Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   10/7/2020

We're ready.

Very good.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for this October 7, 2021 p.m.

meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A14, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are 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, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio District.

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.

Participation will include the opportunity to comment on those matters for which comments from the public will be received.

Also, we have with us today our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Clerk, Ms.

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

And with that, if we would all please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you everyone.

And number four is the adoption of our final agenda.

Thank you, Travis.

I believe many of us have minutes to pull.

Perhaps the clerk may want to address that.

Shall we just pull all of the minutes for the next board meeting?

The objection?

No.

Then those will be moved to the next board meeting.

Very good.

Any other changes or items to be pulled?

So moved.

All right.

Travis, if you would with the vote.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

All right.

Very good.

And the next item, brief announcements by board members and we'll go in our speaking order for today.

Supervisor McKeel, you are up first.

Thank you.

Yes ma'am.

A few quick ones.

Thank you.

We had the opening, the formal opening of the Blue Ridge Tunnel with the state guests last week.

and there are a few punch list to be done, but the trail should be open in several weeks and there'll be big announcements going.

So when it's freezing cold outside in the winter, you can walk in there and it'll be 50 degrees and you'll have a delightful several miles of walking along the tunnel.

And I hope lots of people will go.

This Saturday, October 10th is the virtual

Arts and Crafts Festival in Crozet.

This is the 40th year, so I hope people will google that and check it out.

And in the middle of November, the artist and studio tour will also be virtual this year, so lots of shopping that one can do that way.

I was privileged to attend the Defense Affairs Committee meeting last week and was really shocked by, or not shocked, but pleasantly surprised by the information in the report on the impact of Rivanna Station to our local county and area of three impact areas.

our salaries to workers at all levels, transfer payments to veterans in the area, and also the Department of Defense and Homeland contracts for our supporting contractor tail businesses here.

The Albemarle County impact is over $550 million.

$182 million in defense contracts and 5,000 jobs in Albemarle County and another 5,000 coming from surrounding counties in the area.

But about $192 million is strictly the salary category.

So very important to us for our good neighbors.

And we, I hope, will continue to be active and supportive for the station and advocate for it with our congressional delegation as they go forward.

Currently, the funding is in place and they're making slow progress on their addition.

So that's a really exciting element for that.

And I will stop there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Just very briefly, I had the pleasure last week to have an opportunity to tour the Botanical Gardens, which is primarily located in the city of Charlottesville, but a portion of it is in Albemarle County.

It is a fabulous program that they've got.

I am really looking forward to it as it is built out.

It will definitely be an increase to the quality of life of all of our community residents.

Yes, I'm really, really excited to talk about this Friday.

We have, the county is doing a giveaway of hundreds of redbud seedlings.

It's all under Project Planet, which is sponsored by Dominion Energy.

That's going to happen this Friday, and we all know about trees, how they improve, they moderate climates, improve air quality, absorb carbon.

Harbor Wildlife, etc., etc., etc.

And so we want everyone to get out there.

Kids, make sure you get your parents out there and go from 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

this Friday.

The following locations, Darden Town Park, Greenwood Community Center, Mint Springs Valley Park, Northside Library, Scottsville Farmers Market.

10 to 2 this Friday and make sure you get those seedlings planted.

Store them in a cool place, get them planted by the following day Saturday.

So this is something really, really exciting.

Just a couple.

I'm a little early with them, but people can mark their calendar.

It's interesting to me how many events people are figuring out how to do online or how to do differently this year.

The Cove Garden Ruritans, typically in the beginning of November, does a

Apple Buddle Festival, and Brunswick Stew sale, making and stew sale at the Albemarle Ciderworks and Vintage Apples.

This year, they're going to do it, only they're going to have a drive-through pickup for anybody that wants to get it, and that's on the weekends of November, the weekend of November 7th and 8th.

and the usual Batesville Royotans that do wonderful apple butter every year.

They're not doing it, but a group of citizens are getting together and doing it and that apple butter is going to be for sale at the at the Batesville Market.

and I also wanted to say that I too, and I think other board members have probably done the tour of the Botanical Gardens to be, and it is lovely.

I was struck when the director explained to me that at least part of that land is Albemarle County land, which I've been meaning to ask about because I had no idea that

that it was the case.

So that's on my to-do list is to find out about that.

But that's all I have for today.

Very good.

I have two brief items.

One I wanted to recognize officially or formally if you would.

At the end of August, we lost former Baltimore County Supervisor Rodney Thomas.

He represented the Rio district

from 2010 through 2013.

He was a lifelong resident of the area, and I know one that both my interactions with him when I was on the school board, but then in my professional capacity in the car business had some interactions with Rodney after he was no longer on the board.

But always a gentleman, always

you know, just a positive interaction with them every time I had it.

And I think our board should recognize the service to our county and we're appreciative of that.

And our thoughts are with his family as they've experienced this loss.

I know Supervisor Mallek, you had the, as you were quoted, you were served with Supervisor Thomas.

Well, I think that it's a really good example of how people who have very different opinions about lots of things can work together really well.

And the board from 10 to 14 was certainly lots of discussion about lots of issues, but there was progress also.

And so

And I've known our girls who are the same age and played sports together.

Again, thank you again.

Our appreciation to Rodney for his service to the county.

The second item, I don't often like to make political statements, but there's a lot of political stuff going on from the federal level and the presidential race about the integrity of elections.

and I think it's important for those in local offices to remind our constituents that the integrity of the election procedures in our locality are sound and that we have full confidence in our electoral board and those who are running and handling our elections as the early election process gets going.

And I think every locality should stand up and say, wait a minute, when you call into question the integrity of the election,

That's really an affront to locality's ability to run this important part of our democracy.

And I, for one, don't want our local people feeling like we don't have confidence in their ability to run this election and wanted to say that.

Thank you, Ned.

That was well said.

And if I may add, when I voted last week, the process was thorough and very carefully documented and swift.

I hope others will go too.

I also wanted to say that I voted early.

The election office is getting lots of compliments along with the electoral board.

And will continue to do so.

The next item, number six, we have proclamations and recognitions.

We do have a proclamation recognizing October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I do.

I have the proclamation, and this is—I'm going to read it, but it is obviously a motion, so I will begin.

Whereas the problems of domestic violence are not confined to any group or groups of people, but cross all economic, racial, and societal barriers and are supported by societal indifferents.

and whereas the crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy, dignity, security, and humanity due to the systemic use of physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, and economic control and or abuse with the impact of this crime being wide-ranging.

and whereas no one person, organization, agency or community can eliminate domestic violence on their own, we must work together to educate our entire population about what can be done to prevent such violence, support victims, survivors and their families

and increased support for agencies providing services to those community members.

And whereas the shelter for health and emergency has led the way in the county of Albemarle in addressing domestic violence by providing

24-hour hotline services to victims, survivors, and their families, offering support and information and empowering survivors to chart their own course for healing.

And whereas the Shelter for Health and Emergency recognized as an essential service provider during the global COVID-19 pandemic and continued to provide services and be a safe haven for victims of domestic violence

and the County of Albemarle commemorates its 41st year of providing an unparalleled service to women, children and men who have been victimized by domestic violence.

Now, therefore, we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, in recognition of the important work being done by the Shelter for Health and Emergency, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2020 as Domestic Violence Awareness Month and urge all citizens

to actively participate in the scheduled activities and programs sponsored by the Shelter for Help and Emergency and to work toward the elimination of personal and institutional violence against women, children, and men.

Signed this seventh day of October 2020.

If we could call the vote.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes Ms.

Mallek Yes All right, very good board.

Thank you for that.

When we're live, we sometimes will have someone here to receive the proclamation.

We do not have anyone here to necessarily receive it today, but if perhaps Mr. Richardson or Ms.

Kilroy or Ms.

Ferguson, we could find if there are those who would like a copy of the signed proclamation that we can make that available as requested.

All right, very good.

The next item on our agenda 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.

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 and a sign-up sheet is monitored by the Clerk's Office.

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 and 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, and 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 you are participating by phone, please press star nine, and if by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called to speak.

Thank you.

And Ms.

Hey, good afternoon.

My name is Gary Grant of the Rio District.

Here are some verbatim remarks from your September 6th retreat.

from White Hall Supervisor Mallek at timestamp one hour, 59 minutes.

Quote, when I'm involved in meetings across the state, people look at the Albemarle County on my name tag and they say, oh boy, you all are doing such a fantastic job.

Supervisor Mallek, please, could you provide Albemarle residents in the future with the specifics when you engage in such self-flattery?

From Scottsville Supervisor Price at timestamp two hours, no minutes, quote, I think good governance looks like providing the services that our residents expect, protecting the economic viability of government.

Supervisor Price, could you also provide Albemarle residents with some words of protection for our economic viability rather than just government?

For Rio Supervisor Galloway, a time stamp two hours 11 minutes, quote, it's a huge responsibility to plan strategically of how that money is going to be programmed.

I think we're thoughtful in that.

I think we do a good job with that.

Supervisor Galloway, could you please let Albemarle residents decide on praise rather than you patting yourself on your own back?

And by the way, the word is not programmed.

The word is spent.

how tax money is going to be spent.

From Samuel Miller, Supervisor Palmer at timestamp two hours, 28 minutes, quote, for the most part, I think we do a decent job.

Sometimes I don't, but the majority of the time I do.

Supervisor Palmer, could you just let Albemarle residents tell you whether you're doing a decent job, 51% of the time?

From Jack Jouett, Supervisor McKeel at timestamp three hours and eight minutes, quote,

It is critical for me that we begin to look at every decision through a lens of equity.

Supervisor McKeel, could you explain to Albemarle residents whether you mean capitalist equity of opportunity or socialist equity of outcome?

And finally, from Rivanna Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, a timestamp, four hours, 14 minutes.

Quote, I think most of us, by the time we get there, if we've done our homework,

We already know how we're going to vote.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, could you just shut up and listen to Albemarle residents before making up your mind in advance which way you're going to vote?

Thanks for my three minutes of your time today.

Looking forward to your answers.

Thank you.

Yes, good afternoon.

My name is Susan Cruz and I am the Executive Director of the Community Climate Collaborative, also known as C3.

I have come before you several times over the past two years to recommend leadership action to reduce our community's contribution to climate change.

Today, I am pleased to come before you to enthusiastically recommend the approval of Albemarle County's Climate Action Plan Phase 1.

Almost one year ago, on October 16, 2019, you voted unanimously to set a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 45% by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050.

We now have nine years remaining to meet

reach our first benchmark and a proposed plan that will chart the course for the work ahead.

County staff have worked incredibly hard to prepare this document and each of you have paid careful attention along the way, pushing for regular measurement and smart targets in each sector.

This climate action plan incorporates those suggestions along with a greater focus on the importance of equity and climate action throughout the document.

C3 applauds the work that staff Lance, Greg, Andy, and Gabe have done to get us to this point.

Please vote in favor of the plan approval today.

The urgency of the climate crisis requires that we move Albemarle County to the next stage.

updating the greenhouse gas inventory for Albemarle County and using that information to set specific, measurable, ambitious, and timely targets for each sector of the Climate Action Plan.

In short, there is much more work to do and it's time to get specific.

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Kirk Bowers.

I'm a long-term resident of the Rivanna District, Albemarle County.

I serve as conservation chair for the Piedmont Group Sierra Club.

I speak today in support of and to urge you to adopt the final phase one climate action plan agenda item number 20514 that is up for discussion.

Albemarle County has done a great job in developing the climate action plan over the past four years.

Public input was collected.

County staff have worked diligently to develop the plan and we believe now is the time to adopt the plan.

We also urge the board to expedite and speed up implementation of the climate plan.

Phase one of the plan is substantially complete.

The next stage of plan implementation appears to be ready to begin.

One option we would suggest is to install solar systems on county school facilities by using power purchase agreements available through existing contracts.

This is one step forward that we urge you to consider and investigate soon.

Unfortunately, recent news concerning climate change impacts is extremely grim.

A recently released movie just two weeks ago shows clear evidence that climate change is occurring rapidly.

Predictions are that in 90 years, please note, the human race will be an endangered species and on the brink of extinction.

And I know that is really hard to fathom, but that's what's happening today.

In this context, there is no time delay.

Please take action today.

We urge you to adopt the plan and expedite implementation.

Time is running out.

We must do our part to help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Hello, my name is Greg McLean.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I'm a county resident in the Jack Jouett district.

It is a real pleasure to have cause to come here today to say thank you to the board of supervisors and county staff for its work on the climate action plan and to recommend the approval of the phase one plan today.

The plan is a significant step forward for our county and is the result of the hard work of county staff, community stakeholders, and the board.

In this final phase one plan, there are three significant improvements that I want to call out.

Number one, a commitment to creating smart sector specific targets.

These are essential to giving the plan teeth, which will enable it to actually deliver on its goals.

Number two, a commitment to a biennial climate emissions inventory.

We've gone too long without timely information.

A commitment to regular inventories will enable us to know how we are doing and whether we're making progress.

toward our ambitious goals or not.

And three, a material expansion of the county's commitment to equity in this phase one plan, as well as an equally important commitment to hearing from an expanded set of voices in the phase two plan.

Certainly there's much, much more work to be done going forward, but today this plan should be recognized as a cause for gratitude.

I urge you to please approve it, and I thank you and the county staff for its

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Let me just, there we go.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rex Lindbl.

I live in Albemarle County and I'm speaking on behalf of the Piedmont Environmental Council and our supporting members in the region.

We would like to thank the county for the opportunity to voice our support for the Climate Action Plan.

