Board of Supervisors Special Meeting   7/22/2020

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for this special meeting on July 22, 2020 at 1pm.

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

an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

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

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

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

Also with us today, our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk is Claudette Borgeson, and

He is not today.

So the first, we're here today to discuss things related to COVID-19 and I know that we'll have some information presented to us by a variety of people.

Is that correct?

Yes sir, that is correct and we are joined by a number of county staff to manage our time most efficiently.

I will not go through and list the county staff present with us today.

I will say that much of the work that's originated from last Wednesday evening until today has been vetted through our incident management team.

This incident management team has been in effect

since approximately the 15th of March and has been running on a parallel track to day-to-day operations with an emergency operational focus.

I asked for a head count today of the number of people who have been active on a day-to-day basis oftentimes multi multi meetings in one day and it's 20 county staff.

A number of those staff are with us this afternoon and so Mr. Campner, our county attorney, myself,

along with the support from that staff.

We're going to walk you through today and our effort will be focused on getting the board to consider recommendations on COVID-19 considerations.

With us also today is our health district.

They are a vital partner

for us to continue to connect with on a daily basis.

I believe that Denise Bonds is with us today and Ryan McKay also may be with us today.

I do see Ms.

Bonds on the call and we'll be handing it off to the Health District here in just a few minutes.

So, Mr. Chair, we're going to go ahead and we're going to start our presentation.

This is a work session for our board to consider

elements of phase two that would be more restrictive in nature than the Commonwealth of Virginia, who is in a phase three category at this time.

And so I will take the lead and just set the backdrop of how we'll spend our time today.

Then I will ask the Health District to step in.

So if we could, let's go to our agenda, please.

Just a second of background from me and then as I've stated I will hand it over to Ms.

Bonds, Mr. McKay and they're going to try to walk you through health data trends and the goal I believe is going to be to give the board a more of a regional scorecard look a little higher in nature as you try to examine the trend, the curve of the trend

and I know this board is also trying to look 30 to 60 days out trying to anticipate what challenges this community has given what we know today.

After the health district maps up and the board has its questions answered come back to both myself and Mr. Campner and we're going to walk you through recommendations that our incident management team has been working judiciously on for the last three to four work days.

and we want to be able to connect these recommendations to a draft emergency ordinance.

The board has only had this draft emergency ordinance for several hours today because we have been working through refining problem-solving elements of this trying to do our best work this afternoon.

and then take guidance from the board.

And if there's additional work that we need to do that we've not contemplated, if there's questions that you ask that we just didn't contemplate, we will tell you that and may need to walk away and give this additional thought with the board's support.

Great.

So I'd like to take an opportunity first.

I would like to recognize our incident management.

We have some talented staff that work for Albemarle County and I couldn't be more proud of them.

They come from every department in county government and this is in addition to their normal job that they're hired on to do every day to keep the county moving in an acceptable operational pace.

But this incident management team has focused itself

First in response mode, and the response mode has included a focus on reducing transmission.

This disease, every element of the steps that we take, we're trying to reduce transmission and keep transmission of the disease down with staff and the public.

Protect people who are higher risk for adverse health complications, and then the last thing is we have to maintain an acceptable operational pace with the day-to-day business of county government.

You move from there into recovery and reconstitution.

And so we've tried to prepare ourselves as the Commonwealth has moved through the various phases.

We've tried to prepare ourselves with the help of all county departments, CARES Act funding, local funding, leadership, and support from this board to move into recovery and reconstitution.

And this, again, it continues to focus on health and safety.

We're wanting to try to support our most vulnerable

populations within our county and we want to facilitate a safe transition back to what normal means in the future.

And that includes community and economic recovery.

I would also say that everything we've done, we've tried to be grounded in guidance, medical guidance from CDC, OSHA, the Commonwealth, the governor, and our key partners at the table, Dr. Bonds, Ryan McKay, their staff, they are a critical hingepin piece of this regional partnership that we have that includes the city of Charlottesville and it certainly includes the University of Virginia.

This is my last slide and then I'll ask Dr. Bonds and Ryan McKay to step in and move us through the health metrics, the scorecard metrics that will help this board reground itself in what are we looking at based on what we know today, where we've been and where we are.

So this graph that's been put together shows a broad perspective

of confirmed cases, probable cases, and a seven-day moving average, moving from the very first stages of our emergency declaration into phase one, into phase two, and into phase three.

And that is driven by the Commonwealth, as you know.

So these phases are the phases that our state government has guided the state through.

You will see that beginning on around June, somewhere in mid-June between the 6th and the 21st, you'll see the moving day average take an upward trend and that upward trend has carried through the latter part of June into the middle of July.

So I will stop there and I'll step back and I will let our health experts step in and try to connect with this board on more of the regional scorecard

and then try to specify as much as they can as to what they see intuitively what they see in terms of the challenges moving ahead with these scorecard metrics.

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to provide some information and really an introduction to our regional scorecard.

This is a tool that we as unified command with the city, county, and the university and working with the Emergency Operations Center

put together as a way to have sort of a snapshot of what's going on in the community, in the region, so that we can sort of make some operational and tactical decisions on how we need to move forward.

That may mean things within the health district and in our staff, or it may mean something more like messaging.

It's a broader look than what we see on our dashboard, either at the district level or at the state level.

And really it's a tool that

that generates discussion in terms of where we're going, what we could possibly see down the road, and how we might be able to make some different changes.

So you can see on the screen here are the first three of eight metrics, and this has evolved over time.

We've removed a couple of metrics that have been consistently met and then really looked more at some data.

There's the percent positive test.

This is the percentage of tests that come back positive of those that took them.

On the state website and our own website, there's the yellow line that you would have seen in the previous slide.

And what we're really looking at is what does it look like over 14 days?

What's that average?

And this is based on federal and state guidance, some of the measures and metrics that were put out in April and May as decisions were being made about reopening.

And so as we look at that trend, we want to see where have we been?

What's it look like in community?

What's the potential for spread?

And you can see in this particular measure, we're unmet from July 7th through July 17th.

As of Monday, the data had only gone back, been up to July 17th.

So we don't have that next frame yet, but you can see that we're still at 7.6% positive.

Next down, and that's at a district level,

Number two, new cases.

And this is really specific in terms of Charlottesville and Albemarle County as a moving average.

And so you can see what we're looking for is downward trends in that moving average.

On July 7, it was 14.

And then on July 13, it's 20.6.

And then on the 20th at 20.1.

So not really seeing a significant decrease from the 13th to the 20th.

And that sort of gives us a little bit of a picture of what spread looks like in the community.

Number three, hospital and infrastructure.

So this is a really critical piece.

It's not just about what we're seeing in the community.

We also want to understand what are the hospital's capabilities for providing COVID care in ICU units and also for acute care, but also what does the standard ICU and acute care response look like?

The first one is really state level.

and one of the things that we've done is excluded Northern Virginia.

This was something that the Virginia Department of Health started doing back in May with the vast majority of cases coming from Northern Virginia.

The response really centralized there.

Moving that out sort of gave us a better understanding of what's happening beyond sort of the hotspot in Northern Virginia.

And so what we're looking at here are the really falling COVID positive census.

And you can see that there's some increasing numbers there across the state in hospitalizations from July 7 through July 20.

The next two measures are provided either by local hospital or through the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association's dashboard.

and just gives us some insight into what we're seeing into our local hospitals to provide information about what their capacity is.

And I think an important caveat to this is that UVA in particular is not just going to have individuals from our health district, from the city, from the county.

They're really bringing in people from across the state and potentially across state lines.

So as you can see there, those numbers are, or their capacity

for COVID at UVA is full and then acute care is at 86% capacity.

This is changing on a daily basis.

That's just sort of another little note to that, that could change tomorrow, next week.

It all sort of depends on what we're seeing in the community, what the need is across the state for different types of beds.

Key to the ability to mitigate spread and then contain spread when we get to a point where we're able to respond pretty quickly and really control outbreaks is our ability to test and to conduct case investigations and do the contact tracing.

So four and five are new measures that we implemented a couple of weeks ago.

Data has started to come out from VDH about these.

So our testing capacity, we're really looking at what the Virginia Department of Health is pushing out

for what our projections should be for each month based on what they think could happen in terms of new cases, testing a certain percentage of the population.

We've had great success increasing access to the testing.

Oh, thank you for number four.

We've had great success increasing our access to testing through our community testing program here within the health district.

We've also had a good partnership with both hospitals to increase community access.

Martha Jefferson has been conducting weekly testing events.

UVA has helped us in different areas of the community, Southwood in particular, where we can increase that access to testing.

So right now that's being met.

There's a lot of access and I think that's really important because that leads to number five.

our ability to identify cases and make contact with them to conduct an investigation, really that initial point of contact between the health district and the individual who's tested positive.

And then on the back end of that, the contact tracing.

So getting in touch with the individuals who were in close contact within six feet for more than 15 minutes so that we can identify those individuals and provide guidance on quarantine.

So isolating those that test positive and are symptomatic

quarantining those who were a close contact is critical to mitigating that spread.

The top one, we're at 82.8% is July 15th.

We're back up in the mid 90s as of today in making that initial contact within 24 hours, which is critical to minimizing spread.

And we've been very successful all along with our close contacting those close contacts for the tracing component.

One of the things that the state has done recently is been using a SARA alert system.

So those close contacts can register in the system.

We can ping them with either a call or a text message to check on them in terms of symptoms.

And then if they have questions, they can always contact us about what to do if they have symptoms, which we would recommend testing, of course.

and then PPE.

So critical in the early phases was the lack of access to personal protective equipment.

Our ability to have sound, prepared healthcare infrastructure was dependent directly on the availability of all those things that keep them safe, the masks, the gowns, face shields.

And so we wanted to track that.

VDH and the Hospital and Healthcare Association check in with hospitals on a regular basis to make sure that

They are well equipped with what they need, not just for the current moment, but for upcoming days and weeks.

And so they just collected yes or no adequate PPEs available and they're using conservation methods.

So far, at this point, all of their needs are being met and they feel prepared for that.

also important public safety.

So our first responders both on the law enforcement side and then fire and rescue also need access to those and tracking that is important because it'll help them make decisions on how to make choices on which calls they're going to need to use the PPE and which ones, if they're limited supply, they don't.

And then finally, there's an unaffiliated unmet section there.

The regional EOC has been providing through a donation center access to various PPE for primary care providers, for dental offices, really working in coordination with us to make sure that there's a adequate supply in the community.

Supply chain reports see that there's an unmet need for this level of community distribution of PPE, which isn't uncommon as we're prioritizing a lot of that equipment for

the hospital's first responders.

That wraps up this.

I do want others.

Next slide, please.

On the next slide, we have been tracking basically the percentage of metrics that we've been meeting each week.

And you can see right now in phase three, we're meeting roughly 63% of the metrics.

One other thing to add, it's not a slide in here, but just sort of breaking down on that percent positivity.

some data that I got earlier this week from our analyst.

In phase one our positivity rate, percent positivity rate was 7.2 for the city and county.

