Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   3/17/2021

I call the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order for our March 17, 2021 1 p.m.

meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with Ordinance 20-16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the

Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District.

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

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

Also with us today, we have our county executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson,

Our Board Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

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

Okay everyone thank you very much and we will move to the adoption of the final agenda and we do have some items to change here my understanding is item number 8.1 will be pulled that's fiscal year 2021 appropriations we're going to move items 16 and 17 that's matters from the board not on the agenda and matters from the county executive not on the agenda to the afternoon

and that will be placed after item number 10, the CARES Coronavirus Relief Funding Report.

Under number 16 from the board, there'll be the topic St.

George Avenue, VDOT traffic calming process at Supervisor Malek's request and also to number 16, county code 1851.43, special events in the rural areas at Supervisor Palmer's request and then obviously other matters as board members bring up.

So if one has a question about the secondary road plan, is today a day to talk about it?

So that item is number 8.9 on the consent agenda.

That would be my suggestion, Mr. Chair.

So we'll go ahead and pull item number 8.9 and if it's alright with the board we could just place that right after the approval of the consent agenda for a quick conversation.

Thank you.

Yes ma'am.

Any other changes?

Hearing none is there a motion to adopt the agenda as amended?

Second?

Second.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right.

Very good.

Thank you.

And that will take us to number five, brief announcements by board members.

And we'll go in our speaking order for today.

The only one is that Supervisor Galloway and I will be co-hosting a town hall on Tuesday, the 23rd of March at 7 p.m.

And in addition to any topics of any order from citizens, we will have a presentation and talk about the fire service for Early Still Firehouse and Chief Eggleston will be there.

So I look forward to that discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

First, a happy St.

Patrick's Day to everyone, the day that everyone can be Irish.

And also that Supervisor Palmer and I will be doing our town hall with the budget in conjunction with our at the Nabon tomorrow night.

We'll do the CAC first and then we'll address budget matters.

Thank you.

Yes, we'll be having our Pan Top CAC Town Hall meeting combination on the 22nd.

So we invite everyone to attend that.

We'll have a budget presentation along with some other items.

And the 27th and 28th, there will be a spring cleanup along Prophet Road.

So we invite all volunteers to come and help us clean up, spring cleanup.

It's a yearly event.

I'll be there.

So if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Maybe we can, I don't know if we can put on the Albemarle website, but anyway, feel free to contact me.

It'll be profit polar grounds road.

That's what we're doing our spring cleanup on the 27th and 28th of March.

Thank you.

In addition to what Supervisor Price just said about our town hall, our CAC, at six o'clock on Friday night I will be doing another town hall of sorts hosted by the regular Yancey Advisory Committee group.

I'm going to be their special guest.

and anybody who would like to join that in the county can certainly do that.

It's on the county calendar and where you can email Ed Brooks, who is the director of the Yancey Community Center.

Yes, I have just a comment and then I'd like to ask a question, but not to be outdone by Donna, since my wife's name is McKeel, the luck of the Irish to everyone today.

And Donna, I have a shamrock scarf I'm wearing today, so I want to know where your green is.

And to get to something serious, I had a great town hall meeting on Monday evening

And I just want to thank all of the staff for participating and for the citizens who participated.

It was really great.

We had some great questions, a good Q&A session.

Our school board member was there and presented four, five, maybe six slides from the school division budget, which was great.

One question that came up that's been in the news

I know that people have been following in the paper the situation over the red carpet inn with the residents at the red carpet inn and the displacement and some concerns about where

They might be relocated.

That question came up and Emily had an opportunity to reach out to Phyllis Savadis, our Director of Social Services.

So Emily, could you just share with everyone what you found?

Certainly, and thank you Supervisor McKeel and Emily Kilroy, Director of Communications and Public Engagement.

So one of the things that came up in the discussion at the CAC meeting was that the county has been part of the land use approval for the project.

out of that red carpet in sight.

The transaction, that land transaction is between two private entities, but the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless has shared that as media reports came out about some of the families that had been living at the red carpet inn on more of a long-term basis, that when they became aware of the communication issue, they reached out to get a list of all the long-term tenants that had been living there

There were 10 households that were impacted with the closure of the red carpet inn and so they've made contact with all 10 of those households.

Seven of them have reached back out for support and they are working on an individual basis to find the best solution for their needs.

so to get those individuals rehoused elsewhere in the community.

And then also the Department of Social Services is aware now of this issue and they have been working actively with the adults and families that they had an existing client relationship with.

And they've also been working with individuals who've been reaching out to them who they've not had a previous relationship with.

And they go through the sort of the standard screening process to determine eligibility.

And also, as with everyone that comes into DSS, provide information and referral for other services that might also help support their needs.

Thank you, Emily.

I just thought it was important to share that information.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate Supervisor McKeel bringing that topic up.

And I just want to state, I mean, the red carpet in, it falls within the Rio district.

I don't know what happened in the breakdown here.

It's unfortunate and frustrating on many levels.

And I, for one, wish when we had this application in front of us that evening for action, I wish I would have had the wherewithal to ask what the transition was from current ownership to new ownership.

And I did not ask that.

I did not think to ask that.

And for my part, as I've seen the comments and the appreciate the support the DSS is providing, I think I owe an apology to those families that are living there.

because this is a stressful event.

I mean, this is not something that is a pop-up communication and can throw things into turmoil.

And I, for one, am very disappointed that they've had to go through that.

And I'm just offering my apology for not doing my part in helping that transition because we all could have had the chance to do that.

So there you have it on that topic.

But again, thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I'm glad that topic came up at the CAC and that you brought that up today.

I don't have any other announcements today other than just as Supervisor Mallek said, I'll be joining her for a town hall later this month.

I'm sorry driving and talking is not a good idea.

That is that on March 27th the Early Spill Fire Company will be having a

Scavenger Hunt fundraiser all around the western and northern Albemarle area.

And information can be found by contacting me or their fire company website.

And there'll be lots more publicity coming out about that soon.

But I realize this is the last meeting before that event happens.

So thank you all very much.

And my Irish ancestor from the 13th century, she was a pirate and was incarcerated in the Tower of London.

So I'm wearing a green shirt in her honor today.

Very good, thank you.

Coming on, just we'll wait till she's officially on.

I suspect we will do the proclamation and

then go to Iretifah, but we'll wait until she is officially on the call.

Good afternoon, Iretifah.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

It's my privilege to read a proclamation, excuse me, celebrating Women's History Month.

Whereas, Women's History Month, celebrated during the month of March, originated in 1987 to recognize the heritage and achievements of women in the United States.

And whereas, throughout our nation's history, women

and pioneers in all areas of society and their knowledge, skills and abilities have laid the foundation for a more robust workforce and a more prosperous economy.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been grueling for all employees, it has also uniquely and disproportionately affected women in the workplace.

particularly working mothers, women of color, especially Black and Latinx women, women with disabilities, and women in senior leadership positions, with one in four women contemplating downshifting their careers,

and whereas this pandemic has put into stark relief the truth that what is good for gender equity is good for the economy and for the whole society and has provided us with an opportunity to create a more flexible and empathetic workplace where

everyone can try.

Whereas Albemarle County has steps to make our organization more inclusive of all including the board's vote to revise the county code to embrace gender inclusive pronouns along with other initiatives to prioritize gender equity and whereas a more diverse and gender inclusive organization

Second.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Paulman?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

All right, very good board.

That motion carries.

And with us, like we mentioned, you're Tofa Binte-Fereed.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

It's Fahir, Coordinator for Equity and Accountability.

Just a quick fact, I actually grew up in Albemarle County and have benefited greatly from female role models in our community whose leadership and guidance have shaped who I am today.

So it is my pleasure to be able to play just a small role in celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of Albemarle County women.

that they have made and continue to make towards improving our community and making it a better home for us all.

And to that end, I'm happy to introduce Virginia Doherty, a member of the board of directors of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women.

I've learned a lot from their work about women in our history who are often forgotten from the dominant narrative, and I'm inspired by their continued efforts towards gender equity.

So thank you so much for joining us today, Ms.

Doherty.

I want to bring thanks from the Charlottesville N.O.W.

to the Board of Supervisors for recognizing Women's History Month.

We need to tell the story of our women much better in the future than we have in the past.

One way to do that happened in this last year.

A commission appointed by Governor Northam voted to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from the Capitol in Washington.

and substitute a statue of civil rights activist, Barbara Johns.

Lee held slaves and fought to keep them, claiming that slavery was essential to maintaining social order.

At the same time, he acknowledged slavery was a moral evil.

Barbara Johns was a student in the 50s, 1950s, at the all-black Moton High School in Farmington, Virginia.

Her school lacked laboratories, a gym, a cafeteria, and other features we now take for granted.

Johns and her sister Joan decided to organize a strike.

Students about boycotted the school for two weeks, returning only after the superintendent made threats against their families.

Johns decided to take legal action.

Her case was made part of four cases that formed

the appeal in Brown v. Board of Education.

This appeal led the Supreme Court to declare segregated schools unconstitutional.

Johns was forced to move in with an uncle in Montgomery, Alabama after receiving threats for her role in the stripe.

In the end, she went on to study library science at Drexel University

The story of this brave young woman is a Virginia story that needs to be told.

We are fortunate that there is actually a statue of John's on the Virginia State Capitol grounds.

It's near the governor's mansion, and it's a wonderful sculpture.

I encourage you to make a special trip to see it.

In conclusion, I want to invite you to the Charlottesville Now program for Women's History Month.

The topic is The Pleasures of Age, Old Women, and Political Power in the United States Suffrage Movement.

Corinne T. Fields from the UVA Department of Women will speak.

Professor Fields will reveal why 19th century suffragists demanded respect and security for older women as an essential dimension of political empowerment and why these hopes remained unrealized over a century later.

The program's on March 22nd at 7.30.

It's virtual.

And you can go to our Facebook page to register.

Go to Facebook, Charlottesville, and O.W.

and thank you again so much for your support of women's history and for the work you're doing in our community to improve things for women.

Ms.

Yeah, but... At least mentally.

I'm sure you should appreciate the program.

But it was interesting that a number of the suffragists were older women and continued the work to get there in their old age.

And some of them didn't get to see it happen.

Is Virginia with us today?

Before I move to the board, and I'm not falling for this older woman to make any comment here, I will say to move to the other supervisors that prior to moving to virtual, this supervisor only had to look to his right and to his left for

women leadership in our county.

So it's been a pleasure.

And with that, I'll ask invite supervisors if you'd like to make comments or order.

Supervisor Malek, any comments?

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I'm about to make the transition to my laptop.

I would agree and I'm also equally inspired by our ancestors and forebears who went

before who have been responsible locally for our water protection ordinances and so many local government processes in Albemarle County over the last 80 years that we can easily describe.

Thank you Chair Galloway, Ms.

Daugherty, thank you so much for being here today.

The proclamation itself I don't think goes far enough in describing the impact of the pandemic on women in the workforce.

The last statistic I saw was that women were substantially more seriously impacted by reduced working hours and loss of income

than any other identifiable demographic.

Women continue to carry the burden not only of working outside the home, but of the majority of the work inside the home.

And I'm proud to be a part of an organization that has recognized the contributions of women.

And I especially appreciate the work that you individually and the National Organization for Women has done to improve the lives of women in our country.

Thank you for being here today.

Yes, once again, thank you.

I've been following the history of the suffragettes, which was back in the 1800s, and I'm sure even before then, women greatly influenced their partners or spouses politically.

I know that, pretty sure for a fact.