In our comments in June,

PEC stressed the need to recognize existing greenhouse reduction strategies that are already embedded in the county's planning and policy documents.

We also noted the importance of properly emphasizing the Climate Action Plan and its strategies within the Comprehensive Plan.

We're pleased with the improvements that we've seen since that initial draft, and the version before you today captures that narrative and recognizes the strong foundation that Albemarle's land use and land conservation policies have provided over the past 40 years.

These policies will accrue climate and public health benefits for our community well into the future, and swift action is needed if we are to meet the targets contained in the climate action plan.

What we do at the local level matters, and while we will likely need to implement all of the actions laid out in the plan, PEC highlights the following two focus areas.

Albemarle County is one of the most highly protected counties in the Commonwealth, with over 107,000 acres that are permanently protected with conservation

Transportation is recognized as the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and these protected lands significantly reduce sprawl and related vehicle miles traveled.

They also keep this land available for carbon sequestering agriculture and forestry practices, protect the Rivanna River watershed, and provide our region with a resilient local drinking water supply.

We hope that you will look seriously at action T.2.5 and continue to provide incentives for and investment in the protection of our rural area as a key climate action strategy.

Also, the first four immediately actionable recommendations within the transportation and land use section of the plan focus on increasing opportunities for bicycling, walking, and other forms of personal transportation.

The Piedmont Environmental Council has enjoyed a positive and productive relationship with Albemarle County, the City of Charlottesville, UVA, and the TJPDC

to encourage coordinated investment in this necessary urban infrastructure.

This investment will not only serve the climate action plan goals, but also has the co-benefits of fostering economic development, improving health of residences, residents and increasing quality of life.

Finally, we recommend that the county immediately begin phase two implementation and climate resilience planning as parallel efforts to a comprehensive plan review.

The urgency of our climate crisis demands that we move swiftly and set clear timeline specific targets and interim benchmarks.

We live in a community that recognizes the severity of the problem and is committed to working with you on solutions.

PEC, along with numerous other environmental, conservation, and climate-focused organizations are here to help with the implementation necessary to meet these goals set in the plan.

You are not alone in this.

We look forward to participating in the process and will continue our related efforts in land conservation, promoting smart growth, and advocating for innovative transportation solutions.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon supervisors and county staff.

I'm speaking as the executive director of the local energy alliance program elite.

First I'd like to mention my strong support for the climate action plan.

LEAP has participated since the beginning in its development and believes it provides a good set of actions that will not only mitigate climate change, but also strengthen the local economy and improve the county's residents' quality of life.

Next, I'd like to provide you a short review on the services LEAP provided to county residents during the 2019 and 2020 fiscal year.

LEAP takes its responsibility in receiving and spending county taxpayers' money very seriously.

Our work made the county's economy more efficient while also improving its affordable housing stock.

Services provided by LEAP included 122 home energy assessments and 10 HVAC and energy efficiency mobile home retrofits.

Majority of the program funding LEAP received from Albemarle County was allocated to serving low-income residents.

LEAP collaborated with Habitat for Humanity to pilot

pilot, and HVAC energy efficiency mobile home retrofit program in the Southwood mobile home park.

Where the participating mobile homes, LEAP added insulation in their attics and bellies, connected or sealed air ducts that were previously disconnected, leaking hot or cool air into the bellies, replaced inefficient HVAC systems, installed necessary ventilation fans, and made health and safety repairs.

While delivering the mentioned services to local residents using county funding, LEAP simultaneously leveraged an additional $71,659 in funding from Dominion's income and age qualifying weatherization programs.

This came to an average of $2,500 a household served and more than a one-to-one leverage of county funding.

Based on the Southwood pilot that I mentioned,

LEAP recently received a grant from Dominion for nearly $200,000 to do similar work in the county in this upcoming year.

That's nearly four times the amount the county invested in the pilot.

Looking to the rest of the fiscal year, LEAP is already implementing another low-income residential energy efficiency program with the county environmental services team.

LEAP greatly appreciates its collaboration with Albemarle County and looks forward to continuing to collaborate

in order to help it meet its climate mitigation and affordable housing goals.

Thank you.

Hi there.

My name is Ryan McCall.

I am a citizen of Albemarle County.

My family and I moved here nine years ago from the Northern Virginia area.

And the main reason we did so was because of how

We saw certain areas in Northern Virginia being managed.

The lack of respect for environmental protections for fighting climate change and the choice to come to Albemarle County to raise our family here was a hard one.

But we did so because we saw what the county stood for.

And since we've been here, we have seen the Board of Supervisors make great decisions in protecting the county, protecting the environment, maintaining the beauty that this county has to offer.

We believe that climate change is the biggest threat to humanity, the biggest threat to our environment right now.

We also believe Charlottesville can be a leader in fighting climate change and a leader for the state of Virginia and for the country to really make a difference and set a path as to how we can make changes over the next five to ten years to achieve these very realistic goals in fighting climate.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I have to get unmuted.

I would like to thank the CAP team and Lance for putting many of the items on

on the immediately actionable list.

There are 36 items on the list.

Thank you.

We need to move forward with helping to minimize climate change.

Today, there are thousands of people suffering from the wildfires out on the West Coast caused by climate change.

Additionally, we have had so many of the hurricanes this year that we've already gone through the complete alphabet.

We have to do something about climate change, and I appreciate you doing the climate action plan.

I strongly recommend that the BOSS make use of the PPAs for solar on all county properties, not just the schools.

This will allow the county to reduce our carbon footprint as well as saving money on the cost of electricity.

Please look at the Fairfax County's website regarding PPAs, which will save Fairfax taxpayers $60 million in the next few years, as well as eliminating a lot of carbon in the process.

I would like to have an answer to the first speaker that was spoke today.

I would like to say that as an Albemarle citizen, I think that the boss is doing a great job and I appreciate all the people who work for the county.

Thank you.

Hello.

And I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on local government in central Virginia.

Later today, you will hold a work session regarding the housing Albemarle draft.

The Free Enterprise Forum would like to thank staff, specifically Dr. Stacey Pethia, for a proactive approach that has included all housing stakeholders in this discussion from the beginning.

In addition to participating in the stakeholder meetings, we provided significant input

to the Planning Commission August Work Session.

I know each of you reviewed the minutes, so I will not repeat those important points here.

Instead, we humbly ask the Board of Supervisors to examine three questions in the context of the housing Albemarle draft discussion.

Number one, is the current Albemarle County affordable housing proffer mandate working?

In 2005, we were the only other organization to speak in opposition of this policy.

It passed anyway.

This morning's paper included an article by Allison Rabel,

highlighting only half of the affordable for sale homes constructed under the proffered have been purchased by income qualifying home buyers due to a failure of the county and providers to provide qualified buyers the balance sold at market rate.

The article doesn't mention that all 91 of these affordable units were no longer affordable to the second purchaser.

The housing Albemarle draft strategy suggests a higher 20% mandate.

This reminds us of the struggling produce peddler

who, when losing 10 cents on every watermelon he sold, decided a bigger truck was the solution.

Number two, will Albemarle Board of Supervisors ever prioritize affordability over NIMBYism?

After 17 years of watching development proposals shrink in density throughout the development review process, I'm curious if this or any board will be able to stand up to those who have said, as we heard earlier this year, affordable housing is great, just not here when we're looking at rezonings.

Politically, we need to turn NIMBY into YIMBY, yes, in my backyard, to increase the affordable housing units.

Finally, when I was 13 years old, Jimmy Carter was president, and Albemarle County created a development area of roughly 5% of its landmass to focus against development.

A great deal has changed since 1979, including the effective shrinkage of the development area to less than 5% of the landmass.

Today, we hear a community desires to have a soft edge or taper

to the development area to have the least density on the edge, which is not in the comprehensive plan, but that would further limit development potential.

Our third and final question, when will Albemarle County consider starting the discussion of development area expansion?

The free enterprise form is encouraged by the draft housing Albemarle document and appreciates the import it puts on for rent properties as well as ownership opportunities.

We look forward to working with staff to further hone these strategies and reduce regulatory barriers

to increase long-term affordable housing opportunities for all.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

I'm Travis Pietella from the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Thank you for the chance to comment, and I'm speaking today in strong support of the board's adoption of the phase one climate action plan.

This process, of course, complements the board's laudable decision to adopt strong greenhouse gas reduction goals for our community.

And over the past year and a half, we've been excited to see the community come together to develop the initial roadmap to achieving these goals that's reflected in the Phase 1 plan.

Overall, the plan conveys not only the scope of efforts needed to meet the county's goals, but also the many co-benefits to our community that will result from these efforts, as well as the critical need to ensure that this plan serves to benefit all county residents.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank staff for its incredible work coordinating the various stakeholder groups and many public engagement opportunities offered throughout this process.

And we appreciate the county's incorporation of so much of the community's input into this plan.

In particular, we are glad to see that the final plan now includes commitments to develop concrete targets for each of the plan's actions.

frequent tracking of the county's progress and the creation of a much needed climate resiliency plan to address the climate impacts our community is already starting to face today.

But of course, as Chair Galloway notes in his foreword at the beginning of the plan, this is just the beginning.

And so in supporting the adoption of this phase one plan, we also urge the board to quickly move forward with phase two, focusing on more detailed actions and implementation.

And we look forward to participating in that effort as well.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

We will close matters from the public.

And our next item today, number eight, is our consent agenda.

We did pull number item 8.1 for the next meeting.

Those are board minutes.

So moved.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Ms.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you.

And that will bring us to our action item, our first of the day, number nine.

This is the final phase one climate action plan.

And Mr. Harper, good afternoon.

Hi, good afternoon.

This is actually Lance Stewart.

Greg Gallaway and Board of Supervisors.

Greg will be taking over in just a second.

Sorry, Lance.

Quite all right, sir.

It's my privilege to introduce to you Albemarle County's phase one climate action plan.

With your support, I and the other Albemarle County employees, representatives of partner agencies, and dozens of members of the community have worked passionately on this plan over the last few years.

And as a result, I believe it is a true community plan.

It's a balanced, actionable, holistic plan to combat global warming on our local level over the course of the coming years and decades.

It's been a true honor to work on this.

Greg Harper, Chief of our Environmental Services Division will walk us through today's presentation to hopefully prepare you to consider adopting the plan today.

Thanks Lance.

Hello everybody.

I'm Greg Harper, Chief of Environmental Services.

In this presentation, I'm going to provide a little background, which I know you've heard multiple times now.

Review the main contents of the Climate Action Plan or CAP, go over the changes to the plan that we've made from the draft version, and preview the elements, some of which we've already started, of the next phase of the climate program.

Following this, we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have during the board discussion.

The climate action planning process was initiated by the board through the adoption of a resolution reaffirming a commitment to climate action followed by identifying climate action planning as a top priority as part of the planning process for the strategic plan of fiscal years 2022.

More recently, the board adopted a resolution establishing community-wide greenhouse gas reduction targets, including a 45% reduction from the 2008 baseline year by 2030 and zero net emissions by 2050.

As I noted when we were discussing this last June, we haven't completed the greenhouse gas inventory since 2008, so our current emissions status and therefore the necessary reductions to meet the targets is unknown.

However, we have begun the process of developing a current inventory and expect to be completed with this inventory before the end of the calendar year.

The Climate Action Plan is the culmination of an extensive effort by many people.

Since this is a community-wide plan, the planning process necessarily included substantial input from the community.

through participation on the sector teams, developing the strategies and actions, and through providing feedback by attending public meetings, by filling out online questionnaires, and by sending letters and emails directly to board members and county staff.

The list of strategies and actions that make up the heart of the plan were developed from ideas suggested by the community and vetted, refined, and organized by members of the sector teams themselves, including community representation.

Early this year, staff prepared the document, or excuse me, the draft climate action plan document, adding context, character, and spirit to the list of strategies and actions.

Due to the emergence of the coronavirus, we were delayed in presenting the plan to the board and instead introduced the plan first to the community in April and May, inviting feedback via the county's community engagement hub public input.

We then presented the same draft plan to the board in June.

Since that time, staff and sector team representatives have been incorporating the suggestions received from the board and community into the present version of the plan.

I'll provide a bit more information about how the plan was refined from the draft version later in this presentation.

But first I'd like to summarize the plan in its revised form.

At its most reductive level, the plan is a list of strategies and actions designed to contribute towards the mitigation of global climate change through decreases in community-wide greenhouse gas emissions and increases in carbon sequestration in the county's landscape.

The strategies and actions will guide future county initiatives to not only modify internal operations, but to work with our partners to enable, empower, and incentivize residents and businesses in the community to take climate positive actions.

Looking at the numbers, the climate action plan consists of 11 broad goals and five action sectors designed to meet the long-term emission reduction targets adopted by the board a year ago this month.

31 strategies have been identified to achieve the goals and 135 actions, which are a bit more specific, to support the strategies.

For each of the actions, we proposed an implementation timeframe

Immediately actionable items are those that are already underway or can be implemented in a relatively short period of time with existing resources.

Initiate planning items are those which we can begin to plan but will take more time and may require greater financial investments.

Items identified as assess opportunities are the most indefinite and will require further exploration.

They may not be possible unless opportunities arise.

Although the strategies and actions are central to the plan, we hope people regard the Climate Action Plan as more than just a simple to-do list.

The plan was, as the broader Climate Action Program will be, developed and implemented in line with the county's core values and overall vision for the community.

We recognize that there is no merit in actions that may lower greenhouse gas emissions, but only at the expense of other community values, such as equity or the economy.

On the contrary, climate-positive actions can and should uplift the community in other ways, including those listed here.

