Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   9/16/2020

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for the September 16, 2021 p.m.

meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A8 in ordinance to an

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District

Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District.

The persons responsible for receiving public comment are the Board of Supervisors of Albemarle County.

The opportunities for the public to access and participate in the electronic meeting are posted on the Albemarle County website, on the Board of Supervisors homepage, and on the Albemarle County calendar.

We also have with us our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgeson, and our Senior Deputy Clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

Thank you, Board.

Thank you very much.

All right board before we have a motion to adopt the final agenda we have a couple of items here.

First of which the applicant for number 9 HS 2019-26 special exception Northfield Manor.

That applicant has requested deferral

So moved.

Thank you.

Further discussion?

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Thank you board and as that item is coming off of the afternoon session and as we have a handful of public hearings tonight we're going to recommend that the item number 20 and 21 which are from the board committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda in the county executive report we move those to after number 11 in the afternoon to plug in some time there as we have it.

and then I do understand from Supervisor Palmer would appreciate to have a number item 8.4 ZMA 2019-10 3223 profit road pulled from the consent agenda for brief comments and we can plug that in after the consent agenda vote.

Are there any other changes that board members need or would like to make for the agenda?

Otherwise a motion to adopt as amended?

Ms.

Mallek.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer.

Yes.

Ms.

Price.

Aye.

Mr. Galloway.

Yes.

Ms.

All right very good the agenda is approved and next item number five

This brief announcement is by board members in our order for today.

So, Supervisor Palmer, you're up first.

No announcements.

No.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Briefly, I did see in the news the other day that Sentara has announced the closure of one of the two medical clinics down in Buckingham County because of retirement of the physician there and the inability to obtain a replacement physician.

And I think that just highlights the difficulties that we face in providing adequate health care to the residents of our region.

And then the only other thing that I would mention is a reminder that early voting starts Friday at 830 at the 5th Street County Office Building.

And I encourage all of our citizens who are eligible to vote to plan accordingly to either vote early, complete your absentee ballot, or vote on election day.

We do have one recognition today and that is a resolution recognizing Bruce Dodson.

And I see Bruce's name popped up.

Is he on with us there?

And I see Chair Bivens of the Planning Commission as well.

Good afternoon gentlemen.

and Board, I would like to offer this resolution recognizing Bruce Donson as a motion.

Whereas Bruce Dodson has served Albemarle County with distinction for 12 years representing the Samuel Miller district from 1994 to 1997 as an at-large commissioner from 2012 to 2013 and later representing the Rio district from 2014 to 2020.

And whereas Bruce Dodson has added value through his participation on numerous additional committees to support the county's planning functions,

and whereas Bruce Dodson's commitment to the vision of Albemarle County has promoted a proactive community planning effort that involves all stakeholders in a consensus building process and ensures that new development reflects the community's vision and whereas Bruce Dodson's faithful attendance at Planning Commission meetings and functions has allowed the Commission to conduct its affairs in an efficient and timely manner and whereas Bruce Dodson's consistent and deliberate manner

has added a key element of thoughtfulness and wisdom to the Planning Commission's decision making process.

And whereas Bruce Donson has provided thoughtful comments on staff work, including careful review of proposed ordinances,

through his experience as a planning professor, as well as his former work experience as a zoning administrator.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby honor and commend Bruce Dodson for his years of service to Albemarle County and its residents as a planning commissioner, signed the 16th day of September 2020.

I will second that.

We can call the vote.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Very good.

The motion carries.

I'll first invite supervisors if you wish to make any comments.

I just wanted to thank Bruce.

We've been in the trenches for 20 years it seems so congratulations and don't go too far away because I'm sure we will have questions for you and

Regent, you and Dennis can reach back in your brain and remember things that were done of great significance when we need them.

I had no idea that Bruce represented the Samuel Miller district or that he was a zoning administrator.

So I'm even more impressed and grateful than I was just a moment ago.

I had no idea about the zoning administrator.

Boy, that's really fantastic.

experience for being on the Planning Commission.

So thank you.

And I just want to say that I always appreciated the few times that I really wanted a in-depth view of something other than my Planning Commissioner could offer.

I would call Bruce and he was always incredibly thoughtful and helpful.

Bruce, just want to thank you for all the years of service, and I've always enjoyed working with you.

We'll certainly miss you, but I think that we might be able to keep you on a couple of committees or at least a little bit busy working for the county, even in your retirement.

Chair Bivens?

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

Supervisors and those in Zoom meeting land, thank you for this opportunity.

Again, thank you for allowing me a brief moment on behalf of the Planning Commission to thank Mr. Dotson for his service and dedication to our community and particularly the way we knit our lives together.

We each have a special appreciation for Bruce and his contributions to the effective working of the Planning Commission.

And today, as you have acknowledged his vast contributions to the built environment of Albemarle County, on behalf of the Planning Commissioners, I want to share that the Commission's work was richer and made better because of Bruce's time spent on and dedication to the Planning Commission in service to this community.

Bruce, thank you for your service and passion, and we look forward to benefiting from your continued efforts with the school's Long Range Planning Advisory Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Donson, would you like to make some remarks today?

We would appreciate it.

I am unmuted.

Thank you all, the wonderful comments and descriptions that you've offered.

I'm surely honored by these and proud to have served.

My priorities have always been to tie together land use, the economy, and public services, because as you know better than anyone, they are linked, whether it's in master plans or

looking at ways to improve the review process which benefits everybody.

The developers, the elected and appointed officials, the community, the staff benefits everyone from having smooth working review processes.

On the economy, I served on the very first fiscal impact committee.

More recently, I've been involved in the CIP and have also been involved on affordable housing.

And let me just put in a plug here, maybe to plant a seed in your minds that affordable housing is really essential worker housing.

to provide affordable housing is not to do housing for somebody else, it's for us.

These people are essential workers and they need housing.

So I just wanted to put in that plug perhaps for a new term, essential worker housing.

And in terms of services, my current focus is mainly on education.

As Commissioner Bivens mentioned, I will continue to serve on the school division's Long Range Planning Advisory Committee to try to tie land use economy and the provision of educational services.

And I also continue to serve on the board representing the county of Piedmont Virginia Community College.

Not retiring, I'm just narrowing my focus, if you will.

So all of this would not be possible without an outstanding staff.

The county really does have an outstanding staff.

My fellow Planning Commission members who bring a whole wealth and varied menu of education and experience and engagement

and last but not least, the support of the excellent Board of Supervisors.

So thank you Board of Supervisors for your service.

I will be proud to add this certificate to the wall in my home office and will enjoy it frequently.

Thank you, Bruce.

Yeah, hand claps there.

I would just, as your remarks proved yet again, you've always approached this

and I also wanted to point out that as you know you always went and took the time to make sure that citizens understood the process and how things were supposed to work and how they played through going through the land use and I've always appreciated that.

I certainly learned a lot I think you and I meshed very well when you represented the Rio district when that came on so that was nice but you certainly made

Have a good day.

Thank you.

Thank you board.

All right the next item on our agenda number seven this is from the public matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

I understand we do have some a sign up.

I just want to confirm that.

That is correct.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

During the time set aside for matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning matters previously considered by the Board or matters that are pending before the Board other than items listed on the agenda for public hearing.

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak.

The clerk's office will manage the order of speakers.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

The timer will commence when you begin speaking and this begins your allotted time.

You will be notified when the three minutes are up and you are requested to bring your comments to a close as your microphone will be muted after about five more seconds.

In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy, the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

When called to address the board, please state your name and, if you live in Albemarle County, your magisterial district.

Address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

If you have written statements or other supporting material, you may email them to the clerk to be included in the record.

If you represent a group or organization, you may identify the group to be recognized.

If the speaker does not use all allocated time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker.

Speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during the public comment period.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

You are reminded that all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

If participating by phone, please press star nine.

And if by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called to speak.

Great.

It's saying that it's muted on here.

Mr. Chair, our first speaker is Gary Grant.

Mr. Grant, you need to unmute.

How about now?

Yes, sir.

All right.

Finally, thank you very much.

My name is Gary Grant.

I'm an Earliesville area voter, taxpayer and property owner.

I do live in the Rio district and I have been here for 34 years.

I'd like to provide the board with some feedback on your retreat held on September 9th.

First, I'd like to say thanks for making your retreat.

available to the public via video streaming, just as you're doing with this meeting, thanks to taxpayer funding.

Secondly, in my opinion, based on what I heard from listening live to your retreat, all six of you are very certainly accomplished at repetitively complimenting yourselves on your relationships with each other and your alleged achievements.

Your retreat came across to me as a five and a half hour compliment carnival.

In my opinion, there was very little substance to the retreat led by a sleep inducing Professor Nalbandian and a softball throwing consultant Novak.

It's my opinion that you should let the public decide whether or not to thank you and your staff for your relationships and for your self professed

and alleged achievements.

It's also my opinion that your county executive should reduce the number of his thank yous to the board.

You're his bosses.

Taxpayers pay him compensation worth well over $4,000 per week.

He obviously is entitled to his opinions and to speak them over and over and over again, but it just isn't necessary.

Meanwhile, here's what your public does say about the Board of Supervisors and your administration.

It comes from your valid and reliable, professionally done 2020 community survey.

In that survey, only 11% say Albemarle County government is excellent at treating residents fairly.

Only 10% say the leadership

of the county executive's office and staff is excellent.

And only 9% say the leadership by the board of supervisors is excellent.

So please spare us your self congratulations.

The public can provide the compliments to you if and when warranted.

Have a good meeting.

Thank you.

And as it was mentioned before, item 8.4 is EMA 2019-10-32-23 profit road is pulled and we will address that after the vote on the consent agenda.

Are there any other items?

Well, we already addressed that.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Mr. McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

All right, thank you.

The consent agenda is approved and that will take us to item 8.4.

Okay, I just wanted to tell the board a few things that I found out in the past week that

So not to rehash any of the discussion on the profit road thing, but I was concerned that we had approved a much different plan than was one year ago.

So I went back and I read all the minutes from the Planning Commission from 2019 and in there I saw that a person, Morgan Butler from the SELC, got up in front of the Planning Commission and urged the Planning Commission to get more information about what was going into the open space.

