Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   12/2/2020

You live?

All right, good afternoon everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for our December 2nd, 2021 p.m.

meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-816, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek

of the White Hall District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway 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 today with us, we have our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner,

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

And if everybody now would please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance.

All right, thank you.

And board, if everyone would please join in a moment of silence.

And board, we need to adopt our final agenda.

To my knowledge, we are not making any changes.

Supervisor Price has been adding item in for committee reports later, so that can

I don't know if we officially have to add that in.

That just falls under other from the board.

Is there any other items that either need to be pulled from consent agenda or added to the agenda?

And if not, a motion to adopt the final agenda?

Second.

All right.

Travis, call the vote.

Ms.

Kreis?

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

And next brief announcements by board members, and I'll go in our speaking order today.

Supervisor Price, you're up first.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

First, I want to thank Emily Kilroy and Sam Hart of our Community and Public Engagement Office.

Last night, Ellen Osborn, the Scottsville District School Board representative and I held a town hall meeting.

We had great participation and involvement by our residents and constituents.

They asked good questions, they asked hard questions, but once again demonstrated the absolute best in civic engagement.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Thank you.

The DAC at the UVA research park is collecting cell phones, iPads, any kind of electronic material that can help the veterans and also their spouses, children.

So they'll receive donations throughout this entire week.

So that's something that I support and it was a good way to get rid of all the extra cell phones I had that I haven't used.

I do.

I wanted to tell the board and anyone else listening out there that at the Yancey Community Center, they gave away 200 turkeys and other Thanksgiving food, where about a half of that was distributed by the Yancey Community Food Bank.

And the other half was from the African American Pastors Council.

and they also had the trail, it's relatively short, but it's a nice trail at Simpson Park all put in for Take a Hike Day.

So they're having an awful lot of activities down in the community center down there.

And that's just part of it.

Thank you, Ned.

I just wanted to once again thank our community for taking our COVID ordinances seriously, masking seriously, and to thank folks for changing the way that they approached Thanksgiving this year because I know many people altered their plans

and Hunker down and did things differently and for that we thank you.

Our hospital thanks you or our hospitals I guess I should say that plural and we just appreciate it and going forward hope we can do the same thing for the holidays.

Hopefully by next year we will have a much more open and free celebration of all of our holidays.

Thank you very much and certainly echo what Ms.

McKeel just said about the holidays and behavior and we are fortunate that we're having so much compliance here and we can always do better so I encourage all to do that but I'm hearing really good reports from from stores and places around the district.

I just wanted to encourage people who might not have had a chance to pay their property taxes or personal property bills at the county office building outside that it is a spectacular experience.

I just pulled up this afternoon at 12 o'clock and was greeted at my car by a very friendly person who handed me a sheet of information because I had

changes in vehicles and all sorts of trouble that I knew I was going to create for somebody and she said please call this number and most likely they'll be able to help you without you having to go in and fill everything out and lo and behold they had all the records they needed and I was able to be reassured that I was going to pay the right amount and I was very very pleased at how well it worked so I hope that others will take advantage of the same type of

experience and not worry about having your taxes lost in the mail between here and Maryfield.

So I really, the more things we can keep close by is probably safer for everyone.

Thank you and in reading the packet for this week and the growth reports that we get monthly I was I guess not surprised but did notice again that Crose Master Plan has 31% of all the growth units again and this has certainly been the trend ever since about 2008 during the last recession there were more than 50% of all the building permits in the county were out there for month after month after month so

I encourage everyone to please keep that in mind as you learn about the master plan redo coming forward and understand that the 7,000 new residents who are in the district now compared to 2008 are concerned, all of them, newcomers as well as old-timers,

about the values of life there that drew them there to begin with.

And they really want to remain for generations to come, and they want to work on it together.

So we've had a really good Master Plan experience, and I hope that it'll all turn out to everyone's satisfaction.

Thank you.

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 our Clerk's Office manages the sign-up sheet.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

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

address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

If you exceed your allotted time, as indicated, you will be asked to enter comments and the microphone will then be muted.

If the speaker does not use all allocated time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker, and speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during the public comment periods for meeting.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the Albemarle County website.

If participating by phone, please press star nine to let us know you want to speak, then star six if you're from a landline.

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

All right.

He's our first speaker today.

Hi, this is Gary Grant.

Yes, sir.

Thank you very much.

My name is Gary Grant.

I live in the Earliesville area of the Rio district.

First to board chairman Galloway, thanks for your email today at 1259 PM, one minute before the start of today's meeting.

I will read your email later today.

I have just one quick reminder today to comment on.

There appears to be two public hearings on your meeting agenda tonight.

Again, that's where you listen to the public before you decide how you're going to vote on something.

Please remember this comment from Rivanna Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley from your September 6th retreat, but please don't treat the public the way she says she does.

And I quote her here from September 6.

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.

And our next speaker.

Yeah, we don't have any more sign up, excuse me.

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

Is there a motion to approve?

And all right, we can call the vote.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

All right, very good.

Thank you, board.

And next on the agenda, number nine, this is one of our first action items, SE-2020-12, homestay special exception.

Is it Awen?

Awen, retreat.

Rebecca is joining us.

Looks like Bart's coming along.

Good afternoon.

Thank you.

You are moving along quicker than I expected.

Yes, ma'am.

It is starting to share.

Thank you.

So the first homestay special exception is 2020-12.

and we are looking at 2020-13 and I need to switch over.

So you should see 2020-12 on your screen.

Thank you.

So this is a homestay special exception for a property that's less than five acres.

We usually go over the homestay regulations that are applicable before we jump into the particulars about the property.

So that's the game plan for these two.

The first one is less than five acres, so it's limited by the ordinance to two guest rooms.

No use of an accessory structure.

only one home stay on the property no whole house rental and that's rental when the owner is not present and then the main reason the item is before you this afternoon is because of the 125 foot required yard from all property lines

which as we've discussed previously is one of those items that can be modified through this special exception process.

So that is the request before you is to reduce the setbacks from a side property line and also a front property line.

A reminder again before we present these special exceptions we let you know what the criteria are that are in the homestay section of the zoning ordinance and that's an analysis that includes the finding that there's no detriment to any abutting lot in granting a special exception and there's no harm to public health safety or welfare.

jumping into the particulars of this homestay special exception request the vicinity map is on your screen and the parcel is the triangular shaped pie shaped parcel in the middle there it's just off of three notched road route 250 it's near the intersection of

three notched and Rockfish Gap 240-250 there.

And Gillums Ridge actually kind of runs through the parcel if you see on the map.

And this is an aerial view of the neighborhood showing that the railroad is behind the property and there are some residential properties beside it and then across the road.

So when we visited the property and as the applicant indicated in their request, there is a berm with the closest adjoining property that's shown on the lower portion of your screen.

There's a good amount of vegetation.

And in this particular case, the guest rooms are located on the side of the house opposite from the property lines that don't meet the 125 foot

request and we did hear from the nearest property owner that you see on the screen and they said they were in support or had no objections to the request and then also I got a couple questions from some other neighbors who were just getting you know clarification but we haven't received any objections to this request.

So for those reasons, staff has recommended approval and the suggested motion is that after your questions and discussion that you would move to adopt the resolution to approve it with the conditions that you're used to seeing now with the parking areas and guest room locations depicted on the exhibit and then a condition that is a commitment and a requirement to maintain

either the existing vegetation that we did find adequate, or an alternative if they ever wanted to change anything on the property.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Ms.

Ragsdale.

I really appreciate the manner in which all of these are presented to us.

They may in some way become sort of old hat with 125-foot exception, but I believe it's important that each of these applications on their record stand independently, and I appreciate the way that you do those reports.

I have no questions.

I will have a comment prior to a vote.

No questions at this time, thank you.

I don't have any questions.

I'm pretty familiar with this property and it seems pretty straightforward, this one.

My perennial question is the tree buffer on the short distance side on the applicant's property or their neighbors?

It's on the applicant's property.

Great.

Thank you very much.

I do not have any questions.

Thank you.

Ms.

Ragsdale, would you go back to the satellite view that shows the triangular shape of the property?

I think the one maybe before that one, yeah that.

And in our package we really have maybe even a better one.

But I think this particular application shows exactly why we have to be able to provide some degree of exceptions to the 125-foot

When you look at that property, it's extremely long and narrow.

There just simply is no way that I believe you could ever have a house on that piece of property and fully comply with 125 feet.

So it's good that we have these general rules but I think this is a perfect example of why it is appropriate that we have the exceptions and I do support this one.

Okay and I will just point out that the railroad is right behind this house.

It's kind of interesting.

All right, the motion has been made and seconded.

Is there any further discussions?

All right, we can call the vote.

Ms.

Having lived next to a railroad track once in my life, I appreciate that comment.

Ms.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

All right, very good.

And the next one, also a Homestay special exception, SE-2020-13, Place of Grace.

Thank you again.

It will be a very similar presentation to the last one.

And that's a photo of the property on the screen there from the property line or one of the property lines where the special exception is being requested.

This, we just went over this information, so I won't go over it in detail again, but this is another parcel that's less than five acres.

So those are the limitations that apply.

to home stays on parcels less than five acres.

This particular one is requesting a reduction in setbacks to the front and the side property line.

And again, our analysis would include looking at the particulars of the property and recommending and making the findings that there's no detriment to any abutting lot or harm to public health, safety or welfare.

This particular property is located in the down the Route 29 corridor off of Monacan Trail on Taylors Gap Road in an area that's sort of further off the beaten path than the other one.

And this is an aerial view of the neighborhood.

There is the residence across the street and then the residence that is on the lower part of your screen.

The one on the lower part of the screen is the closest house and the request is for a reduction to the front where

the property has 100 feet but not the required 125 and then it's about 60 feet to that side property line so in this case the neighboring property it's the driveway that's closest to the house and then the house is set back on the lot so it's

located well away from the homestay.

This is a lot that doesn't have any more development rights so we wouldn't expect another home to be built on the property.

And there is some screening between the home and the house in the form of some landscaping and there's actually some landscape features and some fencing and sort of an outdoor area that acts to screen the guest rooms and the parking is on the other side of the house away

from the neighbors.

So in this case, we have also recommended approval of the special exception.

We did not receive any questions or concerns or response to the abutting owner notice that was sent for this one.

All right, thank you all for your questions.

Oh, Chair Galloway, you're taking away my opportunity to speak.

I have no questions, but again, Ms.

Ragsdale, thank you for your presentation.

If you would put up the satellite view again.

Yeah, I think, and again, the image we have in our materials, if when the people built that house in 2008, they had contemplated that they might have a homestay, then they may have moved the house further into the center of the property.

Again, I think this is just a good example that shows the reality of what we're dealing with.