We recognize that this plan echoes many of the same values and broad aspirations identified by other county and regional plans, most prominently the comprehensive plan.

These other plans should and do overlap with the climate action plan in countless ways.

Continued work to implement components of the other plans will, in many cases, contribute towards climate mitigation.

Conversely, the implementation of the actions in this plan will push the county towards reaching the other plans' goals.

Climate change is a complex global challenge, the ultimate example of a tragedy of the commons.

This challenge can be addressed only through a shared understanding, relying on the world's subject matter experts, and collective action, starting at the local level.

The board acted in this cooperative spirit as recently as last February when it called on the Virginia General Assembly to support climate-friendly policies as a member of the We Are Still In coalition.

I touched on the idea a moment ago that it would be careless to measure actions only in their capacity to lower greenhouse gas emissions and without consideration of their impact on other community values.

We commit to avoiding this narrow assessment, termed carbon reductionism, and will consider planning and implementation effects taking into account the overall well-being of our community, the economy, and the environment.

Although the first phase of climate action planning did not include quantitative assessments nor measurable goals at the action level, we recognize that effective plans overall must have targets to aim for and methods to measure progress and success along the way.

As mentioned earlier, the board adopted greenhouse gas emission reduction targets 12 months ago, with the first target just 10 years away.

and to measure our progress we are committed to conducting greenhouse gas emissions inventories every two years beginning this year.

As with any complex long-term initiative this climate action planning process will be phased and adaptive.

This is particularly necessary in the case of climate action and due to the scope and complexity of the challenge, developing technologies, changing politics,

and the need for global collective action.

During phase one, our focus has been raising community awareness, engaging with partners and seeking community participation to establish rudimentary strategies and actions.

Subsequent phases will build on this foundation with a significant shift from simply planning to a lot of doing.

I'll summarize phase two work more in a few minutes.

At every opportunity, we will adjust our course as needed based on our progress in shifting local, national, and global conditions.

As I shared in the June presentation, we received hundreds of comments from individuals and groups throughout the community, particularly as part of our intensive public education effort in April and May.

From this feedback, we believe we have produced a better overall plan with a more comprehensive and understandable collection of strategies and actions.

After being able to step away from the text of the document for several months, staff were also able to see ways to better organize the opening chapters and to make the plan more readable.

The list you see provides a sense of the number and types of refinements we've made to the opening chapters.

I won't go through the entire list, but I will explain the second bullet describing the removal of the at a glance section, which was a summary near the front of the document of the strategies and only the immediately actionable items.

We found that a significant number of people misunderstood this section to be the entirety of the actions list, and were making suggestions to include actions that already existed.

In total, we developed 20 new actions, edited nearly half the draft actions for clarification and to express additional ideas, and changed the timeframe for 17 actions with all but one being shifted to earlier implementation.

I'll note to community listeners that all of the changes to the strategies and actions are documented in attachment B to the board agenda item, and this can be found online, of course.

There are obviously too many changes to review here, but I will provide a few examples of changes in the next slides.

In this example, we strengthened an action to assess county buildings for suitability for rooftop solar by adding a commitment to develop a plan and timeline for installations and to begin working on this action sooner.

I think the board is aware that this and another minor change were made in response to a specific request from community groups for even stronger commitments.

Staff feel that making the language any more specific at this time is not consistent with the character of the phase one plan and that we intend to add further details to and prioritize actions as part of phase two planning.

In this next example, we again responded to comments we received from the community by adding a clarification to this action related to a concept we touched on earlier, and that is thinking holistically.

We don't want readers to think that the county would encourage carbon reduction actions without considering impacts that action might have on other important community values.

In this final example, we simply wanted to be explicit that during any process to evaluate new locations for trash and recycling convenience centers, equity would be strongly considered.

Before we conclude the presentation, I'd like to preview the next phase of

Climate Action Work.

As the title suggests, we're looking forward to transitioning from plan development to an emphasis on implementation.

If you recall from an earlier slide, there are 36 immediately actionable items alone in the plan.

We will continue our progress with the items that are already underway, such as supporting LEAP's home energy efficiency programs, providing safe connections from neighborhoods to urban centers through sidewalk projects,

and exploring ways to improve trash and recycling operations and services.

In addition, we will get started on newer items such as shifting towards cleaner county vehicle fleet, adopting a green building policy and facilitating the local expansion of electric vehicle charging stations.

Implementation will require resources, funding and or staffing and we will begin to work to identify these needs in possible ways to meet the needs.

We will also ensure that there is a responsible party to champion each action.

We are well into the process of developing a current greenhouse gas inventory and as I said before intend to have completed this inventory by the end of this calendar year.

We are also involved along with the city and UVA with an extensive training session for a new inventory component that will enable us to account for the carbon effect of trees and forest throughout the county.

Environmental Services staff have already had several discussions with Fire Rescue's Community Risk and Resilience section to begin getting organized around developing a climate resiliency plan.

Like the Climate Action Plan, we expect this initiative to involve many county staff and include extensive community involvement.

Of course, we're not going to actually turn our backs on the plan itself.

I've described our intent in phase two to more completely evaluate every strategy and action in order to determine which ones are most cost effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions or could contribute the most towards advancing our county's values, including equity.

This evaluation will also enable us to be more specific and time-bound in revising the actions.

Lastly, we will continue to engage with the community and to promote climate awareness and individual actions and to boost the community's involvement with the county's climate action processes.

This climate action plan represents Albemarle County's commitment to be part of the collective action necessary to address global climate change.

The plan acknowledges the importance of changing the way we do business and the way we live our lives, but also recognizes that climate positive changes don't have to happen through personal and economic sacrifices.

They can actually help to bring about the type of community we envision and desire.

One with abundant resources, healthy ecosystems, vibrant development areas, a physical environment that supports healthy lifestyles, a thriving community, and exceptional education opportunities.

In adopting this plan, the county will be joining many other governments and businesses around the world in building an equitable, clean, and prosperous future.

Thank you, Greg.

And board at this time for comments, reactions, questions.

Well, I'm happy to go first and to just sort of in thinking about this, I have about three pages of notes that I'd like to talk about and I recognize that's impossible.

But first, I would like to just say that I'm not sure in six or seven years that I've had a document that has come to us that I'm more excited about.

This is really great work.

It is a huge undertaking.

And I am just thrilled.

I appreciate all the hard work.

And I think it was great, great to put the document aside and to come back to it and revisit it.

I do that lots of times with speeches and things that I'm doing as well, letters that I'm writing.

I do want to just comment that I hope we don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I think it's really important that we do move on some of these or as many of these as we can and not delay where delay is not necessary.

We've spent a long time with community engagement and I think we at least know the direction we need to be going in.

I will like to just a couple of thoughts and then I'll, because I don't want to take too much time, but I do appreciate how the plan incorporates actions through an equity lens.

and I really applaud, I read very carefully as I went through the plan and I have lots of notes about it.

It references as well, Greg, an equitable climate action plan in Albemarle County, which I think that contains the rubrics that you all were talking about.

Is that correct?

I see you're nodding of your head, yes.

So I would maybe think it would be helpful to send that document out pretty quickly again to folks because I'm not sure whether everybody has had a chance to look at that document.

Greg, are you there?

Yeah, that document out because it would be a great document for the community as well as the other board members if they haven't had a chance to look at it because it really does work in conjunction with this.

So the equity lens is great.

I guess I've highlighted in my notes the transportation piece which really overlaps with our next discussion around affordable housing.

We recognize how interconnected these are and I do want to recognize that development area communities

have received more focus on this where there are new developments.

And for much of this, I do think we need to concentrate when we're thinking about development through this lens, we also need to remember that it's not just tying these plans into new developments or existing developments, but that are popular right now.

but to go back and look at some of our older neighborhoods and our older development areas.

And we want to be very careful how we do this because we need to maintain many of those neighborhoods for affordable housing for our folks but we do need to look at how to create more livable older neighborhoods that have a quality of life.

I have so many notes here.

I just am trying to to go through some.

I was very impressed and I liked seeing the B1.3 and B1.4 the better than code minimums you all discussed.

I think the density and connectivity and I think Neil Williamson talked about the densities.

We really have to come together as a board and decide what densities we're going to be

supporting with the proposals that come to us.

Let's see, the solar I'm very excited about.

I'm not asking so many questions here because I guess I'm just making comments about my thoughts.

We have a lot of park area.

that's forested in Albemarle County.

And I mentioned recently to Jeff that I thought it would really be beneficial at some point for our board or for staff, Parks and Rec

We need to have a discussion I think with maybe the forestry department here.

I would like to understand better forestry management to make sure that when you look at the fires that are happening in the west right now, we have a lot of forestation and perhaps there are things that we should be doing now or preparing for in the future because it could turn on a dime and we could have a drought right now and

when you look at Biscuit Run and many of our parks and that also includes a lot of the property I think the University of Virginia Foundation owns that's forested.

We just need to make sure that our community is preparing as best we can for some of those inevitable, what may be inevitable for us.

And let's see, I guess I'll stop there.

I'm assuming Ned will have a chance to come back in another time and sort of chat a little bit further about these.

But all in all, I think this plan is absolutely wonderful.

Thank you.

And this is a very exciting day because it was a long time ago that the LCAP plan was adopted in 2011.

So I also appreciate the details and the specifics that are put forth because I think this encourages our community to have some hope that we actually are not just talking about things anymore, but able to start making some concrete changes.

And while I have absolutely

I think the grand majority of that, I'm not trying to delay anything, but I do have some specific concerns that I hope will help to make it even better.

And a couple of general ones, and that is we have lots of potential partners who are from the region, the country, and locally.

And when we call out names of individual partners, despite there being wonderful partners now,

It seems like we're saying we're all set, we have partners.

So I would suggest that we find a way to talk about the fact that our partners in these various sectors are very important to us, but we not name them because it is more welcoming to having new ideas and new people to come forth.

from other places to say we'd like to bring this opportunity to you.

So I will throw that idea out.

I know that we have made a lot of progress in the last five years with our solid waste, but I am worried that the solid waste seems to be completely set aside in here except for some

Mild-mannered paragraphs.

So if that's coming in some other way, that's great.

But if there is a way to focus on very specifically cutting the use of single-use plastics and not purchasing

things that are going to create pollution, whether they're plastics or any other kinds of things for convenience or even for capital projects that we are using the disposal elements of these projects and their impact into the far future as a decision point about what we're going to buy for our county, for our capital projects, for example.

So we'd want to be careful that we're not getting sucked into the oil company saying, oh, look at all this great stuff we're making for you.

We can't sell any fuel, so we're going to be making all these other things for you that will be great.

and then the county gets stuck with disposing of all these materials or the ground up rubber tires in the playgrounds 10 years ago.

This was a great way for tire companies to get rid of their tires, but it saddled the counties and cities with the cost of disposing of this when they very quickly realized that all this black grime was going home with the children all over their shoes and all over their skin.

So these are just examples of ways where we, the solid waste I think we need a lot more

to be included in the next phase when we're digging into this.

And to sort of simplify by not calling out our particular partners, I think that would be very helpful.

We talk about, in page 10, we talk about protecting our watersheds.

And yes, we did make some progress in the 90s to protect our watershed, but we need to

do a better job of that now.

Because whether it is hiking and biking around or picnicking and leaving baby diapers around our watersheds or as much as also the erosion and the chemical contamination and the sediment, we haven't solved that problem yet.

And we need to make sure that we're continuing to move forward in those categories as well.

And let me jump around here.

I was very pleased and have had some positive comments from citizens about how balancing the carbon versus other consequences is so important and they were so pleased to see that it wasn't just zeroing in on greenhouse gas only.

I think a lot of people are very concerned in other states as well about utility scale solar because of its taking over of prime vegetable growing

Land.

When you go to the Eastern Shore, you see thousands of acres that used to be growing tomatoes are now growing solar panels.

And everything in its season, but we need to be also putting those things on brownfields and on rooftops where we can also continue to grow our food.

That would be my choice.

And also not to call out companies as success stories

who are generating most of the packaging.

They can say they're doing a great job on getting rid of packaging now, but they're selling the packaging all the time.

So we will try to keep ourselves free on that.

And jumping down to the page 33,

I hope that we'll find a way to talk about the provision of weatherization monies for targeting landlords and talked about, but making sure that we're also having opportunities for tenants, not just landlords to save money, but that the tenant will, the whole hierarchy will benefit that these kinds of savings need to be reflected in the rents and allowing the tenants to participate.

in those savings that are achieved by the weatherization.

And, okay.

So I think I've gotten to the end of my current list, or the ones I want to talk about now.

Supervisor Price?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I'll second many of the comments from Supervisor McKeel and Mallek and be very brief.

I think what this shows more than anything is the interplay of our climate action plan with all of the other things that we have to deal with solid waste, water, air, transportation, energy, housing.

My hope is that we will collect objective data.

metrics, which will allow us to provide detailed analysis of the progress and shortcomings for future improvement to the plan.

I just saw in the news, I think earlier today, possibly yesterday, that once again,

We have broken environmental records.

September of 2020 is the hottest September on record, which of course broke the record from 2019.

The environmental impacts around the world are simply increasing.

We must take action.

I think this is an excellent plan.

I want to thank our constituents and residents for their involvement in this process because government only works with citizen participation.

for them working with our residents to put forth this plan and I wholeheartedly support it.

Yes, I also agree with what my other supervisor friends have said.

I think we're showing leadership by hopefully adopting this climate action plan.

I thank staff for doing a great job.

I think this is a very good few first steps.

Of course, we need to do more, but we are constrained with finances.

And I would like to see a convenience center in the Scottsville area.