A long discussion ensued and no more information came out than what we usually get

which is those things that can go into open space, trails, recreational area and stormwater.

And so I began thinking also that we spent two hours on that discussion and thinking back through many discussions since I've been on the board

These, what are we going to do with open space, ends up being frequently extends the length of our our meetings.

And because we really just, you know, we we typically just get these are the things that can go in and they're going to meet all of the regulations and a lot of it's going to happen at the site plan level, etc.

So I did call up Greg Campner and I asked him if there was any reason why in the future if we could get a way to get more information from staff on what could go in to these areas so that it would help us in our deliberation to try to get the meetings to go a little bit smoother, a little bit faster.

and he was very kind in saying that that was an interesting idea and that he would go on and talk to Doug Walker and kind of go over that with other staff.

So I wanted just to bring that to the board's attention before we vote because I'm thinking back on Southwood and things like that that maybe the two supervisors that joined us this year don't remember of these exhaustive conversations about what

What does open space mean?

It conjures up this idea that there's gonna be something nice there when it really could end up being a large stormwater basin, a staging for construction, whatever it ends up being.

So I just wanted to let the board know that that might be coming back to us in some way to help us streamline our meetings a little bit better.

And that's all I wanted to say and we could take the vote.

I am going to vote against it.

I know just of the principle of the way that the whole process went.

But I'd like to see something hopefully good come out of our two hour discussion and some of the ones in the past.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Before we do the vote, I'll see if any others want to wish to make comments.

Supervisor McKeel, any comments on this one before the vote?

Only that when the last public hearing was held, I was shocked at the acreage that was shown in that giant stormwater thing, which had never been described before.

So I guess the only thing I would like to see is a lot more information provided ahead of time before we get into these, and that would help staff.

And it's work that the applicant should be doing, not staff doing.

No comments.

Yes, since it's my area.

I move that we move for approvals on the consent calendar ZMA-2019-0001-0323 Profit Road.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

All right, thank you board.

That item is approved.

And let's see, we are moving then to

So the next item would be number 10, our Community Development 2020 Work Program.

And Jody will be joining us here momentarily.

Is Jody leading?

Oh, yep.

Good afternoon, Jody.

There we go.

Good afternoon.

I am going to be leading this and I also, though, have the pleasure of having Amelia with me.

She will be leading a portion of this and we are in the same office, so we're going to try and speak through masks.

So if you have trouble understanding us, please let me know and we will

speak louder and hopefully we will be able to be understood.

Excellent.

Good afternoon Chair and Supervisors.

My name is Jody Filardo.

I'm the Community Development Director for the County of Albemarle.

I'm joined today by Amelia McCully, the Deputy Director of Community Development, and we're here to present an update on the 2020 Work Program.

Let me see if I can advance my slides.

Okay, here we go.

This presentation is for your awareness only.

No action is necessary.

Because so much has changed since we were last before you in March, we wanted to update you.

In this presentation, we will lay out ways in which we're working differently now.

We'll share data on productivity, the impacts of the pandemic, and the work we've performed since we last spoke.

will also present the updates to the ongoing work program.

Finally, we'll share the growing list of additional project ideas to be considered at a later date as resources become available.

On March 4th, permit applications and project values appeared to be on the rise and approximating the highest numbers we've seen since 2008.

Then on March 15th, we sent staff who could do so home to work.

At the time, a mix of planners, engineers, geographical data systems folks, support staff and managers picked up their work, their computers and their work lives and completely reconfigured how they were going to accomplish the work of CDD and the county in a totally new environment.

Some staff remain here, our inspectors in the building, engineering, and zoning teams working on site at Cobb McIntyre and in the field, plus the CDD leadership team and additional staff.

Whoops, let's go to the right.

Early on, staff recognized the need for the department to stay open to support our community, businesses, and our developers.

Based on the guidance from the incident management team, we implemented policy changes to keep our staff and community safer, as noted here.

The inspectors continued to work in the field.

Through the end of August, four and a half months, CDD logged 14,645 inspections.

We also implemented safety-oriented changes in keeping with the multi-phased approach to the pandemic outlined by the IMT.

We installed barriers between staff and the public.

We controlled access to reduce the number of people in the lobby.

We reduced our lobby hours to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8.30 to 4 and placed drop-off and pick-up bins in the lobby for contactless delivery.

For a while, we even quarantined paperwork received for 36 hours.

And we remained open.

to receive applications and bonds throughout the pandemic.

With over half our team working from home, we've learned new technical skills, installed new environments, developed new management techniques, and still met our mandated deadlines.

We've also discovered more challenges with our tools, especially our permit and application tracking software, CountyView.

which is 16 years old and not well suited to managing in this new environment.

Thanks to the emergency action taken by the board, we were able to make temporary policy changes to support our business community.

We've implemented fee-free zoning clearances to support temporary outdoor restaurant seating to improve business viability for restaurants trying to stay open.

As the pandemic continued, and with the retirement of our counter planner, we implemented a new online process to accept requests from the public via the website, phone, or email.

Since implementing this six weeks ago, we've received 199 separate inquiries.

To further increase accessibility for our customers, we expanded our acceptance of various online applications.

These are some of the impacts to the work environment during the pandemic.

All changes impacted the work program you'd endorsed in March to varying degrees.

We want to stress that despite those impacts, we've stayed open, adjusted, and innovated to meet the needs of our customers.

Now we'll move into a discussion of the work program itself.

This is a chart familiar to many of you illustrating that CDD allocates the majority of our staff resources to meet our obligations regarding non-discretionary mandatory items within specific time frames.

Volumes of many of these items, especially building permits and zoning complaints, have increased in recent years.

mandated work limits, mandated work limits resources available for the work program.

Remember, the work program is a list of discretionary projects and policy updates prioritized by the board.

In pursuing projects, of course, complexity and the number of stakeholders with different interests directly correlate to the time necessary for completion.

We strive to right size engagement processes to the project complexity and impacts.

In summary, the purpose of this slide is to illustrate the amount of staff time available for the work program is limited by non discretionary demands.

Through the end of August, we've received 1,929 applications at a project value of $228 million.

Compared with last year, we're experiencing a higher volume of smaller projects.

If we project these through December 2020, we're anticipating our volumes of permits and their related project values

will be more in range with those from 2014 through 17.

The graph is displaying our projected year-end figures in orange.

Of course, permits are the beginning of the construction process, whose impacts roll through to inspections and zoning.

We also projected the complaints forward to the end of the calendar year.

However, this does not accommodate the impact of a release of additional letters to potential home stays found through the Hamari software program, which looks for home stays through various social media sites.

We anticipate the release of those additional letters will raise our complaint levels to approximately the same levels as last year's.

So a funny story about how times have changed.

When going through a dry run of this presentation internally, this photo of CDD staff taken at the last time we were all together caused quite a stir.

It was taken in 2019, not since we've been maintaining social distance and wearing masks.

So please don't despair.

This is an old photo of a type of gathering we may not see again for a while.

The last time we updated you, our staff count was 74 and a half.

Today it's at 67 and a half with five frozen positions.

Organizational changes are normal and our retirements are ongoing.

As folks retire, we, like all other departments, are freezing our positions in an abundance of caution pending revenue results.

Now we'll transition into the work program update of the presentation.

In this next section, we're going to review the previously approved work program, progress made, and additional requested projects from the board and others as well.

Thus far, we provided you context.

This slide is the one you adopted on March 4 before COVID struck.

Moving forward, we're discussing the specifics of the updated work program.

Of course, we think it's important to emphasize our environment is not business as usual.

This slide shows both the Finish What We Started projects.

This is also the recommended work program for us to do the right work.

The three major initiatives, Schedule the Unscheduled, represent a bold yet strategic effort to better position ourselves for the present as well as for the future.

This work, number one, the strategic comp plan update, number two, zoning ordinance amendments to implement our comp plan, and three, development process improvements also update and align key tools.

The critical work outcome from these three initiatives will increase efficiencies and better assure that we're attaining land uses and development that are consistent with board policies and those projects we recommended to improve department efficiencies.

These are projects now in the implementation phase and those underway

in work through the geographic data services team in CDD with IT and other stakeholders in the county.

These are projects requested by the board that are on their way to you before the end of this year, with the exception of the wireless policy update, which is tabled until funding is available.

Now we'd like to go over projects that are currently in work.

This is the list of projects from the March plan listed in the finish what we started category.

These are projects underway now.

Of course, the home stays, housing policy, form-based code, and Crozet master plan have been before you since March.

The Rivanna corridor plan is being led by TJPDC and restarted in May.

By December, the Southwood project agreement regarding community development block grant funding will be before you.

The Crozet master plan adoption was impacted by COVID modifications to our community outreach schedule and will come to you in early next year

as will phase one of stream health in the development areas and an ordinance update to the Admoc County easements program.

Let's transition to items previously requested but requiring additional external resources.

Thank you for the funding of the Rio Road corridor study last July.

Work is underway with a target of third quarter 2021 for the findings.

Thank you, Jody, and good afternoon, board.

I'm going to talk with you about the status of projects in our work program as previously directed by the board.

Let me begin by providing a legend for the colors and symbols that you see in this chart.

The green arrows show work that's underway.

Light blue squares show planned work time.

Blue triangles are the milestones for deliverables that were shared with you in March.

Now the red triangles are the revised deliverables, which are based on

operational re-gearing such as determining how best to provide public and or stakeholder engagement for projects in the context of COVID.

In prior slides, you've heard about projects that are completed and underway.

You'll note that work is currently underway in this, the third quarter for almost every project in the work program.

As previously noted, several of these projects will be completed either this quarter or next quarter.

It's important to note that some projects such as form-based code involve substantial resources with work from many hands.

Because of the substantial resource demands, the timing for the strategic comp plan work, which also requires many hands, is synchronized to follow delivery of the form-based code.

Now, this work program list before you doesn't include work to advance dozens of prioritized transportation projects, including those for bicycle and pedestrian travel.

Work such as that is underway, but not on this list.

The list also doesn't include priority projects or CARES work, which are typically unscheduled and require our staff to be quickly responsive as they're identified through the Economic Development Office.

The board will note that we're aiming to provide more depth to our resource and work planning as we consider phases beyond the most immediate deliverable.

For example, with the home stay deliverable in this year's work program, it was a June status update.

but work continues to close a compliance gap that is necessary and related to the home stay regulations.