And again, a reason why I find these sort of exceptions to be acceptable under the appropriate circumstances.

I have no further questions or comments.

Supervisor McKeel?

No questions, thanks.

So I guess in that picture that was shown, you don't need to bring this back up because it looks like in the other photos and the driveway is kind of where you have parking labeled, the driveway is kind of

I have some photos that might be helpful, but there is, there are, there's some vegetation and then there is, there's some shrubs and then there is the fencing that is sort of near the swing and the, I think it's a gazebo and a seat, an outdoor seating area that's out there.

So those are some of the pictures we took from the site.

Are they on the applicant's property?

I was trying to find pictures in the staff report, but then I saw there they are.

Oh, so that's the fence?

Yikes.

I guess it's where the activities are going to happen is going to prove to be where whether this fencing is protective or whether people are using that huge play area behind the fence where there is no screening.

So that's a little uncertain.

It appeared to me that the first picture, the one on the left, showed the screening with the house with such standing than the screening than the house.

All right, thank you.

Okay I move that the board adopt the attached resolution attachment F to approve the special exception with conditions contained therein.

Any further discussion?

Okay we can call the vote.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Very good.

Thank you.

Y'all have a good afternoon.

Thanks.

Let's see, Frank's already on there.

Number 11, revocable license agreement for construction of drainage improvements and county property along Eastern Avenue.

Good afternoon.

My heart's still racing from running upstairs.

Okay, I will speak up.

Okay.

Thank you.

I apologize.

It seems to pop up in the window that I'm trying to use here.

Can you see my screen?

Yeah, from this standpoint, it's fine.

I mean, your notes are down below.

Yes.

Yeah, for some reason my slideshow is on a different screen.

I can't recognize that screen.

I can give it one more try if you'd like.

Board for seeing me today.

I'm here to you, before you rather, to ask or recommend approval of a revocable license agreement for construction of drainage improvements on county property along Eastern Avenue.

Background on this project is that development in the West Hall area has occurred in phases.

West Hall 5, I'll have a map up in a minute, the homes were completed in 2012

and Eastern Avenue was completed afterwards and there's kind of an area where grading did not accommodate drainage and we have some minor flooding.

The property where the flooding is occurring was dedicated to the county for a greenway and for a public park space, which is why we're here in front of you today because the board represents or is the owner of this land.

This is a map showing where the minor flooding occurs.

This is Eastern Avenue.

And this is West Hall 5.

And this is Johnna Street.

And this is the county property parcel, parcel tax map 56-HA.

And so that's kind of where we are out in Crozet.

Here are some photos which show you what happens even during any kind of rain event.

It doesn't have to be a flooding event.

It can be a two or 10-year storm event that can cause flooding here depending on ground conditions and if it's rained recently.

So this is the backyard.

You can see it's starting to damage the bottom of this fence over time.

The trees in this area,

have died.

They've been replanted once.

So they lasted for a little while and then they died because their feet are wet.

So they're not meant to be wet.

And this shows where the water flows over the sidewalk and creates a hazard for pedestrians and mostly during the winter when it can ice up.

So the next steps will be to survey the area and then complete designs for both options.

We have two options that we're looking at.

There might be a third now that's cropped up.

Work with FES to decide the best option to move forward with and develop a replanting plan because there will be tree removal required for either option, but the developer has

has committed to replanting trees, as many trees as he takes out.

And if we ask him to plant more, I'm sure he will, but I can't commit him to that.

And then complete repairs in the spring of 2021 or as soon as possible, actually.

We're trying to get this road dedicated and everything else we think should be ready to go.

Considering confirmation of site distance

out there, and a few other minor issues.

But other than that, I think we're getting close to acceptance.

So the staff recommendation is for the board to adopt the resolution attached to the staff report.

And that's the end of my presentation.

Supervisor Price?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. Pohl, thank you for your presentation.

I don't have any questions.

My comment would be that I see this resolution as a developer being a good neighbor and accepting responsibility to correct the problem.

So thank you very much and thank you for county staff that worked to bring this to resolution.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions.

And just so I understand how this happened in the first place, it's the same developer for the houses, same developer that built the road.

No, they were two different developers.

The original developer, I think, was

What type is Hauser?

Bob Hauser, potentially?

And so who looks at the site plans and all that?

I'm just trying to understand how the stormwater plan didn't get done properly.

I'm not trying to blame anybody.

Sure, it was a road plan that was reviewed for this and there wasn't sufficient, in my opinion after going back and looking at it, there wasn't sufficient surveying of the area and they tied into some existing, the existing side streets and so I think it was kind of a

a miss, but things do happen and this is a circumstance where they're willing to fix it.

So I didn't dig too much into to that side of it.

And so that would have been done by the engineer that works for the developer that put in the road and then reviewed by our staff.

All right.

Thank you.

I think I'm good on this one.

Yes, thank you.

So there was a change in ownership, but is it true that the buyer takes all the responsibility of the previous owner on when that kind of transfer happens?

So there's no question about being responsible to fix this.

Okay, so that's good to know.

This was the subject of a very big field trip last week and both the VDOT people and county staff people realized that the site distance issues are huge so there's going to be a lot more work that has to be done out there but we had very good up close and personal view of the sanding water behind these people's houses which they have been complaining about for a long time like more than two years so

I'm very glad to have this done.

And if there's a way to sort of drain some of that out sooner than waiting till next year, that I guess is great.

But if it really needs to be done before warm weather again, because this is a real source of mosquitoes for everybody.

There has not been a request to replace that fence, so I don't know.

I'm not, I can't, I should not have said that there is damage.

I'd see that there's water on some of the boards.

Okay, very good.

So those are all excellent things.

And the other last thing to follow up is I think I understand correctly that this drainage is considered part of the bonded road project.

That's been my determination, yes.

Just a comment.

I really appreciate, as I think it was Donna that said earlier, we certainly appreciate the developers stepping up to the plate for this, but when I look at this picture and read about this, this is exactly a problem that you see a lot in the older urban neighborhoods, except they don't have the sidewalks.

So you visualize that problem without the sidewalks.

And it gets to part of our, and we have developed, no developers are around, no one's stepping up to the plate.

So I just wanna make that comment that this is not an uncommon problem in the old urban neighborhoods.

Ned has them, I have them, we all have them, I'm sure.

I think we should say they're in every neighborhood, everywhere.

That's what I said.

Yep.

We all have them.

We talk about how to fix them because there's certainly more of a problem in some areas than they are in others.

I can show you pictures where yards look totally flooded.

Having said that, it's really great that this developer is stepping up to fix the problem.

And there were two options out there.

It's clear option two is the preferred.

I thought that there was going to be engineering that was going to impact that decision.

I was not prepared to make that choice.

But I certainly don't want to have the sort of cheap and dirty way done.

Did I misunderstand Frank?

Yeah, I'm not asking the board to decide on an option today because we haven't fleshed out the issues with both options.

So we want to come up with a figure on that now.

My mistake.

Okay, I just put away the proper.

Right, any further discussion?

Okay, we'll call the vote.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Galway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Malek?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

The board, we're about an hour ahead of time or an hour and 15 minutes ahead of time.

So, NLC, I believe, is ready for item 12, which is consideration of new enabling authority to levy taxes on the sale or use of cigarettes and two finance and budget tax deadline extension ordinances.

So, if no objection by the board, I think we should go ahead and knock this item out and keep the recess scheduled where it is at and see how this plays out.

I am here tonight with three of my team members who are going to be bringing forward three items for the board's consideration.

Lori Alshaus will start us off.

She is the Assistant CFO for Policy and Partnership, and she will lead us in a discussion about whether or not the Board of Supervisors wants to consider levying a cigarette tax in the county.

And then we'll move from there to Jen Lin who is our division chief over revenue administration.

So she assesses and collects all taxes in the county.

And she will lead a discussion about changing one of the due dates for next year from June 5th to June 25th.

And then lastly, Peter Lynch, who is the county assessor, will discuss with the board a possibility of extending a deadline for very specific supplemental bills, not all supplemental bills for real estate, but just a small segment of supplemental bills that we have.

up to an additional 90 days.

And he will go into much more detail later, but I did want to give you a moment to process that before I turn it over to Lori to talk about cigarette taxes.

Thank you.

Hello.

Thank you, Nelsie.

My name is Lori Allshouse.

I'm the Assistant CFO for Policy and Partnerships.

What my role today will be is to provide you with an overview of some new enabling authority to levy taxes on the sale or use of cigarettes.

So you all recall that the General Assembly provided counties with the options to add additional tax, be able to levy different taxes and make different changes, somewhat similar to cities.

This has been something that's been long coming for counties.

And what this page is is a list of legislative items that you've seen from Mr. Campner a couple times.

Here are the things that we are able to do now that we weren't able to do before.

The first thing is we're authorized to impose a tax on plastic bags.

We are not bringing that forward to you today for a couple reasons.

We want to focus this conversation today on the cigarette tax.

All these other options that were provided by the General Assembly are very important for your consideration.

What we thought, giving where we are with the pandemic and giving where we are today

thinking about next year's budget.

What we want to do is just bring the cigarette tax forward to you today and not bring these other items forward.

And the first reason on plastic bags is that is a very important item that we think we really should explore.

However, it does have impacts on businesses, especially small businesses at this time, because a lot of times they have to program things differently within their stores to be able to impose this tax.

So we're pausing on bringing that forward to you today because of that.

There's also a taxing authority to raise the limit on food and beverage tax.

Again, we're not bringing that forward today because of the timing and the pandemic.

And also, there's an option to remove the limit on the transient occupancy tax.

Again, same reason.

We think this isn't the right time to bring that forward, although we should

I talk about all of these at some date.

And then the ability to impose emission tax of up to 10% is another item that we believe would be a better brought back at a later time for conversation.

So today the focus will just be on the imposing a cigarette tax of up to 40 cents per pack.

Any questions?

So up until now, only Virginia cities and towns and two counties were able to impose a cigarette tax.

If the tax is approved, staff recommends we go with this with a regional approach.

You may know that you can administer this tax as an individual county or jurisdiction or you can do what's being done in Northern Virginia where 19 jurisdictions have gone together to administer this tax in a regional way with a regional board.

So we've been on a couple meetings across the state.

Just yesterday, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission had a meeting to talk with folks about how you would administer this as a county.

And there was a lot of conversation about regional approaches.

So if this tax is approved, we do recommend that we go with a regional approach to this.

We do know that there are Fluvanna County, Charlottesville, and Orange County have all

mention, their staff has mentioned that they would be interested in joining in a regional approach to administer this tax.

There's a lot to administering cigarette tax.

It has to do with stamps and there's a lot of, there's distributors, there's a lot of activity, there's compliance issues.