In phase two it was 7.4 and right now it's 8.1.

So obviously as we open things up we're going to see more cases.

We're going to see a higher percent positivity rate.

I don't know that we want to see 8.1 though and that is actually higher than what we're seeing in the counties.

So I think

Also, one last important note is that numbers for the city and county, their positivity rate, and also just the number of cases we're seeing on a daily basis in total is going to be higher just given population density and the higher number of individuals who live here.

These are the things we look at.

They're really starting points for how we have discussions about what's going into these numbers, whether or not there's larger events for testing happening, if our positivity rate is higher,

Is that related to an outbreak in a long-term care facility, or are we tracing it back to something like bigger social gatherings, more people out in the community, tying those connections so that we can identify potential clusters and outbreaks?

We'll go through our order.

Yes, please.

Ryan, could you go back to the slide on the contract tracing?

It was something I didn't quite understand.

For number five, you have moving out of new cases, investigation started within 25, 24 hours, unmet as July 15th.

And I just didn't really have time to read the other part of it.

So the part that is unmet at this time is those more extended contacts, tracing those extended contracts.

Is that correct?

Do we assume that as of this is July 15th later we're still somewhere around that or do we know for those

So for the one that's unmet, that's the case investigation.

So that really is the starting point where we're trying to reach the individual who tested positive.

And that number is going to fluctuate a little bit.

The extended contact tracing piece is the one below it that's met at 96.9%.

So there's the two components of this.

We have case investigators who are really just trying to identify the individual, provide them guidance on isolation, and they go through a series of questions to figure out who are their close contacts.

From there, we hand that off to a contact tracer who then notifies the individuals who may have been exposed and make decisions on whether or not they need to quarantine for that 14-day period.

And then back

Today it's met.

Okay, thank you.

Just trying to figure out, and maybe this is a question for later, but I'm trying in my thought process to reconcile how the delay factor works with these numbers.

if my question is clear.

So what you have here I understand is a snapshot in time and it's as close as you can get to data and I get that.

We also know that there's a delay because people are symptomatic, show symptoms anywhere from what five, six up to two weeks.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around that

Wow, we're really getting a lot of thunder, I'm sorry, around that delay and how that works into these numbers.

The delay is sort of an assumption that we have to make each time.

The numbers will obviously have that lag, and we have to consider that in the discussion when we're reviewing these every Monday, either with a regional sync-up or internally here.

So it's a little hard to reconcile that in real time and we sort of have to understand that this brings us to a starting point of a conversation and we can say well we had a number of significant testing events over the last week or there were a couple of outbreaks that are going to skew these numbers or we think an additional point prevalence survey testing everybody in a facility is going to come up next so it's a little difficult to use these as real-time data as you're pointing out

Thank you.

In general, yes, we haven't

I think the percentages are indicative of that.

We've had really good success.

People have been very forthcoming with providing information about contacts.

Sometimes there's maybe a little difficulty in getting them to answer the questions, but our investigators are trained at sort of asking really good follow-up questions based on a response.

I'm so glad to hear that.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. McKay, thank you.

Could you go back to the previous, I think it's two slides before this that shows the chart.

As I look at that, it appears that there is a recent downward trend at the end of the yellow line.

and then if you'll go to the next slide, the one that followed this one.

But when I look at this, when I look at the first three rows going across, the positive trend seems to be that slight dip.

But then the new cases, also a slight dip, but then the state shows an increase basically two weeks from 633 to 909.

On the

There's a little bit of delay for number three in regard to hospitalizations because

It takes maybe a week or two for individuals to develop the most severe symptoms that are going to push them into the ICU for that care.

And so that's sort of another layer in this, in the discussion and how positivity rate doesn't necessarily reflect current.

Thank you.

Well, I think in terms of reopening initially,

The highest level would be 10.

So if I understand that right, would it be fair to say that we are approximately smack dab in the middle of the range?

We want to be 5% or below.

We don't want to be above 10%.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. McKay.

I have no further questions right now.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you and thank you Mr. McKay for your presentation.

Mine has to do with PPE.

My question has to do with PPE.

As of right now, no.

That metric has been met pretty consistently.

Okay and if I'll just get to the point the reason why I'm asking because I know we have a problem with our schools not reopening and especially the smaller children is or that's very problematic because they really need that time with the teacher and I was just wondering is that something that would be practical to have

The face masks, the cloth face masks would be practical.

If they were to use a face shield with a face covering, that would obviously give them another level of protection.

It would obviously provide them with more protection.

I don't have to think of the practicality of that in terms of the fit testing that goes along with it, availability in large numbers.

All right, thank you.

Like I said, I was just worried about, you know, like K through three, they really do need that interaction with the future.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Mr. McKeel, if I missed this, I apologize, but looking at the hospital capacity in the census, when you look at Martha Jeff, the adult critical care, and then the COVID ICU at UVA, are these similar

I mean, does COVID ICU equal adult critical care?

I can only make an assumption on that.

And when we're looking at that capacity, obviously it says full for the ICU, but when we look at

There's 72% capacity below.

And then the COVID acute care.

So let's use that one, 86% capacity.

How many beds does 14% equate to?

You mean the 14% is five beds versus 14% is 30 beds.

That seems to be a metric or a count that would be important here.

I don't know looking at this if 86% capacity is enough not enough without knowing the actual counts and then I'm presuming that if they have other folks come into the ICU that's needed if they're already at capacity for the COVID patients does that push over into the other ICU is that

just trying to understand the need of the hospital.

So Ryan is it okay if I jump in here?

Yes.

So I certainly understand your point.

It's critical and we can certainly ascertain that from UVA.

I think a couple of things.

One, I don't think they would ever mix COVID with non-COVID patients.

The risk of them transmitting the COVID to an ICU patient that was previously uninfected is pretty high given the acuity and the type of procedures that you would do in a COVID setting.

UVA has been trying really hard to keep them as two separate groups, which is best practice for infection control.

And the same would be the case with the acute care.

I think the other thing to think about with UVA in particular is that they are a regional asset.

And so not all of those patients that are in there and not all of the capacity is reserved to our community, as it were.

So I've seen counts in the past from UVA.

I haven't seen one recently where the majority of the individuals in that are from our area.

I've also seen censuses where a large portion are not from our area.

And so that's a moving target every single day, depending on how people are moving in and out and whether or not a regional hospital in Culpeper, for example, has a patient that

I mean it just seems to me that to look at these percentages without knowing what it breaks down to this seems to be a metric for and it's not just bed count if you're at

Full capacity, they're not hiring more employees right away to deal with upticks in population, so then staffing becomes an issue for capacity as well.

To me, this is one of my major concerns, is if we start to have an uptick, what kind of strain and pressure do we put on our local hospitals to deal with the situation?

And obviously in the decisions that we need to make, you know,

I'm not criticizing.

You wouldn't know I would ask this question today.

So while this discussion is going on, I'll send a few emails to the contacts that I have at UVA.

And let me see if I get a bed count for you.

I know that when we've talked to them in the past, there have been

something that's not reflected in the scorecard necessarily but does go with the issue of hospitalization.

Is there ability to discharge people that are ready to go back into places like long-term care facilities and other step-down type of units?

And what we have heard from UVA and to a degree from Martha Jefferson is that there's a little bit of a challenge in getting folks that don't really need that acute care any longer into a facility where their needs can be more appropriately met.

And that has to do with outbreaks that we're having in long-term care facilities.

It has to do with the previous strategy that the CDC was recommending for those living situations where you had to have two negative tests.

They've since walked that recommendation back because what we're finding is that people shed virus for weeks and weeks afterwards, but it's not viable virus RNA in Iran.

So there was a little bit of bottleneck on that.

Appreciate it then.

I think I'm good with questions at this point.

Who's next or what's next for the information we're receiving?

Mr. Chair, after the... I'm sorry, hold on.

Just checking my chats here.

Yes, thank you.

On the statistics, how often or is it, how is Albemarle County's number truly visible when we're using a region?

I think there was a spotlight a few days ago where Albemarle was at 8.6 whereas the region reporting was at 7.4 because rural counties around us who have fewer people and fewer incidences

So I can help with that a little bit.

that the health directors can access and that's often where I've gotten locality specific information with regards to testing numbers.

They won't make this public because some of the counties are just so small that it's unstable statistics and also potentially could

inadvertently released someone's private information if you knew what day they were getting tested, et cetera, and where.

So I'm actually trying to pull it up again in sort of real time here.

So this breaks it down by the number of each locality.

And Albemarle County is currently, their capacity rate is 7.5%.

This is a seven-day rolling average.

and so in the last seven days there were 288 individuals that tested positive out of the 3,863 tests that were done.

So about 15% of the population, if my math is right, has been tested.

We are meeting the requirements, so we have

guidelines from the state of how many people in each locality should be tested and we're meeting that requirement.

I mean, we're actually meeting the testing goal as well.

And that's the PCR test.

Yes.

Not, let me just make sure about that.

I'm sure that's the PCR.

Not all tests.

Yes, that is the

Oh, I apologize.

That's wrong.

That was all tests.

For PCR, it's 7.1, so it's a little lower.

We are seeing more and more serology tests used, antigen tests, and then people who use the antibody test.

I guess I'll take this one since I've been doing all things UVA recently.

So the current plan that I'm aware of at UVA is that they are asking all students to have a test

within seven days of their return to campus.

And they're mailing those out and they'll go to a mail order lab somewhere.

So it doesn't really impact locally our ability to get testing done.

I anticipate that that will cause a huge uptick for that immediate period of time.

anytime you put a bolus of 28,000 tests into the system you're likely to get people who are positive but also it's still not a perfect test and some of those will actually be false positives but we still have to act on them um so for august we're anticipating a pretty large bolus we're already seeing this a little bit because uh the athletes the athletic teams are returning and

their conference requirements are that they get tested on a regular basis.

And so we've seen positives come out of that testing.

And then of course, more students is more interactions.

I think UVA is really trying to put forward a reasonable plan to keep those interactions at a minimum by having large classes online,

making sure people have face masks, altering how they're going to do cafeteria.

But at the end of the day, a big chunk of those students live off campus.

And at that point, UVA doesn't have a lot of control over their actions.

And we've already seen this summer students doing what students do, which is getting together and having social gatherings and having parties.

I anticipate that that will continue.

I think UVA is trying to clamp it down, but I don't know how successful they're going to be.

And that's going to cause outbreaks and it's going to cause individuals to be positive.

That being said, it's not fair to put the entire

Burden on UVA, because we've seen lots of social gatherings over the Fourth of July weekend, for example, in the city of Charlottesville, where we had two large block parties with several hundred people at those combined and had a large number of people who were positive out of that as well.

So, you know, people are social beings and we try really hard to educate, but at the end of the day, it's

Just a follow-up question, because I know you said, Denise, you have been working really closely with UVA.

So I've had conversations with them and I think they're certainly aware of the issues of fraternities and sororities.

I haven't seen a specific plan, I haven't seen something that says, you know, if we see X number of outbreaks

And to be honest, I don't know to what capacity UVA can do that.