I think that's very much needed.

But also the comments that are made, I think it's important to get those down and

Riding to see if they're doable.

So that would be a good thing for my fellow supervisors to do.

And I just commend staff and us taking the initiative as a county to move forward on climate action and climate resilience and doing something about it.

So I applaud our efforts.

Okay, so I'm excited too.

I'm following this for last few years.

I'm just extremely happy with what staff has done.

I've got a couple of comments or questions.

And of course, like everybody, I'm concerned about the money to implement this.

On the water end of it, I just wanna mention that we wanna continue to support

the water supply plan fully implemented.

That does certainly have, fits very well into our thoughts on what's going to happen in the future with respect to climate change.

One thing that I would like to see us be talking about and integrating this into is our legislative agenda.

There's a lot of things that we could be doing if we had help from the state.

And one thing that I was gonna mention under our legislative agenda comes under the trash heading

which is promoting glass recycling in the state.

That's actually a pretty good market if we could have some help from the state on getting some of our producers to require some glass recycling of some of the produce wineries, breweries, that sort of thing.

And also right now,

Glasses is counted in our diversion credits for recycling.

And so that actually, because we don't look at the end game on where our glass goes to, we're actually incentivizing it to go to landfills, which is a bigger subject.

And our Solid Waste Advisory Committee is actually trying to tackle that right now.

So we'll see more coming out of that.

I was happy to see the trash equity portion added on the convenience center.

I did note that there was a comment in there about looking into composting at our drop-off centers, and I'm not sure if I was just interpreting that incorrectly, but I just wanted to mention that we do now have composting at Ivy, so our drop-off centers do have composting.

The other thing I just wanted to mention to staff was page two.

They talk about TDRs and not to get into the TDR discussion now, but you have in here that on page two, continue and expand policies and actions to direct development into the development areas and to reduce development in the rural areas, such as transfer of development rights

and you have that as immediately actionable.

I would, having been one of those people that was around during the whole TDR discussion more than 10 years ago, I guess now, I would encourage staff.

I know we've had a lot of turnover in staff.

If they don't have access to those discussions to talk to some of us who have been around for a long time because there were some serious

implementation issues around the TDR program.

And I can't imagine why that's immediately actionable.

So that's just a comment.

And I think that gets me, I hope I made sense on all that, but that pretty much does me for my comments.

I'm just really excited to get going on this and hoping we can find the money to implement some of these things.

and seek out as many community partners as we possibly can find.

Yeah, and to kind of piggyback on the money comment, the way I was reacting to immediately actionable.

Understood, you know, the comments been made several times that measuring is important and we have to set up targets and goals and measure things and make sure we're doing it, but we also have to measure people's expectations.

So while it's, you know, and Greg, if you need to speak more to this or maybe you spoke to it and I missed it, but is immediately actionable, you know, that could be a status like this is ready.

We can rock and roll and get this done now.

But that's different than this is something that from a budget standpoint or a timeline standpoint, you know, are we saying to the community this is immediately actionable and setting up the wrong expectation for when this can be implemented?

And I think when you were talking about phase two, it sounds like the defining of the realistic timeline for things that are labeled immediately actionable will come out.

Yeah, I'll take this one.

I'll say, you know, the

There are a number of things, and I think Greg mentioned a few, like the development of a green building policy, a green fleet policy, some education and outreach items that are immediately actionable with existing resources.

And we consider those resources to be a combination of both staff power or community power.

as well as financial resources.

So you know for those that are are phrased such as you know the one about solar develop a plan to put to put our you know our solar on our buildings and school buildings

I was phrased that way because I do believe we've got the resources to identify clearly which rooftops specifically would be viable targets, the cost to be either via PPA or a direct cost, the return on investment, start conversations that are very detailed to make those things happen and do these multiple things that we would be looking at at the same time

anything that doesn't require an immediate investment we would act on and come to the board as necessary for authorization if it's something entirely new or unwarranted.

But otherwise, all those other things that are

Plan Center or really need to be vetted more thoroughly to the point where we have a solid grasp and think we can move forward.

If funding is required, we do have, of course, the $250,000 that was set aside

for a low income weather organization program.

We have another half a million dollars that was set aside for climate action generally.

I appreciate that.

the policy items, the finding the roofs.

I mean, we can go through each one that says immediately actionable and have that level of conversation, I suppose.

The one that I was reacting to is T12 on 28, which is increase the extent of sidewalks, bike lanes, and shared use paths.

As we'll see in our transportation report, we see how long it takes to get sidewalks in.

There's not a supervisor here that would probably say, yeah, we're pretty fast and quick at getting sidewalks in.

There's a lot of bureaucracy, funding, et cetera that plays into that.

So I get, while I'm very supportive of the plan, I just also want to say, well, if it's immediately actionable to increase the extent of sidewalks, we've met to make sure everybody understands the process to put sidewalks in place, even short sections of sidewalks.

And that can be frustrating.

Now, we've said that climate action is our number one priority.

us as a board that should follow through in our budget programming of money and how we prioritize how we're going to budget should be supported by what we say our top priorities are.

But even if we say we're going to fund all sidewalks and make that our top priority, how long does that reasonably take to actually get that implemented?

And these are the type of things that when we put in a time frame of immediately actionable

I don't want to be communicating out that this is going to be done in six months or 12 months.

So we have to be very cautious or maybe cautious isn't the right word.

We have to be very good at explaining the timeline on how these things are going to be implemented and how this interconnects with things.

I think you're right.

We can know by next week which rooftops are appropriate for solar.

but implementing the increasing the extent of sidewalks is a different conversation.

So I think that's going to be coming out in phase two by the way I've heard it described and that wasn't necessarily in my head as I read through the plan so I'm confident that will happen.

These are type of follow-up things that I think would come in phase two or hope they will be.

Like for an example on T23, on page 28, you talk about incentivized, denser, and more mixed-use development.

And I'm curious what those incentives are.

What are examples of those incentives?

If some were shared, then I missed it.

But in phase two, I see the word incentivized used in different places.

but I think I need to hear concrete examples so that we can start considering, all right, how do we get incentives in place?

What are they?

What do they look like?

And how do we make that happen?

My final one is T-73.

This is the telecommute.

Obviously this was in place before the COVID-19 emergency where you talked about providing, I think it's provide opportunities to telecommute.

Well, lo and behold, we've had a pandemic that has completely reframed our approach to telecommute and not needing people to come into the workplace.

So this screams at a larger policy initiative of this is one that's immediately actionable, right?

Because it was done so out of need.

I'm confident and I feel that obviously the County Executive's Office is working on this

moving forward, that there's some opportunity here to gain some efficiencies that a lot of the things in this climate action plan speak to.

Commuting, vehicle use, etc., where having a telecommuter work from home

You know, a rigorous work from home program in place allows us to attack a lot of this.

So, you know, I've been curious to see how far along those things would have gone had we not had the pandemic.

Would we be, but out of sheer need, we're there, so let's capitalize on it.

What have we learned?

and what have we grabbed that fits into this climate action plan from the work from home policies that we can continue once the pandemic's not out of place that allows us to achieve some of the things here that are goals in this plan.

And with that, I'll stop.

We've got a few minutes.

Did supervisors wish to make any additional comments?

And I'll just go back through because it sounded like there was the need for that.

Yeah, I do.

Just a couple.

And I think you're exactly right about, Ned, your comments.

I appreciate them.

In looking at B8.1, and I was struggling to find it in the book, I'm not sure what page it was on, but

We were talking, someone else referenced it a few minutes ago, about the importance of the General Assembly and our legislative packet and advocating and being able to get some of our policies or legislative packet through

I'm just gonna put this on the table and I'm not expecting anybody to really, I just want people to think about it.

Greg spends an enormous amount of time on our legislative packet every year.

And we are large enough now with a diverse number of concerns and issues that we come forward with every year to the General Assembly.

I would just like us to start thinking over the next maybe year if it's time for us to continue to use David Blount, TJPDC, he does great work for us, but just as our school division has their own legislative aid,

It may be time for Albemarle County to think about our own legislative aid.

Not sure how that might work.

It could be that we could share with another locality.

But we have very different packets, concerns, needs than Greene, Louisa, Nelson, and Fluvanna.

They're all great localities, but we're a different locality.

And our packets can look very different than them.

It wasn't several years ago that I mentioned in a chairs meeting with those localities something around climate change and I was told we can't use that word in our locality by at least two of the localities.

I'm just saying that we have very different, we represent very different populations and so I'm

Just wondering if it might be a good idea for us to just start thinking about it.

Sometimes by spending a little money, you can save or make some money.

And I recognize that this is a time when we're freezing positions.

And so I'm just putting that on the table that success at the General Assembly can be very important for us.

and perhaps we would like to start thinking about how we can move our legislative packets forward and free up Greg's office.

He would still be working with that person, but he wouldn't be the point person in the single point for it.

And I think it could help his work plan as well.

Just something to put on the table.

And I guess I'll just let it go with that for right now.

Supervisor Malek, any additional comments?

There we go.

Thank you.

Let me get back to my notes here.

Oh, well, come on.

Where are you?

Go away.

Something was in the way.

I hate notifications, they get in the way.

All right, there we go.

So someone mentioned about the broadband and getting that and is already on the forefront for sure of our thinking.

And I just wanted to report because it's very appropriate right now that Evan Feynman, who is the

Governor's broadband guru spoke to the VACO meeting last week, the study committee.

And when I raised issues about having difficulty getting our local hardline provider to maintain the lines they have, he said, well, you need to stop wasting your time with that because fiber to the home is the only thing you should be working for and not be making investments for outdated technology.

and that was a real shock for me because I thought we could slide along with but it does change our whole outlook about how much of the county is really served because I expect there's a grand majority of what is called served in Albemarle County for broadband is people like me who get DSL through the phone.

So that's just something that we need to throw out there as we expand this capability that then allows people to do all the things we want them to do, like commute from home and study at home, et cetera, et cetera.

The other item I underlined is, where is it?

Landscapes.

I hope that we will also take

We talk about forestation and tree planting.

We're doing a giveaway this Friday, but passing ordinances that enhance or require tree preservation and prevent these overlocked grading that just demolishes a whole entire property, 80 acres, and then they put back tiny little trees.

I think this is a perfectly appropriate thing to fold this into climate change so that we can get some recognition in this plan as well.

and teaming up with our local partners on that I think will be really important.

And I know there are many things in response to Bea's query.

I will send these out in writing so that combine all these notes from all these citizens who have sent me things and do a better job on my reporting here.

But as I said at the very beginning, this is a huge step forward and I don't want to do anything other than make it better.

Supervisor Price, any final comments?

No, thank you, Chair Galloway.

Yes, I know, thank you Ann for that, Supervisor Mallek for that.

A lot of action items for this.

I'm always thinking about how do you prioritize and how do you get concrete results?

Do we do we do everything at once?

Do we prioritize?

Who prioritizes it?

Is it the staff that does that?

Is it Greg in the sense that prioritizes the items that we can do?

Do we get the low hanging fruit and actually get some things done or implemented?

I'd kind of like to I would like to see what we can do and what time period and what the staff need from the board

Do they need that kind of direction or are they just wanting to go ahead and already do that?

And I agree with what Chair Galloway said about, because we have words like develop, implement, incentivize, and what does that mean?

How do we actually look at people with our climate action plan?

Any response there, Lance?

I think Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley really summarized for us pretty nicely what

and you as well, Mr. Gallaway, really defining those things, prioritizing those things and coming up with a methodology that is holistic as we described, includes equity, includes co-benefit, is actionable, achievable and measurable.

and achieves the ultimate goal of greenhouse gas emissions.

So we've tried a number of matrixes and have others to blend together.

Our focus in the last months has been on writing and perfecting the document and listening to public feedback and getting this right.

So I'm personally looking

Yes, just on the measurable comment about measurable and what about broadband, there are some things in here that are going to be extremely difficult to measure

However, they're still important, especially from an equity standpoint.

You've added, for instance, convenience centers, the equity portion of that, how one measures specifically something like that with respect to greenhouse gases.

I'm really not sure how that's done effectively.

And you don't need to answer that.

But I would just caution us in that there are things in here that are going to be very difficult to measure.

but they're still important.

The one comment I have about the broadband and Ann's comment about fiber, the broadband authority has definitely prioritized fiber.

We recognized as a group that that's where we need to be going, but given how long some of these fiber projects are taking, for instance, the SEVIC projects, it is

We have also been looking at trying to improve getting CenturyLink, for instance, to improve their infrastructure because we're just not going to be able to get fiber to the home of everybody in Albemarle County in the near future, certainly.

So it would be years to do that.

So I think we really have to be looking to the state to try to help us

make sure that these carriers, these ISPs are taking care of the infrastructure that they already have.

Very good.

I'll move that we approve the climate action plan

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Yes.

Very good, motion carries.

Thank you Lance and Greg.

A lot of work going into this and being that it's our top priority and we've got the action in the

Can we do that?

Lance, are you the most appropriate person?

Should we send them to you, the other notes that we may have?

That would be great.

Yeah, because maybe you could get them together and then share them with us.

Because that way we could see what everybody had.

That'd be lovely.

We are, thank you guys, we are running a little behind here.

The next item, our work session number 10, housing.

This is our draft housing policy recommendations.

Hi, good afternoon.

This is Stacey Pethier, Principal Planner for Housing.

Give me one moment to pull up my presentation.

There we go.

As Chair Galloway said, this is a work session today about the draft housing policy and

So I'm presenting this to you for the first time and it's really for you to review it, discuss it, and provide feedback on the recommended objectives and strategies.