Another example of this more in-depth planning is with the housing policy which once delivered will have an implementation plan and schedule.

So many of the projects that you see on the list with deliverables will continue to successive phases and involve implementation.

We feel good about the progress on these board priorities that we've made and continue to make during the pandemic.

Our excellent staff have pivoted to find new ways of doing their work.

We've evaluated whether this is the right work for this time and we continue to support that it is the right work.

Thank you, Amelia.

The purpose of this slide is to share with you project requests raised by one or more of you over the last year.

We hear you.

These projects have not been scoped or prioritized yet, as we don't have the resources to undertake them now.

We just wanted you to see the ever growing list of project ideas waiting in the wings for consideration.

This presentation walked us through the current resource constraints and the previous work program for discretionary projects, recommended an approach for the 2020 work program predicated on finishing what we've started, and shared the growing list of projects.

This work plan represents the list of projects we believe we can complete in light of the pandemic and the current environment.

At this time, this concludes our presentation.

We'd be happy to entertain any questions.

Thank you, Jody.

Yes.

Thank you, Jody.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer.

That's a very good question.

Actually, surprisingly, we have an array of different positions open across the department.

The five that are frozen are our zoning principal planner position, the transportation principal planner position, with the recent promotion of Kevin McDermott to chief of planning.

the counter planner position, one co-compliance officer position, and another planner.

We are presently actively recruiting for a commercial combination inspector and a permit technician.

Thank you and

I didn't quite catch your last thing that you said, the list that was last on the screen of the 13 things that we've requested and have no funding.

Did you just say that you think you can get those done with your current staff if you had the funding?

I didn't quite understand.

your explanation of your ability to get those done.

Well, thank you for asking that clarifying question.

Sadly, no, we cannot get those things done as we presently do not have resources to do them.

I just misunderstood.

I'll blame it on your mask.

No, I'm just kidding.

And I had one other question, but I've forgotten, so I'll let others go on.

I do.

I have a couple of questions.

First, Jackie, you referenced challenges with our software, with our technology infrastructure.

And I think that's a challenge in many areas in Albemarle County right now because our software packages are very, very old.

And it's slowing down our ability, I would assume, to get some work done.

Can you just address right now what the plan is to solve that challenge?

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

We do have a plan.

It is going to be, and we've already actually started forming our needs analysis team to start taking a look at all of what we need a system to do.

Interestingly, in conversations with the finance department, a department with whom we integrate a lot by handling payments received from our community for permits, they also are in need of a system.

And so we've started having conversations about how best to position all of our systems for a sustainable future for the county.

All of us, as you'd mentioned, are in a situation where we need new major systems.

So we are getting ourselves ready to bring things like this forward to you as we start tackling our budget requests.

So while we are just beginning our scoping on these kinds of projects, we are putting teams together to figure out a needs analysis for us to begin with.

And will that inform our next budget cycle?

We will not have an ask for the entire system ready for you for this next budget cycle.

We will begin working on it through this next calendar year.

All right, and the only other comment I would make about this is please, please make sure as we're doing this work, and I know you all are aware, the systems have to talk to each other.

We can't have them in silos.

Absolutely.

Live through that and other organizations, specifically UVA, and that creates a real, so we have to just make sure they're all integrated.

So it is a big, I understand the amount of work it takes.

I have another question.

When we're talking about prioritizing and our work plan, and I understand the way that these topics or issues get on the work plan, it takes four votes.

and although we do have a list that I think some of the items may have come from one supervisor or another and that's fine.

I'm not, so I understand the process itself, but when you're looking at the work plan and prioritizing these projects, how does our current infrastructure and the needs of our current infrastructure inform the work plan?

In other words, are you just trying, because we know, for example, we were just talking about infrastructure as a software problem.

Well, thank you for that question.

Of course, the board prioritizes how we go after these discretionary projects.

So while we would give a staff recommendation and give you feedback to consider as you're prioritizing these things, our expectation is that as some of these work program items get completed in the fourth quarter and on to the first quarter next year,

Come March in our routine update to you all, we hope we will have some good discussion about prioritizing this list and any other projects that come up between now and then at the board.

So we would consider infrastructure as we're talking you through each of these projects as we can see them before we start work on them.

And certainly infrastructure would play into that.

Of course infrastructure, that covers a very broad range of projects.

So certainly just about everything we do has a component of an infrastructure element in it.

Understand that.

So I guess where I'm going with this is, well, I have the projects that, I mean, for lack of a better description, are probably my wants or my app, because they match with my community, right?

to really be interested in some of these discussions to see a larger prioritization from you all as a suggestion on if we do this, then we get a bigger bang for our buck, so to speak.

We can make these other three or four projects work better a little bit later if we get this done.

I guess I'm just trying to, we keep doing the same thing the same way.

That's a very good point.

I think what we're trying to tee up to address some of those concerns are the comp plan and zoning ordinance changes.

Because once we know the environment and the world we're trying to create in Albemarle County, then that will inform some of these other discussions as we move forward.

We've already tried to bring that kind of an approach to doing business as we came to you all for your support on the Rio Road corridor.

Yeah, because I'll be asking some of those questions.

and I understand it's a little bit different question and look.

The only other question I have is a similar question.

Are we looking at our projects through an equity lens?

Because I would be very interested in looking at, and that probably may involve Siri's office,

We are actually a prototype for working with Siri on some of the CDD projects.

So we are actively engaged with her.

and evaluating our comp plan using our new value of community is on our list as one of those strategic and important updates to the comprehensive plan.

And I'll again be asking that which ones of these projects rise to the top if you're looking at it through an equity lens.

Doesn't mean that's the way we're going to determine everything, but if we don't ask and we don't look at that through that lens, then it's very easy for some of us to miss this bigger piece, I think.

and I'm just speaking for myself.

Maybe nobody else would miss it, but I think it would lead to a more robust discussion among us.

Okay, and that's it.

Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you very much.

So, my question when you were talking about CountyView was, is this something which might qualify for COVID funding?

And I will leave that thought and not require an answer.

But I'm always thinking of ways to jumpstart something that we really need to do with some of this federal funding that's coming our way.

I did hear from Culpeper County that they are investing a million dollars in their COVID funding in broadband investment because they think it's something they really have to prioritize.

So just passing that along.

I'm concerned about how complaints are increasing and that does not surprise me at all because there's a weird vibe going on I think in the last six months particularly but over the last couple of years it's been increasing where we have more people who say it's all about me and don't really recognize that their neighbors have any rights at all and so that puts the staff in an obligation to try to help so my question for you also not requiring an answer today is

Do we make it harder for staff to intervene in these zoning complaints if our rules are not so strong?

Or putting it the other way, would more thorough ordinances and rules give staff an easier job to make things be better?

Because I found that when repeat visits happen due to incomplete

rules, then it just makes everybody go round and round and round.

So there's another thought.

Would that help in the long range to reduce the workload?

It also, it definitely would reduce the sort of neighbor versus neighbor, which I think we put on people by not having rules of our own.

We require that neighbors call out when something happens.

And that's just been our culture for 50 years, and I hope that we will continue to slowly move away from that.

I understand completely the staff transition because having known all these 30-year timers who have decided to retire, how dare they?

And you have this wonderful group of younger, much younger than I, because I'm 70, very bright and interested and engaged, but helping them to sort of drink from the fire hose and absorb the institutional knowledge that the Waynes and the Davids and the Amelias and the Lisas have

been storing all these years before they escape.

It's really, really important and I know you're working hard on that.

Regarding the Rivanna Corridor Study, we had basically the Rivanna River Basin Commission demanded that the Planning District cough it up and tell us what they've been doing because we've seen nothing basically for three years.

And I think that needs to

The wrapping up of the current process that is wrapping up now.

And I keep saying, is this new money?

Because they keep saying they're finally doing all these things that they were supposed to do two years ago.

know that money's still been sitting there because they haven't done it.

But now they're finishing this mapping project.

And so I would love to say that needs to go on the phase three or whatever it is needs to go on the list instead of continue because spending $300,000 for small area planning for a tiny little area on the river to me is a lower priority investment when it's going to be a lot of meetings and trying to ask people what they want.

We're not in a position to

Give anybody what they want right now.

So that's just something that I would shift to status quo and preventing bad things from happening for sure.

But that might come off your plate and that would help.

And the whole changes.

Regarding the county view again, a citizen grabbed me somewhere in the last year and said,

The county would benefit from using software that's readily available instead of having everything custom made which takes five years and cost a fortune and then you can't even update it.

And this was, I don't understand the details of this, but it seemed to make sense that there are lots of things that already have the bugs worked out.

So I'll just leave that with you as well and something to think about.

because the last thing we need to do is spend another 10 years like we did with County View getting it up and running only to find out that now it's not working as we wish.

I'm just going to sort of echo without repeating some of Supervisor McKeel's comments from earlier so you know there's a couple of us that are following the same thought processes and I recognize this is your work study report but while I've got you here I want to

And that is anecdotal, not specific, and as Supervisor Mallek just mentioned, no response required at the moment, but I have anecdotally been hearing from some individuals, developers, construction,

entities about the amount of time it takes for applications for permits to process through the system.

Now I want to acknowledge and give due respect to the way that your department has worked during these most challenging times of the pandemic, having to lose personnel, having to work remotely, because I know

When I first moved to the county four years ago, when it was possible to come into community development, sit down with some of your employees, and they would have other relevant parties present, it was a very thorough, very efficient process.

And of course, it's much more difficult now with social distancing.

So I just want to point out some of the comments and concerns that have been raised to me that there appears to be stations within

Permit application where things appear to be getting bogged down a little bit, and some comments about some inconsistencies.

An individual may be told initially you need A, B, and C, and then later find out, oh, and you also need one, two, and three.

And again, I think part of that is just the nature of having to work under this different environment.

But I would ask that you look at your department to identify the different stages in the process

and the amount of time it takes for each application to work through that in order to identify where there may be delays and can improve efficiencies.

And also, and I think this is something that we all run into, when we work in a particular environment, we know what is required.

but an individual particularly someone that is not a business enterprise that comes to the county to pursue something they don't have that wealth of knowledge background and experience to understand the full processes so part of it may be sometimes an assumption on the part of county staff that the applicant understands the process the county does and so maybe a little extra time and in communicating with the applicant to really be sure

of what exactly it is that they are seeking so that you can answer the questions they don't even know they need to ask.