I went to a non-faternity sorority college and it was also a while ago.

So I actually don't know what UVA itself can do about those off-campus student organizations.

So I know they're aware of it.

I don't know if they have specific plans.

And one more question and then when we talk about our testing capability so the students are all going to come back or not all of them but a lot of students are going to come back and need to be tested and if they show symptoms or if they're in large gatherings they need to be tested

How does that capability factor into what we're talking about with lab availability?

Sure.

And I want to say this scorecard represents what's going on right now.

And I would say that for the months of June and July, we've been really successful at getting testing.

We've had great partnership, as Ryan indicated, with Sentara Martha Jefferson.

They have been at Washington Park every Thursday evening and will be there tomorrow.

And UVA, every time we've gone to them and asked them to help us out with large community testing, they have scrambled and been able to do it.

And I had hoped that UVA would be stepping into the role starting in the next week or so where they would do regular testing events

in our community on our behalf.

They had a plan set up, they were setting up regular testing sites that included some in Albemarle County, some in Charlottesville City, and were, I think, even going to hire people.

And I got an email last night from the Executive Vice President of Health Affairs that I think is going to put this in jeopardy a little bit because

The plan and what I thought was going to happen was that they were not going to charge the state or me for any of their staff time or any

of their sort of material costs with regards to tables, tents, et cetera.

The only thing that they had asked for reimbursement for was actual test kits, because as you can imagine, testing 200 people a week is a considerable expense on their part.

And they're already doing a lot of testing for the state with regards to point prevalent surveys at long-term care facilities and other congregate living.

And now it looks like that deal has fallen through in some capacity.

And so they're not going to do it unless they can get their test paid for.

So I'm not sure that I have UVA's assistance in community testing now.

I also heard and need to confirm with my contacts at Sentara that they will not be able to do community testing after this week.

And so what went from really widespread testing availability for our community members has now dropped down to our testing team and the CVS commercial sites.

And while I think it's great that CVS is willing to do it, I will just say they send it to Quest Labs and you won't get your result back for 10 days.

And that's useless.

That doesn't help me if it takes 10 days to get a test result back.

So we had also heard from the state a month ago, probably more than a month ago, that they were going to provide us with additional funds so we could hire another testing team to be out in the community.

So just so you recall, our current testing team is paid for by a private foundation grant

that generously gave us a sum of money and said, here, you have indicated you need community testing, we're gonna allow you to hire that.

It's a finite sum of money and it's gonna run out.

It's been great and I think really instrumentally getting testing done, but without that additional state resource and funding, we're gonna be really hampered.

So while things look good now,

I think I'm very worried that come the middle of August when I don't have UVA necessarily because we can't figure out how to pay for the test and Sentara has taken that asset back.

I'm going to be left with our testing team trying to do the best they can with the resources that we have.

So that's where we're at.

I think you bring up a great point.

Once I have all these positives in our system, best practice is to get their contacts, their close contacts, tested five to seven days after the testing.

Again, there's going to be a huge backlog in the system.

Already we're seeing a little of that, right?

I have all these athletic teams that have now taken a big chunk of the UVA testing.

And because they've opened the hospital up, all of the surgical patients that come in get testing before they come in for their surgery to make sure they're not positive.

And I don't have commercial labs that are available because the southern half of the United States is in dire straits and taking up all of LabCorp and Quest and other commercial labs.

So this is becoming an increasingly big problem.

The state is aware of it, but I haven't, to date, seen anybody come up with a good solution to it.

So the students coming back, I anticipate, will have knock-on effects.

Primarily, they'll be tested at Student Health.

Their contacts who are students can be tested at Student Health.

That's all a UVA.

So just another comment and then another question, I think.

So as a retired UVA nurse, I remember how important Quest was to UVA to some degree.

And I'm already hearing Quest saying at the national level, we're so overwhelmed now that it's not going to be long until we're not going to be able to respond.

Just maybe more of a comment.

So we're not going to get any help from them.

So what you just said to me is very concerning.

Yes.

So my question to you, and it's probably not fair to have a question as a question, but if you had one question that you wished we would ask, what would that question be?

That you would like to share with us?

I'm serious.

No, I'm just trying to think.

I think the important things for the board to understand, so I guess a couple of things.

One, we are always using stale data, right?

We're always

a little bit behind.

Even the testing data is a couple of days old at that point in time and it's going to reflect what happened a week ago.

So just understanding that we're working with an imperfect situation and I guess the second is it takes a while for change to happen and so if you decided to defer for another week or two

It was the change that we would see would probably be a week or two after that because it will take a while for the message to get out to individuals.

It will take a while for the message to cause behavior change.

It'll take a while for enforcement issues to go on.

So anything that we do, you have to think about

the change now is really going to impact things happening two weeks from now just like the data that we see is probably data that happened reflects events that happened two weeks ago and that's a really like it's an uncomfortable situation for me to be in I'm a scientist I like live off of real perfect data we're always searching for that perfect data and

This is just a situation where we don't have it.

So I don't know if that really answers your question.

You did answer my question and I appreciate it very much.

they do have the capacity, assuming that they had a shortage of reagent to run their high capacity throughput.

I think that's been solved this week.

And I'll just, as an aside, that's also becoming an issue.

We've heard shortages and swabs again, something we hadn't heard shortages of for quite some time, reagent.

So again, we're meeting some supply issues.

When Dr. Kent,

sent me his email last night.

He indicates that it's about $12,000 a week to accomplish the testing.

So that seems a little high, given the number of tests that I thought that they were going to do.

So I don't have a per test amount.

I just have, because this was never,

It wasn't an ask on my part to the state.

It was an ask on UVA on our behalf because the contract had to be between UVA and the state.

So it sort of went by me and I didn't get to see what the MOU looked like.

So he is quoting $12,000 a week.

That seems a little high.

My understanding was they were going to do somewhere between 200 and 400 tests.

and each test was going to be something on the order of $50 a test.

So that seems, even if you said $400 or 400 tests, what is the math on that?

Oh, maybe that's right.

Maybe it's close to that.

So, and I don't know, again, I haven't had this conversation.

It's today at four.

I don't know what the holdup is.

Okay so two follow-ups.

If you can't get it solved I would hope that because of the important importance of testing that you would be reaching out to your district counties and city about a request because we do have the CARES money.

I would assume that we're allowed to spend

the Cares money on this.

I would, as a board member, would like to know what that costs because we've got to get these tests going.

Yeah, that's a great question and I don't know.

I would have to reach out to Amy Mathers and Mindy Poulter who run that lab to see if that's been a consideration on their end or not.

I have heard Amy talk about it a little bit, but I hadn't heard if she'd really come down one way or the other on if that was going to work for their circumstances.

and I don't know if the state lab has considered that or not, but I can certainly find out.

I can find out from Dr. Kent when I ask him, meet with him by phone this afternoon, what they were going to charge the state per test.

I don't know if his figure included their point prevalence survey data that was also doing, but I want to get a per test cost so that I can let you know

what it would be if we wanted to try and arrange an agreement for community testing in Albemarle.

So I'll find that out.

Dr. Bonds when you were making the point about things are delayed a week two weeks behind before you see change it's been about that that long I think that the compliance and enforcement um elements you were granted by the governor have you seen any impacts or changes

Yeah, I'm going to be quite frank about the compliance.

I think it was great that the governor granted us that power, but he didn't actually give us any tools to do it other than for restaurants and those facilities that we already regulated and have the

Permit.

So I would say in the early days, we did a lot of education, we called people on the phone, we tried to get them to comply.

I think since the governor's press conference last week, the tactic that we are taking now is working with the ABC board.

and we're going out to do joint inspections with a food inspector and an ABC inspector and if we're finding violations it's going to be one chance or you'll lose your liquor license.

because my food inspectors tell me that that's a more valuable license than, frankly, just having a restaurant license, which makes sense.

That's a big profit margin.

Now, you know, obviously we're going to we still are trying our goal is not to put businesses out of business.

Our goal is to just get compliance with the mask issue.

So to the degree that we can achieve that with education we will, but we've had a couple of repeat offenders where we've tried the education and now we're going to move on to the joint visit tactic to see if that doesn't get a little better compliance.

And my understanding for grocery stores, which has been really the other group that we have had lots and lots of complaints with,

is the VDACs, which is the primary regulatory group for grocery stores, was going to do that same tactic with ABC to go out, do a joint inspection to try and get better compliance.

I would say that my N of 1 experience is I went to Lowe's back in May to pick up some stuff and no one was wearing a mask.

Everyone was all over, not socially distanced, not anything.

We were just at Lowe's this weekend again to pick up a few things anticipating that it would be really poor mask compliance and we were actually really pleasantly surprised that

All of the staff were wearing them and I would say probably 80 plus percent of customers were wearing them, maybe even as high as 90 percent.

So I think generally the message is getting out a little bit better than it was before.

We've called Lowe's, I don't think that improved.

I'm taking no credit for that improvement at our inspectors.

Thank you.

What's the next portion?

Chair Galloway, I'm sorry to interrupt.

I lost the internet for a few moments.

Dr. Bonds, I missed your summary.

about UVA's current testing plans.

Yeah, I'm happy to.

So my understanding of what they're doing with the students is that all students will be required to have a test, a negative test before they can come, but a test within, I believe, seven days of their returning to campus.

They are using a mail order testing company, is my understanding, so it should not

directly impact our ability to do testing locally.

It will provide a huge influx of positive tests.

Anytime you test that many people in that short a period of time, somebody is going to come back positive, whether that's a true positive or a false positive, and it still requires our investigation.

They are going to do ongoing testing at Student Health of students.

I haven't seen a definite plan of what that will look like, but that's where students will be directed to get testing.

Employees will go to Employee Health to get testing, and so both of those will be funneled through the UVA lab.

Right now we are seeing the student athletes as they come back get mandatory testing on some regular basis.

I'm actually, I'm not, I don't know that I completely know like how often the football team has to get tested.

That's mandated by their regulatory sports conference groups made them all get testing.

So, and we are seeing a little bit of an impact.

We have seen a number of student athletes come back positive and we're working really closely with the team physicians and trainers to get everybody isolated and quarantined.

But Dr. Bunch, you were talking about an information that you got at the last minute late yesterday afternoon from one of the UVA.

Sorry to go back over this.

So, Supervisor Price, I don't know if you heard my portion about UVA had agreed to do community testing for us.

And I heard from Dr. Craig Kent, who's the Vice President of Health Affairs, that the state contract that they thought they were going to get to pay for the cost of the test, they were going to provide all of the labor for free, or at their

on their behalf, has fallen through.

And so now it's not clear that they're going to be able to do it because they won't do testing if they have to both pay for all of the employee time plus the test cost.

So I have a call with him today at four to get a better understanding of where that's fallen through and see if I can't resurrect that.

You said the same was true at Martha Jefferson, you thought?

That is correct.

Martha Jefferson has informed us that this Thursday will be the last community

testing events in Washington Park.