And so if this tax is approved, we think that we should go with a regional approach.

This will minimize our staff resources required.

We will not need to store or manage the stamps.

They actually have to be kept in a vault.

It would streamline the process.

There's this option to do what's called dual stamping.

Each cigarette pack has a stamp on it for the jurisdiction for the taxes, and there's a way to save costs for that.

And then costs would be allocated by the number of jurisdictions and the sales that occur in your jurisdiction.

And there's also a compliance component to cigarette taxes, and if you did it with a regional board, you could have a regional compliance approach to it.

Revenues are important to have a conversation about.

Revenues are hard to project for cigarette taxes, especially in your first year out.

And the other thing that we've heard about revenues is often jurisdictions will

will project more revenues that actually come in.

It's also a revenue that may decrease over time.

You do know that there's e-cigarettes, there's other things going on than just tobacco cigarettes, so this tax is a declining revenue likely.

This slide in front of you today is the city of Charlottesville cigarette tax revenues.

And you can see over time how the revenues have performed.

These are the actuals that were received by Charlottesville.

And you can see around fiscal year 15, the city increased its tax rate from 35 cents a pack to 55 cents a pack.

So you can see that initial time period where they did increase that tax rate.

And then again, you can start seeing the revenues decline over time again.

So I think Charlottesville is a very important one for us to consider when we think about revenues.

They have a formula that they use to project revenues.

If we would move forward with this, if the board would be interested in it, we would probably use the city's formula as our starting place.

Revenues are also impacted by the big box stores, the stores that sell cigarettes in your community.

and so we would take the revenue projection process that the city starts with and then probably modify it.

Off the top of my head of just starting with their revenue projection, it looks like it could be about $750,000 to $1 million annually if Albemarle County would be interested in doing this.

And again, that's a swag right now and it'd have to be scrubbed.

There's some additional staff recommendations as well.

So if the board is interested in levying this tax upon the sale or use of cigarettes, we would need to schedule a public hearing on a potential ordinance to do so.

In addition to that, staff has additional recommendations.

We think that the board should consider enacting the cigarette tax at the 40 cents per pack

We also would recommend that we would start at mid-year, so it wouldn't start in the beginning of fiscal year 22, it would be in January.

That's in alignment with a lot of our taxes that are based on a calendar year.

It would also provide us time to put the regional approach in place.

The second bullet is about the regional approach.

The county actively would want to support the development of this, so we would take some time to work with the other jurisdictions to set up this regional approach to this.

We also think that if we would enact this tax, we should think about it through an equity lens.

and working closely with Siri and her office to consider the impacts of this cigarette on different populations and think of it through that lens.

We also would need to finalize that revenue estimate.

I gave you a beginning estimate on that, but we would need to finalize that.

And then if approved, we recommend that these cigarette tax revenues after the administrative costs could be dedicated to a specific category.

It isn't required, but you could say this particular tax revenue could be dedicated to a certain expenditure in your budget.

And I believe that's my last slide on it.

Thank you, I'm going to start with questions first and then we can go to some discussion areas if needed.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Yes, Ms.

Ochshouse, thank you for your presentation.

Could you go back one slide, please?

Yeah, so here with the staff recommendations, first and second bullet, totally agree with.

The third bullet, explain to me, if you would please, exactly what the county

means by considering it through an equity lens?

Are we talking about population demographic?

Are we talking about business demographic?

Well, I don't know the series joining us right now.

She would probably have a more precise answer than I have.

But I do know that in other jurisdictions, cigarette tax may have more of an impact on lower income residents.

So that would be one consideration.

It may also, to your point, may affect different businesses differently that provide it.

So for example, smaller convenience stores or smaller businesses may be more impactful to them.

than a larger business or a larger organization.

So I do know that those would be two considerations.

Supervisor Price, I can also add one more thing.

I think the other piece of this would be to support that last bullet and looking at where this funding and how it could support

um efforts you know whether you know there's all kinds of equity related efforts that might uh play into how the the county spends the money um so it's it's absolutely what um Ms.

Okay, I really do appreciate that.

First off, I believe we must go with the regional approach.

If we don't do that, what we're basically doing, particularly for our smaller businesses, is we're simply sending customers across the county line to the adjacent store.

I am basically opposed to tobacco usage because of the health care costs but I recognize that it is an addictive substance.

So I really would like to know exactly what we mean through the equity lens as it deals both with demographics of population as well as businesses.

Right now I don't believe that in Albemarle County we have one of the mega sellers of tobacco products.

If you go to Zions

the sheets for example are 29 north there's a sheets up there those are the the type of stores that sell massive volumes of cigarettes on tobacco products and um so clearly any type sort of attacks could have a disproportionate impact on our smaller mom and pop business stores um so i really do want to know all of those considerations the impact on businesses as well as demographic populations

I really appreciate Ms.

Allshouser's slide that talked about the changing amount of revenue that Charlottesville is receiving through this.

Hopefully as people decline their consumption of tobacco products, it will be a declining revenue.

And candidly, I would offer as a suggestion that if we do approve it, that the funds should be used towards healthcare costs, things that will bring better health into County.

That can be through our health district or

What exactly is a tax on the use of cigarettes?

I understand a tax on the sale of cigarettes.

Maybe Mr. Camper would have to address.

Is that just simple language or is there an actual difference between a sale or use of a cigarette under the tax code?

I have no further questions.

I'm not sure what use means other than it is intended to capture or at least make the dealer subject to the tax if they try to convey the cigarettes in a way other than a sale.

Thank you, Mr. Cameron.

I appreciate that.

That was a quick response to an unexpected perhaps question.

Thank you all and thank you Chair Galloway.

I have no further questions at this time.

Yes, I definitely support continuing this process.

I think this is something that's long overdue.

I do have a couple questions though.

Thank you for the question.

Yes, they just indicated they're interested in a regional approach to it.

So what we would do is we would want to actively start meeting more with them, also working with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and there may be others that may want to join in as well.

So as a regional approach and also that saves us money and time, I'd definitely be in favor of a regional board for this whole process.

But I also want to make sure that since we're going, it's going January 1, 2022, I wish it was sooner, but since it takes that long, I want to make sure that

We, that Orange, Rivanna, and Charlottesville are on board, and that

You know, everything goes smoothly because if it doesn't, I mean, I think we should be prepared to frankly go it alone, if in fact they don't want to join with us.

So I'd like that to be in the back of everyone's mind that, okay, this isn't working out, so we need to do it this way.

As long as you can just keep thinking that way, that would make me very comfortable.

Is that possible?

Okay, yeah.

I just want to make sure this goes through one way or the other.

Thank you, and that's all the questions.

And we are going with the maximum, the 40 cent tax.

That's our recommendations, yes.

Okay, good.

All right, thank you very much.

Yes, thank you.

Lori, when you say $750,000 to $1 million a year for the possible revenue on 40 cent, is that just for Albemarle County?

That would be again a very early estimate for Albemarle County based on the same formula that the city uses for the city.

There's also other counties that are doing a similar formula.

Basically it's the population of your community and the tax rate that you're charging and then based on a formula based on what the proposed usage may be.

And you said that with a regional approach, our proportion would be based on sales.

and that would be sales in Albemarle County.

Is that correct?

Okay.

So when I first heard, I suspect before I got on the board, the previous boards had been talking about this, but when I got on the board, I remember

It's been several years now.

The discussion was that we'd probably bring $250,000.

I'm assuming that was a smaller tax.

Is that correct?

I know we've talked about it in different ways.

I know that there was a committee that looked at different revenues many years back, and they were projecting about a million.

But it depends on your rate, of course, and usage.

and yeah I would think that our first year we'd have to be very careful with what we project and that the first year really we should just possibly you know collect you know make sure that we project it more accurately as we move forward.

We also heard from the city of Charlottesville that's been administering this tax for a long time that the revenues don't come in very consistently because basically you sell the

Stamps to a distributor.

And so it's when distributors buy your stamps.

So it's a very, it's what Charlottesville actually called a lumpy revenue.

It actually comes in at different times.

Yeah, I kind of I like the idea of looking at this as a health for health reasons to reduce smoking rather than as a revenue source, although clearly it'll bring in some revenue.

And I certainly would approve of going forward.

I would suspect that, you know, we're talking about our surrounding counties.

If Orange and Flubana wants to do this, but Louisa doesn't, then

I suspect some of those other counties will not feel comfortable going ahead with it.

So I would agree that we should look at going by ourselves if surrounding counties don't want to do this.

And that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I don't think that there's anything that my fellow supervisors have said that I disagree with.

I will certainly add that Virginia has historically has been a tobacco state.

And so this has been a big lift over the years for Virginia to do anything regarding tobacco.

I certainly oppose cigarette smoking from the medical standpoint.

and I definitely agree that it should be a regional approach if at all possible, but if not, we need to just take it on.

I will point out during this pandemic, the science has come out very clearly and said that cigarette smoke is a vector for virus.

And I would suggest, and I have, you know, but it would seem like to me if we know it's a vector for the coronavirus, it's probably a vector for other viruses as well.

But it certainly is a vector for the coronavirus.

That's another reason to discourage it.

So I agree with Liz, discouraging this from the medical standpoint and not the revenue standpoint is the way we should go with this.

To me, and having said that, if you want to look at this through an equity lens, then the equity lens says you spend the revenues on medical support and how we can make our community healthier.

and that takes financial support.

So I definitely would be in favor of the revenues being used to improve the life expectancy and the medical well-being of our community.

And I think I've answered the questions here.

So with that, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

I wholeheartedly support this and in asking questions of Greg as I was reading my staff report was surprised to realize that the Cane restaurant bill was way back in 2008 because we've had 12 blessed years of being able to go out in public and not have to be covered with other people's smoke.

So having made multiple trips over many years to Richmond on this issue, and also when I was on the planning district years ago, we had absolutely no response from anybody in support to join us in a regional effort.

So the fact that Flubana Orange and the city are now interested is a huge step forward and change in view.

And I'm very glad about that.

One of the biggest obstacles in Richmond was the

perception that localities don't manage this very well.

And Mr. Smith, with whom we have received a correspondence in the last couple of weeks, basically shot down all of our efforts at the committee meeting that Louise Lucas's bill was being considered and said what a fiasco it was going to be because the counties just can't do this right.

talked to him in the hall afterwards and said, why are you taking this attitude?

And he said, well, I just see it.

And he said, you go organize yourselves regionally and I'll support you.

So I'm going to hold him to that.

If we can get it to go.

And I think that dedicating the revenues to health improvements for underserved populations is an absolutely spectacular approach.

I would expect the city will have to come down in the amount of tax that they have if they're going to be in our regional

thing because right now they're at 55 and we cannot go higher than 40.