Also, we know that when we educate women around the world, then we also raise the level

of raise our level of living.

That is one of the main factors that will actually raise the level of living is by educating the women.

They have healthier children.

The children get educated, et cetera, et cetera.

So this is something that's very near and dear to my heart.

It's hard for me to add anything.

Thank you very much.

And I know we stand on the shoulders of a lot of really wonderful people who came for us.

I do have to say one funny thing, because before you got on, we were talking about St.

Patrick's Day and Ann Mallek talked about her pirate great grandmother or something like that.

And I have a great grandmother, six foot tall,

that migrated from a little island off the coast of Ireland on the West Coast with her seven daughters under the age of 12 here.

And she got the money, the family lore is by stealing her father's cow and selling it.

So, you know, so many stories of, you know, of people that

I mean, can you imagine traveling across the ocean to another country like that?

And it's just amazing.

I could never do any of the things that the suffragettes did that so many other people did.

So thank you.

Oh, I just appreciate all the wonderful remarks that my other supervisors have said and certainly agree with all of them.

Virginia, thank you very much for being here today and the great work that you all do.

I do want to thank Ned because certainly we have lots of men in our world that make it possible for the women today to do what we do.

So we must realize that.

And I will say, I am very impressed at my age.

I talk about the younger generations, but I am really impressed with our younger generations of men who really are stepping up to the plate and sharing the workload more with the women in their lives.

But this is just a great recognition, and I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

I know what that means, so thank you.

Virginia, thank you so much for being here with us this afternoon.

Yirtipa, as always, it's a pleasure to have you join us and thank you both again.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

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

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak and a sign-up sheet is managed by the Clerk's Office.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

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

Address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

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

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

Speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment, and back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

If participating by phone, please press star nine to let us know you want to speak.

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

Thank you.

I've unmuted.

Oh, yes.

I'm Gary Grant of the Earliesville area in the Rio District.

Thank you to White Hall Supervisor Ann Mallek for her excellent constituent services to Rio District residents who have recently had concerns about a proposed shooting preserve and a violation of Albemarle's land disturbance ordinance.

Thank you to Supervisors McKeel, Palmer, Galloway, Price, and Mallek

for filling out correctly their annual state required statements of economic interest for 2021.

Now for some questions.

Who board among the six of you has the courage to admit that your February 17th closed meeting discussion of your rules of procedure policy was at least unethical, if not illegal?

What board should Albemarle taxpayers who pay for their own broadband services privately think about your executive recommending that county government should collectively give away tax dollars to pay for others broadband.

Where, board, do you think the electricity comes from for all the expensive electric vehicles you want Albemarle residents to buy?

According to the U.S.

Department of Energy,

60% of Virginia's electricity comes from burning natural gas and fossil fuel.

30% comes from nuclear power, producing tons of anti-climate action plan radioactive waste.

And why, board, does your local climate action plan not include protections against the health and property consequences of open burning?

When, board, will your allegedly upgraded county website's search function actually function?

And finally, board, how do you expect taxpayers to trust you with our money when you and your county executive can't even bring yourselves to say the word money?

Resources are money.

Investments are spending, expenditures, costs.

Fund balance is surplus.

Market adjustments, for crying out loud, are raises.

Could you please stop speaking in governmental euphemisms?

And saying there's no tax increase is a lie, Supervisor McKeel.

Check the videotape, like I did.

Even if the tax rate doesn't change, when reassessments go up, taxes do increase on community members.

Meanwhile, thank you for spending taxpayer money to stream your meetings.

Thank you for my less than three minutes of your valuable time today.

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon.

Hello.

Good afternoon.

My name is Lonnie Murray from the White Hall District.

Your consent agenda for today is the secondary six-year plan for road improvements, which includes paving projects in the rural area.

As a citizen, I'd like to bring your attention to attachment B, the unpaved road policies review process.

While I give credit to the county for the development of this process, there's still some important adjustments I feel need to be made.

As noted by staff, rural road paving can run contrary to a comprehensive plan and end up causing development of rural areas, despite our county's goal to protect them for the primary uses of agriculture, conservation, and recreation.

One of the conditions of rural rustic road projects is that the County Board indicates growth in traffic generated by the land and not expected to increase significantly.

However, given that you approve a statement certifying this as fact, I should strongly encourage you to explicitly include this analysis in the process.

Indeed, because these projects have the same impact as a rezoning, it might be even good to send them to the Planning Commission first so they can make a decision about whether a given paving is indeed consistent with the comprehensive plan goals, including considerations like habitat fragmentation.

Secondary, as a long distance runner, it's concerning to me that only cars are evaluated in this process.

Many gravel roads are highly used by the running and mountain biking community.

These natural greenways are a limited resource, and paving them can leave runners without a safe place to exercise, which is even more important during COVID-19.

Unlike some sports, runners don't ask much from the county.

We don't ask for millions of dollars for artificial turf, stadiums, lighting.

We just want the county not to destroy the places necessary to train safely for our sport.

So I feel it's important if the criteria also includes the outreach to the cycling and running community and analysis of the non-vehicular traffic.

As it is, three of the paving projects on your list are highly used by cyclists and runners and will be irrevocably damaged by paving.

Staff reach out to other organizations routinely, like the Farm Bureau, so reaching out to the Charlottesville Track Club, Charlottesville area trail runners, and Charlottesville area mountain bikers seems like a reasonable thing to do and is consistent with their comp plan goals.

Lastly, even with their significant public opposition, it's really hard to get one of these roads removed from the list.

White Mountain Road is an example of this, as noted by VDOT.

The process as it stands is backwards, since many homeowners aren't notified or asked for input until the paving is imminent, at which point these projects develop institutional inertia, which is hard to overcome.

Plus, some real estate agents promise homebuyers, don't worry, it's being paid, which sets up expectations that are hard to overcome.

There needs to be a clear process for removal, which gives more weight to property owners who will be negatively impacted.

Remember, in the rural area, we don't get bike lanes or sidewalks.

That infrastructure is reserved for the growth area.

Given that, our policies concerning road paving should be consistent with that philosophy and also abide by the principle of do no harm.

Thank you.

and we will move to our next item number eight and this of course as amended earlier item 8.1 has been pulled along with item 8.9.

So 8.1 is the fiscal year 2021 appropriations and 8.9 was the VDOT Albemarle County fiscal year 22-27 secondary six-year program.

With that is there a motion to approve as amended?

So moved.

Okay.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Very good.

The consent agenda minus the two items are approved.

Let's see, Andy, item 8.1.

Are we discussing that now?

Good afternoon.

I'm Andy Bowman.

I'm the Chief of the Budget Division in the Department of Finance and Budget, and I will share my screen.

This is a revision to an appropriation number 20-21-053.

One second.

And this is a change to the appropriation based on the board's discussion at the Monday afternoon's budget work session.

On February 17th, the board gave direction to move forward on funding for three items.

A development of the Southern Convenience Center, conceptual analysis and preliminary design of the Raised Forward, Earliesville intersection improvements.

There is no change to this appropriation for those items.

But based on the discussion for broadband, this appropriation is revised so that instead of $3 million for broadband support, at this time, we would appropriate $350,000 from the pandemic reserve.

And that would be for the partial year start-up costs for two full-time employees, related operating costs, and an affordability support program.

And that would be subject that moving forward in 21, contingent upon the board's approval in the 22 budget.

The remainder of that $30 million, which is $2.65 million for broadband infrastructure, that is recommended to be paused at this time just to provide for additional analysis to analyze pending funding that would be coming to the community from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

It was approved last week and signed by the President, I believe, just last Friday.

Alright, thank you.

Any questions here?

No, not with this.

No questions.

I just want to thank, I believe it was Supervisor Palmer who in our previous discussion brought up the advisability of this and I support it.

Thank you.

I'll move to approve the item.

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

All right, thank you very much.

That is approved.

And then the next item is 8.9, the secondary six-year program.

I guess to ask our staff to allay any confusion that I may have about how some of these roads seem to be moving forward, even though I thought they were not.

And so perhaps for White Mountain, for example, that's in Ms.

Palmer's district, I thought that that was still up in the air because of the considerable

controversy about it.

There's one in the Whitehall district, Fox Mountain, way at the bottom of the list, which we don't have to worry about doing right now because it's many years away.

But that is another one where I don't think it's ready for the list because of the considerable disagreement about what to go with.

And directly relates to the comment of one of our speakers during matters to the public today about paving roads through remote mountain properties

with no residential uses, we should really refine I think our criteria going forward to not be in getting public pressure to spend millions of dollars on four miles of something which isn't going to serve more than three houses and also will open up tremendously remote areas to subdivision.

So that's my concern and

Andy or I mean Kevin or Dan can help me out with that when they went after everybody else has had their chance to give their questions.

I think it appropriate we can go to Dan.

Daniel Butch senior planner and transportation.

The attachment.

It's attachment D. That's the priority list for unpaved roads for the county.

This was what was approved at last year's public hearing for the secondary six-year plan.

Any roads on this can be removed by the board.

Presently, the focus for secondary six-year pavings is through rural rustics, which includes the first 19 secondary roads.

You can see in the draft,

a secondary six-year plan attachment E what the projected funding is for those.

So for I think Supervisor Malek mentioned White Mountain and that is number 19 on this list and on the draft secondary six-year plan that's projected to be funded in fiscal year 25 and fully funded in fiscal year 26.

For the out years, this is just a projection.

Any board member can remove any of these roads.

And for Fox Mountain, we have after rural rustic paving, we have the regular paving list.

And this is priorities 20 to 31 in the attachment.

And these are for roads that were evaluated by VDOT and decided that they do not meet rural rustic eligibility as the rural rustic paving is the priority paving right now.

So secondary priority list from numbers 20 to 31 is what will be tackled after the rural rustic pavements.

So Fox Mountain comes in at very last of the list at number 31 because it does not meet rural rustic but it would be under a regular paving type

We had had lots of work with VDOT to get spot improvements done on that road because of its wretched condition.

But how it jumped from there to the paving list, I guess, is where my knowledge gap is.

And you can send me some information about that later.

Supervisor McKeel.

I'm sorry, Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Mr. Butch.

One of the things I've really become much more attuned to is the concerns of the property owners that are affected by decisions on paving a road.

I appreciate Mr. Murray's comments earlier today which replicate many of the comments that I have heard from residents in my district

Some of the roads, candidly,

A year or two ago, I would have just thought it's sort of a no-brainer to pave the road, but now that I understand the situation more, I realize that a lot of these roads actually, while the surface may be better for vehicular traffic, the adverse consequences of developmental pressures, the loss of some of the recreational areas because of higher vehicular count and higher speeds, among other things, have really raised in my mind the concern

over the process that is being used to notify the property owners adjacent to the roads that are being considered for paving to ensure that we're receiving adequate input from the residents before paving decisions are made.

Even Secretary's Road, which is the road that the gravel road that I live on comes off of,

Still to this day there are residents down there who are frustrated if not disappointed that the road was paved because while it has made for an easier transit for vehicles, it has increased the number of vehicles going between

Scottsville Road, Virginia 20 and over to Rolling Road, Jefferson Mill area with substantial speeds on these vehicles well above the speed limit and has increased those developmental pressures.

Thank you.

Yes, I agree with Vice Chair Price regarding informing everyone.

What I've realized when I've gone out into the community is I have some people living along gravel roads do not want them touched.

other people, they want them paved.

So I think it's more very important to be able to get the input from everybody.

One other thing that recently came up that I realize is happening on I think it's Stony Point Road is that

We're putting down gravel because that does get a lot of traffic.