As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, there are knowns, unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and I think particularly for the individual residents who are applying

They have many unknown unknowns, but I don't want those comments to detract from the great job that I think you all are doing under very difficult circumstances.

In my law practice, I deal with federal agencies that have basically been rendered unable to complete anything.

I've observed other municipalities and local governments who have done nowhere near

the category and quantity, quality of work that y'all do.

So I appreciate everything you do, but those are a couple of areas I would ask that you look into.

Yes, I just have a quick question for Ms.

Eduardo.

The software, I'm very much interested in getting updated software for everything that we're doing.

Are you, following up on one of the other questions, are you actually looking at software that's already been developed that would work?

I actually have a software development background before I got into public service.

That was a lot of what I did.

I believe

We are going to follow the existing process that the county has.

So there is a process whereby we develop our needs analysis and take it to a team of people at the county level that explore what our needs are and they will help us figure out what possible options we can consider.

All of us share, I think it's safe to say, a belief on the staff side that we would much rather buy a best in class project or software product that exists already than to do what we did with County View because County View is actually a software product that we bought and then customized to fit our processes

instead of taking the processes they built the system to utilize and implementing those instead.

So I think we've learned our lesson over the past 16 years and I know that we have a team here that will help us sort through all those things after we get our list of needs clarified and brought forward to this team.

Good, good.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

And the last question is, I know we're working, you're working on a home state registry.

So is that something that you have to wait for the new software?

No, ma'am.

It's not easy to implement.

No, no, no, but I mean, is that, yeah.

It's underway.

It is underway, okay.

Okay.

Is everybody doing?

Yes.

Similar to the discussion you're currently having, Bart Svoboda, Zoning Administrator, so we're listening out in the virtual world.

Similar to the discussion you're currently having, we've had to go through our capabilities within CountyView

to see where we can adapt entries to query to do the registry.

And so basically at this point, long story short, we've accomplished that this week and we know how to get that into the system to be able to pull kind of what we call the registry information out.

And we are now beginning to send our notices to our pre-approved folks

to get them registered, meaning those are folks that were approved for home stays prior to their registry being up to date.

And then as we begin to approve these ones that are coming in now, they will have their forms submitted as they are approved through that process.

And a follow up, thank you.

So how long do you think it will take approximately?

Well, it's an ongoing process.

So the registry happens annually and it'll happen each time you're either first approved or within your annual date.

So one of the agreements some of you may remember as we went through the homestay is the annual inspection has to take place.

So what we didn't do with consultation with Fire Rescue and Building Co.

to say everybody's coming in

on January 1st because we can't absorb that impact.

So as time goes on everybody will be added on their approval month and then again re-register on their approval month throughout the year.

Good, well that's very good news and those

So their approvals are valid meaning what they got approved for they can do the registry is not contained within the zoning ordinance and it's a different part of the county code they will have to comply with the registry requirements

They will also be inspected.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Yes ma'am.

Thank you.

Yes, so the three strikes as we're commonly calling it now is a registry component.

And so that is for compliance with any of the homestay regs.

So that still applies.

Thank you, Chuck Galloway.

Anytime I hear something like, you know, a three strikes rule, I think back to some of the abuses that happened in the criminal law area, whereas minor offenses ended up resulting in life and

and I recognize that we're not here in that same situation, but I just, you know, I hear something like that and I think we've got to be reasonable.

There are different degrees of violations and I'm sure that we will be, but like y'all have all heard me talk about the over visualization and I think anytime we start getting into that sort of language environment, I just want to be very cautious.

Chair Galloway, if I may, I'd like to add one additional point of clarification.

To be placed on the registry, you first have to be an approved homestay.

So for those people who you all have declined,

They don't even make it to the registry, just so you know.

Let me ask Bart, I think it greatly depends on what kind of approval they received.

They have to be present.

Okay, so I'm not understanding.

If they were approved prior to the new home state ordinance and they were approved as an Airbnb, do they have to be a resident owner?

Do they have to be present?

Yeah, I gotta say, I wanna say generally, yes, without memorizing all the approvals.

So we did not have the process where you didn't have to reside on premise.

You could have, I believe, like a caretaker depending on the circumstance.

So what I'm gonna do is default back to my original answer, which is they need to follow the approvals that they received and they'll be okay.

They are subject to registering on the register

Thank you.

Final comment on the Airbnb's and

Thank you Chair Galloway and I think actually following up on the last three individuals who spoke I think that we have to make sure that we also educate our constituents the difference between the homestay under our ordinance versus the more commonly understood Airbnb because there is a substantial difference between the two

and I'm seeing that in the lack of understanding in some of our constituents in the communications that we're receiving by email.

Thank you.

Yes, my only separation of that same thing is that before we had the ordinance there was no legal short-term registry.

There was no illegal short-term operation because it was fewer than 30 days was not allowed.

So

There is nobody who was operating before who somehow should get out of participating in all these things.

And the B&B is something we've had for 30 years.

And so that's a completely different category.

And those people who have signed up for that will bring themselves into this as it's combined.

locally, in my understanding.

So final question, I just want to say that, so as of now, everything is a homestay, falls under the homestay ordinance.

So if you have a short-term rental, that's a homestay.

We no longer are approving Airbnbs.

They all fall under our homestay ordinance.

Right, so Airbnb is an industry term, not a zoning ordinance term.

A bed and breakfast is what we had before.

So we just did BNB for bed and breakfast.

And those were any of the 30-day or less that were allowed for a number of years in certain districts, okay?

We're not calling them, we're not calling them bed and breakfast permits.

Everything now is a homestay.

Going forward.

If you have any additional questions on this item, we can reach out to Bart and follow up.

Jody, I had a couple questions and it's

I don't know, it's more just on the visual and how I'm reacting to this visual this time around.

This isn't criticizing or judging it, I'm just trying to get my head wrapped around it.

It dawns on me that I don't have an appreciation for how staff resources are used.

So when I look at it as a supervisor trying to make priorities or understand why something is taking the time that it's taking or I'm trying to explain to a constituent why this item isn't in there yet, I don't really understand myself how you allocate human resources to these projects.

You do, but it is a new endpoint.

What we've gone through are a series of adjustments we've had to make, especially because of our community outreach requirements relative to a lot of these projects.

But while we were in that period of indecision about how we were going to manage public outreach and

meetings with the public.

But what I'm getting at is that when I look at this from a standpoint of

I see the blue come to a close and all that white to the right.

I see all this blue filling in under the longer range items.

But, you know, strategic comprehensive plan update may be equitable to four rows up above.

But that's the part that's lost on me because staff capacity isn't necessarily visualized here.

I've seen this before, so I'm reacting to it differently, where I'm going, oh, I really don't understand what staff capacity it takes to work on the Crozet master plan or the water resources stream health rural area and how that equates for me to zoning amendments to implement comp plan.

And I don't know if there is a way, you know, when it comes up for budget time, we've got pie charts, we've got dollar amounts,

When we're allocating those resources, we know the capacity that we have.

And it's very obviously critical to be able to understand how to program the resources moving forward.

What I don't have my head wrapped around at this point, and it's my fault, is that I don't know how that staff capacity plays into this.

I just don't have my head wrapped around it.

So as we move forward and it comes back to us for prioritization, I think that's a

They absolutely do.

And to that end, just so you know, all is not lost relative to that.

We have started deploying a Microsoft project inside CDD, which is a software tool in the Microsoft family of tools that indicates how much resource it takes and which specific resources are taken up by individual projects.

So when we come back to you, we can show you

This takes four people.

That takes half a person.

This takes more.

For example, on form-based codes, some of what you're seeing there with form-based codes, the actual individuals on form-based code are a lot of the people with the right expertise to be working on the comp plan.

So that's why you're seeing some of that stagger.

But we are learning and training up on a tool

That's great because I would think like affordable housing comes to an end you know that expertise level you don't necessarily just shift them over to riot road corridor study or something like that or any other project that that expertise is also part of that capacity that's yeah that's a good point well that's helpful to know that that's going to be coming forward.

Would you mind, you had mentioned the frozen positions and I wasn't fast enough in writing them down.

Is that just a follow-up?

You could email that out to the board so we could have that information.

That would be helpful to have on here just as a FYI.

Absolutely.

I think that's it with my comments.

I think moving forward like that Rile Road corridor study is obviously of interest, but I don't see that.

That was one of my first questions when I saw this graph was under

with this particular work plan as well.

But there's plenty of time to discuss that and I mean you've addressed it so I get it.

But visually it helps I think to have it all in one place.

Great.

Are there, nobody has put up any comments, are there any final questions or comments here?

Just to pile on to Ned what you just said, even something as simple as a different color triangle on the chart that showed outside work being done as the corridor study is somebody else is working on it, but it's there.

That would help us to keep these things in our mind.

Thanks.

All right board, the next item on our agenda, we have number 11, Thomas Jefferson Health District COVID-19 update.

I saw Dr. Bonds and Mr. McKay.

Oh, good afternoon, Dr. Bonds.

Awesome.

Good afternoon, Dr. Bonds.

Thank you for having me.

I'm actually going to have Ryan McKay come up.

He's got some data slides that he can share with you.

So if he could share his screen, I think that would be helpful.

All right.

Thank you for the opportunity to share some information about our current status.

I'll start a little bit briefly with our state and regional status and then drill down to districts and county and city and sort of end up a little bit talking about work with University of Virginia and just sort of what we've seen in other university and college towns across the Commonwealth.

In August, Virginia Department of Health introduced new pandemic metrics as a way to inform decision making around sort of what the board did back in the end of July and early August, which is how do we strategize around returning to some of the more restrictive mitigation strategies around containment for COVID.

and this one here just provides a brief overview of what the pandemic status is in terms of transmission extent by region.

We are in currently a moderate phase, but we are increasing.

We're the arrow in the Northwest pointing upwards.

And just wanna point out, so the Eastern region was around the same time that Albemarle County had implemented the ordinance

was in a similar position where they were seeing increasing cases.

And this was the first region to really look at reverting back to phase two.

And they implemented many of the phase two measures as a way to contain and slow the spread of COVID in that region.