So perhaps there's a legal answer for that that I'm unaware of.

And that I guess is my, oh, it is curious that North Carolina raises I think lots of tobacco too and they have had a cigarette tax for years that is many, many, many, many times more than Virginia.

So it's so interesting how they approach all these different things.

Yes, I just had one other comment.

I know Vice Chair Price mentioned the sheets of Zion in this big area of purchasing of cigarettes.

I wanted to remind everyone that we will be having two Wawa's in Alamo County along with their sheets so you know anyway I just wanted to mention that I also I like the idea because of the fact that we would have declining revenues eventually

I like the idea of maybe putting it into something that would be more, helping out something that would be more permanent that would help regarding the equity issues.

I'm thinking of something that would help those areas where we could do something, maybe after school daycare, maybe

having something for those areas where children are involved.

I'm not a big proponent of using these taxes because I also think

I think it would go really well, would go over well with the public to use any of these monies toward education or toward schools or toward after school programs that really do affect some of our poorer neighborhoods.

make a couple comments on the regional ward item.

So I think obviously there'll be time after this as we continue with the process.

I agree with everything else and that should go to the next step.

The thought should be given to the regional board just from the standpoint of we have the TJPDC and all of the counties that are included in that and there's already a mechanism

For me, it's already a structure.

If we create a new board, what comes along with that from a cost perspective?

Obviously, then the tax revenues collected from this would

So I would think we'd need some consideration of that.

I think of the TJPDC just because it's a structure in place, not that that means there's not costs associated with it, there certainly would be.

Because just a range of little discussion or conversation among the counties kind of a what are you doing, this is what we're doing kind of deal.

And then it plays out where counties aren't trying to undercut or

you know, play games.

Well, we're going to have a lower tax than them and then maybe that'll facilitate more revenue.

I mean, I think that's the intent of a regional conversation is to avoid that kind of gamesmanship so that everybody can be on the same page with where everybody's at.

And it seems that our participation with TJPBC will help facilitate those conversations.

I know that when Vice Chair Price and I are at those meetings, we give updates on what we're considering.

and a lot of times there's a lot of overlap of what we're talking about so the information gets shared on the roundtable portion.

I don't think I would be opposed obviously to the regional conversation, but I think it would bear to make sure we scrutinize what putting a new regional board in place would mean cost-wise.

And then I certainly wouldn't be opposed to tax revenues going to health items, but what I would expect that would come back, and I fully expect, even if we all said, yeah, great to go to health, that there would be several options of where those revenues could go to offset.

I know that years ago, when I was on the school board, I wrote a letter of endorsement for a state bill where a cigarette tax would have been used specifically for school.

We could probably sit here and list 20 or 30 things that this could be used for.

And before we jump to any conclusions, you should have some pretty well-thought conversations about if we're implementing a new tax, how specifically should this tax revenue be used?

I think it merits making sure we win the gamut of all the different options that could be there.

And then obviously, I fully expect that, you know,

While understanding the equity lens piece, then hearing any time a new tax is considered, we do have to have a full understanding of how it will impact those who are going to pay the tax, both in businesses and what that means to them.

So I agree with other supervisors, and I expect we'll have that full understanding before making the decision.

There was just one that I'd like to respond to to a couple of the questions that were raised.

My understanding is that if you have a regional board you don't have to have all the same tax rates.

So that's just one thing.

I mean, you could set it up any way you want to set it up, but I don't think it was a requirement for the Northern Board, nor is it a requirement that it has to be.

It could be, I believe, a Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

There could be some groups that could help facilitate that.

But the only one that we have in Virginia right now is in Northern Virginia.

So I did hear a talk by the person who set that up and a lot of the details on how they set theirs up.

So we do have a model that we can learn from.

But I don't think it's dictated that there's a certain model that we have to use.

But there are some, there is one model out there

I understand that I know that anytime you implement a new tax that there are just going to be costs associated with it.

It's a great point.

And I do want to point out those numbers that I shared was like the base revenues.

It didn't include the net of the administration.

I think how we need to be theorized as we're thinking about regional boards or what have you.

I'd imagine TJPDC is very good at that.

I have a couple of questions, if I may.

So questions to add to the list, not answers today.

The planning district is a federally oriented organization, so I don't know if they are authorized to do this or not, so that's something you can find out.

And I do know that in other topics, counties from different planning districts have been allowed to partner with

hours.

So that may be a way, if we get through the original authorization hump, that Orange or somebody else could join our thing wherever it is.

But I know that with the planning district being so focused on particular issues, I look forward to having that answer about whether they are authorized to expand into this role.

So they could or could maybe not be our group.

And that's all I had to leave.

All right.

I'd like to make a motion.

Second.

All right.

Now, the only other point is this public hearing is not going to happen until we have done the research and everything else is happening.

This is not coming right away.

Am I correct in that?

I mean, I just, this sounds like we're about to go to the public hearing now and I'm totally unprepared to do that.

So if that's what we're talking about, that someday when we're ready, then we'll be, we'll authorize to move forward.

Thank you.

Harris, Mr. Gallaway, Mr. Puston-Kirtley, Ms.

McKeel, Ms.

Honorable board members, my name is Jen Lin.

I'm the chief of revenue administration for finance and budget, and I bring to you for an ordinance change to amend the 2021 due date for first installment tax for property taxes.

Next slide.

So in October this year, the board

In October this year, the board approved the budget development calendar to improve alignment with the school's budget.

and extend the time for the board to approve the annual tax rate from April 15 to April 15 to May 5 in fiscal year 21.

So because of this change, we recommend to extend the deadline for the property taxes that affects real estate, tangible personal property, machinery tool, mobile home and public service taxes

from the current June 5th of 2021 to June 25th of 2021 so that we have an adequate time to prepare the bills and for the taxpayer to make the payments without the deadline approved on May 5th that we cannot run it earlier than that.

This change is not going to affect any other tax due days.

in 2021.

And if the board is okay with this, this requires a public hearing.

Any questions?

Supervisor Price?

Is this something we're going to do each year?

No, this is just a temporary one for fiscal year 21.

The reason we did it is we did it as a temporary one.

Just to be clear, because I had the same question as Liz, I guess in my head then what you're asking is that I think of this as a pilot.

That's right, yes, it's a temporary one.

Yeah, Supervisor McKeel, do you mind if I interject here?

So we did this this year, but we did it because we were in a pandemic, right?

We pushed back the deadline to June 30th.

What we found is that did create some challenges because it was a day before, it was the last day of the fiscal year.

And so from closing that audit and doing the CAFR and doing all the accruals, that actually was one of the unintended consequences of going to the last day.

um so what we want to do next year there's two goals uh in looking and learning from the pandemic what we learned from the pandemic is why don't we push back when uh mr richardson provides his recommended budget to the board in order to take advantage of updated revenue assessment numbers so in order to do that it sets in motion all of these dates because of all the requirements that are set forward by the state right one of them being um when the board approves the annual tax rate

And so that problem, that challenge that we have there is we needed to push back from the June 5th date and we tried to pick a date that we think is going to work and then also align it with some supplemental billing that we have.

That's the piece that when Jen and I and Lori talked through this, we still don't know the unintended consequences.

So we want to play it through one more year, pulling it up five days.

from where we were during the pandemic, but pushing it back 20 days from where we typically are.

And then we're gonna reevaluate this as we look at the whole cycle of tax rates and the timing and the deadlines as we move forward.

So I wouldn't say, I mean, it's kind of a pilot, it's kind of split in hairs.

We're testing a theory that we think is gonna work, but we wanna make sure it's gonna work before we do this in perpetuity.

Yes, that helped a lot because what we're doing is we're saying that we may want to move forward with this permanently.

We've realized the problem because of the pandemic, right?

Yes.

Even when we come out of the pandemic, we may very well keep this change.

But we need to see what else.

And I'm all for that.

I just think it's confusing for the public when we have dates that shift all the time.

I do too, and thank you, Nelsie, for that explanation because I did not understand that from the last explanation.

So, great.

That's what I was kind of thinking was going on, but I wasn't sure.

Excuse me, Liz.

Thank you very much, Nelsie.

I appreciate that.

So we will think about this more as a, I'm not going to get into temporary pilot then, but we may well make some adjustments the next time and then come back out.

Absolutely.

Here's something that we can lock in and feel more comfortable with.

That's great.

Thank you very much.

Yes, thank you.

So I remember within the last couple of years, the legislature allowed us to have a shorter interval between

in the advertisement phase for the last public hearing, which rather than 30 days, I think it's now down to seven or maybe 14.

So that allows us a little flexibility too that we may be able to use next year.

My question, if someone could provide a little more information about the normal processing time, I think that would be very helpful, assuming that the board takes all the time it can, which is May 5th.

Then I assume it takes you two weeks to get them printed and another week to get them, or two weeks to get them delivered if we're using the postal service.

So I just want to make sure that we have enough time for the taxpayers to get home from their trip, get their money together, get it in, and we're not putting people in a trap.

I can answer that question, Ms.

Mallek.

Thank you.

So if in order for the bill due date is June 25th, if we change that, so the bill needs to be by the taxpayers hand around the 25th of May within that period of time.

So this really is between May 5th to June

to May 25th.

That's about 20 days for us to get the close the book.

We usually can't close this during in the middle of the day in the middle of the week.

We close this over the weekend because it's a large process so that May 5th is during the week

Day.

So that pushes to May 8th-ish.

So that leaves us approximately about two to three weeks time for us to close the book and get the bills ready for sending it out to the vendors to have it ready, reviewing the bills.

That's the whole process that takes.

And Ms.

Malek, we will, Supervisor Malek, we will provide kind of what it used to look like and what it will look like so that you can see our goal.

The goal is always a month to give taxpayers a month.

That's excellent follow-up.

I'm a little more tuned into this today because I received phone calls this morning from some White Hall residents who haven't been getting any mail.

And it turns out that the Postmaster has down multiple positions and has to then have Monday, Wednesday routes on some places and Tuesday, Thursday routes on the other places.

So I want us all to remember anytime we are relying on the Postal Service for anything, we have got to figure out how we can give the maximum amount of time to do this.

And I know in past years you've advertised, advertised, advertised to say, look for your tax bill.

If you haven't gotten it, please call us.

We'll get you something else.

And

We're going to need to do that even more, I think, for a while.

Are there any further questions?

I would move that the board directs staff to schedule a public hearing on an ordinance to change the due date for the first installment of taxes in calendar year 2021.

from June 5th to June 25th.

Further discussion?

OK, we can call the vote.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

All right, number three.

Hello Chair Galloway and members of the Board of Supervisors.

Thank you for having me today.

I've seen your presentation.

Okay, all right, great.

Thank you.