We're putting down gravel, but then the gravel part of it is a fine gravel or the dust in there.

And that's actually going now into the water, into the streams, the nearby streams and the nearby culverts and actually blocking that up.

So

I'm wondering, okay, with paving it, then that's what they're saying.

Paving it would then relieve that, or is there something called a chip and tar?

So is there something between gravel and paving that could be used whereby the road does not go into the sides of the road and into the streams and into the culverts and blocking the water flow or affecting the water flow?

VDOT evaluates that and I see that I do have a response from VDOT addressing this more about the steps that they take with the runoff with that.

Okay, thank you very much.

Greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

So on a follow up on that, Dan, could you ask, VDOT has clearly gotten a much finer dust to put down on the roads in recent years.

And I am curious why that change has taken place, because I do notice

that we have a creek, I live off of a dirt road, there's a creek, it's in terrible condition because of the amount of this really fine dust that's really getting in there.

But my real thing that I wanted to mention, Ann brought up White Mountain Road, and when I was reading your criteria, which I really appreciate being all written out and provided for us,

For that evaluation, I was struck by the part that said that it is up to the individual who is asking for it to be paved to show some support from other people on the road.

And I thought that was great.

And when I look at White Mountain Road, I've been

Listening to the problems with Wright Mountain Road for seven years now, we know we have one individual who is very, very interested in getting it paved.

We have one other family who has asked for it to be paved.

And we have multiple people who have asked for it not to be paved.

And that list of people who are interested in having it paved has never been

As long as I've been here, maybe it was done before I was, but in asking you and Kevin before, I'm not aware that that was ever brought in.

So I just want to make that comment about White Mountain Road.

I was going to bring this up when we did the six year plan publicly.

But just as a heads up,

that was something that I noted because we have several people on that road that do not want it paved.

Yeah, we don't have a list, excuse me.

This is Kevin McDermott, planning manager and formerly transportation planner.

So I've dealt with this a lot and just to provide a little bit more information

That process that was provided in the attachments was developed a few years before I came on, I think in 2016.

And my understanding is that roads that had been previously been requested for paving, that those were just brought over into it.

And so it's very possible that when White Mountain Road was first brought on that requirement for the petition was not there.

that maybe it was just put on the initial list because one person or two people had brought it up.

So that's when that project has been around for a long time, I think as you know, and I think it was prior to the process we have now.

Sam mentioned we can remove

roads at any point in time by the supervisor's request or when it goes to the paving, the year of the paving, you have a second chance to take a look at that and that's the point when we send letters to every resident along that road and any road that gets its sole access by that same route, we send a letter to them letting them know about the proposed upcoming paving

and we come to the board before that approval with all the comments we received on it.

And that's another chance for the board to look at all the comments from the public and either remove it at that time or move forward.

I'll come back to you Supervisor Malek.

No, I'm finding the conversation very interesting and as the supervisors have been talking I think back about streetlights and being very thankful on several occasions that there is by Dominion Energy a rule that if someone requests a streetlight on their block

You have to get the permission of everyone that lives within so many feet or yards or a certain distance from that house in order to put up that streetlight.

And there have been many times over the years when I am really thankful that they have that

And you can see the comparison and where I'm going with that.

I also, as the mother of two Albemarle County public or Albemarle High School cross country runners, have been very thankful that there were some

Non-paved roads in the county that they could run on.

Having said that, I understand sometimes people's frustrations.

I also have a good friend who lives at Stony Point and has replaced her windshield probably four times because of gravel.

So I'm just gravel kicking up and taking out her windshield.

I am very interested though in what Bea brought up and would very much like to know about the powder

and the impact on our streams, I think that would be a really good piece of information to have.

Even in our subdivisions in the urban ring, just the salt that VDOC puts down just destroys and just eats away at the curb and gutter, people's yards, the grass that it washes into.

And that's not that I understand that issue, but I would like to know about the powder and

and the pros and cons and what product they're using.

I think that would be very interesting.

Yes, thank you.

It would be very helpful to me if Kevin and Dan would consider sharing the list of the

Do Not Pave list.

It may still only contain Dick Woods Road, but I'm not sure.

That took five years to establish to get the pressure off the continual argument about Dick Woods Road and that we would, sometime in the future when it's not budget and it's not the rush to adopt our six-year plan, that we very deliberately go through with some discussions about getting some of these other roadways onto that Do Not Pave list because once it's public,

It reduces the ability of people to misrepresent the situation one way or the other depending on their own needs.

And I think we've had some wonderful input today that's gotten this discussion started.

And I do know in Bea's district, there are those mountain crossings that are very difficult.

But spot maintenance, I've found, I don't want to confuse what spot maintenance for a short place where there's a real management problem or it's slippery or something, the steeps are where we've had several places where there's

So as long as we can figure out a way to balance those two needs and not lock VDOT into a

Downward spiral of having to take care of these roads that are really, really challenging.

Every single one of the gravel roads in our area is a tremendous burden for VDOT, and I understand that.

But there's no width to pave.

They're 12, 14 feet wide, so they don't even meet the 18-foot requirement that we need for rural rustic.

The gravel, I understand that there was some contract problems a number of years ago before any of our current residency people got here where they had to discontinue using supplies from a quarry because none of it would stay where it was supposed to stay.

And it didn't have the quality, but it took a while for them to figure that out.

We're still suffering with it.

I still have a whole lot of it in my pasture because it just picked up and ran right into the grass when it rained.

I understand that, but I appreciate the staff's assistance with this.

It is an incredibly traumatic thing for residents, and I think one of the biggest problems is that it's over and over again, and it's over a really long time frame.

So that's why I'm hopeful we can figure out a way to isolate things in certain categories to keep people from having to go to the barricades every year about something, especially when it's not even coming up for

reality for 10 years or more.

So I'm sorry I was caught by surprise on Fox Mountain yesterday, but anyway, citizens reached out on both sides of the argument.

So I was really in the crosshairs on that one.

I'm sorry, quick question.

I don't know if it's folklore or not, but is VDOT or the state, are they planning on eventually

Paving all the roads in Virginia, is that a plan or is that something that I just heard?

I don't think that that is their goal, but I think they want to address any safety needs or improvement they could offer and they give us this funding to do that.

All right, so this item was an action item on consent.

Is there any need to amend this item or can we take action knowing that it can be amended later, changed?

I move adoption.

Thank you.

All right, you call the vote.

Ms.

Malek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Mr. Bea LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Very good.

That will take us to our next item, number nine.

This is our work session.

We are running a little behind, but we've got some cushion here today.

So if we could just be mindful of time, though.

So comprehensive plan update, draft scope of work.

And Rachel, one of two big items for you here today.

Are we on comp plan?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

Okay.

Bear with me while I share my screen here.

Okay.

Good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Rachel Falkenstein.

I'm planning manager, and I am here to present the comprehensive plan draft scope of work.

Our agenda for today will be to share an updated scope of work.

And this is in response to board questions and requests for more information from a February work session we had, specifically related to the project timeline, Board of Supervisors engagement in our project advisory group.

And so our intent for today is to receive your direction and your input on

whether we should continue our work on the phase one pre-planning and phase two big questions as we've scoped the project.

So this is just a refresher slide.

Why are we updating the comp plan now?

Four main goals that we've identified as staff.

First is to better align the comp plan with the county values and the board strategic initiatives.

Since the 2015 update, we've had significant work in climate action planning, economic development, equity inclusion, and infrastructure investment.

So we want to better align the plan with those initiatives.

Second is to recognize our growing needs.

We have increasing demand for urban services and affordable housing needs and things like transit and parks and we want to make sure our comp plan is keeping up with those needs.

Third is focus and prioritization to improve implementation of the plan, mostly to improve clarity and establish clear priorities so that we can use the plan more readily.

And then last is to set the stage for future implementation.

We've identified the need for a zoning ordinance update and doing the comp plan update now to incorporate these initiatives will help set that stage.

So now I'll go into our draft scope of work.

This image should look familiar to you since we shared it last meeting in February and we have outlined a scope of work that anticipates an update of a comprehensive plan from visioning to adoption that will allow for a complete review and update of the plan.

And we've developed the scope based on research precedents and other processes from localities, specifically those focused on equity and inclusion in their processes.

And the scope estimates a three-year planning process broken into five phases.

So quickly just going to refresh on what those phases are.

The first is pre-planning, which is where we are today.

You can see us on the timeline.

This is work that involves scoping the project, compiling data and information to get us ready for broad engagement, and then just setting up those logistics and budget allocations that we need to do the work.

The second phase is big questions and community goals.

And this is where we'll begin broad engagement on the community's vision and goal setting.

We'll do some information sharing about the history of planning in the county and really see the time investment in this phase as being critical to ensuring equity and inclusion are central to the project, both the engagement and the identified community goals.

Phase three is policy and land use framework,

Here we'll set expectations for our development areas, our rural areas, and our growth management policy.

We'll do some additional technical planning work, our multi-metal systems plan, and incorporate those other plans such as climate action and housing and developing a land use framework to support our vision and goals.

And then phase four, policy development and recommendations, we'll get specific recommendations and strategies to support the goals from phase two and the land use framework from phase three, and then do some prioritization and implementation work.

And then phase five is pulling it all together to bring a final document for review and revisions and adoption.

So at our last discussion, the board shared a desire to shorten the project timeline.

And while staff agrees with the urgency of this work, we feel that given the level of engagement and the breadth of topics that are covered in the comp plan that three years is really a realistic timeline for this work.

We've studied other comprehensive planning processes across the state and across the region and this is really a typical timeline even with well-funded plans.

The board had asked about resources that might quicken up the process and really I think the length of time comes back to the level of community engagement necessary and then just the wide array of topics that we'll be covering with this comprehensive plan project.

So we've identified two approaches that we think can help us keep a tight timeline.

The first is a project engagement plan.

And this is where we'll identify a clear plan that outlines how stakeholders and community members can participate in the process, but also to identify a decision-making process that really clearly lays out how decisions will be made.

and then secondly to clearly articulate the appropriate level of detail for the comp plan document and to do this at the beginning and we're calling that a content framework.

So what we plan to do would be to come back to the board later this year before we begin phase two with a detailed engagement plan and a content framework for your feedback and discussion before beginning the phase two kind of public kickoff work so that we can make sure we keep this schedule good and tight.

And if we see opportunities to speed up the process along the way, we will absolutely do so.

The next topic I want to cover came back at the February work session and that was about how the board will be engaged.

You asked us to clarify and make sure that you'll have a role throughout the process and not just at the end for adoption.

And since that time, we've also had questions on planning commission engagement.

And so I just want to share kind of how we envision both bodies being involved.

So for the planning commission,

We anticipate regularly scheduled work sessions and check-ins associated with project deliverables.

And really the Planning Commission's role would be focusing on the technical planning content, bringing to them various topics for their feedback and recommendation, and they would make a recommendation for you all.

We see their role being heavy throughout, but particularly in phases three and four, where we're getting into that policy and land use work.

And then for the Board of Supervisors, we anticipate check-ins at the transition of each project phase so that you all can provide feedback on deliverables of each phase and then also advise on approach for the subsequent phase.

And then we'd also like to be able to share planning commission work, staff reports, and summaries of our work.

throughout the process as information items on the consent agenda.

And again, phases three and four, we anticipate probably a couple additional work sessions as needed for specific topics to get

And so this timeline kind of pulls it all together.

You can see the board work sessions would be anticipated at each transition between each phase and then the planning commission throughout.

We'll continue to refine this as we have a more detailed schedule, but it gives you an idea that both groups will be heavily involved throughout the planning process.