So they were at a high transmission extent at that point.

And since then, they're down at moderate and then they are decreasing.

And you'll also notice in Northern Virginia,

They're actually in low transmission extent, which they have been at, I think for three straight weeks now.

So implementing the various containment measures and mitigation strategies has been working in these regions.

and certainly something to continue to push as we move forward in our region.

The metrics and how they determine this is based on case counts, positivity rates, and then a number of measures that are specific to the healthcare infrastructure surge capacity, visits to emergency departments where people are reporting COVID-like illness, and they're all weighted so that they come up with this extent.

Going down just a little bit more in terms of

the northwest region and they put a score on this based on these measures.

We've increased about five points between end of August and September 12th.

And I think this is largely attributable to case counts that have been seen in positivity rates, certainly in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County.

We're seeing increased numbers here in Charlottesville.

and then some of the other more populous portions of the Northwest region.

So based on these measures as a region, we're moving towards substantial community transmission, but that's not necessarily taking into account all of the rural areas.

So they may not be experiencing such transmission as we are in more urban areas, populated areas.

So breaking this down a little bit further, this is a snapshot of our new measure on our TGHD data portal.

So this changes things a little bit.

We're now reporting at the district level cases by date of onset.

So it gives us a more accurate picture of when symptoms are developing as opposed to waiting for a test result in the report date for that.

And as you can see, we've been trending downward

over a seven-day moving average, that's the yellow line, and then daily cases by date of onset are also posted there.

So it just gives us a better sense and a better picture of when things are occurring in terms of symptoms in the district.

The top part of this slide breaks things down a little bit by localities.

Albemarle County is in blue, so there's a slight misalignment there.

So there's a total of 1145 cases, 73 hospitalizations, and 19 fatalities in Albemarle County.

The information below is actually a report date, so when we receive that lab report and this aligns with the data that VDH posts on their website.

So they don't break it down by locality of onset in terms of symptom onset.

They still continue to report this out by when lab reports are received into our surveillance system.

So we're doing the same here and you can see different trends over time.

Looking at the demographics, we continue to see disproportionate cases among Black and Latino and African American individuals in our districts, populations by district on the left in terms of race and ethnicity.

Cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities are also disproportionate, particularly with

Black and African Americans.

This is a trend that we've seen over the course of COVID-19, not just locally, but also in the Commonwealth and then across the country.

Part of the pandemic metrics that VDH posts and updates is including some locality-specific metrics.

On the left-hand side broken down are numbers of cumulative cases, the seven-day rolling sum in percent positivity over a seven-day average from August 31st, September 7th, and then September 14th.

On the right, they use this as an opportunity to not only show case incidence rate, but also measures over time.

So you can see how it's been fluctuating basically since the beginning of COVID.

At this point, Albemarle County is at 5.3% and this is updated daily.

So just sort of keeping that in mind that there's going to be fluctuation from one day to the next, which is why we introduce these on a weekly basis to local government, community partners,

The schools receive a copy of this information.

And then the trend for Albemarle County thus far over since August 31 has been a downward trend, both in percent positivity, but also in a number of cases.

I think a couple important pieces here.

There is a lot of testing that's ongoing, both through UVA, our community testing events, and then different events that are occurring through UVA in the community, which is really important.

So high testing numbers and even higher and low, excuse me,

percent positivity in case counts is really important.

So that gives us a good sense of where things are trending at this point as of right now.

Obviously this can change, but right now we've had, sorry, the cameras.

We've had 10 days of decreasing positivity rate.

So they consider that to be fluctuating.

And then we've had 14 days of decreasing case incidents above 10.

So the decreasing portion of that is what's important to pull.

At the state, or excuse me, the regional level, they add some other metrics in there that's related to healthcare infrastructure, but they don't do that necessarily for localities.

Here we have metrics for Charlottesville.

You can see on the left-hand side, positivity rate approached 10%.

That's one of the thresholds that VDH recognizes as possibly an opportunity to discuss mitigation strategies.

And then since then, through massive increased testing, both within the community and certainly at the university for students and faculty, we've seen cases

133 is probably about the high we've seen for Charlottesville over that time and then the positivity rate has gone down to 4.5 percent.

So there's still some burden in relation to cases per 100,000 which is at 39.5 but the positivity rate is something important to look at as well as it continues to go down.

There's widespread access to testing and there continues to be

So this, again, is an important element to keep in mind when looking at all of the different metrics that we're using to sort of evaluate where we are.

Imagine you've all seen this at some point.

This is a snapshot of UV8's COVID tracker.

As of today, there's currently 373 total positive cases, 325 of those are student cases.

And they're updating this during the week around 4 p.m.

is when this gets updated.

We are certainly seeing increased number of cases among students.

We're beginning to see some cases that are occurring on grounds.

Working with UVA, we meet with them on a daily basis to make sure that we're communicating regularly.

There's transparency between what we're seeing in terms of numbers, what they're seeing, and then how they're trying to support students on grounds and off grounds day by day.

And those meetings have been really helpful in terms of establishing some really strong communication points between our investigation team and then their folks within student health and the university and even into the health system.

For some comparison, here's some data that I was able to locate on different COVID dashboards, including JMU, Radford, Virginia Tech, and obviously UVA.

I polled JMU, Radford, and Virginia Tech partly for size, but also Radford had hit the news maybe a week, week and a half ago as a designated hotspot.

And so we wanted to see what was happening there.

Not all dashboards are the same in terms of what information they offer, but it does give us a little bit of a sense of what's been occurring in universities in Virginia, particularly larger universities.

And I think Harrisonburg in terms of pulling that data is going to be somewhat close comparison to Charlottesville.

As you can see, positivity rates within those universities are high, particularly with JMU and Virginia Tech.

I know Virginia Tech is doing a lot of testing on their own.

JMU is working with a number of partners to do that testing.

So I think UVA certainly has an advantage over other universities in terms of the amount of testing they have experience doing, but also providing that widespread access to students through student health.

And then to kind of give you a little bit of a comparison, it's not entirely apples to apples, but where

JMU and Harrisonburg were on August 21st versus where they are now.

The red circle is when students return to campus at JMU.

It doesn't necessarily account for students that would have returned to Harrisonburg living in off-campus housing.

And then the yellow circle on the right is where they are currently.

So it's taken some time.

Positivity rates have dropped over the course of the last couple of weeks, but cases are still occurring relatively high in Harrisonburg.

Kirk, and their dashboard is updated day rolling sums as well.

And finally, I think an important piece for us to recognize is that testing is really critical.

It's an important part in that it identifies those who are testing positive.

It gives us the opportunity to ensure we can isolate those individuals, identify close contacts, and then quarantine.

We continue to do that at a pretty high rate, consistently above 90% of the time getting in contact with those individuals within 24 hours, both for isolation and the close contacts for quarantine.

which allows us to really mitigate potential spread and depending on number of cases contain further spread.

So these testing events will continue either through UVA.

We have our community testing team and we're hiring a second team.

We've had a little bit of a struggle with getting nurses who can do the testing, but we'll be able to ramp up that second team hopefully here in the next couple of weeks, maybe sometime in October.

and one thing we have noticed is that fewer people are actually coming to our testing sites so we have lots of opportunity for people to come to get tested which is a good thing so that we can identify those individuals and isolate as needed.

Mr. McKay if you would if you'll leave your slides up in case the

Okay.

Yes, please.

So your slides on the university's comparison, and you said that UVA has an advantage in that they're doing a lot of testing.

Virginia Tech also has their own testing, I believe you said.

Can you explain

a little bit more about how they compare.

I don't know.

I don't know that they're doing how much testing they're doing in comparison to Virginia Tech.

I know they have plans for doing more random testing so they're going to start with 50 then to 100.

and I noticed that they're also going to look at doing wastewater testing within the dorms to determine if there is any potential spread occurring there.

I don't have good insight into the amount of testing that they're doing on a daily basis, nor do I have that insight into Virginia Tech.

OK, yeah, I don't.

That you already started the what?

Oh, they're wastewater testing, okay.

And my only other request is if you could send out this PowerPoint to the board, please.

Yeah, just a couple of questions.

I see on this particular slide that's in front of us, University of Virginia percent positive not available.

It's not posted on their dashboard.

I just pulled it.

Yeah, UVA doesn't post the percent positive on their dashboard.

I guess I'd have to ask UVA.

I'm sorry, but I'm just wondering.

That is correct.

So it's important to know if you go on on Saturday or Sunday that you're looking at Fridays

So it's an update Friday and Monday.

Correct.

And just one more question.

What is our testing turnaround time-wise right now?

My understanding has been really quick.

It decreased and now it's back up again.

But I don't know, Denise, if that's still accurate.

Yeah, so I think it depends on where you send the test out to.

And it depends a little bit on when we send the test out.

So if it's one of our testing events and it goes to DCLS,

You know, it depends on when it hits the courier.

So if we do a testing event in the morning and it gets courier to the lab that day, it probably won't hit a run until the next day.

And then we don't get results uploaded until that night.

And so people won't get the results until the following day.

So what does that make it?

At least 48 hours.

And of course, if they have a big point prevalence study that they're doing for

someplace that's ahead of us that may push our labs out to run, for example.

So we say four days.

We usually get them back earlier than that.

Obviously, the sooner you get them back, the sooner we can either get people out of quarantine or make sure people are in isolation and get those contacts notified.

I think UVA still has roughly a 24 hour turnaround time.

And they do lots of testing for us at community events, but also you can go to Riverside and get tested there.

I don't know what Martha Jefferson is running at the moment.

And I don't have a good feel for things like LabCorp and Quest.

It was really long.

I don't think it's quite as bad as it used to be.

And just clarity on one slide and I don't know that you have to go to the slide but Ryan when you first started you showed a map of the state and you were talking about the eastern area and how they are

have improved.

Yeah, it was one of those very first slides.

Anyway, this one.

And my impression was that the Eastern decrease was based on what Governor Northam did at one point.

Is that correct?

That was his mandated masking.

Yeah, so that down arrow, which is what everybody wants, was a result of the governor's mandated restrictions, I guess, for lack of a better word.

I'm good for now.

This is good.

Thank you.

Supervisor Malek?

There we go.

Got it now.

All right.