So yes, this is a process, this is kind of something that we want to get straight in the billing part of this process.

So the process itself is my correction of assessments.

And over the last, almost five years now that I've been the assessor,

We've been finding properties that were not being assessed or they were missing additions that had been added and we've been corrected as we're required to correcting the assessments and that correction doesn't just happen in the future, it happens by law to the current three previous years.

Now that, as you can imagine, can create a substantial tax bill.

And what happens is, as soon as I present that to the billing office and it is billed, by law, they have 30 days to pay that bill.

And like I said, that can be a pretty substantial bill.

As we've worked through this in the past, I have actually held off sending it to the billing office to give notification to the owner

This is what's going on.

And then I would provide to the billing office and then they would provide 30 days to pay the bill.

This is a better, more official way to handle that circumstance.

And it allows the billing office to give 120 days for that bill to be paid instead of just 30.

And it kind of changes the process, but it allows the same timeframe.

and basically this is we have talked a lot in my presentations before that we are doing a review of the properties of Albemarle County to make sure our records are correct and as part of that review and an additional

review that the um that GIS has helped us with the GIS office where they've looked at pictometry photo aerial photographs at properties that we are classifying as vacant and we find that there are houses on those properties.

We've been using that to identify any any information that is missing from our records.

And of course, anytime that is an actual improvement that needs to be assessed and corrected, we go back and we correct those assessments over that period of time.

So when Nelsie first came into her position, she asked me, what is one of the things that I'm likely to hear about that you deal with?

And this was the top item, you know,

I am doing these corrections and we're sending these supplemental kind of surprise tax bills to people that can cause problems and can upset taxpayers.

So that led us to this process of extending this due date.

The wording is kind of the legal wording where it talks about a waiver of penalty and interest

over that 90 days, it really is referring to just effectively an extension of the due date.

We have been experiencing about 20 to 30 of these properties a year.

There are a number of properties that were not assessed properly.

Obviously, that's a small percentage of 47, 48,000 properties that we have in the county, but it's very important, obviously, to those taxpayers that receive these bills.

As we move forward and get through fixing the problems that we've had, it's just going to be a matter of keeping our records up to date and doing that, and this is something we've always talked about again,

20% of properties per year is what we're reviewing to make sure our records are up to date.

And we might find some in those reviews, but we're not expecting it to exceed five per year at that point.

One of the, let me go to the next slide here.

So, oh I wanted to explain that you know the difference between this, this is a very specific form of supplemental bill.

It's kind of what we consider a a surprise bill or unexpected bill for the taxpayer.

Anytime that somebody builds a house or does an improvement to the property, we will

pick up the value of that new house and we will supplement the value and send them a supplemental tax bill.

Those are not, those are expected.

Whoever's building, anyone building a house should be expected that they're going to get a tax bill after it is completed.

So those are not included in this.

This ordinance, the ones that we are including are specifically those corrections of assessments.

The language allows the last point, the Director of Finance determines that good cause exists.

That kind of gives us a little bit of leeway in our determination of what applies.

The error is not due to the actor omission of the real property owner.

So this does not apply if somebody builds something without a permit.

We would not be expected to know that they're building it if they did it without a permit and we had no notification.

So that type of situation would not apply to this.

so and the basically it's referring to property or improvements that were added with a permit there was notification to the county itself but for some reason my staff did not pick it up so it could be that we did identify a problem in the interface between community develop and my office

where some permits were lost in that interface.

And that caused probably the majority of these properties that we've been fixing to be missed in the first place.

We fixed that, we found and fixed that problem in 2018.

We are just still working through finding the properties that were missed.

So that just to answer kind of why is this even happening?

So that's,

is my explanation.

Thank you.

Supervisor Price, any questions?

Yes, thank you Chair Galloway.

Mr. Lynch, thank you for your presentation and I totally understand what you're talking about.

This is not the situation as you just indicated where someone has made an improvement without getting proper permits.

Everything was done right by the property owner and there was a mistake made on the county standpoint.

With that as my understanding, I totally agree with the first three bullets that you've got here.

My question with the fourth bullet is that if the first three occur, then I believe that it should be the Director of Finance will determine that good cause exists.

And then with the concluding that the Director of Finance shall cause no penalty or interest to accrue rather than make

because in that situation

it's all based upon a mistake that was made within the county's own offices and therefore we should as not as a as an option but as a right give the individual up to the additional 90 days but other than that I concur with everything else that you've presented and definitely support that we should move forward with a public hearing to resolve this but I also want to express

How much I appreciate the county seeing that this is the right thing to do.

And I really appreciate that, you know, do well, do good aspect of county leadership management.

No questions at this time, but thank you Mr. Lynch for your presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Peter, and I'm very happy about this.

This is great.

I'm noticing that, as I listen to you talk, that there's been some confusion on my part in past years when you and others have said that we can't do this, you know, we can't give this break to this

individual because it's against the law or we're not allowed to, then I'm a little confused about what state law and what is our ordinance and rules.

And of course, that's my problem.

But I just wanted to note that as we're moving through this, that clearly I have some additional homework to do in understanding what we're allowed to change and what we are not allowed to change.

Yes, ma'am.

And I believe Anthony Bissette has joined us or Greg can answer that question.

Thank you, Greg.

And part of my answer will respond to Supervisor Price's comment about if bullet one, two, and three exist, then the Director of Finance has to find good cause.

I think the decision needs to be discretionary.

It needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to be true to the law.

I think the questions that have come up in the past generally speak of

Circumstances when there may be a request to waive penalty and interest because of certain things, certain facts exist.

One may be that the taxpayer claims that they didn't receive the bill.

and the Attorney General has opined that the public taxpayers are on notice.

They have constructed notice when the tax bills are due and payable.

So just not receiving the tax bill is not a basis to weigh penalty or to grant an extension.

What is outlined here though is when the county has

They created the problem, an error in prepping for this.

One example that was given was the circumstance when the certificate of occupancy or the building permit, somewhere between community development and finance, that gets misplaced or it never makes it to the assessor's office until a significant time has passed.

That would be great.

I mean, I'm remembering situations where I at least felt, and not the owner forgot, didn't see the bill or something like that, but things that I felt that we were actually responsible for, but that we had no ability to give the taxpayer a break.

Yeah, and to lay it out, because even the local government attorneys around the state, they struggle with these questions too.

That's great.

I think the Director of Finance has to have that flexibility.

And over time, as these cases come forward, if we are getting, you know, even just five a year, there will be a

Well I'm certainly in favor of this and I really do appreciate Peter and everybody on staff that it's important that when we make mistakes we have mistakes and say that to the public and move forward.

I think that's how you gain trust and you have credibility and you just treat your citizens and your residents fairly.

Thank you.

I am also incredibly grateful to Pete and his staff for the tremendous improvements you've made in the records and the details that you go after, which really makes it more fair for everyone as you remove the scapegoats, I mean the scofflaws, shall we say.

So one of my questions is, does this also apply to changes that are corrected because of changes in land use?

This is directly related to houses and structures and does not necessarily relate to land use unless that land use change is a correction of the assessment based on something we didn't know before.

There's something we should have known before.

It was based on something we were unaware of, which usually the land use changes are based on something we were unaware of.

And all the work that you and Eric are doing to improve the knowledge base is really going to help me with my concern that there are a lot of people who need to be doing more.

The connection between finance and the building permit process has concerned me for years.

And during all the building we've had in Crozet over the last 10 years, it became very apparent that a new or one of the methods used to avoid assessment was that builders would not call for the final CO.

until they had a buyer all lined up.

And that could have been a year.

Then the house was complete and they are just getting away with it at a 40% or 60% level.

So I hope that that kind of thing is in the improvement list so that you don't have to wait for that phone call anymore because that is a real concern.

And I'm very glad you're not including things where people do a lot of building without permits because that's just rewarding people.

for misbehavior.

So that's really all I had.

Thank you very much.

I can answer your question in regards to the builders not calling for a final.

I did find when I came here that kind of the practice was to wait for that final and to get to CO before the appraiser staff would go out and look at it, pay property to make sure it was complete.

But my policy is that they check those permits that they have to continue to see if they are complete.

And then according to the law, it's basically when it's substantially complete.

There doesn't have to be an owner in it, a new buyer in it.

It doesn't have to be occupied yet.

Supervisor Price you had an additional question?

An additional comment.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

And you know I really appreciate Mr. Campner's ability always on no notice at all to answer my off-the-wall questions.

And I fully agree with the explanation that if a semi-annual bill is not received by a property owner it's no excuse because they know the semi-annual bills are coming out.

I just want county staff to really look at what would be a situation where a supplemental bill that the taxpayer has done everything properly about and Bullets 1, 2, 3 are met where there would not be good cause

And I don't want to get bogged down in that discussion today, but I'm struggling to see where if one, two, and three are met, that good cause should not be found.

And I would just like county staff to review that for when it comes back for a public hearing.

I really appreciate, as every other supervisor has said, acknowledging that this is something we need to do.

It's the right thing to do.

I have no other questions or comments and I would be more than happy to make that motion that we schedule a hearing on this.

Thank you all.

I will second the motion.

Second.

All right any further discussion?

You can call the vote.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Thank you all.

No, there's not.

I'm going to wait for Nelsie.

Sorry.

I couldn't find my mute button.

I know that the next item we will have others joining us from outside.

They are available at three.

They're on standby.

I am.

Thank you for that, Chair Galloway.

Hi, I'm Nelsie Birch, the Chief Financial Officer for the county.

I think I forgot to mention that during the last presentation.

We have a few members of my team here who were instrumental in the CAFR that I do want to recognize before I start with some prepared remarks that I wanted to introduce the CAFR with.

First of all, Kristi Shifflett, who some of you are very familiar with her.

She's been serving as the interim deputy

Chief Financial Officer for the county.

She is on loan from the county executive's office.

They brought her over earlier this spring to help with the audit and make sure that we could address some of the challenges from last year.

And I can tell you that the finance department has definitely benefited from her leadership and certainly has made my onboarding much easier than it could have been if she wasn't in the seat that she's in.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to her.

The second person

which I'm not sure if she has been in front of the entire board yet, is Cecilia Baber.

She is our new controller.

Cecilia has worked for the county for a while.

She's been here for I think about five years as one of the chief accountants.

But she was put into this controller role that was created and better refined from what Lisa Breedness, some of you knew Lisa when she was here, she was in charge of financial management.

and we change things a little bit to create a controller position which is responsible for all the accounting, payroll and risk management operations for the county.

So I wanted to introduce her.

In a moment I'm going to turn it over to David but as I mentioned David Foley who's our auditor with Robinson Farmer Cox.

I wanted to take a moment

because as we were preparing for this, I realized that I'm entering my sixth month, which seems absolutely crazy that I've been here six months.