And my understanding is they will no longer be able to do community testing here after this week.

So those are two big community testing assets that will be gone.

Additionally, again, I don't know if you heard this, but we had been promised money from the state, which would have allowed us to hire an additional testing team.

And we still don't know where that is.

I keep being told that it's coming, but

All right, are we ready to move to the next portion or section of information?

Thank you, Dr. Bonds.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board, and a special thank you to Dr. Bonds and Ryan McKay.

As the board could tell over the last few minutes as you ask your questions, you're seeing in real time

what the value of this regional partnership has been and we've spent as much time with Dr. Bonds and her staff over the last week.

Probably they've given us more time than they really had to give us and I can't thank her enough for the time.

So at this point I'm going to walk you through the recommendations from our incident management team members of the board.

I want to walk you through this and then Greg Campner, our County Attorney, will take you through the draft emergency ordinance and his goal will be to walk you through the applicable sections of that ordinance that are relevant to the framework of our recommendations.

So if you would advance please.

Thank you.

In general, this is just a summary overview slide board

and it's really taking all of the relevant components of phase two versus phase three and on one slide trying to put this in front of you as board.

So it's pretty straightforward.

Our non-essential retail in phase two goes to 50% capacity.

Restaurants, 50% capacity.

Entertainment venues go to low contact.

Fitness and exercise facilities go from 75 to 30%, respectfully.

Our gatherings go from 250 to 50, and personal grooming goes from being open and a regular business with social distancing back to appointment only.

For purposes of our recommendations, I would point the board to really two areas where we tried to develop pinpoint strategies

to anticipate as the density continues to grow in our Albemarle County area with the UVA effect of an additional approximately 7,000 students who will enter the grounds over the next four weeks, UVA getting back up to some sense of on-campus

are on grounds normalcy.

What does that mean outside of the grounds and how are we able to look at that and anticipate things that we may do with a pinpoint focus on tighter restrictions aimed at lowering the percentage likelihood of the spread of the disease.

Two areas come to mind that we've talked about.

One is restaurants.

and looking at indoor seating moving from phase three to phase two and that would mean indoor seating with a capacity of 50% and a focus on gatherings going from the current phase three 250 limit back to 50.

Both of these deserve some explanation.

So we made our recommendations based on the following, the trend data, the discussion that you just had with the health district.

We have the advantage through our incident management team, through our regional emergency operations partnership, we have the advantage of being with these people

If not every day, several days a week to check in, to examine how things are going, what the trends look like.

It's an eight section scorecard.

We also looked at compliance and enforceability.

I need to remind the board that if we are more restrictive than what the Commonwealth is at at phase three,

It puts an additional burden on our local staff for local resources to manage the compliance and the enforcement piece of this.

The state will not step in and enforce at a local government level.

more restrictions that are over and above where the state is and so we have to have some level of understanding about compliance how we work through this operational operationally in our community and we've spent significant time over the last four or five work days to explore what that looks like on the ground finally we focused on a responsiveness to the contact tracing community spread data

Dr. Bonds and Ryan McKay have spent time with us.

We've asked questions just like the board has today trying to better understand what this means on the ground day to day.

What have their experiences been over the last several months?

And what steps can we take that may be meaningful steps to help prepare for the next 30 to 60 days?

Okay, so

The framework of our recommendations today are around, first, food establishments to include wine, wineries, breweries, distilleries, with policy recommendation to focus inside.

Why are we focusing inside?

We're focusing inside because when you're inside of these food establishments, your mask is off, which makes it critical that there be adequate social distancing.

because people are eating and drinking.

And so we're focused inside of restaurants from going from the occupancy load that's allowable from 100% back to 50% for the wineries, breweries, distilleries.

If they do not have those occupancy loads, there would be a 50-person limit inside of the establishments and also the required six-foot distancing.

I'll talk more about the compliance mechanism in just a minute, but we are anticipating at a local level the need for additional resources to carry this forward if the board supports it.

That requires us to explore third-party contract with the appropriate vendor and again I'll explore what that means in just a minute.

The second focus area is social spread and that gets to one of the key components of this local ordinance for your consideration and that would be a local ordinance requiring face covering indoor and outdoor without six-foot distancing.

This will include an ambassador program and a signage campaign.

I'll talk more about that in just a minute with an additional slide.

And finally, the framework includes also the focus with social spread, gatherings, and us looking at more restricted gatherings.

And we'll cover what the definition of gatherings is, but we're looking at going from phase three, which is 250, back to phase two in certain circumstances.

There are exceptions to that and those exceptions would include events outside, wineries, breweries, distilleries, religious exercises, the county attorney can expand on that, and then finally weddings.

And again, our compliance mechanism, we would place a lot of emphasis on a proactive ambassador program to be able to educate,

Proactively visit our businesses, our high traffic areas, commercial high traffic areas in the county to be very positive with the visit and the need to take the compliance seriously.

To explore just a little further what the compliance approach means, if this board will recall, and we do have representatives from the Parks and Recreation Department on the call today, I believe Amy Smith is with us.

But several months ago, we worked hard to recognize that we do have 12 parks in our system in Albemarle County.

And when we were in more restrictive measures across the county, we noted that there's an importance to our park system and our public being able to get outdoors and exercise, walk, especially during the stay-at-home order.

So we work through an ambassador program at those parks.

We have ambassadors that have been inside six of our busiest parks since the onset of this and we've had very positive results with that.

The ambassadors are

our front porch introduction to our park system.

They're there to answer questions.

They're there to help citizens with their experience.

They're there to help ensure citizens have a positive experience with our park system.

It's been positively accepted across our county.

Our Parks Department is very proud of the work that they've done to keep our parks open.

We've tracked our

activity in our park system in several of our parks.

We've had record visits, record volume this year.

That's understandable given what people's choices are to be able to be active.

under this environment.

We'd take that and we would borrow that concept and put it more focused in our business community with an ambassador program.

We would go through a third party vendor.

We would place some contract staff under contract with us.

We would train them on what the outcome of this ordinance consideration is.

And we would be working with them to proactively send them into the community

to our popular gathering areas, which includes retail, food establishments, and other areas that are identified through our key partner areas and maybe complaint areas or areas of concern that may need additional visits and additional outreach from the county government.

These types of visits could include ambassadors seeking out business owners and on-site management with a business signage program, a consistent business signage look to where the county's reaching out with signage if the board agrees with the local face covering ordinance to suggest that we do now have a local ordinance in effect that expects our patrons and our citizens

to wear face coverings when they are inside businesses, grocery stores, retail.

our medical professionals are telling us that this is a key initial step to lower the chance of transmission.

And so this outreach program we believe if conducted appropriately with the right tone could take us another step further into compliance across Albemarle County with folks complying with face covering requirements.

So

That is the additional resources that we believe that we could bring on board.

Lance Stewart, who is our facility and environmental services director, would be responsible for overseeing a contract with a third party vendor.

Staff within county government would be responsible for overseeing day-to-day supervision.

connectivity back through incident command, connectivity to the health department, and so forth.

And so we believe that this is a positive step that goes in the right direction.

So

Mr. Chair, I'll stop there.

I'll see if there are questions from the board on this framework overview and bear in mind that the next part of this process would be to ask Mr. Campner to take the framework and to associate it to our draft ordinance and certainly can try to answer any questions that the board may have.

Thank you.

Yes, Jeff, could you go back a slide, please?

So, actually, one more slide.

I'm sorry.

One more.

So, right with phase three, restaurants right now can do 100% capacity.

Are most of them trying to do the six-foot distance now?

I would hope, I know that Dr. Bonds is still on the phone call, or she's showing that she is, and our health department has got regulatory oversight of restaurants.

Yeah, and so restaurants should distance tables six feet apart.

And what we find happening when they do that is that they really, their capacity is actually at about 50%.

We have received complaints about tables not being appropriately spaced apart.

We do investigate those complaints and go out and make sure that

the restaurant owner really is separating them either indoor or outdoor.

And Ryan can confirm this but when we spoke to our technical specialist who really knows the regulations best her feeling was that if you enacted a if you truly were keeping tables six feet apart

For almost all of our restaurants, that would be at 50% capacity.

So right now they're required to keep 50%, excuse me, six feet apart.

And you all are monitoring that.

So it sounds like us ordering them to be 50% capacity is

not necessary.

So I will say we will go out if we get a complaint.

At this point in time we don't do routine inspections and are measuring that distance apart and we're

We haven't been doing routine inspections in the field.

I think we're at the point where we're ready to start doing that.

We have only been going out for complaint or for cause.

They are supposed to be six feet apart.

If we get a complaint that they're not six feet apart or that the tables appear too close, we will investigate that.

But I can't say that we have gone around to every single restaurant or food establishment in the community and confirmed that that's the case.

The other thing I would say is, for any of these, right, we only routinely go out and inspect a restaurant

So even if we said indoor has to be 50% capacity, that wouldn't change your inspection or anything like that routine.

That is correct.

I don't know this for sure.

I think it might it might make it easier for restaurants in some way actually because they all have a maximal indoor capacity.

and maybe even an outdoor capacity with patios.

And it's a lot easier, it's an easier mathematics to do to say our maximum capacity is 50 and we're gonna accept reservations for up to 25 individuals on a turnaround time, for example.

So for six o'clock, we will assume that

25 people will be here as opposed to separating tables six feet apart that starts to become so six feet of what?

Six feet from the center of the table to the center of the table from the edge of the table to the edge of the table from the back of the chair to the back of it just gets a little the the gymnastics there's a lot more to argue with rather than to say look your capacity right here says x and

That means you get to have Y number of people in here.

The converse of that, of course, is that you could have that capacity and they could all be sitting in one corner and not socially distancing.

Alright, thank you very much.

So I just want to make sure I understand this because it sounds like to me

When we're talking about the restaurant capacity, that really if we moved it back to 50% and used the capacity metric, we might not be changing so much for a restaurant in reality based on what they're supposed to be doing with the six feet.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I think that's correct.

And Ryan, you've had more conversations with Sean than I did.

But that just kind of makes sense to me that what you're saying about the capacity is a much easier metric for them.

Okay, go ahead, Ryan.

Yeah, it's easier on the restaurant to make that determination and if someone makes a complaint it's easier on whoever's enforcing that that ordinance or the state guideline whichever that's coming from to make a determination at that moment in time.

Yeah, and I can certainly appreciate that because I've even had incidences where someone said to me, I'm six feet away from you, and my sense was they were not, right?

So it is very subjective at times.

Will you go back to the, I guess it was the slide before, the one about the outdoors and the weddings, and I don't really remember which direction it was.

There we go.

I think that was it.

Right.

So help me understand, gathering the limit from 250 to 50, which I think is really critical when we look at the university and the students coming back.

Actually that restaurant piece is very critical when we look at UVA students coming back as well.

Having said that, I want to make sure I understand this.

So wineries, breweries, and distilleries, right, will go down to a, will stay where they are, I'm sorry, they will be able to because they are outside.

So they'll be able to spread out their folks, which is really great.