On this map, I'll jump in right here, please.

So I remember that several jurisdictions in the Hampton Roads area and also Richmond went to the governor when he went to phase three and said, we won't because we're in trouble.

And he gave them special dispensation.

and we just did what we were going to do anyway.

I would like to know what Fairfax County is doing and why they're low because they are doing much better than we are and I would like to know what they're doing because all I see every day are these maps where we're steady, we're steady, we're steady, you know the national maps and I don't see Virginia making any progress at all and it makes me very anxious and certainly our our kids and families are

scared to death all the time no matter which route they're taking, either missing school or going to school.

So I'm hoping there's some details there that we can find out what this other region, the low region up there is doing to accomplish that.

And that's something, if it's not an easy answer now, then I would love to have it.

If you can direct me to where to find that information, I would love to know that.

The second question that

might have to do, can you explain a little bit more about why the date of onset data is helpful?

If our numbers are still rising, rising, rising, what good does it do?

So, Ryan, I can certainly take the first one.

I think, Supervisor Mallek, your point about learning from areas that are doing well is really well taken.

And in fact, if I make it, I'm going to be on a call this afternoon with a community mitigation team that's just being stood up by the state.

And it does include representatives from all of the various regions.

So I'll be representing the Northwest region.

so that we can learn what's going on in, for example, the Northern region, because it's more than Fairfax, right?

It's also Loudoun County and Prince William and Alexandria, but all very dense urban areas.

So I think it would be really helpful to understand.

But they are also coincidentally learning from us as well.

I did get an email from the director of Alexandria

a week or two ago asking for the ordinance that was put into effect for Charlottesville and Albemarle and wanting to know how that was working out.

So because they were thinking of instituting one and so I forwarded all that information along.

So it does go both ways.

Good.

Yes.

The date of onset.

This is a new thing.

Yeah, well, it's helpful because it helps us identify potential super spreader events.

So we know that not everyone gets tested at the same time.

So someone may have symptoms and may be really stoic about it.

And they're like, no, I'm just going to stay home.

I'm just going to put up with my symptoms.

And finally, five days later, they go in and get tested and come back with a positive test while other people who

perhaps are, you know, for whatever reason, really want to know because they need to know for their job, for example, might go in at the first time they have a sniffle.

And so by doing that, by looking at that date of symptom onset, if we see a sudden surge that was happening around September 15th, we can start to go back to those cases and really start to comb through them and say, okay, you know, we didn't

Great, thank you.

I've heard discussion also on the news about the percent

positivity per 100,000, or a number of positivity per 100,000 population.

And I missed when someone, Ryan, I guess presented what the city's was, but what is the county's cases per 100,000?

OK, OK, great.

And the last thing for you is the university, what's out on social media is that kids are being told, they're telling their fraternity brothers and sisters and all that, go get your testing out of town, because then if you're positive, it won't be reported to the university and you won't have to quarantine and all that stuff.

Is there any handle that's happening on those numbers?

And are those numbers reflected in either this, the university numbers should be reflected either in the city or the county, but if not, why not?

And I'll stop.

Yeah, so those are, that's a great question.

So the way that reporting system works is

The labs are sent to the jurisdiction of the home address.

And so what we try and do is get students

to change their home address in their insurance to wherever they're living locally so that the cases get reported to that local district.

But that doesn't always happen.

And so then we talk.

And so if we get a case and it's clearly a student at JMU, for example, and the student is living at JMU, we transfer that case up there to them.

so that they can investigate.

And they do the same for us.

And we do that all over, and we actually do that across states as well.

There's cross-jurisdictional transfer.

So people can try, but we track them down eventually.

So they get counted in where they're living at.

Now, whether or not they get reported to the university,

The university has really encouraged students to do that, and that's part of their on-ground.

And if they get tested, it's part of the consent.

But ultimately, if a student says to us, I don't want you to report my case to UVA, then we follow their privacy directions because

That's the mandate that we have.

We can't share information without the individual's expressed permission to share it.

We try really hard because we think it helps UVA to understand the burden.

But at the end of the day, it's the student's responsibility.

We still tell them to quarantine and isolate.

So they don't get out of that direction.

And the other thing that the state has done is created unique IDs in our electronic database system.

so that we can have an internal tag for various universities to try and get an internal idea of what the burden is from various institutes of higher education.

So there's a couple of different ways that we're able to kind of get a collated sense.

And really, we want students to understand that this is not punitive.

It's really, talking to us allows us to provide education to the students.

We do have individuals that can provide some assistance and there are resources in the community if that individual who's been asked to isolate needs groceries brought in, for example.

We can either direct them to a resource or we can help them obtain that resource.

Well, thank you for all of that.

I know the picture that went around of the kids trying to get food at Newcomb Hall just jammed into the hallway there because their dorm rooms have no cooking facilities and they can't get to the grocery store.

They were really trapped.

And so I know it's a very difficult situation for them.

I also want to thank you for the host organizations who have had your testing crews come, have had a very positive experience.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, Dr. Bonds and Mr. McKay.

Thank you both.

Mr. McKay, could you go to the towards the earlier part of your slide presentation?

I believe it's the first one that shows an actual graph or chart.

Yeah, that may be the one.

The next one, I think.

Yeah, maybe that one.

Anyway, it's one of the charts that shows apparently in the most recent data, what appears to be a fairly sharp decline in cases right now in our county or area.

But of course, as with many people, we've seen kind of an increase as the students came back into the community.

We've started to experience some of our first cold evenings and we know that flu season is upon us.

So I have a couple

I have started to see some of the facilities that provide flu shots indicating that they're available.

So Dr. Bonds, is now the time to try and get that annual message out for people to start getting their flu shots?

So we are just about at the ideal time.

We usually tell people in October because that gives you plenty of time to develop the antibodies before flu season really gets into full swing and it provides you with the longest

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Bonds.

That's very helpful because, as I recall, the peak of the flu season is December through March, maybe December through February.

And so we want to make sure people get their flu shots in a timely fashion, but as you just indicated, to give you the greatest range of coverage during the flu season.

And we recognize that the COVID-19 is not the flu, but also that people, if you can protect yourself from the flu, it can also have sort of a corresponding

protection towards the pandemic.

Now, as I mentioned, it appears that at least within the last seven days, our numbers are looking better.

But are there any indications that you have seen that would, and recognizing this is a policy decision for the board to make, but are there any indications that you have seen which would warrant a laxing or reduction of some of the steps that we have taken with our recent ordinance to try and continue to reduce

So I think the ordinance has really been helpful and has contributed to some of the reductions that we've seen.

Having the UVA students obviously has added an increasing burden, and we did see an uptick.

And I don't think we're done seeing the increase in cases because of the increase in numbers of UVA students.

And I think we are entering a really risky period.

As you indicated, I had to put a coat on this morning to do chores on the farm.

And so people are going to move from those outdoor activities that were protected because you are outdoor, your aerosols were widely spread to indoor activities where there's a much greater risk of infection.

and so having the ordinances that you put in place, I think has been really helpful in keeping the large gatherings down and keeping the numbers down.

I think people, the complaints have gone down as well.

Thank you so much, Dr. Bonds.

And again, thank you, Mr. McKay.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

No questions at this time.

I only have one question, so I understand it clearly.

When you show the 300 in some cases at UVA, you had a chart there which had the 18,000 students

Yeah, that was it.

Go back to that.

Advance to that other slide there.

So the student pre-arrival.

So am I understanding this right that of the 18,000 that had negative pre-arrival tests, the 325 total positive is after they were here?

Wait, there's the event.

I didn't see that with my chat room.

This figure represents the number as soon as it is passed.

So am I thinking about that right, that that 325 is after they arrived, clearly a pretest negative?

That's correct.

Yeah.

Now, some of those 65 positive tests could have been individuals that were UVA pre-arrival, but were actually already here in the community.

We had a number, these tests were sent out in, help me out here Ryan, August, beginning of August, I think.

All right, thank you.

Were there any other questions for Dr. Bonds at this time?

None for me.

Thank you all.

Well, the board appreciates you coming to give us the updated information.

And as it was requested earlier, the PowerPoint presentation, it'd be great to have that sent to us.

Happy to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Great board.

Looks like we're running relatively on schedule.

A couple minutes behind.

So we did move numbers 20 and 21 ahead of the closed meeting.

So that number 20 is from the board.

Committee reports of matters not listed on the agenda.

No, I do not.

Nothing, thank you Chair Galloway.

All right.

And then the next item from the County Executive, report on matters not listed on the agenda.

It's Friday several items and I believe Ms.

Kilroy will cue up a brief, very brief presentation and Mr. Chair I'll run through this and certainly the board knows to stop me if you have questions.

Thank you.

So I'm going to talk first about in the county executive's report our memorial removal event from this past weekend.

I wanted to share some information with the board to wrap that matter up.

As this board knows this is this was a in my opinion a complex construction project and we did complete this without any major issues.

We did have some what I would call minor issues with some separation of the statue from the stone as you can see with

picture that you have in front of you.

I won't go into detail about that, but that is about a 111 year old piece of infrastructure that had been in place.

And there's just frankly some unknowns when you begin to pull that apart.

And as this board knows, we were trying to pull it apart in

very meticulously not to damage it in any way.

And so it took a little longer than what had been planned, but I'm pleased to report that this statue was pulled apart successfully, meaning that putting it back together again is a true reality.

Concrete foundation was about 36 inches deep.

I would like publicly thank the city of Charlottesville.

They do have a public works department as this board is familiar with with experience with sidewalks and streets and heavy infrastructure projects and so they did lend some expertise to the county and it was very much appreciated in trying to get that foundation successfully.

property.

Our cost we think that we're going to land this at about $60,100 and our timeline we ran from Friday afternoon and again this board is aware because this board was helpful and involved to the degree that was

reasonable given your schedules.

But we did go Friday from 2 p.m.

and we wrapped up Sunday at about 1 o'clock.

And it was about a 14-hour process that did stretch over both weekend days.

So the time capsule, which did get and continues to get a lot of attention, you can see on the left that this is what the cavity looked like as soon as the final stone was revealed.

And unfortunately there was about two inches of standing water that was in that area.

About two and a half hours to recover the box from the cavity.

The box is about 12 inches.

by 12 inches and the depth is about 6 inches.