The last topic I want to touch on is our engagement process.

We shared this last time is that we really want to focus on incorporating our new organizational core value of community, and that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated into the way we live our mission.

And so we've developed, we've pulled together a project team that involves planning staff, Office of Equity and Inclusion staff, and communications and public engagement staff, who'll be working to design our engagement plan for this effort.

One aspect of the engagement approach that we've identified is the development of a project advisory group.

And this would be a group that we would pull together to advise on all aspects of the project scope and the content as we go through the three year planning process.

The members would be selected based on county demographics and identified criteria to try and ensure equitable representation on this group.

At the February meeting, staff shared a proposal to provide funding to this group in the form of stipends and to support their work through this three-year process.

And some board members had questions about the stipends and expressed some concerns with this approach, especially considering the number of other volunteer committees that we have across the county.

So as a revised approach we're proposing that rather than offering flat stipends to each advisory group member that the funding instead be set aside to reduce barriers to participation.

So group members would be asked to communicate if there are any barriers to their participation and what those might be such as language access or transportation and then funds would be available to support their participation as needed.

Similar approaches have been done in other localities and it seems to be an effective approach to create more equitable processes.

I also want to share that we plan to treat this kind of as a pilot program where we'll develop additional parameters and guidance.

to kind of guide this group and for you all to weigh in as we get more detailed in our work.

But I want to acknowledge that this is something new that we haven't done yet at the county and we'll continue to keep you involved as we develop more details.

So that completes my presentation.

I want to share that we have other staff present with us.

We have Siri Russell and Emily Kilroy who are here to answer questions especially about the engagement topics that I share.

All right, thank you Rachel and board you do have some time here to spend on this.

Supervisor Malek you're up first.

My Zoom page was buried under everything else.

I want to know if I am understanding correctly what you mean by scope.

Does the draft scope mean

that the first thing we're going to do is to look at our existing plan and figure out where the particular issues are that need to be adjusted due to, number one, things that we've accomplished, number two, things that are not consistent with state law, and number three, the new issues altogether that we have not done enough with in the past like climate and housing and economic development.

Is your scope originally going to be refined to that process or does it go include other things as well?

Sure, I think that the topics you mentioned would be more appropriate in the content framework that I mentioned.

So what we want to bring back to you before we start the public kickoff of the plan is kind of a list of what we think should be included in our comprehensive plan.

Right now we have a really detailed

comp plan that might have a lot of overlap with other policies that the county has that are more detailed such as economic development, climate action planning, natural resources protection, things like that.

So we think it'd be really helpful if we clarify what details should be in the comp plan and what details should be in other policy documents.

So what you're saying is your draft scope is what you just described as somehow making a decision that what we have is too much detail and so

I look forward to more homework to study to get that because I don't have a reaction to what you just said because I can't quite understand what you're saying.

The benefit of our comp plan now and I think why it won awards and was very well accepted is its readability and the fact that it's not just the last 12 months of something.

It is a very long-term history document about how we got here.

and it helps new residents particularly have spoken to me and said how important it was for them to read that because it even before they came here say I moved to Crozet because of the Crozet master plan and because of your comp plan and how I could understand the importance that the county as a whole puts on certain issues it doesn't just fly by night to the latest thing and jump on that and then go on to the next thing there are these ongoing policies so

My baggage is, and I will try not to let it get in the way, is that I've been involved in these since 1985.

And so I've seen it evolve and be more attentive.

But as I've said many times before, getting people to participate is going to them, not expecting them always to come to us.

And so that's something I will just reiterate for you all to think about when you're doing your connections and your engagement work is

Lots of meetings in schools and community activities will be a way to get people who are just walking by and say, oh, that's interesting.

I didn't know anything about that.

So I'm not sure I have an answer yet, but I will work on getting there.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Ms.

Falkenstein, for your presentation.

I first want to recognize the complexity of what you're dealing with, and particularly when we have so many important documents, the complication of having a single document versus which is sort of a centralized versus a number of documents decentralized, keeping all of them consistent,

is truly a very difficult task.

I think today you know we're starting today talking about the comprehensive plan later today we're going to talk about the housing policy and clearly the interaction between those two and our zoning ordinances are really difficult.

So I just want to thank staff for the work that y'all are doing.

Today I'm just going to make one comment.

I really appreciate the staff listening to what the board raised as concerns about the stipend question at our previous meeting and I would say I for one am much more supportive of the way you've described it now is rather than funding in terms of stipends it would be funding to support

And in that respect, I'd say maybe the county should look at that as sort of a pilot program because we have a number of other situations where our community members

are being asked and they want, they're volunteering to participate.

There are barriers to our community members being able to participate, much as there would be with this particular group.

And I recognize that there is a cost to that, but I would really like to see if this proposal goes through with funding to support rather than funding to the individuals.

the costs, the benefits, how that might improve community participation in all of the many different ways that our communities, community members participate so that we can help encourage that.

We've been running what a 20-25% vacancy on our committees and commissions and I suspect a good part of that vacancy is tied in with the inability of people to be able to work in that volunteer time

because of these barriers.

So I appreciate the work that y'all are doing.

I will follow the timeline that you have laid out for us, but see this as an opportunity that we might be able to help encourage broader community participation across the board.

Yes, thank you very much, Ms.

Falkenstein.

I'm just concerned about the timeline and the amount of time and effort it's gonna take to redo this.

I know we have a really good comp plan now that needs updates, but having said that, I'd like to hear what the other supervisors have to say first and then go from there.

Thank you and I appreciate all the additional information that you've given.

It's great and it's provided me more clarity.

My concern is that we do have this sort of massive update of the comprehensive plan in 2015 that some of us were involved in.

We literally met once a month for at least

six to eight months or something like that to go over chapter by chapter.

And when I thought about the update this time, I really was expecting that we would, you know, look at our new priorities, which you've outlined and you've said we would.

and that we would look at changes in state law since 2015 that we had to incorporate.

And I know that our county attorney has talked with us many times about the need to update our code.

And I would love it if Mr. Campner could comment

on the ability to possibly do a parallel track to try to do that so that we won't have to wait years before we get our code updated.

In doing it that way, it would certainly accelerate the process.

But my concern, if the two were on the same track at the same time, would be that the zoning text amendments and possibly zoning map amendments might be dealing with a moving target.

So

as parts of the plan are nailed down, that's possible.

And it also, I guess I should frame it, a lot of it depends on the extent of this current upcoming comp plan review.

If it is dealing with discrete topics, parts of the zoning ordinance can certainly be worked on.

What we,

So when we talked before, Greg, you had talked about a parallel course.

Right now we would be talking about not doing that for another three years.

about the update of the zoning code.

Well, I say ideally.

To be honest with you, I don't recall having an extensive discussion about these two things going on a parallel track.

There was the question that came up during the budget hearing on Monday where the question was asked of Mrs. Villardo, and she said that ideally the rezoning process begins after the comp plan is in place.

Supervisor Palmer, if I could speak to that, Charles Rath, the Playing Director, because it'll come forward as we present the Community Development Department's work plan in the next coming weeks or months.

Our current approach is similar to what Greg mentioned.

It does need to start afterwards, but it's not necessarily just finish one and then start the next one.

I think once we get to, as Rachel had pointed out, that kind of framework for the comp plan so we know what it's going to contain, then we can go ahead and start

making progress on the zoning ordinance update because we at least have some level of confidence as to what will change, what direction we go in so that we aren't recreating work.

But I do think that they can't, they just can't start at the exact same time, but it doesn't have to happen one after the other.

Okay, so

My other issue is that I would like to see the Planning Commission weigh in on this plan that you have for us, that you brought to us since typically a comp plan review would begin with the Planning Commission.

And so that would be my other request.

My understanding from talking to my Planning Commissioner is that this has not been discussed on the Planning Commission level.

as to what they think is required at this time.

I am concerned about this idea of a three-year plan being a complete rewrite of this comprehensive plan.

And that's the part that I'm really struggling with.

I think Rachel did a good job today explaining that you're not there with the scope yet.

You haven't figured out what the scope is.

but I would love to see the planning commission involved in that figuring out the scope of this plan.

Because I am concerned that we have been told many times by our county attorney, first of all, I'm concerned because we spent a huge amount of time on the comp plan before and I think it's a pretty good plan and I think it has, it's a pretty progressive plan to begin with.

but we have been told by our county attorney many times that we have this very antiquated code that doesn't match the comprehensive plan.

No, it's not keeping up with the comp plan.

and because it has been amended so many times over the last 40 years, it is not as integrated internally as it should be, but it also needs to reflect the values and the policies and the goals and objectives of the comp plan.

And the problem is that the comp plan is always a slightly moving target and there's always a reason to not jump into

updating the zoning ordinance because that comp plan is always being, you know, it's a great comp plan.

So thank you for saying it that way.

I appreciate it.

So my, I'm not trying to belabor this.

I'm just really trying to understand.

You know, we take a look at the comprehensive plan every five years.

Apparently, we haven't been looking at our we've been changing code, but not, you know, not holistically for 40 years.

And so I would love to maybe you can come back after some more discussion about maybe the places or maybe talk to the Planning Commission about it as to where you could integrate those.

so we could understand a little bit more because I hate to wait another three years.

I won't be here, others will be, but the community still will be.

And if we really need to integrate these things together, it seems like it should be done sooner rather than later or in some kind of joint project.

I would never say that you're repeating yourself.

I'm not sure I have any more to say.

So that's and my comment about I'd like to hear from the Planning Commission on what needs to be done and get their feedback is another comment.

Yes, thank you very much Rachel and Charles and staff.

I really, going back to what Donna was saying, I really appreciate you all listening to us and the changes that you made to address some of our concerns, specifically the stipend.

And while I know we haven't done, we haven't provided childcare

and we're talking about we haven't provided childcare for public participation.

I do remember at least a couple of, I thought public hearings where we provided childcare and maybe pizzas or something for people so they could come.

And I thought it worked beautifully.

I am in favor of that.

I think that is a great expenditure of money to help people be able to participate.

The other question I would have is,

I have folks participating now in my CAC that would not be able to participate except for Zoom.

And I just don't want to leave that piece out, because while we can provide childcare perhaps and pizzas or whatever, somehow or another, maybe a hybrid with a Zoom option, just to keep that in mind, because I think it does expand our public's participation ability.

I guess I'm trying to figure out exactly how to say this.

I am very concerned about a three-year process that gets us back into the same loop we've been in.

We spend a two or three-year process to amend the comp plan and then we have old stale ordinances and it just seems like we're chasing our tail for lack of a better expression, right?

If we could figure out a way, because I think the ordinances, the zoning, the code is critical to getting it updated.

It's my, to be honest with you, it's really my priority along with specific areas in the comp plan, economic development, climate action.

I mean, I could go through and name maybe just a couple of others.

I'd like us to figure out a way to allow that code to be updated quickly.

I mean, now.

and then at the same time look at perhaps specific areas in the complaint that need to be addressed.

And I understand Liz's concern about the Planning Commission.

We don't want to leave the Planning Commission out.

They need to definitely be involved in this.

But I think it's kind of up to us to determine the scope.

That's not, in my opinion, we need to figure out the depth and breadth that we're going with this.

And then I want it to absolutely go back to the Planning Commission a bunch of times.

But I think that process is our decision with all, I mean, just saying.

So I'm not really in favor of a three-year full-blown comp plan review at this time.

I'm really trying to cut to the chase here.

I really want to look at our code and get that up to date and maybe at the same time if we could

It doesn't have a process that looks at specific chapters, for lack of a better word, or omissions and gaps that we might have.