I wasn't quite sure, are you assuming that religious exercises could go outside?

Certainly weddings could be outside.

Now, gatherings can be either indoors or outdoors.

And religious exercise was included as an exemption.

So we would be subject to the phase three rules for religious institutions.

Okay, I was just trying to wrap my head around these three if they were all being treated exactly the same.

Yes, it would have to comply with the phase three guidelines.

And one of the reasons why weddings were included was because of the advance time that weddings have to be planned and scheduled.

And so it's possible that if the board were to adopt an ordinance that became effective in the next couple of weeks, that there would be major disruption of these plans.

I'll just leave it at that.

They would, well, there's a little, we need to connect, yes, as it's written right now, if they're there for a common purpose, and then they're also

subject to the capacity limitations or a hard number.

The thing with the farm wineries, breweries, and distilleries is that probably most if not all those buildings do not have rated occupancy loads because they're exempt from the informed statewide building code and the fire prevention code.

So for occupancy, right now there would be a limit of 50 individuals.

Okay, and I see that Liz just popped a question up while we're talking about this.

Well, they can be.

They can either be civil ceremonies or they can be religious ceremonies.

And the other thing was we didn't want

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm going to jump back to

If I may ask, I have a couple of questions.

If I may ask Amy Parks a question or Lance.

So I'm not familiar having not seen the ambassadors working in person.

I'm curious about how their job functions.

and where they normally interact with people.

Do they meet them and interact with them as they're arriving at the parking area or the trailhead to have a chance to have a conversation?

I'll order out of the meeting them throughout the park.

Okay, I could answer that question for you.

The park ambassadors, we have one stationed at the entrance of the park at our large parks like Chris Green, Walnut Creek, Mint Spring, Speed Creek, Ivy Creek, and Tow.

And they greet the customers and remind them about social distancing.

and the mind of about all the park rules.

There's no swimming this particular summer at the swimming beaches.

Thank you.

That's exactly the information I needed.

All right, and then rolling down a little further.

So when we were just speaking about indoor activities in churches, would our mask rules

continue to apply for any of these places where there are exemptions, unless somebody is eating or drinking something.

So I know that it's been explained to me that some of the outdoor activities they're trying to do that people are required to mask when they're moving from place to place, but once they're sitting in their own little compound, then they might take their mask off to eat and drink.

But how does that impact these indoor religious

Gatherings or for an indoor wedding if it happens to be pouring down rain in the afternoon when you were supposed to meet outdoors that your place has the opportunity to move you indoors briefly for the ceremony.

Sorry, I was on mute.

In the definition of public places in the ordinance, it excludes religious institutions for a couple of reasons.

One is allowing the phase three rules to remain in place.

The rules for religious institutions require separation and seeding.

arrangements.

The other reason is it's a broader reason, and that is that we hear this ordinance is trying to target the problem areas that have been identified by the health department and the complaints that they've received.

And so it's focused on the restaurants, the large gatherings, and wearing

And so the ordinance doesn't

anything that's not addressed in this ordinance expressly remains subject to all of the phase three requirements.

All right, so now I understand why the indoor requirements for the turf services are not including the masks, but all the ones I know of so far locally are online still, which is really, really helping.

And hopefully that will continue.

That's all the questions I have for now.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. Campner, I have a question.

When we look at the capacity or 50 persons, as I read that, if you have occupancy and limitation for the facility, the way it is phrased is you could have up to 50% or 50 people, whichever is less.

And you are looking at 4-A?

I believe that's it.

Yes, 50%, not more than 50 people.

It's an either or and it depends on whether or not the building has a

and established occupancy load, a number that is identified in the certificate of occupancy and likely posted somewhere within the building space.

What if the occupancy load was 120 people?

Okay, all right.

I just wanted to make sure that for those larger establishments, this would not unduly burden them in comparison with smaller establishments.

I've noticed over the time of the pandemic that some retail establishments limit the number of patrons that are permitted in the store at a given time, others do not.

For example, we have some very large grocery stores in the area and I'm not aware of there ever being any count

patrons in the store at those facilities.

And yet there are smaller businesses, small businesses where they do limit the number of people that are in there.

I'm not sure I understood your question.

Actually, I don't know that it's specifically with our ordinance as much as it is.

I have just noticed that some grocery stores and other establishments have limited the number of patrons that are allowed in at a given time.

Other stores, grocery stores in particular, have not.

Has there ever

Well, probably the guidelines that apply to all business sectors and they are supposed to restrict the occupancy of physical spaces to ensure that adequate physical distancing may be maintained.

Thank you.

I think that does answer that question.

If I could ask Ms.

Smith, if she could answer a few questions that I've got.

First, thank you Mr. Campner and everyone else who has been working so hard.

and so much time over the last week or so working towards this.

Ms.

Smith, you and I have exchanged a couple of emails and you know that I've gotten inquiries from some youth sports organizations about use of the parks.

That'd be great.

Thank you, Ms.

Just to go back in time a little bit, during phase one and two, we didn't allow field reservations for school organizations.

And in phase three, our plan was to allow field reservations and the organizations would have to submit those

We sent a letter out on July 9th

to all sports organizations letting them know about phase three.

Okay, thank you.

I do think there's adequate space at the fields and just reviewing some of the sport leagues plans, some of the leagues were going to reduce spectators to either no spectators or just one per player.

You know, especially an example if the players were five, six, seven years old, you'd probably want a parent or a guardian around.

All right, thank you.

And Dr. Bonds, if you're still available, do you have any information on what the contagion rate or other information in terms of athletic events?

So that's a really great question.

I think what you're asking is, what's the R naught?

That is, if you have one infected football player, for example, how many other football players would he infect?

And I can't say that I have seen specific numbers targeted at sports.

I think the other really important thing to consider about sports

So I guess two things.

One, any sport activity is going to aerosolize more particles than sitting quietly and reading under a tree and when you're exerting yourself you're breathing heavily.

and that's gonna put, if you're infected, put more viral particles in the air.

Conversely, being outside also disperses those viral particles and so generally we consider outdoors to be a safer place to be than indoors, which is why we allowed restaurants, for example, to open their outdoor facility before we allowed them to open their indoor facility.

And then the second thing to think about is the sport itself.

Some sports are going to be more risky than others.

I think if you're out running track and field, for example, that's going to be

Generally, although I can think of lots of exceptions now that I'm really thinking about it, safer than football.

But those high contact sports like football and soccer where you're really close together with each other, you're right in each other's face, you're breathing across each other, that's going to put you at greater risk than sports like

softball where there might be some close contact but generally players are spread far apart and not so much

Yeah, and that also raises the question about fitness centers and gymnasiums.

I understand if I read it right that under phase three, 75% capacity under the state policy.

And I know when I work out, I breathe pretty heavily.

and trying to work out while on a treadmill or an exercise bike while wearing a mask, it strikes me as a very daunting situation.

Right, I think just to reiterate just what you've said, again, any of us who've been in an indoor gym, when you're in there exerting yourself, you're really breathing heavily, you're expiring lots of viral particles.

And that's a risky behavior and people don't like to wear masks in those situations.

It feels very claustrophobic.

You know, we

are encouraging gyms to spread out their exercise equipment.

We're encouraging them to do some extra cleaning.

But at the end of the day, it is an enclosed environment in which people are breathing heavily and probably are not wearing any sort of face covering.

And so it has risk associated with it.

Thank you, Dr. Bonds.

Mr. Campner, with regard to Section 8, the penalties, as you are well aware, I am reluctant to see an over-criminalization of conduct.

I also recognize as a Dillon rule state, there may be areas where we have no option.

for violation of ordinances.

We are constrained and so the different violations have been identified as class 3 and class 4 misdemeanors which have

punishment caps of $500 and $250 respectively.

We do have authority to enforce our disordinance in a civil proceeding for continuing violations seeking injunctive relief.

Okay.

Thank you.

And just to explain why it caps a day.

A class three misdemeanor.

One is so that there is no threat of jail time, but the other is because under state law, we cannot impose penalties that are more burdensome than would generally be authorized by state law.

Health director has authority in

Health Commissioner has authority in the Commissioner's capacity to impose Class 1 and Class 3 misdemeanors.

Thank you, Mr. Governor.

I thank you enough for the long hours and work you put into draft.

I have a question for you.

Supervisor Price that's an excellent question and I do have on the line with us today Lance Stewart.

I believe Lance is on the call and

I would like for Lance to address this because I believe there has been some very preliminary work done on this.

Yes, I can.

Thank you, Lance Stewart, Facilities and Environmental Services.

Just this morning I was working up an estimate for costs per month and over a cumulative period.

I've come up with a rough estimate of roughly $2,900 per month per ambassador.

We have not determined how many ambassadors it would take to visit

an unknown number of restaurants or other businesses on a rotating basis what our posture would be.

So I've done estimates from one up to as many as eight ambassadors including the compensation to the contractor for

uh what we would expect for a normal uh labor rate for someone say a security uh person for an example there would be travel involved there would be some expenses that that we would um would hold to support them um so my range of cumulative costs uh if we were implemented in august

through the end of the calendar year would be $123,000.

Mr. Stewart, thank you.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate the work that you've done, again, with everyone else on the staff on such short notice.

That $2,900 estimated average per person, is that labor costs or is that total costs?

That is the total cost.

Okay and then the rest would be the travel expenses and such?

Exactly, yes.

That also would include Social Security, FICA, all of those expenses the county would be paying.

Well, that would be the burdened labor rate plus markup of a contractor is what I said.

Alright, Mr. Stewart, thank you.

That was quite detailed information.

Very short notice.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Thank you, Ms.

Smith, Dr. Bonds.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I have no further questions right now.

Yes.

Whoops, did we lose the slides?

Can the slides be put back up?

Okay, no problem.

So I have a couple questions.

So the 50% capacity of 50 persons with six foot distancing, my understanding is that a lot of the restaurants like the 50% capacity

with distancing, social distancing.

But I guess this, it would be 50% or 50 persons both with six foot distancing.

I'll jump in.

What we would expect would be that restaurants are going to be located in buildings that have a certificate of occupancy.

So they would be subject to the 50% capacity regulation.

I see.

Okay.

If you have a restaurant that has a private room,

So would it still be 50% of the entire restaurant or could additional people be in the private room?

I'll jump in.

The way the ordinance is worded, and it actually relies on the phase two

Language provided by the state, but it is the lowest occupancy load on the certificate of occupancy.

So if there are different spaces that have rated occupancy loads, it's going to be the lowest one.

Now, there might be situations where you have different rooms in the same building, maybe the same restaurant, but they have different entrance and access points and different ventilation systems.

We haven't accounted for that in this case.

Our enforcement, if the board adopts an ordinance such as this one, it would be enforced by Albemarle County Police.

Right, right.

And I would like if Mr. Richardson could just comment because we get a lot of emails, I've been getting a lot of emails asking us to close the schools, not close the schools, let UVA students come, let them not come.

And I just wanted Mr. Richardson to, or Mr. Canton to make clear that we don't have that purview over those agencies.