So today we will be discussing a little bit of the background on how we got to this policy.

Community input that was received during the community outreach and engagement session of the policy development, the draft recommendations for policy objectives and strategies that were created by a stakeholder committee, the proposed implementation schedule, next steps in this process, and then finally open it for discussion.

So beginning with a little bit of background, in 2002 and 2003, county staff worked with members of the Albemarle Housing Committee to draft an affordable housing policy.

That policy was approved by the Board of Supervisors in February 2004 as an amendment to the comprehensive plan.

In 2015, some minor changes were made to that policy during the comprehensive plan update.

And they were mostly, I believe, some wording changes, nothing major.

With the release of the Comprehensive Regional Housing Needs Study in the spring of 2019, staff made a recommendation to the Planning Commission to update the housing policy based on the current and future housing needs presented in that report.

The Planning Commission supported that recommendation and in July 2019 passed a Resolution of Intent to amend the comprehensive plan with an updated housing policy.

So the current policy that we have really focuses, getting confused over there, the current policy focuses primarily on affordable housing and it defines affordable housing as safe, decent housing where housing costs do not exceed 30% of the gross household income.

The policy sets maximum rent and home sales prices equal to or less than 100% of federal fair market rent for a housing choice voucher program minus an allowance for tenant-paid utilities and 65% of the maximum mortgage limit for Virginia Housing's first-time homebuyer program.

And for reference, the current fair market rent for a two bedroom unit is $1,262 per month and the maximum affordable sales price for Albemarle County is set at $243,750.

The current policy

It contains five objectives that are really oriented towards promoting affordable housing, ensuring a variety of choice and housing and equal housing opportunities, creating and preserving safe, high quality, sustainable neighborhoods and housing, understanding the diverse housing needs,

and special needs of various populations and directing county assistance towards those populations that are least able to attain affordable housing through the private sector alone.

The current policy contains a number of strategies to support those objectives and those strategies include decreasing regulatory and administrative barriers to affordable housing development, setting targets for the development of affordable units,

creating mechanisms to ensure the long-term affordability of for sale property units, pursuing public-private partnerships for affordable housing development and provision, and identifying additional resources for affordable housing projects and programs.

So beginning in October of last year, staff opened up the community engagement period for the housing policy development.

We held three community meetings in October 2019.

We also held a series of focus group discussions, and those were organized in partnership with non-profit housing providers, understanding that the communities that they serve often

do not have the time or ability to attend traditional community meetings.

Staff went directly to those organizations and met with a group of their residents.

We also offered opportunities for online feedback from October 2019 through December 2019.

So each of the presentation materials provided during those October meetings were summarized and provided online along with links to feedback forms so residents would be able to provide comments that way.

So we heard a good number of things during those meetings, but one of the most commented, most received comments is that housing is too expensive for many county residents.

They also, residents also noted the lack of overall housing supply, a lack of resources dedicated to affordable housing.

They identify policy and programmatic issues and community-based resistance to new housing development and all act as barriers to the county's ability to meet affordable housing needs.

At the end of the public engagement period, staff summarized all of the information that we collected and the comments received from the public and then worked with the nine-member stakeholder committee to draft the set of recommendations that you will be reviewing today.

So the draft policy is really designed to support the county's vision

of active and vibrant development areas, a physical environment that supports healthy lifestyles, and a thriving local economy.

The draft policy also supports the county's housing goal of safe, decent, and sanitary housing available to and equally accessible by all current and future residents of all income levels and age levels.

The draft policy

contains 12 policy objectives and 39 corresponding strategies.

I will not be discussing all of those today, those that would take a really long time.

Instead, the discussion will focus on seven broad policy themes, identifying current corresponding policy objectives for each theme and highlighting key strategies associated with those objectives.

A brief description of the rationale for addressing each theme will also be discussed.

The broad themes addressed in the policy include increasing the overall supply of housing, increasing the supply of affordable and workforce housing, preservation of existing housing and communities, opportunities for increased community engagement, fair housing and community equity, homelessness and special needs populations, and sustainable communities.

One of the issues that was raised during the community meetings was the fact that residential development has not kept pace with population growth in Albemarle County.

And county residents expressed concern that this lack of development may be leading to an increase in housing costs.

According to the Weldon Cooper Center population estimates, Albemarle County's population is expected to increase by about 26% by the year 2040.

To accommodate this growth, Albemarle County will need to add

11,750 housing units to our current stock over the next 20 years.

Policy objective one speaks directly to the overall housing need and proposes several strategies to support housing development during that period, such as encouraging and incentivizing

the construction of a variety of housing types, promoting increased residential density in the county's development areas and designating areas as housing rehabilitation zones as enabled under section 36-55.64 of the Code of Virginia.

To ensure sufficient supply of affordable housing is included, the policy recommends ensuring 20% of all new housing units are provided as affordable housing, updating the density bonus for affordable housing,

and identifying county-owned land that could be made available for affordable housing development.

The 20% figure was determined based on data contained within the 2019 Comprehensive Housing Needs Assessment, which indicates approximately 20% of current county residents.

I'm sorry, households are struggling to afford housing costs.

The draft policy includes six objectives that specifically address affordable housing needs in Albemarle County.

Approximately 10,800 county households are housing cost burdened, which means they are paying more than the recommended 30% of their income for housing and housing related costs.

While the majority of these cost burdened households have incomes at or below 80% of the area median income, more than 2,000 households with incomes above that level are also struggling with housing costs.

Key strategies to address affordable housing need include several strategies that we've discussed in the previous slide.

as well as adopting an affordable dwelling unit ordinance to replace the current proffer system and increasing the percentage of affordable units gained under rezoning and special use permits from 15% to 20% of total housing units built.

Also changing the definition of affordable housing to better meet the needs and incomes of county residents and creating a new category of housing for workforce.

households to fill the gaps in housing provision that occur based on the current definition of affordability.

To provide a little bit of more information about the differences between affordable and workforce housing, the current policy, as discussed previously, defines affordable housing as housing affordable to households with incomes no greater than 80% of area median income.

And our current AMI is $93,900 per year.

The recommended policy would set the maximum affordable rents at the fair, sorry, our current policy sets the maximum affordable rents at the fair market rent, which is used for the housing choice voucher program, minus an allowance for tenant paid utilities and a maximum house sale price, which is equal to 65% of the maximum loan limit for Virginia Housing's first time home buyer program.

Or as I said earlier, $243,750.

The proposed policy recommends tying affordable rental rates to the AMI itself with maximum rents equaling 25% of 65% of AMI and adjusted for bedroom size.

The table on the left of your screen indicates what those rental rates would be under this new definition.

They are really closely aligned with fair market rents but slightly lower.

And because they are tied to the area median income as opposed to median rents in our region, they are less likely to fluctuate and greatly in one direction or the other as the high limits count often do.

The affordable rental units are recommended for households with incomes at or below 60% of AMI.

The affordable for sale units, the draft policy recommends setting the price at no greater than 65% of the federal home program, one unit purchase price limit for existing housing.

That would make the, under this definition, the maximum sale price for sale affordable units would be $191,750, a significant difference from what we currently set that up.

And these units would be available for purchase by households with incomes up to 80% of AMI.

In the workforce housing category, the

Rental units of workforce rental units would be available to households with incomes between 60 percent and 100 percent of area median income and 80 to 100 percent of area median income for the for sale units.

Workforce rent limits would be set at 110 percent of the federal fair market rent and the maximum for sale price would be equal to or less than 65 percent of the federal home program one unit purchase price limit for new construction.

And again, those prices are listed on the right hand side of your screen.

That would set the for sale price limit at $215,150 per unit.

Again, that's significantly less than what we currently have.

And it is also very close to what the Thomas Jefferson Community Land Trust was able to sell their four new units in the city for.

And those units were actually, at least some of those units were purchased by families at 50% AMI.

So they open up that home ownership to a greater number of people in the county.

The Burke and Bendy policy also addresses preservation of existing housing in communities.

Preservation plays an important role not only in providing housing for our county residents, but also in efforts to support social inclusion and promote social equity throughout all neighborhoods.

Approximately one third of the county's housing stock was built prior to 1980, and many of these units are now in need of repair.

Many lower income families, particularly seniors, do not have the income available to really keep these up to code on a regular basis.

So working to preserve those units is vital if we wish to keep them within our housing stock.

Looking at four RIB units, the county is at risk of losing up to 455 units of affordable housing that we currently have in our area.

as those affordability periods expire over the next 10 years.

And as any housing units are taken out of service, whether that is through expiring affordability periods or just out of aging beyond repair, we risk losing

Breaking up long-standing communities as residents would have to move away to other areas of the county or even outside of the county to more affordable housing.

So policy objective four speaks directly to housing preservation and recommended strategies such as encouraging owners of naturally affordable, naturally occurring affordable housing or those housing units that are affordable due to market forces without any subsidies to make them that way.

I've been working with those owners to preserve some or all of their units as those affordable units are redeveloped or rehabilitated, revitalized into market rate housing.

Implementing a rental inspection district program to proactively address housing standards, particularly in rental housing, multifamily housing, implementation of an anti-displacement policy, and tracking neighborhood change through a series of neighborhood change indicators.

This last recommendation would allow the county to identify neighborhoods at risk of disinvestment or social demographic change and help the county identify areas for county investment and services.

The policy also recommends strengthening community engagement with housing policy activities.

through the creation of the Standing Housing Advisory Committee.

Members of this committee would be able to help the county identify emerging housing needs within our community, help the county evaluate current housing policy strategies, make recommendations for improvements when necessary, and it would help increase county accountability to our residents in terms of housing.

To promote fair housing access and community equity, the policy recommends the creation and implementation of an equity evaluation tool and affordable housing impact statements.

Both tools, which I will discuss in a little more detail on the next slide, would provide the county the data necessary for measuring the potential impact of policies and programs on community equity and housing access, as well as providing

equity assessment tools

are used to evaluate the potential impact of policies, programs, initiatives, and funding on racial equity.

Such tools help protect against unintentional discriminatory impact on protected classes from developing and implementing policies and programs.

And this tool would be developed in partnership with the county's Office of Equity and Inclusion.

Affordable housing impact statements are similar in many ways to environmental and economic impact statements.

They measure the potential impact of a proposed development ordinance or policy on the affordable housing stock.

Such impact statements may include both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

And the essential impact statements have been implemented in cities of Atlanta, New Orleans, and San Diego.

And they're currently under consideration in the city of Pittsburgh.

An affordable housing impact statement would in no way allow us to either to deny a development.

They would simply be designed to help staff and the Board of Supervisors identify what the potential impacts would be and if there is any programs or services in addition that we could put into an area to assist the residents.

The policy recommends two objectives to adjust the housing needs of persons experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness and also the needs of special populations such as seniors and persons with different disabilities.

Key strategies include increasing the number of permanent supportive housing units such as the crossings at 4th and Preston, expand

Expanding the emergency shelter capacity, encouraging the incorporation of universal design standards into all new residential developments, increasing the number of affordable and accessible housing units within the county, and encouraging the creation of fully accessible communities.

And that would include making sure communities

have sidewalks that are wide enough to support wheelchair access and making sure all public buildings are accessible for those with disabilities.

And finally, objective 12, the draft policy provides recommendations for strategies to address the environmental and social sustainability of housing and county communities.

Key strategies under this objective includes

Encouraging energy efficiency upgrades and rental housing such as was discussed previously under the Climate Action Plan Encourage residential development near public transportation and biking pedestrian paths and addressing unhealthy housing issues which could be done through the rental inspection districts described earlier.

Staff worked with the Stakeholder Committee to develop a six-year policy implementation schedule which can be found in the draft policy beginning on page 45.

And staff has a recommendation to review and update that schedule every five years.

Members of the Stakeholder Committee also identified six strategies recommended for priority action and these are shown on this slide here.

These recommendations include providing incentives to developers to increase production of affordable rental housing, developing an affordable dwelling unit program with structures and guidelines, develop and implement a sustainable housing trust fund, establishing a standing housing advisory committee, reviewing the county's comprehensive plan to identify barriers to affordable housing and workforce housing development and identify barriers

and working in partnership with public, private, non-profit partners to expand permanent housing opportunities for chronic and homeless households.

The policy also recommends a number of metrics that we can use to measure our progress towards achieving these goals.

These include looking at total number of housing units,

tracking affordable home ownership trends and affordable rental housing, efforts to end homelessness within our area and increasing the number of housing units for persons with disabilities and for seniors.

These are just a beginning

The number of metrics, there would be more detailed metrics developed for each of the strategies recommended in the policy as those strategies are developed.

Staff presented the draft policy to the Planning Commission during a work session on August 11th of this year.

To summarize the feedback provided by the Planning Commission, there is all overall support for those recommendations.

and the Planning Commission also recommended that an objective be added to provide public transportation to all county neighborhoods, to add an objective to provide reliable broadband service to all county neighborhoods, and to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on affordable housing and low and moderate income communities.

After internal discussions with other community development staff, it was decided to not add the recommendations related to public transportation and broadband simply because the county does not have a lot of control over even one of those issues.

But staff did add

a paragraph during the introduction to the policy document that discussed COVID-19.

It is a bit too early to really identify what those long-term impacts will be coming out of the economic impacts from COVID-19 and how that relates to housing.

So that is something that staff will be keeping track of as we move forward and if there's any, responding in any ways that we can.

They also made a recommendation for the county to adopt an affordable housing specific goal.

They recognized that the goal we have now for housing is good, but they felt that we really need to focus more specifically in a separate goal on what our vision is for affordable housing moving forward.