And with that, I'll stop.

I don't disagree with

What's being discussed here relative to the code, I think that that's almost a separate, I mean, that should be ongoing.

That should be something that should be happening.

You know, I recall I was not a member of the board when the last comp plan review went through in the update, but I remember listening in as somebody that was interested.

I just remember how exhaustive listening to the work going through all of the chapters

and was like, wow, that's the level that's going to happen every five years.

I just don't know if that is the best use or the best use of time in terms of scope.

I think there are things that if they're incongruent,

with actions that have been taken or we see popping up that are problematic, I think those are highlights that we should go in and go, okay, we need to focus in on that, hone in on that.

So I guess I'm restating in many ways some of the things that have already been said.

So that's where I'm at on this.

Three years now, I'm basing this on the last time that I listened.

I mean all along when I've heard three years I'm like oh yeah that sounds speedy compared to what I listened to the last time but it was because of how exhaustively in the details and in the weeds the board was when they worked through that it's good work I'm not suggesting they shouldn't have done it that way but having watched them go through it I'm like oh three years is awesome but I am one over to the idea let's really look at what needs to be done here and let's hone in and focus in on that and then the timeline

and everything else should be driven based on that decision, if that makes sense.

Thank you very much.

I love the idea of keeping Zoom going that Diantha mentioned.

We had 92 people listening in to the CCAC on Wednesday, which we've had 50 or 60 in the room at most ever before.

So I know that we will get many more people.

But we've also had great success with the pizza and the child care for the downtown Crozet district and the DCI and the plaza planning.

which did bring out hundreds of people, but that was before COVID, et cetera.

The reason that our plan is big and the reason it took so long is that it was the transition document from 15 different notebooks.

So when I heard earlier from someone that, well, we have some topics that have their own thing and people should go there instead of looking at the comp plan and the comp plan should be smaller,

The reason it was put together was so people would know where to go.

Because if you didn't know that there were 15 different notebooks and chapters, you wouldn't know where to go to find the information that you wanted.

And that was very frustrating to people.

So there was also a tremendous effort to bring some of those plans that were 15 years old, some chapters or whatever, and provide them all in one space.

with consistent terminology with the vision and stuff that went throughout so that there was a coherent picture of where our community values were at the time.

So I'm very supportive of all the comments I've heard from others about how we have got to focus on the critical problems we have with the code and the

The things we cannot address or have not fixed that we know are problems and are causing new problems with applications every single day and get that done.

At the same time, I understand completely that we are looking at things now that we didn't look at five years ago and so people can go and work on those discrete chapters.

and then they can easily be pulled in because they aren't there now.

And that's a neglect that we need to fix.

But what I'm very concerned about is sort of a historic pattern.

I would argue with previous community development director, who I'm very fond of, but Mark's approach was to do the big picture.

Let's solve all the problems in all the chapters all at once, which means we never did anything.

It was such a big project that we just never did it.

And it was frustrating.

So I am very much in favor of solving the critical need when the critical need arises so that others don't have to go through the same insanity that whatever the issue is.

The special events is a perfect example of that.

It's been sitting idle for years and years and now all of a sudden it's raised its head as being the new

problem.

So to say that we don't have enough staff time to do that because it's going to require deleting some references all throughout the document, well, I hope that we will find a new way to prioritize those kinds of issues.

So anyway, enough ranting.

All right.

I've been seeing some other folks unmute here.

Doug, did you need to weigh in?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board, Doug Walker, deputy county executive.

I just want to make sure that before we leave this conversation that there is alignment between the interest of the board and what's next for staff.

I appreciate very much your kind comments about staff listening to you because we do, we work hard and they work hard to listen to you and bring back to you and reflect that back.

And thank you for acknowledging that.

but I'm still not yet hearing that where staff is is where the board is with respect to the length of time that's anticipated and maybe the depth and the breadth of the work that the board may think is required.

This is not intended to be a rewrite, which was actually done the last time.

It is an update, but I acknowledge that to some extent, updating and rewriting can maybe seem a lot the same if we're not very careful

about how we distinguish one from the other.

So I just want to, and maybe Charles and Rachel want to kind of step in here, that we get some clear direction from the board, or at least a clear indication of what we can do next so that we are best reflecting your interest going forward.

I think a good next step for us would be to do that project scope where we come back to you all and talk about what should be included in this update.

And then from there we can go back and look at the timeline.

But I will echo what Doug said in that even an update, even if we pick three big topics, climate action, equity, and housing, for instance,

That can still be a long process because we probably have to go through each chapter, identify where there might be inconsistencies or language that we need to change and do that work.

And we certainly want to engage the community as well.

So we can keep an eye on the timeline and come back to you all in the content and revisit the timeline from there.

Yeah, I would just say, similar to what Rachel was saying, one thing that we've done in some of our pre-planning is to kind of start to create a list of a lot of different things that we have heard from the board and other members of the community that seem to be a priority to address.

And one thing that has kind of stuck out is that list has grown and it keeps kind of growing and there's a lot of stuff and once we start adding a lot of different interests and desires, that's kind of what is driving the idea that maybe we need to really take some time to do some of that scoping and determine what that is.

Mr. Chair, thank you for watching me unmute.

I believe that Mr. Walker

I want to reframe this right in the bullseye and I think Ms.

Falkenstein and Mr. Rapp are talking to this board exactly where we need to be right now.

That we will tease out a project scope at the staff level and come back to the board.

Rachel said later this year I'd like for us to be approximate with that.

with, you know, not to the exact date but what is a projected time to get back to this board.

Rachel reeled several things off the top of her head and she did a good job of saying if it was just these three items and then you begin to take a thread through all of the chapters

in trying to scope how long would this take, but to come back and give some of those examples to the board.

And Charles is exactly right.

One of this board's favorite sayings is, add to the list, add to the list, add to the list.

And so the staff is trying to manage this and manage the board's expectation.

In three years sounds like a long time, but everywhere I've ever been, comprehensive plan updates

take quite some time because of the domino effect of touching all of the various aspects of the entire plan document.

So we're really trying to manage the board's expectations here and Ned, I appreciate the opportunity to step in because we really are trying to manage all six boards' expectations and different board members have different experiences with this.

Some will look backwards, some look forwards, and all of it's important.

all of it is important but trying to get six in one spot here is really critical for us so that people don't leave here today and you've heard different things.

All right so I mean we have a I'm gonna go back through everyone just to get any final comments or remarks but we have a it's the word I'm looking for a proposition to go back at the scope bring that back to the board to me that seems

legitimate just in terms of that I think helps inform timeline.

But just make sure you address that when I go back through the round for comments.

Thank you, I agree.

And as I, the very first thing I said when it was my turn to talk on this is I don't have enough understanding of what is really being proposed to be able to react well.

But I do not think that I'm looking backward.

I think that I'm remembering where we've been, but also very intent on making things go better.

And from my list, I think the things that I've added are on zoning code changes.

as opposed to planning document changes.

So I would love to see the list, even if it's just scribbles, to see what others are putting together because that will help us and maybe we need to prioritize the list.

I don't know.

But I look forward to the next round of information.

Supervisor Prince.

Thank you.

I have nothing further to add.

Yes, I agree with Supervisor Mallek.

I think in order to be able to cull this down, we do need to prioritize.

So if each one of us comes up with 10 different things, we really do as a board need to prioritize and say, okay, we'll do items one through five or one through six, whatever, and I'll agree upon that.

We can't just keep throwing in things.

But also I wanted to ask Mr. Rapp and Ms.

Falkenstein,

It seems to be a threat here that we want zoning and ordinances and any state laws updated within the comp plan as soon as we can.

That seems to kind of be clear.

And if I'm wrong, supervisors, feel free to jump in.

But it seems to me that we want that updated.

But you mentioned

three things, climate action, you mentioned equity and you mentioned affordable housing.

So the three things that I mentioned, which are either in state law, ordinances we've passed, zoning we passed, are we talking about things that we've passed or things that we want to pass regarding zoning and ordinances?

If it's something we've passed, are you looking at it through the lens of climate action, affordable housing and equity?

I can speak to that.

I believe, kind of as Greg pointed out, it's a combination of 40 years of things that have been passed, where there's just some inconsistencies with references to future land use, categories, development process, how we regulate different things.

our comp plan is very comprehensive you know it addresses a lot of issues and the zoning ordinance needs to really reflect that uh and as tweaks have been made over time to the comp plan there haven't necessarily been adjustments made to the zoning ordinance over time always to keep up with that and so um

It's a little bit of everything of recent adjustments, but more recent ordinances are more up to date with current state code and things like that.

It's some of the older legacy zoning, legacy things in there that need to be adjusted.

We've dealt with some of that legacy zoning in the rural areas recently.

Some of those challenges need to be addressed as well.

I believe it would we probably need to discuss how we want to handle that yeah uh we we have some some older um

More legacy zoning, which is, so in the rural areas that we've dealt with recently, some of the commercial properties and things like that that conflict with the goals of the comprehensive plan are to restrict that.

But our zoning says something else.

And maybe that's an area we should, yeah, that seems to be an area that has, as we develop, go into development areas and as we have land developments, that seems to be an area that keeps coming up, whether zoning says this and the comprehensive or ordinance, comprehensive plan says

X and the zoning says Y and the two don't get together aren't the same and that really causes a lot of problems not only for the developers but for the community and for us as supervisors that have to vote on that.

To answer the question, yes, I think, Rachel, your proposal to come back with a more defined scope makes great sense.

I appreciate that.

And I will say that having a plan that throws everything in the kitchen sink is not necessarily a great way to do it either.

So if we do, you mentioned the three things that we all seem to have on our minds these days.

Clearly, we haven't

pass the housing plan yet.

You don't really know where that's going at this point in time later today.

But I appreciate that.

And I think if there is a very long list that is complicating life, we ought to prioritize that.

And I, for one, would be happy to help with that if I could in any way.

So thank you.

I don't disagree with what folks are saying.

I think for me, my priority is really trying to get the code updated.

We have talked about this for eight years.

and have made no progress to be on.

Well, as the new has come forward, we have, but we haven't been able to go back.

We haven't had the staff, we haven't had the time.

And I just think we're kind of in this churn.

And it just seems like to me, the code could be the priority with selected areas.

And I think that's what sort of everybody is trying to say.

So I'd look forward, Rachel, to you guys taking a look at this and coming back to us.

I would say that when we did the comp plan the last time, we didn't even hardly have an Office of Economic Development.

We have some time that we can wait because the affordable housing policy hasn't even been passed yet.

So while I think that's critical too, I mean I'm just saying we just have to figure out our priorities and I think certainly all of us could come up with some at least a list of priorities that we all agree on.

So thank you very much.

And I really do appreciate y'all struggling to try and find the balance for all of this work because it is a struggle and it's hard.

It's hard work and it's hard to decide what to do.

If I could just make, just trying to reflect on the conversation here, which is outstanding.

I really appreciate that.

I think staff can take this and do some work to again, to better reflect your interest.

I did want to just acknowledge that there's some level of regulatory work that doesn't get suspended while we figure out how we are going to address our comprehensive plan work.

It's true, and I tend to oversimplify it this way, being at least an old planner by education anyway, is that the zoning ordinance is necessary to implement the plan.

And you understand that too.

And so that's why the one follows the other.

But there is other regulatory work that will continue.

And you'll see some of that reflected on the work program when it comes forward to you in a month or so.

and the best example that I can give, this is just an example.

I'm not trying to foreshadow everything that'll be on the list.