I'm sorry, I thought I clicked my button.

Greg can elaborate.

He's got depth level on this that I don't have, but two things.

One, this ordinance would not apply to the University of Virginia grounds.

So this ordinance is focused on Albemarle County proper, but it would exclude the University of Virginia grounds.

The second thing is that, as this board knows, the State Board of Education has made it clear that they would like for local boards of education and their superintendents to work to decide in each locality how public schools will move forward this fall.

This ordinance would exclude our Albemarle County public school system.

It would, and Greg can elaborate, but it would exclude public schools.

It would

allow that decision.

Public schools will go.

Thank you very much.

And that approach is kind of dictated by looking at the state education laws and the state delegating to the school boards the operations of the schools and when they start, how they teach,

really how they operate their schools.

So because our enabling authority cannot be, what we're doing with this ordinance cannot be consistent with the general laws of the state, we are backing away from that.

I'll note also that we're also not applying these regulations to the private schools.

They've been

shut down for a while.

For that reason, they hadn't been identified as a problem, an issue that needs to be addressed in a targeted approach that we're trying to take here.

So this is not the board's one opportunity to deal with the pandemic.

I do wanna commend the staff on what they've come up with, especially separating the wineries, the breweries, distilleries, and weddings from just a huge group of people getting together, you know, having a 150 blowout party at some location, which you can't, you know, that would not be good.

But wineries, breweries, distilleries, weddings, those are all businesses.

So those businesses really want to make sure that

They have good events and they certainly do not want to be part of the COVID pandemic.

So I trust them to do the right thing.

Just a quick one.

I got a little confused on the enforcement answer that you gave Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

You said that if we pass the ordinance, it's the police department that will enforce that.

Right now, with respect to restaurants, the health department is going to help.

and asking them to comply.

It does on a very narrow issue, and that is the occupancy in a restaurant because under the state health department is operating under the phase three rules, which allow 100% occupancy.

and our ordinance is 50%.

All of the other elements on how a restaurant operates would be enforced by the health department.

So it'd be up to the health department to make certain that the tables are properly spaced and that the workforce may also become a state department of labor and institution, but make sure that all of the employees are wearing face coverings

and all of those types of issues.

Okay, thank you.

Hopefully they wouldn't need to do that very often.

Okay, now I'm back.

I don't know if Denise is, there she was.

So what are the reporting requirements to the Board of Health or others for gyms and fitness membership organizations when they have a case?

So currently there's no

A gym or a fitness center wouldn't be doing the testing, and so they have no reporting requirements.

A physician or a healthcare provider who runs a COVID test has a reporting requirement to get us the test results.

It's rapidly reportable, so within 24 hours.

And for the most part, those come to us automatically.

Almost all labs do electronic reporting.

there's a few boutique labs that don't do it but generally once it's in their electronic system we get it whenever the next sync up is which usually happens once or twice a day.

The gym and the sports facility

Under the Department of Labor, my understanding currently is that if they had an employee who was positive, they would have to tell other employees who worked in that facility that there had been a positive case.

And they should not really assume the name of that individual.

It's just that there has been a case of COVID amongst the staff.

I think we would work with the facility to try and decide what they should put out for clients who came to that facility and if we had a case who was a member of a GEM we would do it on a case-by-case basis deciding whether or not we would have to notify the GEM and whether or not they would have to notify other

And following up on gyms, will masks be required in the gym?

Because there are all sorts of great news on the internet about people running marathons with two or three masks on to prove that it can be done.

And yes, people may not like it, but if it's better than nothing, then perhaps that is something people would live with.

So how would our local ordinance requiring a mask affect the gyms?

What does that mean?

We didn't include them.

Okay.

If we haven't had a problem yet and prevention, we just can't get there.

Is that it?

I mean, they are a public business.

I don't understand necessarily why they're put in a different category than a hardware store.

So that's something for people to think about as we go forward.

Because it is a high risk activity, all that running down the treadmill and huffing and puffing, which I do at a walk, huffing and puffing, are going to certainly be difficult to manage with great big spaces and all common ventilation.

Okay, and that is the end of my question.

I just want to be clear, so even if the athletic team's piece, because we've been receiving emails about that, basically we put it on pause to see how this ordinance would shake out.

That was my understanding last week since we were

waiting to have this special meeting, see what we were going to target, what this was going to look like.

And it was unfortunate for the teams, that way they were moving in one direction and then got put on hold.

But as I'm watching this play out, it seems to me that we would continue, we would just unpause what we were already in motion and doing.

If I misspeak I stand corrected but I think your overview Mr. Chair is exactly correct that last Wednesday night Amy Smith I thought did a really good job earlier of kind of walking us through where we've been and where we are currently.

The board gave direction last Wednesday night as Paul's going into phase three.

Amy and her staff are prepared

to manage phase three with leagues and fields both with a review process and with a compliance oversight process.

If the board is uncomfortable with the county internally going to phase three with fields availability for leagues for league play we will continue to pause that

in accordance with the board.

I think the board uh your first opportunity to really talk about that was last Wednesday evening and that came up whenever I was just giving an update of the county internal operations preparing to go to phase three and uh you said hey let's pause one option would be for us to pause uh going to phase three with league play let's pause that and I heard the majority if not the consensus of the board to do that

Amy and her staff immediately reacted to that.

We're now approaching a week later and you have had some reach out from the community on their concerns or support.

and we're prepared to take action to continue to suspend that or Amy and her staff, and Amy if I misspeak you'll correct me, but Amy and her staff are also prepared to go back into a carefully thought out process of how they would work to bring the leaks back online

both with practice and then with league play through a review of planning for compliance.

This board really needs to think about that and we will certainly take your direction.

No I think I got it.

I just it sounds like we will continue as we were.

The items here within the framework that we're recommending don't seem to apply.

Anyway I mean I can't imagine even with league play

in a competitive situation when we're talking about baseball teams and the kind of programs that are going on now that they would necessarily approach over 50 anyway, and then being outside and spread.

In my mind, I would be supportive of continuing with where we were at a week ago with the athletic team situation while these other targeted approaches seem to be hitting the high points of my concerns.

Yes, thank you Chair Galloway.

Mr. Richardson, if you can let us know where do we stand with regard to communication

and potential consensus with the city of Charlottesville, U.K.

and also frankly I want to throw in the town of Scottsville as well and Albemarle County.

If we were to pursue this ordinance do we become an outlier and do we then end up finding ourselves in a situation where we have

and the latter part is for us to decide that if we become more restrictive than the surrounding communities of the university and the city, do we end up then putting ourselves in an awkward and precarious position where on one side of the street is the city of Charlottesville, for example, and the other side is the county of Albemarle and we have imposed restrictions that adversely impact

and the economy of our businesses and people just go across the street to the other side.

I know the city of Richmond and Ricoh County I believe recently went through something somewhat comparable.

Great question Supervisor Price.

Let me speak first about the city.

We met with the city Monday afternoon.

UVA officials were also there.

It was our regional weekly check-in.

On Monday afternoon, we gave a very brief overview of where we thought the draft emergency ordinance might be going.

That was the day that the Charlottesville City Council was scheduled to meet I believe at around 5 or 6 p.m.

So they were gracious enough to give us some time later in the afternoon given that they were on meeting day.

Their time was limited and their focus was limited because of the full agenda they had on other items.

It did indicate to us that they were very interested in what the county was considering.

They knew that we're going to have this dedicated work session this afternoon.

They indicated that they would make time for us to speak after today and I believe that they Mr. Kettner can elaborate on this because he may have had some discussions with the city attorney since Monday but I believe that they would be interested in receptive at whatever the final considerations that this board makes they'd be interested in learning about that

we would want them to consider it and frankly from where I sit as we've worked through this we have tried to look through it from both the county lens and the city lens from an applicability standpoint and you make a great point when you talk about in some scenarios in our commercial areas that maybe one side of the road is in the county and one is in the city

I think a hopeful outcome would be that if the county takes steps to be somewhat more restrictive than the state that we would get the city to consider doing exactly the same thing.

It removes any potential confusion.

It removes problems with compliance and enforcement.

So that would be our hope.

Our hope would be that whatever you land on that we're able to go back and have

Good discussions with the city.

We also would want this board to consider that whatever you want to adopt, let's put a future implementation that is reasonable to give the city some time to consider this.

They're going to need some time to work through this.

and so the coordination is important.

The University of Virginia, I had a conference scheduled this evening at 545 with the University of Virginia and also the city and that's to give them a report on where we are with this.

UVA may have some things they want to share as well as the city so it won't all be about the work we're doing.

It's a three-party arrangement with sharing of information but I hope to share with the university what the board has talked about today

and what we're trying to accomplish.

I think it's really critical though that we try to dovetail with the city.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

I think getting feedback from the city and the university is critical before we were to make any decision.

Thank you.

There was some discussion earlier about the space on a playing field and I guess in what I've seen in photographs of previous things going on unofficially in the last month it's not that there's not enough space it's that all the people are stuck in one space and not able to manage the group of

The kids practicing, it's a different leadership than the business who has a professional obligation to do crowd control and I think it's unfair to expect that our parent coaches and others will be able to manage.

this successfully.

So it's the risk that we're creating by encouraging that.

I'm very pleased to hear that people are still supporting the postponement.

Regarding what Donna said, I think we are a leader rather than an outlier as far as making these things that are based upon prevention and so locally focused.

But my last question is, for the sports elements,

What about organizations practicing in groups on private property?

Do we have any way to keep that from getting out of hand?

So this is an afterschool sports group.

I mean, every sport has ongoing things throughout the seasons, and I know many of them are probably eager to get back at it, but

Where do we stand on those kinds of activities, whether they're not on school property, not on park property?

Thank you.

Okay, I guess it isn't an Amy question.

Okay.

And

So that's not really a limitation for most of these that I have seen, but it might prevent the tournament type things where people are invited to come from other places, which we're hearing about through the great line already.

So thank you for that clarification.

I'm disappointed, but if that's the fact, then that's what we need to know.

Well, it's not that it's without any peace here.

I know that if there's going to be a review process with these coordinated leagues that want to get together, I'll just use Little League as an example.

And I appreciate the fact that, you know, putting it on parents and the coaches there, but they do an exceptional job of managing those kids on a regular basis.

So if they're going to go through a review process and are passionate about these kids wanting to get them out there into play,

then they know that it's a high standard to stick to whatever plan they put through for the review of how they're going to hit these bars.

And then you can go back and enforce that because you have something to go by.

This was your plan, you're not meeting it.

If there's stuff that's just been happening on its own prior to that, that's a different animal in my opinion.

But moving this forward the way that the county is attempting to do it, I have faith that the fact that they'd like to get these kids out there and

The physical and the grief, the social ability to do it with having the distancing in place, the masks in place when it's pertinent.

I think I have faith that they will adhere to that so that these kids can do this, knowing that if they don't, it'll shut down.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the only one I know of is one that ran for a week and already shut down because there was an exposure of 40 people from one person, one parent who was exposed themselves.