The Special Collections Library recovery work is ongoing and I believe that we will have a report very soon on what the

ability is to recover the items that were in that box with the expertise of folks, conservators and such that will certainly be very involved in trying to use their expertise.

As the board knows, we did have a live stream event that was nine hours and 17 minutes.

Our chairman, Mr. Gallaway, did open live remarks.

The live stream event was both video of the removal, but it was also a learning opportunity on the time capsule, the engineering of the statue and the base, the funding and the installation of the monument.

It highlighted community with public comment from the board meeting with recorded reactions from community members.

And so there had been a lot of work that went into the live stream with lectures by professors and subject matter experts.

About 100 people at Court Square perimeter, it showed up and they were masked.

Our live stream reach was 126,000.

Views were 51,000 and shares were 271,000.

We had a steady audience even through the end of this podcast of about 200.

We know that when the statue was installed that thousands of community members attended.

The live stream was intended to allow our community to attend while keeping our community safety in light of COVID-19.

While our intention was to meet the needs of our community, the world was watching us.

You did get a media report, I believe Saturday evening, and I asked Ms.

Kilroy about it at some point over the weekend or Monday because she put a caveat in there that said, I think that I've covered most of the media outlets that have reached and reported.

We did have national and international coverage that boosted this event throughout the day.

We do have folks that are on the call that are participating today that if the board has questions, Mr. Chair, I'll stop there on that event.

I have several more items to cover quickly.

Certainly there may be board member questions.

I know Mr. Henry was there, a good part of the day.

Certainly Ms.

Kilroy and Lance Stewart.

Just one, thank you.

I watched a good portion of it over video.

It was very well done.

Is there a list of all the speakers anywhere that we can get?

Yeah, Emily, Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

We can certainly provide a list.

Going into the day, we weren't sure what of the content we had lined up that we would show.

Thank you.

I'd love to see that.

Thank you.

That's it for me.

And everything looked great.

Very successful removal or relocation, I should say.

I was at the site during the morning until the statute came down and I really want to thank everybody that participated and you all just did such a great job.

I've heard nothing but positive comments to be honest with you from the community that have contacted me.

I'm assuming that

There were some surprises.

We had the surprise about getting the statute loose from the base.

I'd be interested in just Trevor or maybe Lance giving us maybe what their takeaway or their real surprise of the afternoon might have been, just out of curiosity.

But Emily, I thought that the livestream itself just went beautifully, and I do thank you for that.

It was great.

And you and all of the people that participated, Siri and everyone.

Lance and Trevor, do you all have any things you would like to comment on?

I would be interested in your takeaway, because you had all these plans.

Thanks, Supervisor McKeel, Trevor Henry, Assistant County Executive,

We have been working on this for a long time, really three elements, the construction project, the community engagement project, and the public safety planning.

It goes all the way back to January.

I think I mentioned that in the past.

So on the construction side, I'll speak to which is, you know, we really planned that out as well as we could.

We had the engineer's report that helped guide the process.

For me, and Lance can chime in, I think the biggest surprise was quite frankly when we got all the way down to the slab.

The pictures that County Executive Richardson showed at the very end, we really didn't know what to fully expect with the time capsule.

And seeing how that was positioned in the slab and then how we had to approach getting to it, it took hours and hours and it took some real

Care, and kind of hand work by the contractor.

And so that surprised us a little bit.

We were surprised about the number of bugs that came out when that last block was lifted up, which I think actually was visible on the streaming.

There was a lot of surprise about that.

And then finally, I think we stopped digging at three feet

of concrete on that slab.

And the public works crew from the city on Sunday said it was the hardest cement they've ever encountered.

We expected to have some challenges.

Once we got the statue piece down, the rest of the

The concrete structures went very quickly.

So it really was that last bit that surprised my thoughts.

Well, and I will say, Trevor, Liz just put a question in chat.

I will say they were surprised insects.

We may be able to get a photo of them.

I hope that we did.

Send that out.

It would be interesting to know.

I'll say my big surprise and a pleasant one was just the fact that the entire community that came out to view this event came out to celebrate it.

And I was mentally prepared for a really challenging and potentially very frightening day.

And a lot of other people were quite nervous going into the day.

The only other comment I'll make and then is that I would really like for the board to send an official thank you to the construction company signed off by our chair perhaps because they really did an outstanding job and it just was they were just so impressive and so honored to be doing the work

So I just think a thank you note somehow or another to the local construction company would be great to send.

Thank you.

With the check.

I'm just thinking something that recognizes because I think they took a certain amount of pressure.

They certainly took some, perhaps some unfortunate communications from citizens and I just think we should officially thank them in some way and an official letter or something would be appropriate.

Mr. Chair, if I could answer Supervisor McKeel's question from a public safety standpoint.

I think that you'd be glad to know that the biggest surprise was the change in the drop-off point for the board members when we went up there that morning.

And I say that just to emphasize how well that the public safety planning actually played

Obviously, it's a situation where you plan for a certain number of different contingencies, and then the events of the day obviously then kind of drive what actually happens.

And for that to be the biggest surprise from a public safety standpoint is a small thing from a planning standpoint.

So a big shout out.

I want to make sure that we are acknowledging the high level of collaboration with the city of Charlottesville.

across the board, not just on public safety, but public works in their administration.

They were just this tremendous partner in recognizing that all of the activity, all you have is that little postage stamp of a courthouse square that's county property, everything else around it's in the city of Charlottesville.

And so the collaboration had to be significant and smooth, and it was.

We will be doing some after action evaluations and debriefing here soon.

There are a number of other communities who have already indicated their interest and learned lessons from us because they also have statutes that they may want to be taking down.

I'm just talking about the city of Charlottesville and so there are some lessons learned that we hope to be able to share

but more locally and obviously extra local in the state and perhaps even far from that.

So I just wanted to add that to the story.

Thank you.

Thanks Doug.

No ma'am, I don't.

I appreciate it very much.

Thank you for the opportunity, but I don't have anything to add.

There we go.

Thank you.

Watching from home, I was appreciative of all of the ability to see and as if I were there.

And I think this really allowed people of widely diverse points of view to be part of this to the extent that they could.

There were many who would have come down to watch but were told not to and they were a little annoyed to see all of these people who then were allowed to be on the sidewalk.

So a lesson learned for sharing with other communities is if you're going to have rules, it's good to follow them.

and then expectations are followed.

So there are some rules for some people and some rules for other people.

But still, it was a very, very well carried out and I'm sure exhausting weekend for all of you who were down there for 25 hours altogether probably.

And I really appreciated being able to watch from home.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I want to give thanks to county staff for the many, many months of work that you put into this.

And I think it was because of the work that you put into it, not to limit the praise, but clearly the community and public engagement in the Office of Equity Inclusion were two of the main offices.

Deputy

Executive, Mr. Walker, and Assistant County Executive, Mr. Henry, for the work that you did.

Because of the work you did in engaging with our community, it was evident that what the board approved ultimately was not only the right thing, but we had the public support for it.

And those aren't always in tandem, but in this case it really was.

I was honored to be there.

I would ask that Chair Galloway's public remarks be made a part of the record of this board meeting because I think they were historic.

I think they were very moving and I believe that they captured the mood and the sentiment of our community.

After returning home I was able to go online and view the recording and one of the things that really struck me were that there were virtually no comments from local residents

that were not supportive of what we did.

And I think that is a telling message that what was able to happen here was something the community wanted and it was done in such a way that our residents were patient and allowed the legal process to proceed to conclusion.

And I take great pride in Albemarle County being the first local jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia to comply with the new law

remove the artifacts as we were legally permitted to do and our constituents allowed the process to work.

Yes, I just want to say to staff because it was the staff the planning of this that enabled everything to go off without a hitch.

You cannot stop people from wanting to congregate in the area.

We kept them away.

That's why we only had thousands of people around there.

Because of the advanced publicity, what we asked people to do, it was done in a very respectful manner, and it's certainly a blueprint for other communities to follow.

So thank you very much, you all, for the hard work you did, making us all look good.

I just want to say one thing.

I recognize that the vast majority of the community wanted the statue to come down, but I really have to acknowledge that I personally heard from several people that were not pleased with it.

and I just want to say that it wasn't universal and I thought that our decision to bring it to the battlefield was a good one to respect some of the people who wanted it contextualized or felt that it represented a grave marker of their relatives.

So just to throw that into the discussion.

Thank you.

I have emailed, I did email my remarks out to the board if you wish to read the statement.

And I just, I'm grateful to, I echo all the sentiment and the appreciation of staff

and very grateful to Siri Russell who provided information and suggestions for the remarks that I was able to make.

So I'm grateful for that.

But thank you to all that were involved.

I know there was a lot of time and effort and a quick turnaround.

This was not something that we were

summary reports in your boxes in the board office.

That was provided by our facilitator from last Wednesday.

So as you have an opportunity to come by to check your mail, just know that those notebooks are in there and I believe the material is reflective of the presentations, the handouts, the drawings, the requests that were made by the board during the retreat or materials.

Please let me know if you need anything in addition to that.

And at this time I will ask Lance Stewart, who has remained on the call, to quickly go over the early voting information from Cobb Fifth.

I sent a document to the board earlier today that outlines the work that is in place and so Lance is prepared to take a minute to walk the board through this as the board knows for early voting that we're preparing for beginning September the 18th.

Thank you Mr. Richardson.

Our office has been working pretty closely with the office voter registration and the electoral board to prepare for the early voting period for some time.

And it was just within the last several business days that our attention switched to the specifically the accommodation at the county office building where early voting will be held.

of individuals wishing to campaign or speak to one of the matters on the ballot that had not been anticipated in previous discussions that the building would function as a polling place.

So we very quickly, I think, came up with a plan and I am sharing my screen.

Please let me know when you can see that.

Okay, thank you.

So as you can see, this is the site of the 5th Street Office Building.

This is 5th Street here.

The red dot is Conference Room A and the approximate location of the entrance to that conference room.

Normally this is an exit, but that is being utilized as an entrance.

The areas in orange will be designated parking spaces for visitors in general, but specifically for the early voting exercises.

The blue area here has now been designated as a staging area for people who wish to participate in their right to campaign.

And then at the entrance, we've designated

sections of both sides of the driveway for the placement of additional campaign signs.