And they also made a recommendation to find less stigmatized terms for affordable and workforce housing.

Staff has not figured out what those terms would be.

There were some public comments received during that work session and to summarize some of those comments, there was concern that the objectives and strategies contained within the draft policy were not written using comprehensive plan-like language.

concern that several strategies and or action steps could reduce the supply of affordable housing and or decrease housing affordability overall and concern that implementation of a rental inspection district program would lead to significant delays in rental unit turnover should that program be implemented on a monthly basis or as tenants vacate units.

That

would not that it's not the intention of staff should that program be implemented that would be it would be implemented as an annual inspection process.

As for next steps, today we collect feedback from the Board of Supervisors.

That feedback will be incorporated into the draft policy.

Once that draft policy is complete, it will then be put out for public comment period, which would last four to six weeks, and then public hearings would be scheduled with the Board of Supervisors in order to adopt this into the comprehensive plan.

Staff will also be working to summarize the draft document for incorporation into the forthcoming regional housing strategy that is being drafted by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and also reformatting the objectives and strategies for inclusion as the housing chapter of the comprehensive plan.

I think I am.

And Stacy, I'd like to thank you for this document.

It's an excellent start.

I think that I do agree with several of our planning commissioners.

They say that they would like to see it perhaps more robust.

And I say that I just want to make sure that we don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I keep saying that because that's about time and going on and doing, getting some things done.

One thing that I noticed, I read through the Planning Commission minutes twice and one suggestion jumped out at me.

At least several Planning Commissioners requested that they thought it would be a good idea for the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission to get together

perhaps before, and the timing might be up in the air about this, maybe before the final draft was adopted or in the process of creating the final document.

Stacey, did you have any comments or any thoughts about that?

I can't see so.

Can you take down the discussion page?

I can.

We had talked about it that was a bit difficult to fit in between the work session with the Planning Commission and today's work session.

Yeah, and I didn't know whether you'd want to go on and work on your final draft.

I certainly would be very interested in what they're suggesting that they would like to talk with us.

I think to get the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors together to have a discussion about this was really a good idea.

The timing on it, sooner rather than later maybe, but that would be great for me.

A couple of comments.

Obviously, I love the equity assessment tools.

Thank you very much.

Bea, I do have a couple of questions maybe that this is a good time to ask.

As we're going through this, I read your suggestions about small houses and, you know, but I guess my concern and what I see in the urban ring is how do we avoid UVA students filling all these up?

And maybe that means a lot of discussion, maybe, I don't know.

But what I see happening is accessory dwellings, what we used to call the old mother-in-law apartments, those fill up with UVA students.

That doesn't accomplish our goal.

It's kind of like what we were fighting back with our home stays where they're just being flipped and we're losing our affordable housing.

So that one is my question is if we do some of these things, how do we avoid UVA students filling them up?

Or the flip side of that is what I also see is affordable housing being purchased by UVA parents.

You know, and I mean, they have every right to buy.

I just, you know, it's a quandary in a university town.

I go back again to, we're in a spot now where we have at least one mall that's emptying out.

Malls have been used in other communities as great options for affordable housing.

and I'm not happy using the word affordable housing, but affordable housing, workforce housing, whatever we wanna call it, it's certainly what's happening I see in the community is that we're talking financial, the finances of houses, the expense of houses is driving fear and we are segregating.

and that's very concerning to me.

We have segregated communities right now and I think it's based a lot on the balance sheet, right, finances, and that's concerning.

I could talk a long time about the connection with transit, but I do think we need to recognize that we've talked a lot about on-demand in Albemarle County.

Fixed routes are not going to get it for us.

We need some fixed routes, but we need to move on our on-demand idea, which would move transit around Albemarle County in a way that would allow us to move more affordable housing around in Albemarle County.

They stopped thinking about, and I think staff has done this to some degree, stopped thinking about just a cat bus stop, but we've been talking now about more transit stop, which

adds a little bit more flexibility.

I would even extend that further.

If we can establish a definition for multimodal stops, that's bicycle, pedestrian, it could be on demand for last mile, we get into bike racks, shelters,

electric vehicle vehicle or charging stations.

So I guess my thought is we have a lot to work on.

The Regional Transit Partnership is working to some degree on some of this.

We're going to be having a work session this month and one of the things we're going to maybe be talking or we will be talking about is we've gone there six months now in this community with fare free.

What would fare free look like throughout the county?

It's working so far.

It would increase our ridership, which means we bring down more federal dollars.

Don't want to take a lot of time on this, but transit is really a big picture, has a big footprint when we're talking about affordable housing.

And somehow or another, we need to tie that together with our work.

You talked about the maintenance to some degree, sidewalks.

One only has to drive along hydraulic road right now to see the impact that sidewalks can make on an older neighborhood, right?

That brings respectability and improvements without gentrifying.

That whole area right now looks, of where we put in the sidewalks along hydraulic, looks so much better.

People are taking pride in their houses.

They have been improved and fixed up, but they're not being gentrified because the last thing we want to do is to go into our affordable housing neighborhoods and areas and gentrify them.

That's one of the balances and the tricks.

So I am so

So excited and I'm really going to start to really push on building sidewalks in these older neighborhoods.

We're insisting on them in the new developments connectivity and sidewalks.

We ought to be going back, in my opinion, and retrofitting some of these older neighborhoods with sidewalks.

It's a win-win for a lot of reasons.

And I guess for right now I'll stop.

But I am very excited about this document as well.

Thank you for your work.

But I would like to think about the Planning Commission and some of these other things.

And oh, Ned, could we copy Bea's idea with this maybe?

If there's a way we could send Stacey some of our thoughts that we have that we don't have time for today, would that work?

That's great.

So we'll be sending thoughts for both.

That's great.

Okay, now I'm ready.

Let me get my notes back in front of me here.

All right.

Hold on.

Oh, for crying out loud.

Technology here.

There we go.

All right.

So I was worried at the beginning when you jumped over the bullet of stakeholders about preserving existing affordable housing, but then you came back to it later.

In the district I represent, there are hundreds, hundreds of houses built from the 20s, 30s, and 40s.

And yes, they may need some upgrading, and we have programs to help with that, which I heartily support.

But we have to be so careful

to find ways that we can not throw those people out because everything, all it takes is one McMansion in an old neighborhood and it's toast.

So I know our planners are working on that and they've come up with some really great ideas, but that is so incredibly important to me as we talk about housing that we don't make it worse for some while we're trying to help others.

And there is a lot of need out there, I do understand.

I also bolded when you said in the mission, make housing available to all people of all income levels.

How do we do this?

I mean, that's like saying we're gonna provide housing for everybody.

So I think some care needs to be taken to focus in on that so that others, in addition to me, don't say, what in the world does that mean?

Because it sounds as if we're gonna just put up blocks and blocks and blocks of housing.

So I don't think that's appropriate.

I completely understand the changes that we've talked about about cost burden, because just a decade ago, the affordable unit was $192,000.

And now it's $243,000.

And yet salaries in our area have not increased worth peanuts in that time.

So it's very understandable.

I mean, I've been in my house almost 40 years and we added onto it a room at a time.

So it's just a completely different approach now

with a lot of these.

And I think having everything done as great big subdivisions and great big apartment complexes and great big everything is that the costs are so much higher than they are if somehow we can encourage the people who want to do these little houses that stay affordable because they're small.

is so much more effective to me than having something that is a $250,000 house that's sold for $200,000 and immediately that becomes market rate.

And it's a blessing to the first owner who gets the equity, but it does not help us make any progress at all in our process.

So that is just a little rant about that.

My question is, I would like to learn more later about what a housing rehab zone is.

and also how are we working with the regional housing effort, especially relating to what Diantha said about UVA students filling up every available house that comes along.

It's like our office now, we don't have enough commercial, I mean office space because every time we get a great building, UVA buys it.

So we have great demand and need for affordable, for office that business can use.

And I guess the other item I will throw out

is something I've been fussing about for a good 20 years.

And that is that our zoning plan gives away our ability to get affordable housing to be built, except in this almost extortion level negotiation between builders who demand all this extra stuff and then make it sound like we're causing great burdens for them to have them build some smaller units for us.

Instead of having our units be 6 to 36 as a zone, 6 units to 36 units is a huge range.

What if we had segregated sections, so 6 to 12 units, 12 to 18, 18 to 24, 24 to 30, and every one of those things, when you step up in density, you have a higher requirement to build an affordable unit or more affordable units in there.

Great, we'll have to advise us later about whether we have the authority to do this, but it seems much more direct than having some nebulous idea that somebody's doing us a favor by building something.

Yes, I agree that the profit margin is much greater on a great big house for only a little bit more effort.

So I get that, but we cannot allow ourselves to get sucked into this

eternal argument about how it's all of our fault that we don't have any affordable housing.

I will tell you that in the 1980s and 90s, before we had the housing plan and before we had the proffers and before we had anything, nobody, no builders were building affordable houses either.

They were maxing out what they could build to get the biggest profit they could.

Now I will admit that the houses are a lot bigger now than they were in 1982.

So maybe that's why.

But

I hope we can think about this and see if this is a way to fold something like this into our ordinance.

If we're going to have an affordable unit ordinance, which I also don't understand the details of, then this may be one way to get at it.

But I do not expect an answer right now about that.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Ms.

Pethia, thank you for your presentation.

When I read the article in the Daily Progress this morning, and I'm going to paraphrase slightly here, since the early 2000s, which I would take before 2005, developers have agreed to build about 411 houses

of those 91 have been constructed and 45 have actually been purchased.

So if you do the math, that means that we've averaged approximately three affordable for sale units being constructed since the early 2000s.

Without casting aspersions on any individual, I would say that that is a demonstration that the current housing plan in Albemarle County has not only been unsuccessful but frankly would be an abysmal failure.

Three houses per year.

So I'm very hopeful that this draft plan as it continues to work through will improve our ability to provide and maintain affordable housing in our community.

Four months ago, almost to the day, I voted against an application before the board.

I did so principally over transportation and safety concerns, but I will say that that is a vote I've come to regret.

Because when I voted against that development, it took away a plan for a substantial number of affordable housing units.

So I have contributed in that vote.

to not making housing available and affordable.

A month ago I voted against a different application, although in that case there were a number of reasons, but one of the reasons was what I thought an inadequate proffer of cash to build affordable housing somewhere else rather than in that particular development.

And once again, we're dealing with the not in my backyard.

We want affordable housing, we just don't want it near us.

When I look through this plan, though, I have reason for optimism.

I do have some questions and comments.

I noticed that in the list of terms to be defined, social equity on page nine is the only one that's not actually defined.

Every other term in there has a definition.

So just point that out to something I'd like to know how it is defined for these purposes.

I support the desire to increase the percentage of affordable housing to 20% from the current 15%, but I'm also mindful of the comments that Mr. Williamson has made both at the Planning Commission level

and I believe earlier here this evening that when you increase the percentage of affordable houses you are by necessity increasing the costs of those houses that don't classify under the affordable category.

So the 80% will become more expensive.

That then requires that we also have to look at increasing the density in order to offset the additional expenses to the developer because they are a business and they do have to make money.

I am very much in favor of deed restrictions on for sale affordable units.

I believe this is comparable to what's happening in the Southwood development.

where individuals are getting the zero interest loans and they have to hold the property for 40 years in order to attain the full equity out of it.

If they sell it before then, then there's a payback.

So I believe we need to do something like that, deed restrictions for the four scale units.

And I also concur with the plan.

That of, I believe it was 30 years for rental units in order to ensure that they remain in the affordable category.

Clearly what we see here is a correlation between jobs, i.e.

income and housing.

And as others have mentioned, we also have to tie in the transportation aspect because that is

Housing and transportation go hand in hand when we look at affordability and quality of life because you can put something cheaper further out but you're going to lose quality of life with your transportation time and increased costs.

I believe that this also reflects the need for us to increase the reasonable nature of our homestay regulations in order to ensure that we maintain

an adequate supply of permanent affordable housing.

It's distressing to see that 40% of our rental families are already in the at-risk category and that we're looking at the potential loss of about 45% of our existing affordable rentals within a 10-year period.

Again, I think this demonstrates a need to have some sort of restrictions to keep these affordable dwelling units in our inventory.

I'm optimistic that we could get an amendment to our county zoning ordinance that can help improve this, and as was just discussed, we are obviously going to face the contrast

between gentrification, which can drive up the cost of housing, versus deterioration.

And we do need to remember that affordable housing does not exist or does not limit to new housing, but it also has to apply to existing housing.

I would like to see further work with the Planning Commission, with community input, back to the board.

but I would say that overall I am optimistic.

I appreciate the work that you and others both on county staff as well as our residents have done and I'm hopeful that we will be able to increase the actual supply of affordable housing units for sale beyond the average of three per year that it appears we've only been able to achieve the last 15 years.

Yes, I do concur with what Supervisor Price has just said.

I was wondering myself regarding how do you make sure that affordable housing stays affordable?

If someone purchases it, do they sell it in a couple of years and then it's at market rate and it benefits the buyer?

or benefits the seller, but then it makes it not affordable.

So I do like the idea of looking into the deed restrictions to make sure that for a number, a period of whatever, how many years that does stay affordable.

I like that idea.

That actually answers one of the questions I was going to bring up, how you do it.

We do have currently 15% of affordable housing requirements on developments, which 80%

I'd like to see that lowered.

but in order to do that, that's going to cause, that will cause more density.

We're going to have to be approving more density in order to be able to reduce the percentage from 80% to 60%.

I like the idea of rentals, affordable rentals and keeping those affordable for years.

So I think there's a lot that we can do, looks like we are doing that.