So this is how quickly things can get out of hand.

And I'm just trying to ask all the questions.

And I think this private activity is different from what we're trying to organize on our sports field.

And I suppose we also would have the capability of having

Ambassadors who would be there, perhaps the organization would pay a fee in order to pay the cost of the ambassador to be there to make sure that they are following what the expectations are because that would change people's behavior.

If we could, and I would like to make sure we get the questions asked and stated publicly for the record, not just in the chat.

So just put out there that you have a follow up and I'll make sure we get to go ahead.

I just suggested to Greg that he send us the list of all the exempt situations because the gym was exempt.

There's a variety of exempt things and board members are asking good questions about what's exempt and so a list of those would be helpful.

Yeah, and they're in the definitions.

The entities that are in the activities that are exempt from the gathering provision are places of employment where people are performing their functions of employment.

Events or activities on the grounds of an institution of higher education or school-owned property.

And that's a phrase I want to modify just slightly to narrow it a little bit.

Persons engaging in religious exercise at their religious institution or any other place of religious significance.

The exemptions from public place, and that ties into when face coverings are

required, does not include institutions of higher education and other schools, fitness and other exercise facilities, religious institutions, indoor shooting ranges, and courts.

And those were selected.

They've not been identified as problem areas so far, some because they've been closed, but also because they have phase three requirements in place.

that cover their activities.

Thank you.

And for courts because the inside of the court buildings were controlled by the judges.

Yeah, just because I know we're pushing up against our time and recognizing that I want to thank Greg and staff for such a thoughtful document.

I am so impressed that it really is five pages.

If anyone wanted to really understand what we're doing, we're not talking about a hundred-page document here.

We're talking about a five-page, very readable document, I believe, and I thank you for that.

I also specifically appreciate, Greg, the section 11, and I probably struggle over this word, but the severability clause, I think, was excellent addition.

Thank you for that.

which is one of those things that covers us, so I appreciate that.

For the public who haven't had a chance to look at this, this ordinance would be effective August the 1st.

So we're not talking about supporting, if we supported something today, we're not talking about it would kick in tomorrow, we're talking August the 1st.

What I'm worried about is what Denise Bond said to remember

Even if we did anything today, we're looking at already pushing off because if we approve this and it goes into effect August 1, she was talking about allowing time for people to get used to it, to understand it, to get the word out.

Now we're all of a sudden pushing up against probably the middle of August.

I recognize that the city is critical and I know I've certainly had conversations by phone over the last several, last week anyway, with several city councilors.

They are as concerned or many of them are certainly as concerned as we are.

But I do recognize that it would be not very effective and not a good idea to move forward on something

that the city didn't agree with as well.

I guess my question is I could very easily support this very what I think of as very reasonable and very limited document today which would send us all of a sudden to August the 1st for it to even become effective.

How do we manage to wrap that around getting the city on board and getting this to them and then not having to wait until the middle of August to come back for an approval which then is going to put us out another two weeks.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around how to make this work at the same time

accommodating what we all recognize is Scottsville and the city on board.

No, no, I think I'm tracking exactly what you're saying.

It's the coordination piece with our key partners.

I want to talk out loud for a minute.

The August 1st date, it's the first day of the month.

It's approximately one week from today.

It's about the amount of time that the Commonwealth, the governor's office, whenever they've put things in effect, they've pushed seven to 10 days out.

So it was a good placeholder day

There's a couple of things that I would make observations on.

This board meets on August the 5th.

The Charlottesville City Council meets on August the 3rd.

So I'm gonna have discussions with the city this evening.

We can have additional discussions with the city between now and Friday.

and we know for sure that if there were no special call meetings, the city meets on the 3rd, we meet on the 5th.

And so, and with the placeholder date of August the 1st, Supervisor McKeel, we're only talking, and every day matters, and I know it does, but we're only talking four days

until between August 1st and August 5th.

So if nothing changes the city's first time formally in a board meeting to consider this would be on August the 3rd.

I didn't know I had any discussion with the city about that.

Mr. Campner may have spoken with the city attorney but I've not talked to the city about the details, implementation, you know I wasn't even

And I'll say this, and then I am very conscious of the urgency of this because August the 1st, August the 5th, then all of a sudden the delays, we start really talking about some serious time.

I mean, we're getting cases that are identified positive.

We have a transit cat person who's now positive, a driver.

I mean, it goes on and on, and I'm just very concerned

that we keep pushing this ordinance down the road.

I don't know if we can have consensus that we agree with this today, because if certainly if the City Council was going to take it up, they would need to know that we have consensus on this document, right?

Maybe that doesn't mean a formal vote, which would put it to August.

I'm just trying to figure out the logistics.

I would like to pile on in support of the argument of keeping August 1st and the fact as several people have mentioned this is something which will be evolving

So if this board can have four people who support this as we have discussed it lays out the starting place to which the university can respond and if they have suggestions that they want to make for improvements we can listen to them but I agree we cannot wait two or three weeks for this to begin because all of a sudden we'll be in October.

This is the way things happen so fast.

And our staff has absolutely outdone themselves in the last seven days, 24 hours a day, to get us to here.

I would be ashamed to walk away and sit around for a week and not take advantage of all the work that they have done to get us here where it's something that is balanced and reasonable and protective.

And I hope we'll bring that positivity rate back down where it belongs at 3%.

I mean if we if we can make a motion today I'd be glad to second hers or whatever so well we ought to send the message that we if it's true that all six of us are supportive of this we really should at least be able to send that message to the community because without that message no one's going to know what to do with this and certainly not City Council right?

Thank you.

I made the assumption that we were going to vote on something today and I assumed it was this and then see if the city wants to come in.

So I have two questions for staff.

And I'm in support of this and I thank staff for it.

I think they've done a great job.

It's reasonable and I'm very impressed and are ready to support it.

I just want to make sure that we're not moving ahead without the city and so I just want to make sure that those logistics are straight and I thought coming into this that that was the plan if the board agreed to this as a group.

But I do have one question.

Would it be reasonable or just too awkward and a mess for us to go ahead and

and approve the face covering ordinance to go into effect on August 1st and bring the other two issues if the city and everybody agreed to it.

I think it's all important and I think they will.

and I think we can go ahead, but it's just a question of is there any value in getting that face cover ordinance in place, you know, irrespective of what others will do.

There's good compliance in the community anyway.

from what I've seen in the in the city there's very good compliance in city residents where actually the problem is in convenience stores and situations like that out in the county.

and I know we got others doing comments here.

Yes, I think Supervisor Palmer, I think that's a very good suggestion.

I like to get face covers at their ASAP.

My question goes to, if we implement this for August the 1st, would that, or should we implement it on the same day that the City Council

has their meeting, so it's open sides.

Or implement the first and then on the fifth, it needs to be a tweaking, we can tweak it on the fifth.

But I think all of us pretty much agree with all of this.

I especially like the face coverings going in no matter what.

Yes, I will

lobby in favor of the full adoption because the clarification which is provided today is so important to small businesses who are having to deal with their customers, who are not giving them an easy time.

Three different phone calls this morning about different country markets in the White Hall district where signs on the door, people are completely disregarding this and putting

I think putting a terrible burden on the people in stores because we have not taken this official action.

I think it will make a difference.

We also have big box people.

National companies who are not following the state guidance.

And many, many people say to me, I'm never going back there because they don't care about me and my health.

They don't care about their employees.

And the same companies are getting reported day after day after day to the health department.

I think this ambassador program may help.

All the things that have been worked on I think are very important.

So I hope we will do this today.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

I am not in favor of piecemealing.

I'm doing part of it today, part of it next week, tweaking it.

I am more in favor of getting a consensus today, letting county staff work with the City of Charlottesville and look to move this to August 6th.

for a vote after we get feedback from them.

I think that leads to less confusion among our residents because if we make an ordinance today and we change it a week or so later, I think consistency and consensus would be advisable.

I think it'd be the 6th.

Is there a way and I'm sorry to jump in I should have gone into the chat and asked for permission but is there a way if we have consensus today and I think we do and we're looking at August 5th if is there a way that we could send this to city council with doesn't have to be a big letter but something that would say we feel a sense of urgency that we're in consensus over this ordinance but we did not want to

enacted outside of their having a chance to review it.

Would they or could they be willing to look at it given the sense of urgency before August 1st or August 5th or what?

I'm just I'm trying to to move this to the city if we can quicker than the first week in August that's all.

If there was a way we could encourage them and ask them if maybe they could do that I don't know.

So that would mean something that would accompany an outreach to them?

I thought we saw.

Yes.

I did send in a chat one last thing and that is it is important I think for the county, for county residents to know that we are

making this decision for them and for us.

And I hope that the other jurisdictions will join us, but our vote, our decision should not be waiting for somebody else to give it a blessing.

I feel this is our responsibility to definitely cooperate and invite their participation.

But I really feel very strongly that we have to be very affirmative about our support for this.

Yeah, I don't frankly see it that way.

OK, great.

I see this as we're doing it.

We're trying to do our best to work the logistics out of working with our partners because we have to do that to make it make sense regionally because you know people it just doesn't make sense where you cross over the boundary that oh this is this that I mean

There's a lot of things there, but I don't think I'm concerned about them saying, oh, we disagree or agree with this.

It's just about this is where we laid it out.

We've got a start date.

I think all of this is going to be changing over the next weeks anyway.

Once we put it into place, we're going to be on keep getting updated data.

We may have to go more severe.

We may have to loosen up.

I mean, all of those things are going to be moving at different mileposts as we march through all of this.

So I think it's always good practice when we have an ordinance, especially as the start date was not August 1, to give us the time to scrutinize the document, the ins and outs of it.

We've had a public discussion today.

As we all know, we will get feedback from folks, and as we've done in other places, we've gotten good feedback from folks.

What about this?

What about that?

Maybe there's a question we haven't thought of.

I think sending the strong word to everybody that there's no disagreement amongst us that this is a clear six supervisors in support of what's there allows folks to say okay did you think about this nuance and gives us the time to maybe work those pieces out with staff as they come in but with the exemptions I mean a lot of the exemptions out there pretty much get rid of a lot of the emails that have come in and the concerns that are there

and the kind of flare-up points, I think, relative to athletics and schools and stuff.

So I'm happy to put out the strong word that we're all in support of this ordinance, and I'd even be fine with if logistically we had conversations that this was moving forward, it's nothing to stop us from calling yet another special meeting ahead of the 5th to be able to enact it, if we wanted to do that.

So we'll keep that on the table and open.

Mr. Richardson do you have any thoughts or comments on them?

Mr. Chair, you're exactly right.

Mr. Cantner did all of the heavy lifting of putting the emergency ordinance together and he has done a superb job.

August 1st placeholder date we didn't talk about and I think that's absolutely the earliest that we can put this in effect.

Giving ourselves adequate time

to continue to work through logistics internally.

And that's about a week, six to eight days out to give us just the absolute minimum amount of time.

All the supervisors who have stressed the urgency in moving ahead quickly, I hear that.