We will still be resource constrained, staff constrained, but is the wireless policy, right?

Which we know there's keen interest on the part of the board that was suspended last year as a consequence of our change in the budget.

But you'll see that kind of reflected in the work program coming forward.

That's a regulatory policy work that's not going to wait, at least it's not proposed to be waiting until after the comp plan is finished.

So I just offer that as maybe one example of where some of this can happen in parallel.

I hope that that's helpful.

Beyond that, just again thanking you again and we'll do the work and come back and reflect the scope that I want to talk more about, making sure we're reflecting your interest.

Well, I appreciate the comments.

We do have to keep in mind we have a very robust work plan and that work is ongoing as this work gets kicked off and undergoing as well.

But if you feel confident you have what you need from us now, from the board,

Then I guess I would just say let's add to the list a conversation about the board's proclivity for adding things to the list for down the road.

That might be helpful.

All right.

Thank you, Rachel.

Thank you, Charles.

Thank you, Doug.

Move to our next item, the number 10, our CARES coronavirus relief funding report.

and Kristi.

Is Kristi on there?

She's connecting now.

Good afternoon, Kristi.

OK.

All right.

Not yet.

It doesn't look like it's loading.

We still get all the... Okay.

I'm not sure.

what to do now.

Here it comes.

All right.

Practice makes perfect.

Sorry about that.

Just one more second.

I will be ready.

Maybe.

Okay.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for your patience.

If you want to hit display settings in the upper left.

Yes.

And then swap it.

Is that better?

Thank you, Emily.

Okay, so today I'm going to present to you the Albemarle County's CARES, which you know as the Coronavirus Relief Fund or CRF report.

I'm really going to provide information for you about the

how we managed the compliance requirements, how the staff needed to pivot and organize to ensure that we were compliant and to really make sure we're able to continue to provide services for our community and also to create new programming to serve the needs.

So that's what you'll hear about today.

And I guess I should say I'm Kristi Shifflett, the Director of the Project Management Office.

So I just want to remind you of the nature of this fund and the restrictions that we needed to follow and continuously track.

And that was that expenditures must be incurred due to the public health emergency.

They couldn't be spent on anything unrelated to that.

They also must not have been accounted for in the budget previously and they had to occur between this March and December timeline.

So in managing that, I want to be honest that the staff really spent a lot of time learning about what was allowed.

I wanted to show you guys that the compliance regulations really changed multiple times.

As soon as we felt like we had a handle on

what we could do.

The information would change or shift and so this is really just showing you that the guidance moved about from several times from April to December and then I call out to you that December 23rd date because that was when we were told we could officially extend the CARES Act funding past December 30th.

So we had been working to make sure that everything was spent and allocated by that date.

And that really informed much of our programming and our ability to get the funding to the required needs.

And then this visual is just showing how we many times had to wait for information to come from the United States Treasury down to the state guidance and then to Albemarle County.

And then what we then did was we really started to understand the extent and the work effort that this would take for us to be able to expend this funding in that amount of time.

And so this really is a visual to express all that went into it on the administration side.

created a compliance team to track all of those updates and frequently asked questions so that we could make sure that legally we were complying to everything and that our programming that we were recommending followed that guidance to protect our organization.

And then you, the board, were involved in appropriating those funds and creating those areas of work that we wanted to identify and support.

And then there was representation from all over the organization and departments where they really led their functional areas to try to understand the needs of the community and the ways that we could help and support.

and then I call out the incident management team because as you know they were closely connected with our emergency response and had their finger on the pulse of what the community needed and how we needed to respond and so they also informed the funding on areas that we needed to support.

And lastly, I want to call out my friends in finance and budget.

I'm here today because as the project management director, I was working in finance and budget at the time and supporting them.

And this really took a project management focus to pull all of us together as it did involve the controller office, accounting and budget.

So to get into our story of how we were able to expend these funds, you're familiar with these areas of focus.

And these are the total amounts that we have come to to date where we have been able to put the funding.

So in economic development, human services,

I call out general government here and you'll see that there's that pandemic reserve note there and we'll talk about that later but that amount of funding is where we were able to connect that reserve.

And then lastly is technology.

So you know I'm not the expert in economic development.

Roger Johnson would be able to speak to all of these much better than I, but I do want to show you in these areas, I'm not going to go through every single thing that we accomplished.

but I am going to highlight the large areas and where the funding was placed.

This is mostly everything that you'll see today.

But you know we had the Business Lift Grant and that was a relief initiative that provided grant funds to local businesses to assist with the impacts due to COVID-19.

We had 133 businesses that received grant funding ranging from anywhere from $2,000 to $50,000.

We did this several times as we continued to serve and find the needs of the community.

There's also the community lift grants and that was focused on the nonprofit community.

You'll see this twice in two areas, but this was focusing on business nonprofit businesses that needed support because of maybe financial hardship or other areas.

And lastly is the Safe Spaces and Places.

I know that you're very familiar with how we were able to assist businesses in staying open and providing them with resources so that they could do the outdoor seating or change the way that they serve their customers.

Hey Kristi, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Could you send me this PowerPoint real quick?

Absolutely.

I mean, just as we're paused, some of the information is cut off.

We're getting the, I don't think it's limited the content here to this point.

Okay.

And we could see the whole thing when we saw your notes.

If you do it that way, you can see the same thing.

You could read along with me, right?

Yes, we could read along with you.

All right.

All right.

Yep, it's just a lot of information.

So as you'll see the human services response, we talked before about the community lift grants for nonprofits.

This was really focusing on the nonprofits in the human service arena.

These are organizations that help with food security, helping people with all kinds of challenges.

child care and arts and education.

And so that's what this work by Phyllis Savitas and Siri Russell really managed those nonprofit support.

And then there's the emergency financial assistance.

and I want to call out our partnership with the City of Charlottesville and the United Way in order to fund this area to help our residents.

A lot of community mass distribution as we continue to try to drive

using and following protocols that we were hearing.

And then lastly, I'll just call out this very cool housing search program that they created.

And this is so that others could reach the housing locations and be able to support that.

So this area, the general government response is really a couple of things I'll call out here.

There are, as you've heard, the reimbursement of public safety pay.

This permission to do this from the state only came out in November, so we were able to transition

and be able to isolate our payroll actually for specific individuals in public safety.

That was our people on the street and serving our community and so we were able to reimburse that

The Ambassador Program we created and we started out in our Parks and Rec area and helping our parks in the summertime to again follow protocols but we then quickly learned that with the success of that we expanded it to our other facilities but also to our businesses and supporting them.

And then as you know we

did support the town of Scottsville with two separate payments to support them on their COVID expenses.

Because we had many programs and different ways of shifting the work around, I wanted to also call out these general government areas and not to go through the laundry list of items, but these are other areas where we were able to either support our employees

or to transition our buildings to keep the businesses and also our local government offices running.

And then lastly, I have in our technology area, we were able to make progress on our broadband expansion and create that Greenwood Wi-Fi hotspot.

We transitioned a lot of staff from where they had maybe desktops.

We were able to get them laptops so that they can continue working from home.

That's just one example of the hardware and software that we were able to pivot to when we went to a work from home environment.

And then lastly, just as we figured out how to take some of our processes and make them digital and the IT staff that helped us support that.

So this is just really a way to target and show you the impact that this funding was able to make and the programming that we were able to provide to our community.

I'll share this with all of you and you can take these components out, but 50,000 masks were distributed

133 businesses received financial assistance.

94 children participated in the YMCA learning program.

We were able to help Boys and Girls Club and the YMCA to create virtual learning experiences.

So lastly, I just wanted to close today with connecting you into that pandemic response recovery and reconstitution reserve.

and the current plan with that funding right now.

is several things, but we have highlighted for you today these areas, and that is the broadband accessibility.

The next one is the ongoing human services support.

This is just recognizing that some of these programs and human services and also general government haven't gone away because we are still in the pandemic and that we're able to continue those

and then lastly the COVID testing and vaccinations that we've been able to deploy.

Thank you, Kristi.

All right, questions, comments here?

I would say that I am so impressed

with the way our whole local government and schools staff organization has pulled us all along.

Everybody's pulled everybody else along throughout this whole process and I know there's a tremendous amount of suffering still out there and snafus that we hear about all the time from whatever.

But there's so many things we cannot control and the fact that everyone has worked so hard to address the things we can control.

on a very personal level to really reach the individuals who need it and to have multiple ways for different size businesses, organizations, and groups of people to request help.

I mean it is a baffling array and every day we get a new something from somebody about apply to this and share that and I quite frankly don't know what to do with all of it except to share it with Doug and have him figure it out because it is just too darn complicated.

But

It has really helped to make it difficult to present our citizens with almost usable amounts of information because it's changing every single day.

By the time I get a newsletter out, whatever I put in there would be wrong.

So it has been really challenging and having that up-to-date information coming from the staff has really been very helpful.

So thank you all for what you're doing and we are going to find our way to the end of this with everybody working together.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

Ms.

Shifflett, thank you for your presentation.

The expansive and comprehensive comprehensive nature of the work that county staff has done during this pandemic is truly amazing and awe-inspiring.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you.

Agree with everybody.

It was wonderful.

Thank you.

I agree.

And Christy, I appreciate the presentation.

And is there a way that you could just send that out to us?

Or that would be great.

I would just appreciate having it because there are some little tidbits in there that I'd like to make note of.

Absolutely.

You're welcome.

All right, very good.

I have no questions here either.

Thank you.

Christy, we've all been in that place before, can I tell you?

As soon as you learn one way, it makes you shift to another.

Thank you.

It was great.

Have a good day.

All right board so that will take us to number we moved number 16 to here that's from the board committee reports of matters not listed on the agenda and the first item here we parked VDOT traffic common process for St.

They're coming back.

All right.

Supervisor Malek, I believe this was your request.

I will be glad to and thank in advance Kevin for his update to me yesterday, which also was shared with everybody else this morning by Doug.

So I'm going to ask Kevin to go through their work on or whatever is an appropriate amount of information to be shared right now.

on their considerable work on developing a pilot project which will help us to have a way going forward that's more predictable to how to deal with these neighborhood issues, traffic, safety, speeding, all those kinds of

things and so many different agencies and offices are involved that he will help us figure that out.

But Kevin, take it away.

Sure.

My pleasure.

Kevin McDermott, planning manager for and I'm going to keep this brief because I think that we'd like to just really address this

This is a specific issue here just in the broad context of how we take on these speeding issues.

I can come back for a longer presentation if you really want to talk about it, but we have a little bit more work to do as well on this process.

So I think it's probably going to be easier if I just walk you through the quick thing related to St.

George and the work that we're doing.

One single slide PowerPoint for you to share.

Sorry, are you seeing the presentation view or can you?

Yes.

Okay, so what I've got here is just the outline of a general process that we have been working on internally related to these speeding complaints.

I'm sure it's not surprising to the members of the board that we get these issues come up a lot.

And we don't really have a standard process that we move through to address them.

And a lot of times that causes confusion.

with community members and with the board members and it ends up causing some of these problems never to really get fully addressed.

So we are trying to develop this process that we can walk through that takes us from

the initial complaint all the way to how we can deal with it.

And we're detailing that out, but related to Supervisor Mallek's request with St.

George, we thought this could act as an initial sort of pilot for how this works.

So the first thing, obviously,

We take these complaints and they can have a lot of details in them that are always different.

But when we get the ones that are specific to this idea that there is consistent speeding on a road, that is that

People are going significantly over the posted speed limit.

This is the process that we would like to walk through to kind of address that problem.