And I thought it was beneficial for you all to hear my thoughts about the audit, the audit process, where we are to date and where we're going.

And it'll just take a few moments of your time.

So I appreciate that.

You know, what you're going to hear from David Foley from Robinson Farmer Cox is that we have a clean audit.

And if you start to pull back the layers, and some of you attended the audit committee last week, you see that our reserves are healthy.

Our financial foundation is really strong.

We are triple AAA and that's not going to change based on the audit numbers that you're going to see.

But what I've discovered is that as you pull back the layers, and from my vantage point, when you look at the operations and you see the work that happens in that next layer down, the work that a lot of you don't see.

And as you all remember, when I first met you, I was

I said, success to me is when I don't have to come in front of you and explain a problem or a challenge.

And we fix things and people and residents see it.

Business owners see it.

But what I found is that our employees are working tirelessly.

You all know that.

And I can confirm that in the finance and budget shop.

But they specifically worked tirelessly to put this audit together.

And I didn't want to miss an opportunity to share with you all the challenge that that created at a time when we are also processing this $19 million CARES funding that we've talked about that the county received.

And we have an entirely new team because we have significant turnover in finance and budget.

and we brought budget over and there's a new chief financial officer.

So there's been a significant level of transition in our department to pull off this audit and we did it.

And I'm gonna tell you a little bit of my concerns and some concerns I have in a moment because what I'm finding is how we were able to pull off this audit is not sustainable.

The team that did this, and this is my charge, I take this very personally, that this as the leader of this group, this is what I'm going to be working on for the next year, is how do we make a much more sustainable and succinct budget and accounting and auditing process so that the team doesn't have to work so hard in order to pull it off.

And it's not necessarily yeoman's work to pull off an audit that happens every year.

And I do want to share a few of our accomplishments just so you all know like what we've been doing over the last six months since I've been here.

A few of them you already know because I introduced Cecilia who has a different title and a different position.

So we've reorganized and clarified some roles and responsibilities in several key areas.

of Finance.

We created a treasury division that's going to do our debt, cash, and investment management.

That was under financial management before, so we've created it as a specialty because of the growing debt and revenue that the county has and all of our obligations and the challenges and complications that come with it.

We've made some changes in budgeting.

As I mentioned, they were brought over under finance.

and Accounting, we've created some roles and responsibilities there.

One of the coolest things I think for me in this role and what I pride myself on is the staff development.

Christy and I have spent a lot of time, she started before I did, really working with the team because we had a retention problem.

We had significant turnover.

And so you have to go back and focus on the staff that's here, develop them, grow them.

And much of that you saw today when you were able to listen to three people

who are on our team that we're developing in different ways to do different things.

We're breaking down the silos, we're working through some training and development and trying to do that in a much more equitable manner that has not happened in finance before to make sure everybody's getting training opportunities.

We started to shore up some administrative policies that were missing or they needed to be updated to reflect the new and changing reality that we're in.

And as you'll hear from Mr. Foley in a moment, our pre-audit work that was managed by Christy

and Cecilia.

So this is what happens before they come here.

This is in the spring.

Our pre-audit work is going to receive accolades from him that I'll let him share with you all that I'm really proud of because it was at a point of some serious challenges with staff.

And so with all of that, with all of these accomplishments, I did want to point out a few things that are of concern so that you're aware and you can see kind of where we're headed with finance and budget.

And one of the issues that's probably most apparent to you right now is that you have a CAFR that is in draft form.

And so while we're doing all of these great things, I still know that there are challenges because we didn't pull off finalizing that CAFR for you today.

It doesn't mean the audit is in jeopardy.

It doesn't even mean that the CAFR is going to markedly change from what you see in draft to completed.

But that tells me that we've got some things that we've got to do differently next year so that we're not in this position again.

And so much of what you're going to hear today is going to be great.

But also, I wanted to explain that we've had turnover, lack of policies and procedures, not having key positions identified.

But the last one is our technological challenges.

And I'm not sure how much that has come out.

And I know Ms.

Falardo in CDD, when she did her work program, talked about the need to update

County View.

And we have been working together on some updates and needs that we have on our technological side.

Because what happens and where it's hitting us now with this CAFR is that we've had massive turnover but we also have a system that's really hard to train on.

and so when you have an inability to just really quickly bring in accountants quickly because our systems are so challenged it really bogs down and makes us less efficient and so over time we're going to have to make some investments on the technology side so that next year and the year after and the year after we continue to make improvements which we're doing right now which I'm proud to say we've got a plan for this but it's going to take some very strategic investments

in technology and also potentially staffing.

What I will say is one of the areas that we've identified that bogged down this CAFR from getting completed on time was grant management and capital assets are two areas that we need to focus on.

We don't have specific accountants dedicated to that and we need to.

But I am putting forward with Jeff's support and Cecilia's leadership

a plan in order to do that without adding to the staffing complement of finance.

We're restructuring a little bit so that we're not, it's not costing taxpayers more and I'm not adding to the position composition in finance to do this.

We're just focused on what is most important and using some of the vacant positions that we have now to do that.

So with all of that, I didn't want to get up here and cause any unnecessary concern.

And I really do hope that that's not the way that this is being construed or being interpreted.

Or maybe hopefully I didn't mess up anything that gives you all concern that we've really missed the mark on this.

But I wanted to share that we do have some challenges.

We've learned from them, though, and we're putting key people in key areas to overcome them and that we are going to continue to make some strategic investments, whatever that might look like, related to our department and our financial foundation.

So next year, I mean, a goal for myself is next year.

I hope that we're in this spot six weeks earlier.

where we're bringing the CAFR to you at the end of October.

That's a goal for me.

That's a goal for Cecilia.

And that we're doing this with a team that has learned from what we've learned this year, has put the pieces of the puzzle together from the turnover that's happened in the past.

And we really are a division

and all of the divisions in finance and budget in this department will continue to work to maintain the financial integrity of the county and that you all can see that growth and that change in our enhancements over time.

So I'm really proud of that.

So with that, I will turn it over to David Foley.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have, but I do recognize that this is a CAFR presentation from our auditor, but I didn't wanna miss an opportunity to share with you all my thoughts.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm glad to be here with you all today.

Again, my name is David Foley.

I'm a partner with Robinson Farmer Cox Associates, and we conducted and completed the audit for the county for FY 2020.

And here to present the results of that to you all.

Before I get into the CAFR itself, just kind of wanted to give you a brief overview of the audit.

So the audit that we do for the county really has three main pieces to it.

One is, of course, we audit the financial statements to make sure that the county's financial statements have been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

And then the other two pieces of the audit we do in accordance with government auditing standards

One of those is in addition to just looking at the numbers themselves, we review the county's internal controls it has over its financial reporting.

We'll perform tested controls over areas in which it looks like there's controls in place and then we'll test those to make sure that they're working as they were designed.

And then the third piece to all that we do for the county is the federal compliance piece.

The county and school board have various different federal grant programs that it spends during the year and when they expend those funds there are various different compliance requirements that the county has to

I want to be issues compliant supplements that list those those requirements.

So one of the pieces of the audit is we go through for the for the major federal grant programs.

We go through that checklist to make sure that the counties complying with its major federal grant programs.

So those are the three main pieces of the audit that's part of the audit that we do for the county.

So as we go into the CAFR, you'll see that there's actually three different reports from us that communicate the results of the audit to you all.

And then the other thing I just wanted to point out this year in relation to the audit process itself, so typically when we perform the audit for the county, the audit's usually done in two phases.

We do our preliminary fieldwork, which is usually done late spring, June timeframe, and then we do our final fieldwork.

which is usually done mid-October and that's when we come in and do the final pieces of the audit.

And typically when we conduct our audit we actually come on site to the county's offices to do that field work.

This year with COVID and the way things were, it was decided both with the county and ourselves that we would conduct the audit most in its entirety in virtual fashion.

the bulk of our fieldwork remotely electronically.

And I have to say, and I have to give the county credit, the county was set up very well to be able to handle an audit in this fashion.

you know a lot of records that we get from the county anyway are electronic and the county did an excellent job of having information together for us and where you know on our end too we're set up that's we basically keep all of our audit documentation electronically anyway so to be able to receive the documents that way

I think we both worked well in conjunction to get the audit completed.

For example, I said this during the audit committee.

last week and I told the staff this as well, particularly our preliminary field work.

The county did an excellent job of getting the information to us that we needed even though it was in this weird electronic way of conducting the audit versus actual on-site.

They did an excellent job of getting the information to us and I think we had the most productive preliminary field work that

that maybe we've ever had for the county.

Again, they did an excellent job of having everything ready and uploaded all the information that we needed.

So while we had to conduct the actual fieldwork a little differently with the hard work of the county staff and just working in conjunction with us to have the audit completed in this fashion,

You know, we're still able to get it done.

So I just wanted to congratulate the staff on being able to get us the information and work around these difficult times to be able to get us the information that we didn't need for the audit.

So I'll go into the actual, present the CAFR itself.

So we have the audited comprehensive annual financial report for the county for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2020.

And again, as I stated, there are three different reports from us that report the results of the audit.

The CAFR has four different sections to the CAFR.

There's an introductory section, the financial section, a statistical section, and the compliance section.

And so the introductory section has a lot of information, just kind of introduces the CAFR.

Then the financial section of the CAFR is where all the financial exhibits and schedules and notes of the financial statements are included.

The statistical section has a lot of trend, 10-year trend information.

So you can see how numbers this year compared to how they've trended for the past 10 years.

And then the compliance information has some compliance reports from us as well as information on federal grant expenditures.

So the first thing I'd like to direct your attention to is the first page of the financial section.

And this is our independent auditors report.

And in this report is where we state we did perform an audit on the county's financial statements.

This report talks about management's responsibility for the financial statements, which management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements.

This report talks about our responsibilities as auditors, which we are to express an opinion on the county's financial statements.

And at the top of page two is the opinion that we have issued on the county's financial statements.

And we have issued an unmodified opinion on the county's financial statements, which is the cleanest opinion an auditor can give on the set of financial statements.

Basically, an unmodified opinion means that the county's financial statements have been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

The other two opinions from us are in the back of the report in the compliance section.

So the first report back there in the compliance section is our report over the county's internal control over financial reporting.

This report was clean as well.

No significant deficiencies or material weaknesses were noted in the county's internal control over its financial reporting.

We believe that the county has strong internal controls in place over its financial reporting.

For example, we really hardly had any audit adjustments as part of the audit, so I think that speaks to

the strength of the county's finance team to go through an audit and not have a lot of proposed audit adjustments by its auditors.

And then the third and final report from us is on PDF page 191.

This is our report over the county's compliance with its major federal grant programs.