I appreciate the consensus and support from this board that you are in agreement.

that what's been laid out today seems to hit the right balance of the pinpoint strategy of what we would do that would be more restrictive.

We took very seriously your direction last Wednesday night but Mr. Chair frankly from an ideal standpoint to give the city of Charlottesville several days to catch back up to us to make sure that they have a chance to look at this and then if possible be within certainly be within several days

So Board, is there any objection?

We have strong consensus.

The majority, or everyone, 6-0, right?

And then I know staff will get to work working with both the City and UVA as needed.

And then if there's need or we feel we can do it, we can come back and call another special meeting if needed.

No.

Oh, thank you.

I'm fine.

Jeff, is there any other items we're going to hit now that we've got there?

Yes sir, I do apologize because this board's been at it for over two hours and I'm sorry but I do need this board to give myself and the staff in the Parks Department please give us final direction.

I heard a nice conversation back and forth about whether we proceed as an organization

in working with the leagues or will we pause phase three until we go further?

I need the board to give us final direction on that please and I think there's been different perspectives.

I've heard different perspectives from the board and

So if we could go through so if I understand the question staff was ready to move forward with the phase three elements for athletics in the fields um a week ago which we paused um and paused till we had this conversation on this ordinance and how that plays in so if we could go through and just speak to where you're at on that position so the question would be to allow staff to continue with what they were doing under the phase three for athletic

League, and League Play.

We're not.

We're positive all together.

So we'll go through the order.

Yes, I just want to make sure I understand we're talking about the Parks Department getting a plan from the leagues as to how they're going to operate safely.

Okay, yes, I agree with that.

I think that the Parks Department is fully capable of getting a plan.

And I think that they will make it very clear that we're able to track now that we're doing contact tracing, that if this turns out to be the source of infections, then they'll get shut down.

And I think that that is enough of an incentive for that to

to certainly be worth a try and probably work.

I would support that, but that goes with the caveat that if something happens, as with all of this whole ordinance that we're dealing with, we can always come back and readjust or change.

I'm sorry to say I disagree because Richmond and Washington have not been able to figure out how to do this.

I think it's very unfair for us to assign the moral obligation as well as the legal one to the Parks Department to somehow come up with a solution that has baffled everybody else.

So I am very much in favor of maintaining the cause

They can gather plans all they want to, but I do wish that we would not give the idea to our leagues that they can begin work on the 22nd of July or the 29th or whatever that date was because we have a long way to go to make sure that we have

the ability to staff watchers or how this is, I mean, I have no idea how this is really gonna play out and I don't think we've been given enough, given ourselves enough time to figure that out.

This, if we, I disagree with the fact that we can somehow get it back again after we open this for a couple of weeks.

That is incredibly disruptive and far worse for the players than, and also for the health of the players and everybody concerned.

than to just say, we're not ready yet.

You need to exercise on your own for a little while longer until we figure this out and see if we actually get these case numbers to start to come down.

We don't even know that yet.

And we need to get through the fact that the students are coming back and this whole disruption that's about to happen to our local marketplace before we even know what kind of risks we have out there.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

I would echo more what Supervisor Palmer said with an addition that I think so which basically is that we move forward with the phase three for the leagues to be able to play at the parks.

Subject to the plan that Ms.

Smith and the county has already worked up that each league has to come up with a safety plan with enforcement and everything.

The other thing that I would add is that we have to look at each sport.

I think Dr. Bonds really addressed the issue here, and that is certain sports, those that are contact sports, basketball, football, soccer, where the players are in closer proximity to each other, raise the risk.

Whereas things like softball, baseball, tennis, I think they tend to reduce the risk.

Yes, I'd like Dr. Bonds to address Supervisor Malek's concern because I'd like to know

their point of view, if she's still here.

Or Ryan, if he's still here.

I'd like to hear their opinion regarding the different types of outdoor activities for children also.

And I think we don't want to do a back and forth, back and forth.

So I like the idea of getting each

event to have their regulations, but I'm really leery about anything close in contact with kids because that affects, even though they are maybe at low risk, they come into contact with others that are at risk.

But I don't know if they're available to answer that question.

So Dr. Bonds had to step off to take other calls.

And I'll just fall back onto what she alluded to earlier, which is the sports that are much more close contact with, probably without face masks, soccer, football, basketball, as you mentioned, those are the ones that are going to put people at higher risk.

things like tennis, softball, baseball.

But wouldn't all sports require that they wear face masks?

I think the contact, if we think about what we determine is close contact, so under six feet for more than 15 minutes, even with a face covering, there's potential for contact.

Well, I think the idea was that that's the plan that they would be presenting to the Parks and Rec Department.

Okay.

Okay, good.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm just stating my understanding here.

The ambassador program is part of that.

Right.

Right.

But nothing would be implemented until this is all approved.

In other words, we would have to go over the regulations that the Parks and Rec department receives from the different agencies.

They're submitting a plan to Parks and Rec for review.

If that plan is sufficient in their judgment, then they will allow them to proceed.

Thank you.

So around the state, I know there are certain regions that don't have hockey and lacrosse because it is high contact.

So it's very important that we have that list that's available.

I think that may reduce the misery for the park department if we have already established which

Sports we are going to consider to participate in this program.

And secondly, is there a contract, is there a content neutrality issue here that Mr. Campner needs to advise us on?

Because we're picking and choosing here, folks, and this is scary.

So there are big consequences if we get it wrong.

We, the Department of Parks and Recreation, excuse me, is evaluating with the assistance of the guidance that's out there.

They're making distinctions based upon the evidence that's out there, weighing the differences

between the different sports, the level of contact.

Okay.

So having seen the bruises that my grandchildren come home with from the sports, there's plenty of contact in all the ones I mentioned.

And so that has to be very much a consideration.

And as Bea said, I look forward to

being able to learn about these plans that are put in and making sure that we have a bigger discussion about all these different things.

So I'm sorry I didn't persuade anybody, but I will go on to the next step.

Yeah, just a quick comment.

I thought we were talking about the sports that were not the close contact.

So maybe I'm naive, but

Amy I hope you're still on the call.

Sure, sure.

We've already sent out to the sports leagues the guidelines that they would need to follow before submitting their plans and that's taken right from Governor Northam's guidance in its seven bullet points on recreational sports.

of the guidelines and they have to outline how they would follow each bulleted point and I can send you guys a copy of that.

I'm sure you have it somewhere but I can send you a fresh copy of that for sure and then we're gonna evaluate as a Parks and Recreation team if they can meet all those requirements.

So the thing that I would add to Mr. Chair is that if this board moves forward with us going to phase three the staff both in the parks department the administration they take the responsibility for reviewing this

the implementation, the plans and such.

And we do that at a staff level.

We would not be coming back to the board with plans and coming back to the board on each league and reviewing this stuff.

That's not what we're focused on.

The board wants us to stay in phase two and not move to phase three.

The staff is prepared to take that direction from the board today.

But if you move us forward, the staff within the Smith's department, Mr. Krichenberger's department, they're going to move forward with the leagues.

and they're also going to it won't be just a one check-in and you're finished that they're prepared the parks department's prepared with staffing that they've got to to maintain oversight for compliance and issues and such and Ms.

That's right.

If we see ourselves or we hear from others that leads aren't adhering to the guidelines that they need to adhere to, we will revoke their reservation.

So we're definitely going to stand behind.

All right, my thoughts, I think people are clear on it.

I mean, I'm fine with continuing with where staff was at.

And part of this is not contingent on the league plan, but I look at the ordinance we're getting ready to enact and I see them being able to adhere to these ordinances.

We're making exceptions from wineries and breweries and places that are having other types of things and the social distancing requirement, the masking requirements are all in play and allowing for those exemptions.

and I can see that these folks would be able to stay under 50 and be able to comply with the social distancing and the masking guidelines of it and I have faith and staff to be able to work through it but if they're not being there they can revoke the field piece.

So I'm comfortable moving forward with it and like I've said on other items there's you know this stuff's I'm going to be under constant review moving forward and at any time if we have to yank back we yank back.

That's the nature on all of this.

There's nothing that doesn't adhere to that rule.

And I'm not hearing the same level of concern from our health officials as I am with others on this particular item.

The exercise facility one is a little bit more disconcerting than the field use for athletic play, in my opinion.

That's where I'm at on this.

I do have what I need.

The final thing that I would say is that our ambassador program that we will begin work on with our facilities and environmental services department

We can cross connect with the Parks Department and we can speak with Amy and Bob and their staff after today to determine if we need to place some attention with our ambassador program to the field use with leagues.

And if they need us in that regard we can work with them on that if they need additional resources on the ground, Mr. Chair.

Very good.

Thank you.

You said that was one.

I'm going to clarify before we finish up to make sure that I can restate what I've heard from this board.

This board is in consensus on the framework that you have before you with the presentation that Mr. Campner, myself, and the staff have made on the focus areas and the policy recommendations.

So there is consensus with this board to move forward.

Can't see anybody's face, but I guess we have consensus.

I am, and I did note that we have had some emails come in during the meeting on this, and I think this pause, to use that phrase for that term, helps us to ensure that both we come up with any tweaks we may need to make,

And while I don't believe that we're waiting on permission from anyone else, I think it's very helpful to coordinate as much as we can with the city of Charlottesville and UVA.

And so I agree with that.

Thank you, Jeff.

I think Supervisor Mallek may have had a storm issue where she is at.

Well, Board, then I think it's clear where we're at.

Are there any other board members matters not listed on the agenda today?

No, there are not.

I'm fine.

Again, I'd just like to thank staff for this great document.

and it's easy to read and it's short and I think our community can wrap their heads around it.

Nothing other than just echoing the exact same sentiment.

Mr. Campner, the work you did on this is extraordinary.

I know you put in really, really long days.

I very much value that.

Mr. Richardson, your entire staff has worked diligently.

We know it's been an extra burden

But it's very important and we are very blessed to have the work that you all have done.

Yes, I wanted to say thank you very much to all the everyone who contributed to this excellent proposal and the very hard work of staff and I know that I don't think Greg has gotten any sleep in the last few.

I don't think anyone else has either actually.

and the Health Department.

I would like to ask a question regarding the wearing of the masks and how feasible it is for businesses with someone saying that they have a medical exemption.

I'm sure that the Health Department has some guidelines on that if someone does claim a medical exemption.

So that's not for today, but for them to think about.

But I agree with everything that's been going on and love the work that the staff has done.

Thank you so much.

So everyone's voice of the comments to staff and everybody that has worked here.

I do hope that some of the questions that board members brought up that were not answered or information that we're tracking, just to put kind of a punctuation on that, that we can have that answered to us by the time we take a formal vote on this so that we have all the follow-up questions that were not answered today.

We'll have answers by the time we take formal action.

Mr. County Executive, any matters not listed on the agenda?

Most are not at this time.

All right, very good.

We will adjourn to August 5th, 2020, 2 p.m.

That will be an electronic meeting pursuant to ordinance number 20-A8.

So everybody have a good afternoon, good evening.