I am able to share the successes that we have and the tremendous work that our family coordinators do.

Family engagement is a key element across the state and a lot of programs have family coordinators of some degree but nothing like

what we have here in Albemarle.

I mean, their mouths just drop when I say we have 10 family coordinators and they work with the children from here to here.