This report was clean as well.

We noted no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in the county's compliance with its major federal grant programs.

and also no other items of noncompliance were noted as part of the audit.

So again, all three reports, all three opinions from us are clean.

So again, another clean audit for the county.

Just a couple financial statement exhibits I'll highlight just very quickly.

Back in the financial section on PDF page 41, this is the balance sheet of the county's governmental funds.

So this statement here reports the assets, liabilities, and fund balance for the counties, the various governmental funds the county has.

And you see there's columns for each of the different governmental funds that the county has.

the general fund, which is the main operating fund for the county as well as some other governmental funds and then all the way over we can see the totals for all the county's governmental funds.

Again, this reports total assets, liabilities, deferred inflows, and then you see the fund balances for the various governmental funds for the county.

And then the last financial statement I just wanted to point out is on page 43, PDF page 43.

This is a statement of revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balance for the county's funds.

So this statement shows the total revenues, expenditures, and then changes in fund balances for the county's governmental funds.

But that's all I have.

Again, it was a clean audit for the county.

And again, I just want to thank the staff for all their hard work and support.

As Nancy says, there's a lot of hard work that goes into preparing these caffers.

You know, it seems like these CAFRs get longer each year and GASB requires more and more information to be put into the CAFR.

So, but it truly is a tremendous task that, you know, the county and everyone has to do to go through to get this completed.

So, you know, I just want to thank them for their support.

But that's all I have.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Ms.

Burch, thank you very much for your introduction and explanation of some things that we need to improve on going forward.

It's very helpful to know up front that there are some areas that we're going to have to focus on attention and resources.

I appreciate all of the work that you and your staff did.

Mr. Foley, I did have an opportunity to watch most of the meeting, I believe it was last week,

I don't know that I have any specific questions with the CAFR.

It appears that the county is again in compliance with all major requirements.

Again, nothing significant.

No significant issues were noted.

It's a major, it takes a lot of work to put together all this information that's required to get this audit complete.

And that, you know, that's only going to grow as the years go.

So, you know, there's upcoming, as we talked last week with the audit committee, you know, there's some future GASBs that are coming up that are going to require even more work, you know, both on our side and the county side.

to implement those standards.

So, you know, the amount of work that the CAFR, the CAFR process isn't going to get any easier.

If anything, it's just going to take even more work.

And in addition to, you know, the CAFR, you know, so much information having to go into the CAFR also, you know, from outside sources, the

You know, making sure that the audit and the CAFR is done on time.

There's more and more pressure, more and more oversight out there.

So it's important that the county is able to continue to get this completed and the county will have the report finalized and submitted to

submitted to the state on time to meet the deadlines, and the county submits to GFOA, and so it'll meet that deadline as well.

But as Nelsie stated, it's hard to get here.

And some of the pieces that, as she stated, the grant management and capital asset pieces, that's a big part of

I think what you basically said is that from your position the county is in compliance with all major expectations and there were no significant errors that were noted and I accept that.

It was Burch what I take from you and by background when I was in the Navy I was responsible for teams that would go into administrative sometimes referred to as inspector general inspections of Navy commands

and what I'm hearing from you and what we expect to hear from you is exactly what you led into, which is we, the Board of Supervisors, County Executive, leadership, we need to provide you some additional resources.

It may be technology resources, because as I heard, you indicated you believe you can do it without increasing the composition of the number of positions, but I've heard you very, very clearly.

We need to provide you some additional resources.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Ms.

Birch and Mr. Foley.

I have no questions at this time, just thank you.

Thank you both.

This document didn't used to be this thick.

And I will say, in all fairness to the making that kind of flip statement, it is not full of just filler.

It is full of really good information.

So, and I enjoyed going through most of it.

I will admit I didn't go through a single page, but I did tune in to a portion of the Zoom meeting that you all had recently where you were discussing this.

So I'm hearing a couple of things and I agree I don't think I have to say a whole lot more about that.

I will say that the technology piece none of us should be surprised about and we do have to get this fixed.

Not only for NLC but for other departments as well.

Yes.

I'm looking forward to.

So thank you very much and I appreciate your work Mr. Foley.

I have no questions but lots of admiration for our staff who put this together and the people who understand all those facts and figures much much better than I do.

I'm glad to have the narrative because it helps me understand and that's really important for the citizenry as well.

I'll make two comments.

One first is just sitting on the audit committee.

I know last year relative to bringing the audit committee

And this year, I've noted that some process changes, the need for the technological changes that probably support those process changes is kind of the answer or the output or the outcome of the comments around staffing last year.

So I appreciated that that concern did not seem to be there but now it is getting to the nitty-gritty of putting actual things in place to procedurally or process-wise make this cleaner or more or maybe less burdensome for our team to have everything in order for the autumn.

As the CAFR is filled with all of our numbers we all know we're going to be going through a tight budget cycle so

It's easy enough for us to say we're going to support resources for things as they come in front of us individually, but we also have to make sure that we're really doing a good job getting the most out of the process changes.

uh with what currently exists so that those resources can um um are really i guess back i'm not to suggest it wouldn't be backed up but what i'm getting at is that the resources will be a lot of bang for our buck because all these other things have already been put into place the second thing i thought was interesting in the conversation last week in the audit committee was you know this has been a year of a lot of

The normal's gone away and what happens with the new normal and nothing's the same.

But actually in the auditor's world, with the influx of the CARES money, David, as you mentioned last year, that just falls under federal programs.

And in a lot of ways, your audit helps us

Not that it's not important to show that federal dollars are being expended to the rules improperly, etc.

That the stakes were a little higher for us from the standpoint of making sure we complied with the CARES Act rules and regulations.

But your process as an auditor coming in didn't really change with that, but the outcome of your audit helps us verify with the feds that the CARES Act money has been properly expended.

You made some comments on that.

You know, again, as I stated last week, and you just stated, you know, the fact that, you know, the CARES was, you know, a big issue this year, you know, with receiving all that, the funding and then trying to figure out, you know, how to spend all that in a short time frame and then also trying to make sure you comply because

You know, when you have money, you know, that you receive like this and then the guidance is, you know, sometimes not as clear and certainly changing, you know, it certainly, you know, certainly can be challenging.

And, you know, from the audit standpoint, yes, the CARES money is really just another federal grant.

And so the county is already undergoing that federal grant review anyway, so this is just another program added to it.

But that being said, it's a new grant, so it's new to the county, it's new to us.

you know there's certainly challenges out there and you know we'll make sure that you know we're complying with everything and um you know this year we did as part of the audit because of the amount that the the county did expend on the CARES Fund that was subject to the audit um the single audit so we

we were able to look at that and you know we can see that the county's on on the right path um you know and as I stated um in the audit committee you know this was while the county spent you know a fair amount of the CARES Act funds um that was still only a small portion of it so there's a lot more uh that will undergo an audit next year so again it'll still be the same same type of an audit um

that the county had this year, it's just, you know, the volume is going to be, you know, greater because that's where the volume of the CARES Act funds are, you know, going to be spent next fiscal year.

But again, from what we've seen, the county's done an excellent job documenting what they're spending on and we're in compliance thus far.

So, you know,

I feel comfortable and confident that that will continue, but the county just needs to be, you know, prepared.

And again, as you say, the fact that they have to, that the county has to do this to get ready for all, it also just helps in general stay in compliance, you know, with the grant funds.

I would hope, I would think, and it's not a hope, but I would think that as

The conversations and I don't know what the timing will be if there's going to be a second round of the CARES Act type of funding, but the compliance and the ability of localities to do, to handle the first round appropriately, properly, hopefully or should play into the decision making and the getting a second round out and through, or at least the confidence that it will be used appropriately.

So thank you very much.

David and Elsie for this.

Greg, do we have to take an official vote to receive?

I always forget on the receiving the annual financial report.

Do we have to vote on this or is it a given that we are accepting the report?

Chuck Alway, can I make one more comment?

Yes, please.

At the full risk of repeating myself, there are a few things that could be more damaging to public confidence in government than reports of mismanagement or non-compliance with financial reports.

Just over a year ago, the entire board of supervisors in Warren County, as well as in other current and former elected officials, were all indicted for mismanagement of their economic development funds.

So again, I would just repeat for Ms.

Birch and Mr. Richardson, if you need resources, you just let you make sure we know we will get those resources to you so that we can ensure that the county maintains its sterling record of full compliance with all of our financial responsibilities.

Any other comments?

All right.

Thank you, David, for being here.

Thank you, Nelson.

Thank you.

Item on the agenda, number 14.

This is the Board of the Board, November 2020.

This is a monthly report from the Albemarle County School Board, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Chairman Graham Page is with us from the school board.

Hope you're having a productive meeting.

I have four major things to report to you today.

First, I'll share some very exciting school division news that occurred this week.

Our equity specialist team received the Virginia Department of Education's Murray Peek Award for Excellence in Education Equity.

This award honors individuals and organizations that have demonstrated a sustained commitment to eliminating inequities or limiting the effects of inequities in education.

In describing the Excellence in Education Equity Award, State Superintendent Dr. James Lane said, this commitment includes efforts to close opportunity and achievement gaps, the elimination of disproportionality in school discipline, graduation and dropout rates, expanding access to gifted education, and advanced programs and improving supports and outcomes for English learners.

Our equity specialists include Ayanna Mitchell, Lelani Keys, and Lars Holmstrom, and are led by Assistant Superintendent Dr. Bernard Harrison.

They will be formally recognized tomorrow afternoon in a virtual ceremony with Governor Ralph Northam, First Lady Pamela Northam, Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Kwanai, and Dr. Lane.

The ceremony will be live streamed tomorrow afternoon beginning at 2.30 on the Virginia Department of Education's YouTube channel.

The remaining three items that I will report to you are related to COVID-19.

The first of this being an update on the effects of pandemic testing for semester-long courses that have an associated SOL test.

The state does not allow SOL tests to be taken virtually, but this year refusing to take the test will not be recorded or entered as a zero.

Students enrolled in high school courses must nevertheless earn verified credits to meet graduation standards.

A verified credit is earned by passing both the course and the SOL test for that course.

In order to offer added support to families as they make decisions around SOLs, the Division will provide specifics regarding which test each student needs to take and relevant testing dates.

Additionally, transportation for testing will be provided upon request and students will return home at the end of the school day unless they have arranged private transportation.

Lunch will also be provided and students should bring their charged computer with them to school.

Doing in-person testing, ACPS will continue to strictly follow the requirements of its health plan, which includes disinfecting of surfaces, enforcement of hand hygiene, the wearing of face masks, and maintaining physical distances between students and staff.

The second COVID-related item to report to you is the launching of our COVID-19 hotline.

The hotline can be used by students, employees, and families to request help and find resources for things like mental health support, food, and other small material requests.