And I thank you very much for the presentation.

I think staff's working really hard on doing all of this.

I think we are moving in the right direction.

I continue to work with the builders, continue to work with the community.

I think we can move forward and make progress.

Okay, thank you and all good comments by fellow supervisors and boy is there a lot of stuff in here.

One quick comment on the, I just want to make sure, I wasn't sure, maybe Supervisor Price explained this, but I just wanted to add that the Daily Progress article referenced half of the proffered affordable houses.

or the proffered affordable houses built.

And so there certainly were other affordable houses weren't affordable to the people who built them in the community.

They weren't very many, but that article just refers to the proffered ones.

But I did want to give Stacey an opportunity to comment on that article and why only half of the proffered affordable houses were bought by qualified income earners and what are we doing about that going forward

to correct this.

This has been something that's been talked about on our board for quite some time.

Many supervisors have brought this up over the years.

Sure.

So the way the proffered for sale units currently work, the developer must offer them for sale to income qualifying home buyers for a period of 90 to 100 days, depending upon the period that they proffer.

If no income qualified buyer is identified during that time period then they can sell that unit as market rate and we consider the proffer satisfied.

In the past, the Office of Housing had a home buyer club program that had a supply.

So they worked with home buyers to connect them with those units.

So we always had people who were ready to purchase homes who could buy those.

I think the price was more often than not out of their price limit, so they could not afford to do them.

Many of the developers currently work with Piedmont Housing Alliance and their home buyer program.

Again, many of them are not able to qualify for a mortgage at $243,000 price level.

But there's also a marketing problem.

It's difficult for the developers to get connected with homebuyers and so the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and Regional Housing Partnership are getting ready to launch an affordable housing locator website that would include listings of both affordable rental units and homebuyer units.

So developers as their proffer units come online

would be able to go to that website, list those units for sale, and identify what that qualifying income level will be.

Okay, thank you.

And that's going to be launched soon, you say?

November or December.

Oh, great.

Very soon.

Okay, thank you very much.

I have a couple of

Questions for clarity on this report for you.

I was struck as I was reading the information on rental housing cost increases in the area.

And I found a couple things a little confusing, so I'd like you to help me on that.

You do a comparison between rental housing costs and median gross rent.

And I couldn't find a definition in here of rental housing costs.

Is that some kind of average or a sample of 100 rentals or what?

So could you explain that to me?

I am really dependent on what data was used and I don't have the report open in front of me so I have to follow this up with an email just so I can go back and clarify.

Rental housing costs generally include everything, so the rent, the monthly rental amount and the utilities.

which is also the gross rent.

But the census data is more accurate when they look at the median gross rent as opposed to the individual housing units.

So I used a combination of data from the Census Bureau and their website and the regional housing study which that consultant had access to a more expansive database of source of information than I have.

Okay, great, because the difference is on page 14, and the difference was 21% to about 14%.

So I thought that was pretty substantial.

And I'd like to know

what these increases in rental costs are due to.

I'm wondering about, I also couldn't find if they were adjusted for inflation in any way.

And I also was questioning how much an increase in our property tax that we've done over that period of time contributed to the increase in rental costs.

So you can get back to me on that.

But we've had, you know, we've had at least a 10% increase in our property taxes over that period of time.

And I'd love to know what the what the reasons are.

Clearly, as a homeowner, my cost of maintaining my home is certainly increased pretty dramatically over that period of time.

So

That's a question to follow up on.

There was a comment in there on page 25, due to conflicts between the county's density bonus program and the density recommendations outlined in the comprehensive plan, few developers have taken advantage of this bonus program.

Yeah.

So in many cases, the 30% bonus in density that a developer would pursue to be able to include affordable units in their property actually brings the density above what is allowed in the comprehensive plan.

so they're not able to actually pursue that density bonus.

Yes, thank you.

Okay, so just give me one second.

I'm gonna go to my next page on a couple more questions.

I'm almost done.

There's on strategy 5A action steps, you have established the right of first refusal

for the purchase of for sale affordable dwelling units by Albemarle County or designee.

Am I correct in saying that we did that with Southwood?

Because I thought that we gave the first we took the first right of refusal for purchasing when we had our agreement with them.

And maybe that's a great Campner question.

but that's what I'm remembering is we certainly discussed it during the Southwood period.

I've been discussing and don't remember if that was included.

Okay, well I could very well be wrong.

I'll have to pull up the agreement.

If I can retrieve it right away, I'll jump in.

Thank you.

And I was just remembering that performance agreement, and I thought we had quite a few discussions about first right of refusal.

Because in that, we had a lot of conversation about how do we maintain the affordability of those units going forward in the future.

So my other one on page 28, you have some of the reasons for our housing problems and you have inadequate water and sewer infrastructure.

Could you tell me a little bit about what you mean by that?

We put in a tremendous amount of money and work into our sewer and water infrastructure in recent times, and I'm unaware of areas where it's inadequate.

Right, so that was one of the barriers identified in the housing needs assessment that the planning district commission had commissioned so to speak and that was really looking at areas beyond the development areas and then also some portions of the development areas that it may be

and we've been pretty successful with some of those grants.

The Albemarle County Service Authority has done those.

But if you have a little bit more information about where those areas are, I would greatly appreciate it.

And then I just have a comment that as I was reading through all these alternatives and whatnot,

I was happy to see that you mentioned in a couple of places the land trusts.

I think that that really is something going forward that I hope we'll be looking at to really maintain the affordability of these homes that we are putting money to over time.

And that's it.

Thank you for all this.

It's a lot of work and a lot of figuring out the priorities.

Appreciate it.

Stacey, I'm going to throw this out there.

I don't know how the other supervisors will feel about this.

I mean, the level of work that has gone into this policy, the level of import for us as a board, but also regionally, as I know the Regional Housing Partnership

has been keeping regular tabs on when this policy is coming before us in this county.

And the level of questions that I know supervisors probably haven't asked to do the time constraints today, this is really a get down in the weeds kind of topic that I think a lot of us can do.

I myself, I mean, there's just not time for me to go through all of the items I have here in my sheets.

I just want to say that this is a good one that we need to get with the Planning Commission, do a joint meeting, a work session specific to this policy.

Do it soon, as fast as we can, but under the guise of let's get all of our questions and reactions to you, whatever they are, clarifying questions, thoughts, ideas, need more.

It maybe categorizes or throws out into and maybe from that you get the framework for how that work session really is with the planning commission.

And then we just need to sit down, get into the weeds and have some time on this.

I think there's bigger picture philosophy and policy questions here relative to your density bonus that I'd love to get into.

Long-term RLIs for us, for lack of a better way to put it.

If we're going to put policy in place, what are the long-term returns for us to solve the affordable housing?

And there's just not the time.

We knew there wouldn't be the time to get into that this afternoon.

I'm seeing supervisors nod their head like they're not objecting.

Do you have a reaction to that?

Is that something we could pull off and do?

I'd certainly bet that Vice Chair Price and I would be willing to get together with Chair Bivens and do some work to make this happen.

I'm willing to do what's necessary to make it happen.

We had indicated to the Planning Commission after that work session that we are happy to schedule that, but as I said we just didn't have time to get that together before today's work session.

I think it's perfectly clear that it's necessary and I think it would allow everybody just like we did with the Climate Action Plan to get everything in and if you need help with

I'm saying that I'm available.

I'm sure Vice Chair Price, we can put us to work.

Supervisors, leadership teams ready to do some of that.

I don't want to speak for Chair Bivens, but I think that there would be intent there to help make that happen.

And you've already done all of this work, so I want to make sure we give it the right do of consideration.

And I think there's going to be some interesting conversations playing out in some of these.

I mean, some of my get down in the weeds questions.

It would probably be helpful to have answers before a work session to be able to be able to get involved and have a bigger level of policy conversation.

So if that's the case, then I won't belabor this with going through all my feedback at this point, but what would an expectation be?

And I don't mean to put you on the spot, but should you, Vice Chair and I, reconvene about trying to find a time

and start talking timing so we don't go down that road right now.

But I don't want this to turn around and it's February.

But yes, I will work with the planning staff.

I see Mr. Walker popped up there.

It's just supporting the notion that the County Executive's office is working with the Chair, Vice Chair and the Clerk's office to honor the interest in trying to get a joint meeting scheduled as soon as possible.

Great.

Yeah, Mr. Chair, just to clarify that the board members will be sending their questions, their follow-up to Stacy.

That will give her an opportunity to work offline, as I think you said, to prepare for a work session.

That would be forthcoming.

You've got some fall work ahead of you with the budget, with the CIP, with the strategic plan.

So I hear you Mr. Chair that this can't be February.

We need to get going on it.

This falls on a list of a lot of things we're going to be getting going on.

So we'll have to work it in with a realistic expectation of everything else we're working on in tandem during COVID-19.

And I say that with all due respect.

Sure.

Just one suggestion and that is that we allow a couple of weeks for the assimilation of the questions and written and answer the answers that can be given to everybody including the Planning Commission because many of the questions that may come up at this joint meeting could be answered ahead of time and allow us to focus on the more policy global stuff or whatever the concerns are that we haven't

So I hope rather than rush to a meeting, I'd rather get our stuff to Stacy quickly and give her a couple of weeks to really dig in and get it right and back to us.

I mean, it would probably, it wouldn't be before November.

I mean, we've got a full slate in October, so I'd just love to see it happen before the end of the year.

I think that's reasonable.

And I think it has impacts for our budget conversations coming in the fall, so it would be wise to have it done ahead of time.

And Community Development's work program.

I'm just going to say I think the Planning Commission will embrace this because they certainly were asking for it during their discussions around this.

And it's really important that the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors are on the same page when we're talking about this.

It really is important.

So with that then maybe Stacy, Doug, we can schedule a follow-up meeting with the chair and vice chair and let us start working with you to help pull this on.

Just to, I can answer Ms.

Palmer's question about the habitat units under the agreement they were assured to remain affordable for 40 years and the county had a

right of second refusal.

If I could just add for the new board members we had a discussion at that point about the need for some kind of fund to purchase those because it's a lot of it's an awful lot of units and you know whether Habitat will be able to

purchase those or if they want to purchase those at that time.

So anyway, just a long discussion about that took place during that period of time.

Board, we are behind schedule.

We had a recess scheduled after this item, so I think we should do that.

If we could come back at four, just shave a few minutes off the recess, and then we just have transportation and VDOT and we always move so quickly through those items, so I'm sure we'll be able to get caught up.

So we'll come back from recess at four o'clock.

All right, we are, sorry about that, a little pickup getting back on live.

And the next item on our agenda is number 11, County Transportation Planner Quarterly Report.

And Mr. Butch, good afternoon.

Okay, good afternoon.

Just my name is Daniel Butch, Senior Planner of Transportation.

I'm gonna just inform you that you could hear me and that you could see my screen.

Okay.

Alright, this is the Albemarle County Transportation Planning Quarterly Report.

This is for the July to September 2020 quarter.

Again, my name is Dan Butch, Senior Planner of Transportation.

We also do have our Chief of Planning, Kevin McDermott, available as well.

We are going to recap on our transportation priorities.

Just a reminder what you're looking at on the screen.

The numbers that you do see against next to the project names are the rankings from our transportation priorities that were approved in 2019 last year.

And for the revenue sharing, we had our Berkmar Drive extension and Old Lynchburg Road at Moores Creek Greenway.

Those were submitted last year and we were just updated that for revenue sharing they will be going to the Commonwealth Transportation Board for October 20th on final decisions as those were held off because of COVID and so we should be able to have some decisions from October 20th.

and for transportation alternatives, our Tabor Street and High Street pedestrian improvements, we were informed that that project was funded at 50% that was requested.

And so consulting with Kevin, we are gonna have to evaluate that and come back to the board on next steps for that and how to move forward on that project.

Again, we have our 2020 SmartScale applications.

They're not proposed.

They're actually submitted applications.

I should have updated that on the PowerPoint.

We presented this to the board.

Kevin presented this to the board this summer several times, and we're able to, this August, we submitted them.

And we have been working with VDOT for some minor edits needed for these applications, but they are submitted.

and we are expecting a January 2021 release of the scores for these recently submitted applications.

For major planning transportation projects, for Fifth Street extended STARS study, this is in full swing.

It's actually in its final stages and we held the public, virtual public meetings this past spring and summer.

and some final recommendations and we're expecting a final report really any week now expected for Fall 2020.

For the Crozet Transportation Study,

This is supporting the Crozet Master Plan update that's in progress as well as the Barnes-Lumber redevelopment and this will be going to the Crozet CAC with the existing conditions results.

That's complete and again this will be going to the fall for the Crozet CAC.

We also have Eastern Avenue, the south extension.

This alignment study of three alignments was sent to staff.

County staff with FES are evaluating these and from those we will have an expected route and the design would be after that.

This is expected for completion this coming spring 2021 for a revenue sharing application that summer.

We also have our

Rile Road corridor study.

This is the beginning stages.

We do have a consultant under contract and the public outreach is going to begin this fall.

For climate action plan, staff has been involved with the transportation sector and have been working in the addressing the public comments that were for the draft plan.

And also for Broadway blueprint,

We have held city and county internal meetings.

We're held this past quarter on that.

For transit, we've been working actively with developers for improvements in their developments with bus stops and shelters.

And what we have shown here is actually a new bus shelter located at the lofts at Middle Creek on Royal Road.

that has recently been completed by the developer there.

We're attending the RTP, Regional Transit Partnership, and the TJPDC has submitted these recent grants towards the Regional Transit Vision Plan, the route expansion,

and through the RTP, we've been updated that for Aspen Express, they're in coordination still with the TJPDC and the DRPT, the Division of Rail and Public Transit.