The first one, speeding is an issue that the Albemarle County Police Department should really be taking the lead on.

with their enforcement capabilities.

If we get these calls, if VDOT gets these calls, we're going to direct them initially out to the Albemarle County Police Department and have them do whatever it is that the police feel is necessary to try and address that in the beginning.

that can include enforcement.

It can include education.

It probably would result in those radar speed display signs that we see go out on the roads for periods of time.

But we will let the police go ahead and work through their process initially for a while to try and correct that problem.

We have regular meetings with VDOT and the police and we discuss these issues and really that's where it goes from there is we get feedback from the police as to what's going on.

And then if the police have come to the conclusion that there is a speeding problem and that they don't think they can fully address it through that enforcement and education alone, that's really when we move to this next step, which is determining if this

This segment of the road is eligible for the traffic calming process.

And that's really where we are with St.

George.

As you all know, we have had, you may not know, we've had complaints in the past about speeding on that road.

And we have talked with the police and VDOT about it.

Recently, unfortunately, we did have a child that was hit by a vehicle out there.

And because of those issues together,

We thought that it was appropriate to go ahead and move to this next step of the process.

To get to that next step, we move into what is already defined by VDOT in their traffic calming guide.

And the first step in their guide is that we, once we determine eligibility for the traffic calming process, is that we would get a petition from the residents on the segment of road.

They require 10% of the residents to sign a petition that describes that and they would provide that to planning staff here at Albemarle County.

If we get that, then we would go to the board and request a resolution

to request that VDOT begin this traffic calming process.

And so I think what Supervisor Mallek was hoping for when she sent her email last week about this was that we could go ahead and move into getting that petition

and getting the resolution approved by the board.

I don't have a resolution ready for you today, but we can come back after that petition is ready at any point.

So I'll let Supervisor Malek talk about that in a second, but just so you know,

After that VDOT would perform this engineering study review which is defined in the traffic calming process and it's actually really a fairly simple step where they go out and they take speed data

They collect crash data.

They look at the geometry of the road.

They look at the signage and they really just do a general assessment of those issues to see what problems are out there and what might be able to be done to rectify that.

This is the kind of thing that could probably be done in a few months.

It's done with VDOT staff.

There's no outside consultants and not very much

Albemarle County staff involved.

We're pretty comfortable being able to move into that step without having to adjust a work plan or anything.

The results of that engineering study would determine if we wanted to move to actually producing a traffic calming plan.

which is a much bigger effort and requires staff time.

It would require public outreach to the entire community to get feedback and design alternatives for what might be able to be done.

So we wouldn't move to that step unless

the engineering review showed that it met certain factors that VDOT defines in their guide to move on to that traffic calming plan.

And so the traffic calming plan would then often result in recommendations for

larger improvements that could be structural or educational, anything like that, that once again would require likely funding through our CIP.

So at that point, we'd have to consider prioritizing it.

But each one of these steps has an opportunity to go back and check and see if we need to move on to the next level.

And we would keep the board informed on all this.

Like I said, I can come back with a lot more information, a lot more detail on this.

We're still working on it.

But I just wanted to give you the outline of it as it relates to St.

George.

So it's important to ask if board members have questions that they would like to ask right now before I talk anymore, just because I have a couple of procedural things and I don't know exactly what stage we're at.

Well, actually, I'll throw my questions out and then others can respond and maybe that will help.

Kevin, your plan is very thorough and wonderful.

And just to save you staff time, and Daniel, I would suggest you consider adding a CC only to the number one that says notify the board member, only because that will save you from having us come back and ask you if you're doing this when you've already, because often people contact their board member at the same time that they contact you.

So if you just put us in the loop, then we'll be able to look that up and say, oh yes, that's going.

Have you already considered in this process somewhere a consideration of higher speeding fees?

I know there's a residential program where we can charge a minimum of $200 and that has been very successful in some places so that may be something that procedurally can be done that might be easier than some of these others.

I don't know.

And the third question is

Is it time now for the petition to be handed in for this pilot so that we can then move to the resolution?

Please let me know that and then I'll be quiet and let others talk.

I can respond to those really quick.

Yet the increased fees are part of what is looked at in the traffic calming plan steps down there in number nine.

That is one of the options they look at along with structural improvements, speed

You know, Medians, whatever that is that you would consider.

So that would be part of that piece of it.

And obviously we will keep the board member involved throughout the entire process and keep them informed and the entire board is appropriate.

and your final question, yes.

What we would do now is if I would go back to the neighbors.

I believe they've already looked at doing this petition.

I think they're already maybe moving on that, but I would get them to provide that petition to staff.

And once I have that in hand,

I would like to come to the board for that resolution that I would have finalized if you want.

That could be on consent agenda.

Supervisor Price?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Mr. McDermott, thank you.

I really appreciate this.

I think it's an excellent outline which helps us to understand the process better.

My only comment, and please this is not a negative, it's not in any way directed to anything that you've said, but as people we tend to wait until a crisis before we recognize the need for action.

And as the parent of a child who was nearly killed when struck by a car walking to school in a different jurisdiction, that jurisdiction's response was we didn't take any preventive action, the flashing yellow lights in this instance in front of the school, because not enough people had been seriously hurt or killed.

And I know that Albemarle County won't take that approach.

But if we identify a potential dangerous situation, my hope, my prayer is that we recognize that before the calamity, not wait until the disaster before we take action on it.

I think this is an excellent process.

Yes, I think this also is an excellent process.

And Kevin, the only thing I would, or Mr. McDermott, the only thing I would like to suggest and put this out to the other supervisors is that

On our rural roads, where it's a two-lane road, it's a straight area, there's no way to pull off to the side of the road if a police car stops you because there's just no place to pull off.

So therefore, the police have a tendency not to pull over that car because there is no place to stop without backing traffic up for miles.

So my other, my remark is that I think as a board one of our, and I think we're looking at this I hope, one of the things we need to do legislatively is to ask the state whether or not for our rural roads we could have some kind of speed cameras.

and they do have agents or they do have, there are businesses out there that won't even charge you that you'll get some of the money, they'll get some of the money, but they take care of everything.

But to set up a speed cameras in certain areas where it's not safe for police cars to pull over speeders or truckers that shouldn't be in that area.

I think this is something that we need to

ask the state for, I guess we have to ask them for permission, but this should be on our legislative agenda.

And I'm hoping we can do that.

Supervisor Palmer.

Thank you.

I have no problem with this.

I'm familiar with this neighborhood road and how it's a cut through.

So I think it's a great idea.

I have no objection.

Kevin, I think this is a good process that will work in many of our neighborhoods and areas, certainly out in Crozet.

Have you run this process by CIRI?

Looking at it through an equity lens, if this process would work in many of the neighborhoods, for example, some of the neighborhoods that I represent, I'm not sure that this process would be very viable.

And I certainly get complaints from some of the folks in those neighborhoods about cut-through traffic.

But I think I'd like to have this process, to have Siri take a look at this through an equity lens of reaching people.

We're talking about a petition from residents, contacting people in some of the neighborhoods, people being willing to sign.

I mean, I just have some concerns and they have some of the same problems that the neighborhoods in Crozet have.

Understood, Supervisor McKeel, and I will definitely make sure I discuss this with Siri before we take it anywhere else.

I think you make really good points there that this may not be a one size fits all kind of thing.

So we need to make sure we address that.

Right.

And some of those neighborhoods have as big or if not bigger problem because they're in the urban ring where there is a lot of traffic

and people are cutting through constantly.

We don't have sidewalks in those neighborhoods, you know what I'm saying.

All right, I have no objections here.

Thank you so many good suggestions that others have made.

I'm so excited about the speed cameras and trying again for that.

I will say I am terribly sad to report that for many, many neighborhoods throughout the county who the citizens have requested help for decades and the day after somebody dies is when the stop signs go up.

such as at Woodlands and Ray's Ford.

It took a death after 15 years of constant complaint to get that to happen and literally 24 hours later they were put up and there's not been an accident there in the 15 years since.

So I'm sorry to say that is the reality that we deal with here and it is incredibly frustrating to people

I also understand completely that the petition thing is tricky, but I think having a street meeting and talking to people going door to door, I think there are ways to solve this and make adaptations, making sure that this is an evolving process.

And I just appreciate the fact that staff has already been trying to make this be more manageable rather than

All these atoms crushed into the balloon and they're just going everywhere which way trying to keep up with the constant speeding problems that we're having.

So hopefully this will be a step in the right direction and we can modify it as we go along.

I've been a street corner petition gatherer for many times.

I'm glad to do that again.

Ann, I'm not saying that I'm not in favor of this for some neighborhoods.

I'm just saying that I think it needs to be looked at because some of the areas where we have speeding problems, perhaps we need to tweak the process a little bit.

No, I don't think so.

I'll be back in touch with more details about the process for you and also we will be back in touch specifically about the St.

Thank you.

Yes, I did.

And just bringing up Supervisor McKeel's point, I think use of the, frankly, use of the speed cameras in some of those areas would also mean that we don't use, that would be in lieu of police enforcement, which would also be more equitable in not only the rural areas, but in the urban areas to be able to have speed cameras, frankly.

Ms.

Mann?

All right board, the next one that we parked here under 16 is County Code 18.5.1.43 Special Events in the Rural Areas and Supervisor Palmer's request.

Thank you.

So I brought this up once before before the board for some discussion to see if we could get an idea back from community development as to how much time it would actually take.

And Mr. Campner has suggested that I bring it up again, and that we just ask community development to comment on the timeframe

when they come back with their work plan.

I read the code, it was very short, but that means nothing, I understand.

Removing it just because I think it's easy to remove is kind of silly.

But what it is was an ordinance that was passed prior to the state law changes for wineries, breweries, cideries,

and before we went through the process of getting some, I'm blanking on the word, but some structure to the process of people going ahead and having special events on their property if they had an agricultural use, like a vineyard.

This allows them to come forward without any agricultural use.

and I think that if it is not too terribly time consuming to just delete it, it would be nice to get it deleted.

This happened in my district with Wavertree Hall, where some people brought a large piece of property and decided to have a special events without any

without any agricultural use at all.

They just wanted to have weddings there at their barn.

So I'm not suggesting that we tell community development now we want that to happen.

We just need to see if it is a simple thing or a complicated thing and look at it in the scope of the community development work plan.

So that's my request of the board.

See if there's some support to have community development come back with their work plan and just tell us how complicated that's going to be.

I guess the one thing I would say is

I'm speaking for the department.

The board can do it either way.

Mr. Chair, if I could, my concern with that approach is without the board seeing the fullness of the work program as it comes forward with all of the items that might be on there that might interest you, that first adopting resolution of intent

might frustrate an effort to try to get that done sooner.

I think the original suggestion from Supervisor Palmer was for community development to take a look at it and then indicate through the work program structure kind of what the process would be and what the time would be so that the board then can evaluate that along with everything else.

If I'm misunderstanding, then please let me know.

I'm trying to go for the simplest approach to try to get an idea of how much time it would take so that the board could decide whether they want to go forward or not.

You know, like I said, I read it.

It's really short.

It seems simple, but I recognize that there is more complications behind things than I often think there should be.

And I'm so reluctant to offer an alternative opinion to the county attorney.

But I do think that staff, hearing what you're asking, and with the board's support, I think staff can answer the question and let the board know and let you know and let the board know what it would take.

Well, I'm hoping that if this starts to pop up, it hasn't popped up much in the past, but with the tremendous interest of property owners to have these special events, I'm thinking if we get rid of this one, it might reduce staff time.