The hotline is accessible by phone or email.

ACPS aims to provide as many resources as possible to those who contact the hotline.

School division staff will respond to hotline messages within 24 business hours.

The hotline is not intended for emergencies or highly time-sensitive requests.

Last but certainly not least, I want to let you know that an anonymous donation of $500,000 to Albemarle County Public Schools will allow the division to significantly expand student mental health programs and services over the next two years.

In a recent meeting, the school board approved the use of the grant to fund a division-wide program to broaden support for students in crisis.

This support includes mental health first aid training for employees who work directly with students.

The grant will also enable the Division to hire an experienced mental health professional who will coordinate the work of school counselors, school psychologists, and community partners in how best to address the mental health needs of students at all grade levels.

We will contract with an outside mental health agency to deliver direct mental health services to students and their families within schools.

Two recent events have added to the urgency of deepening support for student mental health.

Changes at the state level that have reduced therapeutic day treatment services for hundreds of students in our division and the pandemic, which can raise student anxiety levels by limiting the personal interactions between teachers and students and among students.

The grant builds upon recent student mental health investments by the school division, which began two years ago with the addition of more full-time school counselors in the division's 25 schools.

Major components of the program, such as the hiring of the coordinator of mental health services,

and the engagement of an outside mental health agency to provide direct services should be completed by this spring with the employee training program underway by the summer and full implementation of the program by the beginning of 2021 school year.

Mr. Dave, Supervisor Price, any questions?

Thank you Chair Gallaway.

Thank you Chair Page for that wonderful report and I mean I'm just so touched that that donation.

Someone out there really has got a great heart for our students and we are just again so blessed.

I really appreciate the work that you all do.

Yeah, thank you.

I completely agree with you on the generosity of that person who did make the donation or the group.

Yes, I also wanted to say as a, I'm thrilled that someone gave that donation to the schools.

You certainly do everything you're doing.

You deserve it.

And I think that's wonderful for that person to do it.

all persons to do it, and I do agree that's money well spent.

I've often said that Albemarle County, we have a lot of people who are very generous, donate a lot, very philanthropic, and it's a pleasure to be able to serve them.

Thank you, Bea.

Thanks very much.

I can't add anything to what Supervisor Price and Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley said.

Thank you.

I love all the good news.

We need good news now.

And a $500,000 donation for mental health is just beyond, it's just incredibly special.

And of course, the Equity Award is really wonderful too.

Thank you.

So I certainly agree with everything they've said.

And I would send congratulations to Dr. Hairston and his team and all of you all for that great award.

1.30, right.

At the Department of Education's YouTube site.

Okay, that's great.

Well, congratulations to everyone for that.

I do have a question or maybe it's more of a comment.

Right, I'm not exactly sure when that was done because

I know with PrEP that involves Albemarle County and some of the surrounding counties, some of the funding for PrEP has really been affected by the pandemic.

And our division will be providing some services that PrEP used to provide for the county, because we think that we can do it at a better reduced rate than PrEP.

Well, it says last year they announced it and I just, this is very concerning because certainly the state and the General Assembly talk a lot about supporting mental health programs and issues.

I don't know if, well, I guess I'll just leave it at saying that if there's anything that I'm sure my fellow supervisors would be happy to help you all support, if there's anything we can do through legislation or your legislative packet,

Yeah, because I'm interested in these changes, maybe just because I'm a former PREP, you know, Representative on PREP, but certainly we hear a lot from the General Assembly about supporting mental health and

Yeah, right.

I'm thrilled that you all are able to offer support without the General Assembly's ongoing help anyway.

Yes, this has been wonderful news and I wanted to credit the school department for the work you all were already doing.

which I think made this donation possible.

My guess is that it wouldn't have happened if they hadn't seen that here was a department who was really working and trying to bridge these gaps and do these things and that really drew these people to their best generous offer.

So well done on that and I'm also grateful to see

What I perceive to be ongoing really good management on the COVID stuff for the young students.

And I hope that that continues and that you all are encouraged to be very ferocious in your standards and so as to keep the school buildings to be really safe places for kids to go.

Sometimes you're going to have to be fierce with some of the families who may not want to follow the rules.

I obviously agree with everything everybody said, but I guess the only thing I would add to the donation is what a place where they really thought would have a targeted laser impact.

The pandemic just multiplies issues that people could be dealing with, and the fact that that's in there is an incredible place to target a donation for, so I'm very appreciative of that.

Chairman Page, we appreciate you coming to give the report.

I suspect, you know, as December's here, I know that we'll be watching, that the superintendent will be doing his budget presentation to you coming in the coming month, right?

That's right.

Yes, right.

Once we get into the budget season, so we'll be looking forward to seeing you all at that point.

Okay, all right.

Have a good day, sir.

Thank you.

All right board, we are running ahead of schedule.

As we don't have a tremendous amount of content for closed meeting, do we want to consider bringing both from the board and the county executive to this point and deal with that before the closed meeting?

Because we'll probably still be running ahead of schedule.

No objection to that.

So I will go to the board

Item 22 from the board, committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda.

Very briefly, as you mentioned earlier, there was one item that I had planned on bringing up, but through some schedule changes in community development, I no longer need to.

But separately from that, I've continued to meet with people about affordable housing.

And one of the areas that I hope that the county will look at is not just the

are offers that go towards the building of either a purchase or rental affordable housing, but that we also start to look more towards what we can do to help our residents stay in the housing that they're in to help keep it affordable.

I know throughout the county and I know specifically in the Scottsville district, we have a number of residents who are struggling to stay in their homes and much as Supervisor McKeel mentioned earlier,

You know, where we have new developers, we can get them to come in and fix some of the problems.

But in older neighborhoods, we don't have, you know, an opportunity.

I think the same thing applies in terms of affordable housing, as well as improving getting sidewalks in some of our older urban areas.

and so I really hope that that is something that county staff will be looking at.

I know next week we're supposed to meet with the planning commission about housing but this is a topic that's been on my mind of late and I hope there's other support from that.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

Thank you.

Nothing at this time.

All right.

I have one thing that I just want the whole board to be aware of and I know staff is working on this so it is being addressed and hopefully we'll have some changes but we had a public hearing for an event space on Monday where we had well over a hundred people want to join the Zoom call and our account did not accommodate

all of those people.

So they had to cut off entrance into the Zoom at 100 people.

And of course, the staff did not anticipate there being such a large crowd.

And so I just want everyone to know that that happened.

And hopefully we'll be able to find a solution for that before it happens again, but just for information.

Thank you.

Great point Liz because I really do think that we need to take a look at that.

Who would have thought?

Yeah, exactly.

The only thing I'd like to just mention, and I've mentioned this to staff, to Jeff and to Trevor and there's several other people, as we're talking about our environmental work and our work around trees and forests, I would love

I hope I'm not the only one, but I'd love to take advantage of having the Forestry Department in our community.

I had the opportunity three years ago around the Southwood work to be sitting beside the Director of Forestry who mentioned to me Biscuit Run and the forest in the woods at Biscuit Run.

And it just seems like having the ability to have a work session or a discussion with some of our experts from forestry around our forests

and their condition, if there's anything we should be doing.

I know that Liz and Ann are, I think of them as experts in some of this work, but I'm not.

And I'd just love to have the ability to talk about, is there something proactively?

We watch all those forest fires in the West.

We have undergrowth in some of our forests as well.

I know we've had plenty of rain.

That's not a problem now.

But it could swing, you know, it can turn on a dime.

And so maybe a discussion would be informative for us along those lines.

And I know Jeff, I mentioned it to Jeff, and I think of Trevor as well, but it's just something to think about.

No urgency to it.

Thank you.

I will echo support Diantha's suggestion.

For years we had a 10-minute presentation annually from our county forester who was Nelson Shaw but now is David Powell and we have the state agency offices right here in town.

So this is a wonderful resource and they work together with the Sonoma Water Conservation District and NRCS to provide landowner assistance and hold

easements on forest property.

So they should, I'm very grateful to hear them recognize for their partnership role and the more we can put them front and center I think would help them do their job and help us learn what they have to offer.

I'm sure there's a lot that they have to offer that we don't know anything about that we might be able to help both our urban

homeowners who need shade trees for sure, as well as the rural ones who might be more into production and everything in between.

So that's terrific.

The affordable housing question that Donna brought up, we have been talking about this question a lot in the Crozet Master Plan meetings over the last six months.

And a lot of interesting data has been brought forth, the most horrifying of which was the 21 units of the 300 actually constructed out there that are occupied by the people for whom they were designed.

And this is heartbreaking, and I really hope that we will find a way as a county government to put our minds to how we can change the program to ensure that we no longer do what we used to do and fail to provide buyers for these houses which are built.

I'm very grateful that we are now looking more broadly at some into rental.

support as well as we have with Brookdale and the other programs that we're working with.

So we have a lot to

But the other side of the question that needs to also be added is preservation of the existing affordable housing, which we have of all different sizes, whether it's rural or urban.

Some of it's newer and some of it's ancient and a lot of its residents are very elderly and really need to make sure that they can live out their lives securely in their houses.

So this is something I really look forward to hearing a lot more discussion and some

Thanks.

And I just didn't hear your word that you used.

Well, the program that we had for years was that of those 15% of the units, they were to be offered for an unreasonably short period of time, but for people in the 80% AMI income bracket.

And for a number of years, we had partners, we had a down payment assistance fund, we had partners who helped the buyers to get

sort of schooled up as Habitat does for its participants.

There are many people who aren't Habitat clients, but who needed more help in how to manage buying a house.

And so that all seems to have gone away and I'm concerned that it's gone away and there seems to be a big gap.

So now we really can open our eyes to different ways to accomplish this.

and I know there are people with lots of good experience.

We're being pushed in the direction of community land trusts and other alternatives, but also we want to make sure that those have the goals that our county has, not another way for landowners and developers to make money.

But are they even suitable if they're not owned by the county or not owned by somebody who is totally focused on their residents?

So I've been trying to learn more about all these different agencies and who's on the boards and who's running them.

I guess one last update, I'll throw in that Bettina Ring, who's Secretary of Ag and Forestry, said that they are in process of evaluating the BMPs that they have for forestry.

I was corrected when I said they were the same rule since 1950, and actually they were evaluated in the early 1990s, which is still almost 30 years ago.

But they are working on those at the state level, understanding that what they allowed for the 10 and 50 year storms

back all those years ago are now completely inappropriate for when we get 500 year storms over and over again.

I mean, we've had 12 inches of rain in our house in the last three weeks.

And all this cut timber all around us for miles in all directions is all just running, the dirt is running down the hill.

And unfortunately, a lot of it's going straight to Chris Green Lake, which is a county resource.