And for the bike pedestrian, for the quality of life bicycle and pedestrian projects, we have

The Avon Corridor Study, we're going to take those recommendations for this and make these revenue sharing or transportation alternative grants for this coming, for next year's submission.

We also have the Berkmarsh shared use path connection is currently in design.

We, through the Rivanna River Bridge Crossing, a connection called out in the TJPDC Regional Biped Plan.

This is being evaluated for location of the crossing and a concept and the public engagement for this is gonna be tied in with the Rivanna River Corridor Study and that will be happening this fall, 2020.

We also are on,

our bicycle and pedestrian facilities, inventory and mapping, our GIS inventory of our existing infrastructure.

And this is in coordination with UVA, the city and the county.

And we're at the last steps of this and being able to finalize some data.

We're in the merging process and it's not publicly available yet, but it's gonna be a

A planning tool to show our existing and future bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure.

For development projects, some of these have gone to the board.

You have seen these.

These are some major items that staff have been reviewing that have been submitted for zoning map amendments or special use permits or site development plans.

We look at the traffic impact analysis or any transportation improvements within these developments in the attachment for the more detailed report of all of these

Development projects.

We also have for reported transportation issues and update on Miller Screw Road is the we are working with VDOT to address the sign correction for Miller Screw Road that states the currently is posted as a no through truck and about addressing how we the endorsement for the resolution was no through tractor trailer.

So we are in conversation with VDOT with that.

We are working, the staff is working on developing a process with VDOT and Albemarle County Police for addressing the speed concerns that we get that are the stages towards a traffic calming process.

The traffic calming process is a funded process to implement

infrastructure towards speeds concerns, but we're developing a process through with VDOT and ACPD and we're going to be bringing that to the board to support the steps that we take when we do get speed concerns, speed safety, just anything of that sort.

We get quite a few of those and so we're trying to develop that process and bring that to you all to endorse.

Through the secondary six-year plan, we have for rural rustic paving, Coles Rolling Road, which was funded in two phases last year and then this fiscal year that will be underway this year for paving.

We also have Reservoir Road and Wesley Chapel were fully funded this year and will be beginning the engineering drainage work and should be expected for paving by the spring.

and then we had the old ivy bridge replacement bicycle and pedestrian accommodations that was supported by resolution this afternoon and which VDOT was able to want our support from the county to provide a four foot shoulder on that.

We had quite a lot of public comment on that and restrictions with the funding and VDOT definitely wanted to make a way to

to accommodate that public comment by providing that forefoot shoulder.

So that covers the main points.

I'm going to answer any questions.

I'm also going to stop sharing my screen, but also have Kevin available as well for any questions.

Daniel, I would just like to thank you for mentioning the old Ivy Bridge and the bike and pedestrian access that we approved on the consent agenda today.

Yes, so it's excellent.

Thank you very much.

And I think I am all right at this point.

Something may come up as we're going through, but I think I'm good for now.

I'm excited to hear about the process you're working on for speeding.

because I think all six districts have constant complaints.

People are terrified to go out to their mailbox in many neighborhoods.

So I look forward to that.

And as soon as you have any kind of criteria together that you can share with us so we can share that with our neighbors and have them know what they should be documenting because otherwise it's going to be months and months and you're going to come out with something and then they will have lost all that time.

So I would like very much for them to be able to know what to do.

and on little Wesley Chapel Road, one tenth of a mile.

This has been five years waiting.

So there's no drainage to be done.

It's just slap some pavement down there so that these people don't continue to have respiratory trouble from the dust, from all the lumber trucks that are coming off Fox Mountain.

If there's any way they can get that done this fall, instead of waiting till March, that would be so exciting for those couples there because they can't go out of their house.

And it's really sad.

All right, Supervisor Price.

Thank you Mr. Butch for your presentation.

I'm especially pleased to see that between both what we've got on transportation and what ABBA has been able to do, that some of the residents down on Cole's Rolling Road are really going to see some improvements in their quality of life.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you also, Mr. Butch, I really appreciate that.

And like Supervisor Mallek, I really look forward to seeing the criteria you're going to be putting forward with VDOT so that we can address some of these speeding concerns.

I just want to second Ann's request to see any criteria on the speeding things as soon as they are available to share.

I would very much appreciate that.

Kevin, the Greenbrier Hillsdale traffic coming.

It just seems like this

I see that there's the update with the September 20 about VDOT reevaluating tier one, tier two.

Can you just, or Daniel, speak more to where we're at on that?

That's what I thought.

The study is final.

It went through the whole traffic calming process.

They did leave us with three tiers of recommendations.

I believe I have sent this.

If not, I could make sure I have sent that study along to you.

We did ask them to look into the cost and future funding and how we can implement the at least the tier one and tier two which have to do with lane configuration and

Stop bar adjustments.

And also a reminder is Carrie with VDOT will be up right after us here and she might be able to provide additional information on that.

I noticed that the railroad corridor study, there's since about a fall 2020.

So I guess my question is in public outreach, understood that I would imagine during the corridor study, there'll be times for public input or

things like that.

I'm curious, will there be a, here's what to expect?

We don't do a lot of corridor studies.

This is still kind of new.

Is there a way to have a meeting to say, here's the game plan, here's what you can expect, here's those points for public, you know, a get ready kind of meeting?

Yeah, go ahead and take that, Dan.

Sure, we did.

And obviously, Supervisor Galloway, we received your request to come out there and speak to the community about that.

We haven't finalized exactly the steps we're going to go through, but we'll be back in touch this week and make sure that we confirm that.

We can come out there and give sort of a preview of what that corridor study is going to look like.

And then yes, there will be ongoing public involvement throughout the process.

Thank you very much.

I think that's all I've got.

Well, I guess I was right when I said that you guys would get through the transportation report.

Yeah, just one quick question.

You referenced the Commonwealth Transportation Board meeting.

Yes.

I just looked on their website and it's not listed.

And that's fine.

But as we get closer to the time, can we get some information?

I'd love to go on and at least see what the agenda is and listen to it.

Okay.

Yeah, just some information.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it because you'll know quicker than we would probably.

Yeah.

Thank you very much, Daniel.

All right, the next item, number 12, our Virginia Department of Transportation quarterly report on Cary.

I saw Cary there.

Where did Cary go?

Well, Carrie, I'm presuming you're still there, our Charlottesville Residency Administrator.

Hey, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.

I guess I will go ahead and share my screen and pull up my presentation.

I've had a bit of a lag today, so sorry this is taking a little while.

There we go.

Okay, I'll go ahead and start with the preliminary engineering updates.

They have not changed too much since our last meeting in July.

The 240-250 roundabout is still in progress.

There was a little bit of a delay as far as the schedule, but the advertisement date is still on track for late 2020, early 2021 with construction still planned for next summer.

The 240 bridge rehab over Lickinghole Creek is also still in progress.

We're expecting an add date of spring 2020.

And I know at the last meeting, there was some concern about increased traffic congestion for the Crozet area because of this bridge replacement.

So I just wanted to comment on that really quickly.

I talked to our bridge engineers.

This project is funded through state of good repair, which means that the bridge is

It's structurally deficient, so it is our goal to replace the structure as quickly as possible.

This is just a superstructure replacement, which is just the top, so we don't have to go and do quite the extensive amount of work as if we were to do superstructure and below that, the abutments, that kind of thing.

So we're hoping that we can look for ways as we continue to design that we can streamline the process and have the closure

A short possible time, and I do want to mention that it's not a full closure, it is just one lane.

We will be putting in temporary signals.

The MOT plan is being, or the, I'm sorry, the maintenance of traffic engineering plan is being put together right now and they're evaluating where to put those signals to make sure that the

entrances within the vicinity aren't going to be locked by queues or anything like that and of course during the project if there is something that needs to be adjusted we will be doing that and we are also coordinating with the with the roundabout project as well to make sure that those impacts and just the coordination between the project schedules is the communication is there.

We also have the 708 bridge repair

over the NF hardware that is in the same place as it was last time.

Next milestone is public hearing.

Add date is still March 2022.

We have the Route 641 bridge replacement over Marsh Run.

Again, next milestone is public hearing.

Expected add date is October 2025.

Next is the 677 bridge replacement over Piney Creek.

Next milestone will be field inspection with an expected add date of January 2023.

We have the 702 bridge replacement over Maury Creek.

Next milestone will be right of way with an expected add date of March of 2022.

And last, we have the connector road from Berkmar Drive to Airport Road.

Next we'll be authorizing preliminary engineering with an add date of fall of 2023.

For our 29 Solutions projects, we are still working on our automated traffic signal performance metrics.

That's still in process right now.

We're working with the city to get that finished.

And we have the Hydraulic Hillsdale South project.

The SmartScale application has been submitted, so we will wait for scoring early next year and give those results at that time.

As far as the Albemarle County design build projects,

We have the 151-250 roundabout and I can give a little bit more detail about that.

They're preparing, the design builders preparing right away submission.

Right now they've submitted it.

They're working on some final wetland and stream impacts and the first submittal should be within the next couple weeks.

There are no significant deviations from the public hearing plans.

For the 2649 roundabout, also, next milestone is right-of-way plan approval.

We provided comments on their first submission.

No significant deviations from the public hearing.

Construction is likely to start next fall with right-of-way acquisitions and then utility work.

As far as the Exit 124 diverging diamond project, next milestone is plan approval.

We have received a first design submission and they are working through the comments at this point.

There's minor deviations from what was discussed in the design that was proposed at the public hearing, but it's primarily reducing right-of-way impacts and adding a right turn lane at Hansen's Mountain Road.

Construction is still set to start this winter with utility relocation work on US-250.

and next is the connector road between Ryer Mills and Burkemar Drive extended.

Next milestone is construction completion.

The construction did begin last month on the piece of property that was donated as part of the Brookhill proffer.

Right-of-way acquisition is underway for small portions of the property needed at Ryer Mills tie-in.

and utility relocation work is being performed at the tie-in as well.

It's likely to take much of next year to finish.

For the Exit 118 project, that construction is wrapping up, should be wrapping up over the next couple weeks with the final items to begin the installation and activation of traffic signals and completion of punch list items.

There will be a road closure associated with the installation of the traffic signal mast arms.

And we will be communicating through media outlets to give more information to the public about that.

And that about wraps that one up.

The next one is Fontaine Avenue, also under construction.

It should be wrapping up over the next couple weeks.

With the final items left, the installation of the overhead sign and completion of punchless items

There will be a change in traffic pattern, which again, we will be communicating through our media outlets to let the public know.

As far as our rural rustic updates, 824 Patterson Mill Lane has been completed.

Coles Rolling Road phase one and two state forces work has started.

replaced some pipes at this point.

We are working on obtaining some rights of entry, removing trees so that we can continue that work.

Wesley Chapel Road, funding year 2021, the scoping and environmental clearance processes are in place, or I'm sorry, they're in progress.

Then we have Reservoir Road, funding year 21 as well.

Again, scoping and environmental clearance processes, I don't think they've quite started,

but they are about to be in progress.

And last but not least, and this was incorrect on my quarterly report, Burt Mill Road is actually funded in year 2022.

So shortly we will again begin scoping and environmental clearance processes to get that one going as well.

As far as our construction activities, we have some county safety improvement and operations projects ongoing.

We have two locations where we are making incidental concrete repairs.

One being Rosemont Drive V-Ditch repair that was completed as of last week.

And the next one, Lands Road sidewalk repair at Albemarle County High School is scheduled to start October 13th and expected to last about two days.

Another project we're working on is Fox Mountain Road.

I have some pictures to share with you in a few minutes.

That one is underway.

We have finished the northern portion, and the next step is to begin work on the southern section to install a ditch line and entrance pipe to improve the drainage on that side.

Next, Route 20, Valley Street.

Just north of Scottsville, we discovered that we had three failing pipes.

We're scoping that replacement.

It will require open cut and road closure.

The closure is expected to last five days.

and we are trying to get this completed before the end of the month.

We are also working on a pipelining project on Route 602 at Howardville Turnpike.

There is a pipe that is failing and requires a lining.

It's a 72-inch pipe.

So we're currently working on the hydraulic analysis involved and the environmental clearances that we need to get that pipelined.

We also have Willow Lakes Drive.

There are three failing 72-inch pipes, so we are working on the required environmental clearances and hydraulic analysis associated with their replacement as well.

At this point, I don't have a good idea if we'll be able to line them or not.

Hopefully we will, but we are working on that as well.

And last, Four Seasons Drive.

There is a sinkhole that is threatening the roadway, and when we started to investigate that, we also saw that there are

Six failing drop inlets, so we are working to put a contract in place so that we can repair those and fix what's needed as far as the concrete work.

And our bridge project ongoing, we've got the 726th bridge replacement over Tokyo Creek.

That began this past summer and we expect completion by March of next year.

Route 640 Gilbert Station Road,

The last meeting that we had, the work was supposed to begin this fall.

However, we have had to delay that because we have not been able to get the necessary railroad clearances.

So we're hoping that we can work through that and get that on our schedule for spring of 2021.

And last, we have various bridge maintenance repair projects on 6429.

It's ongoing throughout the year and

We have lane closures for nighttime and allowable daytime hours.

As far as our traffic engineering, we performed a sign review for 1115 Broadway Street.

That is complete and the sign has been installed.

For 1765 Montana Drive, also a sign review.

It is complete.

The speed limit sign has been installed.

627 Porter's Road sign review

That is complete.

We installed stop ahead signs.