Let's hear from others.

I was just going to ask that when there's a time evaluation that the staff also take that time expended into consideration because there was a big one.

The Roslyn people tried this first.

The Ballard's Mill people tried this first.

Hundreds of staff hours involved in both of those things.

then the Wyvertree one where 300 people wanted to participate in the community meeting because our ordinance, as short as it is, does not rule out properties where it's completely surrounded by neighborhoods, which is what really creates the huge issue.

So I look forward to this, but let's look at both sides of the equation to make sure we're not just saying, yes, it's going to be a little more work, but if you don't do this, it's going to be a whole lot worse.

Thank you.

And I guess it hasn't been used between Wavertree.

I guess it was way back in the 90s was when the Panorama farm was approved.

And that was an old barn in the middle of 900 acres and didn't bother anybody.

So that's a completely different approach than what it's turning into now and why it's become such a big issue.

Thank you both Mr. Campner and Mr. Walker for your input on that.

This is clearly a subject that is of increasing interest in the rural area because of the impact on the quiet enjoyment of property.

So as we add items to our list, I think the way Mr. Walker described it would be the appropriate approach on it.

Supervisor Palmer, I think we have your thoughts here.

You want to add anything right now?

Nope.

I agree with the issue and the problem and I'm happy to go along with the board with what Doug has recommended, but I will say that this is yet another example of us adding to the workload.

having to prioritize and maybe we ought to ask staff what would it take or where could we find some money and not that money always solves every problem but is it possible to put some money towards some consultants or someone to help move some of these issues forward so that we're not constantly chasing our tail on all of this because this is just another example

of adding to the workload and it's just, we're here all the time.

And I'm sure staff finds it frustrating.

It's really frustrating for us.

And we're just not moving any of these issues forward.

We're spending more time trying to figure out how staff, how we can carve out staff time to do it.

It's just

And I don't even know if it's possible to hire consultants to do this work, but I would rather hire and set the parameters and get it and spend some money.

and get it done rather than constantly be readjusting the workload and adding more and more and more and just getting in this constant swirl.

And I'm sorry, but that's just the way I feel.

And I think it's a very valid issue, but everybody has their very valid issues.

I have some for the rural area and I represent the rural area.

I get it.

I just want to agree with Supervisor McKeel in that, you know, if we were taking a look at our code more expansively, we could simply remove this as we're looking at it.

And I would love to hear Mr. Campner's thoughts on hiring a consultant group to work on that.

In conjunction maybe with the comprehensive plan, would that be a way to deal with this and an older ordinance like this that has, you know, it's not necessarily great for the community since all these other changes have taken place since then.

Yeah, I think we're at a point now and we do have the project management skills with the on staff now to where it would be good, might be good to bring in

Yes.

We've got to start moving some of this stuff forward and we're just not going to be able to do it with the staff we've got.

And we just get in this vicious cycle.

Yeah, no, I agree.

And I think it would be perfectly reasonable if we had a consultant looking at some of this old code to add that to that list of old code.

You guys will.

Sorry, Doug.

No, that's quite all right.

And we know what options we can pull in.

Thank you very much.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

We still are on from the board committee reports and matters not listed on the agenda.

So those were the two items we had parked.

I'll go back through for other items.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, Nava Supervisor Palmer I do want to tell the board the SWAC committee next month and I can send out this if anybody wants to listen to it we're having a presentation from a group from Pennsylvania who has done a study on litter and the lack and trash problems and the lack of convenience centers

for people to dump trash.

And I have no idea of what we're going to hear, but apparently I'm told it was a rather comprehensive study.

And of course, it will be it'll be on the website afterwards.

But I just wanted I'll send out a little thing with a little more information.

But I know some of the supervisors have talked a lot about litter and illegal dumping and

I will just add we are awash in litter right now.

It is really horrible.

I'm not offering any suggestions for that right now.

I just want to throw this out.

I don't need this for response now, but I need some help understanding.

I had a concern come from a constituent in Belvedere.

If you've been through Belvedere, there's kind of some main streets and some boulevard type pieces where the traffic separated.

And of course, the cars park in the direction of the traffic.

But there are also a lot of side

And this is beyond the alleyways, side streets kind of cutting around some green space where cars are parking in the opposite way or on the, I guess, if traffic is two way on the street, they're parking not in the direction of the traffic.

And the concern here is with as much pedestrian and especially children pedestrian in that neighborhood, which I did a little walkthrough there this past Sunday and did notice this.

and some very short sections of street.

And so the question is, is that allowed?

Is it not allowed?

What needs to be done?

If there's nothing that says you can't do that, it really does look to me to be like a safety issue.

And I'm throwing this out there and asking staff if you could just bring back some more information so that I can understand it.

And then once I understand it, then I may follow up with some additional questions or requests.

I can do that, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next item is from the County Executive.

Report on matters not listed on the agenda.

Mr. Richardson.

Mr. Chair, I have a County Executive's report today and I'll be very brief.

We have a couple of slides for your consideration.

Thank you very much for the opportunity for me to point out some things that are going on in the community, the work of staff, and I'm always very appreciative of the staff's work and the opportunity for this time to share with our board and our community.

Okay.

Nearly 2,000 individuals ages 65 and over received a vaccine over two days at Monticello High School auditorium.

This happened a little bit over a week ago.

The clinic site was managed by the Regional Emergency Operations Center.

This was the first site in our region to administer the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Among the vaccinators that day were several Albemarle County Fire and Rescue EMTs to include our fire administration staff who were qualified to administer vaccines, including our fire chief.

He actually was the first to administer the first shot at the clinic.

The operations went incredibly smooth.

People were getting from the front door to the stage for their shot in under 15 minutes.

So I applaud our staff for the synchronization in getting people in and through the process and out the door in a timely manner.

In partnership with the Blue Ridge Health District, nearly 300 people of color ages 65 and older were vaccinated at the Yancy School Community Center on February 21st.

This event specifically focused on increasing vaccine access in communities of color.

It was a wonderful partnership with the Yancy Advisory Panel, our Fire Rescue Department, and of course our Health District.

Albemarle County's first historic marker through the local historic marker program was installed on February the 26th at the site of the Albemarle Training School.

The school operated as the Albemarle Training School from 1886 until 1950 and was the only school in the region that provided educational opportunities for African American youth beyond seventh grade.

Following integration, the school closed.

The site on the Rio Road West, this site is on the Rio Road West and will be the first of several historic markers the county intends to install.

A more formal unveiling will be planned when COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed with participation by several school alumni of which several are shown in this picture along with board member Diantha McKeel and also Dan Foley who helped to oversee the installation

Dede Smith, who is a local historian.

Heritage and History Project in Yancey Lobby curated space to recognize the legacy of Mr. B.F.

Yancey and his efforts to foster education for African Americans in Esmont segregated schools in the early 1900s.

This exhibit features stories gathered on an oral history

an oral history day from students who attended BF Yancey as well as the history of the ESMOC community and the African American education in Albemarle.

This exhibit will open to the public when we're able to relax COVID-19 restrictions and we really look forward to sharing it with our community.

The Stream Health Initiative has launched a community learning series Fridays noon through April 9 partnering with local experts in a range of areas related to water quality in the rural areas.

Our first two events were very successful each drawing over 50 participants and can be watched on the county's YouTube and Facebook channels.

The Rio Corridor plan is now officially underway.

The goal of the project is to develop a community vision and a plan that will guide future design and improvements of the Rio Corridor.

A kickoff event to share information about the project and how to get involved will be held next week.

There were two options, Thursday evening and Friday at noon.

Both sessions covered the same information with over 70 residents

Logging in to learn and ask questions.

Learn more about the project and how to access these meetings at albemarle.org.

This board is surely aware that we had several snow events in February and even though our buildings were closed to walk-in customers at times our well overall without appointments they're closed for customers our buildings provide office home base for our first responders

and the county office building at McIntire serves as a fueling station for Albemarle County.

Public Safety, and John.

Our facilities and parks and recreation teams work weekends, weekend days, nights, very early mornings starting as early as 3 a.m.

to keep our buildings and fueling pumps accessible.

I really want to take this opportunity to thank this team who did an outstanding job in keeping our facilities safe and open for all of the necessary traffic to keep all of our public safety functions moving

all during the inclement weather.

I have a section very quick Mr. Chair and members of the board on 2020 by the numbers.

This report was on consent agenda at the board's February 17th meeting but I wanted to highlight the building permit activity in Albemarle County in 2020.

This chart has a lot in it.

2020 was the greatest volume of building permits in over nine years.

Just 9.7 of the building permits were issued in the rural area.

Over 90% of the building permits were issued in the development area.

As you can see, the types of units vary with about a quarter of the units being single-family detached and the remainder being a mix of multi-family townhouses and other types.

Building permits are, of course, the start of the project.

Here is the certificate of occupancy, which is at the end of a project and when you begin to see the new units coming online for rent or sale.

That concludes the County Executives Report.

Thank you for an opportunity to be here and as always I thank our wonderful staff for all of the work they do that you're aware of and maybe just as importantly all of the work that none of us are aware of but they do every day for the betterment of our community.

Thank you Mr. Richardson.

Any questions here Ms.

I would just ask people to correct

Think about the great success that is described in Jeff's report just now that 90% of the building permits were in the development area.

Because of all the work that's been done for 30 years, to have our development areas be places where people want to live.

and how important it is that we're so careful about not messing that up.

You know, whether it's not addressing the shortcomings we have for infrastructure or making it so crowded that people don't want to be there.

I mean, we just have, there's a wide range of demands and stresses that we need to think about.

But when it was 50-50 in the split to rural to urban just 15 years ago or 20 years ago,

That is a spectacular movement of growth.

Some of it, I think, is that people don't want to live out in the booties anymore, and that's fine.

I mean, lots of people come to my house and say, I would live out here for a million dollars.

And so I understand that.

But this really is a pretty spectacular statistic in my view.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

Mr. Richardson, thank you.

That was an amazing report given that we're coming through the pandemic and it demonstrates the strength of parts of the economy while we know other parts of the economy are really struggling but it also demonstrates the work county staff did.

Thank you.

Yes, I also thank you and I thank the staff and all the hard work that everybody's done because this shows that we're really moving, not only moving, but we're looking at the future and moving.

It was a great report, Jeff, thank you.

And I, of course, thank all of our staff for all the hard work.

At the end of, at some point, it would really be nice to be able to get together with staff and have some sort of a celebration around all of this.

Maybe that's something we can all look forward to.

I would just remind people, though, that there are challenges in the development area.

And we have to keep focused on getting the infrastructure built to handle all of these folks.

Now, I do think we're rolling out some projects with VDOT through SmartScale.

They're going to make some differences.

But I would encourage us to remember that the development area also includes older areas, not just the new.

Yes, well said.

Yeah, I had spoke to a news reporter last week about the, you know, there was a report on a year of the pandemic, but to the comment about getting staff together.

And I mean, you know, while we made a seamless transition to virtual meetings and we were cautious in that, we reduced the agenda and moved it, but we've been successful in getting a lot of work done.

It is amazing, just like the joint meeting with the school board the other day,

A focus on social-emotional learning for our students that we have to remember, even us adults.

There's something to be said about social camaraderie and being able to see people in the hallway and chat about this or that.

And that's been missing for a year now.

So there's a value there that I can't wait to get back to that bit of normalcy so that we can have that interaction again.

So more of the next item on our agenda, number 11, a closed meeting.

We do.

I move that the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 3 to discuss or consider the acquisition of property for a county facility in the White Hall Magisterial District where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the board.