We also wish to be very careful to establish some guidelines that are clear to accomplish several things primarily related to the protection

of voters and campaigners and staff alike to observe local ordinances and state guidelines and also to keep pedestrians out of the way of vehicular traffic.

We wanted something that seemed to be convenient to pedestrians as they made their way from the cars to the entrance to the building while at the same time ensuring that they don't get hit by a car.

Also, just to make sure that there is equity from day to day, establish a guideline that staging areas will be available.

on a first come, first served basis beginning 30 minutes before the election.

And then each day that begins again.

So following the end of the voting scheduled that day, campaigners and others will have 30 minutes to remove any materials from the site.

And we will be marking those and have accompanying signage located so that these guidelines are clear.

Finally and briefly, just some simple guidelines in terms of signs along the entrance.

Again, more for reasons of maintenance of the lawn.

We're also asking that they not be placed more than 30 minutes before the scheduled day and removed at the end of the day.

Also that they not protrude into the traffic lane for safety and that they maintain a reasonable distance of approximately no greater than six feet from the curb or the sidewalk.

And that is a pretty straightforward plan.

I think the electoral board reviewed this plan and responded positively and that these are the instructions that this point have been provided to Jake Washburn and as of this morning also provided to representatives from both political parties, three political parties I understand.

Thanks.

This is great that you've got this done so quickly, Lance.

Did the Registrar's Office have any comments about the, you said 30 minutes before, so it's a first come first serve, and how coveted the spot is right next to the stairs going up?

I guess the fact that people have to walk through there might reduce that competitive

and I was personally concerned that someone might claim that, try to claim that for the duration.

Okay, can you share this with us, your PowerPoint also, since we've all probably gotten lots of questions about how that's going to work.

Yes, of course.

I think I'm okay, Lance.

Thank you very much, this was great.

Yes, I appreciate Greg Swift's work to bring, sort of change the direction to get this accomplished very quickly when people reached out with concerns.

The amendment questions are really important for a space for people to be able to read the amendments, the very small print, before they go inside and therefore then create a traffic jam inside when they're trying to read things.

So if you were going to assign a permanent spot to anybody, doing it for the amendment considerations would be a good

Good thing to do that's different from the partisan things but if you don't want to do that then expect that people will be there at six in the morning in their cars waiting to set up at eight o'clock because all of the various items are incredibly important on this year's election and I can't wait for all of this to begin but

You mentioned three political parties, but the amendments would make four different areas where people need to be able to function.

Chair Galloway and Mr. Stewart, thank you.

My hope is that the partisan political parties will be reasonable and behave in the manner that they historically have done in Albemarle County in sort of lighting up the spaces that are available so that we don't have, you know, even those conflicts at the very beginning and will act in the way that best serves the public as a whole.

Thank you.

No questions at this time.

Very good presentation.

Very good.

Thank you, Lance.

Not at this time.

Okay, Board, that takes us to our closed meeting.

Yes we do.

I move that the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-37118 of the Code of Virginia.

The vote call.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

All right, we're in closed session.

I'm calm.

Good evening, everyone.

We're coming out of closed meeting.

Yes we do Chair Galloway.

I move that the Board of Supervisors certified by a recorded vote that to the best of each supervisor's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in closed meeting.

All right with the vote.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

and there are no motions coming out of closed meeting this evening so our first item this evening number 14 run the public matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters pending before the board.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

During time set aside for matters not listed for the public hearing on the agenda, individuals may address the Board of Supervisors concerning any issue not listed on the agenda for a public hearing.

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak.

The Clerk's Office maintains the sign-up sheet.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer and it begins when you

start speaking.

We would ask that you bring your comments to a close at the three minute mark because your microphone will be muted after about five seconds.

In order to give all speakers equal treatment and courtesy the board requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines.

When called to the speaker's podium state your name and if you live in Albemarle County your magisterial district.

Address comments directly to the board as a whole

If you have written statements or other supporting material, you may email them to the clerk to be included in the record.

If you represent a group or organization, you may identify that group.

If the speaker does not use all allocated time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

We are reminded that all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

And if you are participating by phone, please press star nine.

And if by Zoom, we ask that you remain muted until you are called to speak.

Good, thank you.

Good evening.

Marcia, can you unmute again please?

One more time, Marcia.

Yes, you're good Marcia.

Go ahead and start.

Ms.

Thank you.

I'm Marsha Guyer, a Charlottesville resident and one of the organizers of the solar petition we submitted to the board of supervisors and the school board with an attachment of 88 signatures and many supporting comments.

In the petition, we ask you to enact the following resolution this year.

For county owned buildings that can accommodate solar roofs, solar panels will be installed within five years of a roof replacement.

For buildings that cannot accommodate a solar roof, if there is ground space available to accommodate a ground-based solar array, it will be added within five years of roof replacement.

Here's an overview of the reasons we urge you to resolve to add solar to county owned buildings

wherever feasible every five years or less and to begin that process this year.

First, by using power purchase agreements, which avoid upfront capital costs, the county can act during the years when the COVID-19 epidemic impacts tax receipts.

So it's feasible.

Second, last year the county named climate action as its most important priority.

It is more obviously important this year with the number of hurricanes forming in warmed oceans and the huge extent of wildfires.

Third, it's urgent the pace of the climate emergency is accelerating all over the world subtly or dramatically.

Albemarle County is not exempt.

We are all like the proverbial frog in a path that is coming to the boil.

Fourth, businesses and families who see new solar panels on county-owned buildings will be stimulated to reduce their own fossil fuel consumption.

Public buy-in is absolutely essential to meeting Albemarle's emission reduction targets.

Please don't delay

leading by example.

Fifth, the county will save money on its electric bills during the 20 years of each PPA term.

Our request is cost effective.

Finally, creating solar industry jobs in Albemarle will economically benefit both county residents and the solar businesses headquartered here now and every five years.

Thank you for your attention.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Yes sir.

Good evening.

Okay.

Thank you for, oh, first of all, I'm going to tell you who I am.

I'm David Redding, and I'm with Eco Village Charlottesville.

We're located in the Rio district.

And get my screen up here.

I'd like to first of all, thank you for all the effort you put into making Albemarle County such a wonderful place to live in.

I'm a volunteer here for a number of organizations, many of them related to climate.

And I appreciate the fact that you put the Climate Monday project last summer, and we all had a good talk about the various ways to learn about the direction that the county is planning on going in concerning climate change.

I want to talk to you a little bit about the PPAs.

Last December,

Fairfax County awarded contract for PPAs to install SULIM on more than 100 sites, including schools and other government buildings.

The Fairfax County's contract is writable, which allows other counties and cities to piggyback on the award, getting the same terms without the need for new contract negotiations.

And I will send you a link to that.

I believe you probably already have something from me on that, but I'll resend that.

The COVID-19 has thrown all of our lives into turmoil, and I realize there's not enough money for a lot of the items that we have worked on during the climate Mondays.

However, there is a pathway that will provide a reduction in climate change as well as reducing the monthly cost of the county's electric bill.

The Virginia legislature passed the Clean Economy Act earlier this summer and it permits a large number of power purchase agreements, PPAs, than we had in the past.

Fairfax County's action gives Albemarle County a clear path.

They expect to save millions of dollars in the next 20 years because they're using the PPAs.

As a result of the PPAs,

Albemarle County can contract with a number of different companies to have them install solar panels on the roof of our government buildings.

This will reduce the cost of electricity while using clean power to reduce the county's carbon footprint.

These contracts last typically for 20 years with a contract cost of electricity that is below the cost of the Dominion charges.

The contractor, the provider also pays for maintenance and repair costs of the installation during the term of the contract.

At the end of the contract, the panels will still have 10 to 20 years left for generating power and the county can either purchase the system or have the contractor take the panels down.

One of the solar panels is planning on charging 3% of the original cost of the system.

Where the solar companies make their profit is from the 26% federal tax credit

to the owner of the solar systems.

Additionally, the Dominion has to charge us for up to 40% loss in the power that comes from the fossil fuel plants that are generating the electricity for us.

There's a lot of loss and there's a lot of infrastructure that's necessary.

When you put the solar panels on your buildings, there's none of that.

So that's quite a savings.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Redding, if you have further statement in writing, you can email that to the VOS at Albemarle.org.

We'll make sure your entire statement is included in our minutes and we are in receipt of your email from Mr. Newsome.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Yes, ma'am.

All right.

Hi, my name is Lisa Glasgow and I live in the Rio district and I must also thank you for working all day on behalf of the community.

A million hours on Zoom like this is not any fun.

And because Zoom is no fun, I want to bring you back in time to specifically 2010

when some of you will remember a young man who wanted to get solar panels put on his school.

That was my son, Amory Fisher.

He worked very hard on getting solar on the school's campaign launched.

He made many connections with people in the county, including Susan Grant at Henley Middle School in Crozet and Lindsay Snoddy in the ACPS building services.

Susan was the librarian until just this August when she retired.

She wrote and received a grant proposal and ran a lot of fundraisers with the goal of getting solar panels at Henley, and she did, but it was pretty small, only 42 kilowatt hours.

Amory wanted a larger array without managing difficult fundraisers, but Henley showed him that school solar was possible.

He and his sister Eleanor, who some of you will remember as the little girl who showed you how her homemade solar robot could walk across a desk, collected hundreds of signatures on petitions and turned them into you.

After that, Lindsay Snoddy became a key ally in his project.

Amory and I, as well as Marsha and Dave, who just spoke, were also part of the former 350.org chapter, a Central Virginia environmental group, and we involved the local press as well as a number of local teachers in the Solar on Schools effort.

We were successful.

In 2014, the school board put out a request for proposals on power purchase agreements.

Some of you may remember that in 2016, Governor McAuliffe and David Pescano came to Monticello High School to cut the ribbon for the new solar installation.

Many people, students, families, and officials were there to see it happen.

We all stood really close to each other in the hot sun and we shouted and clapped.

Remember how we used to stand next to each other and talk?

At the time it was still normal.

We were all elated and excited that Amory's vision had come true.

Now that vision can continue if you make regular solar installation a policy.

The county will save money, we will help save the environment, and that will lead to saving the future for the visions of our children.

What's not to like?

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Donna Shaughnessy.

Good evening.