Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   5/5/2021

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A-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 Donna Price of the Scottsville District,

Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller 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 County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

Claudette Borgerson.

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

And the next item, number four, is the adoption of our final agenda.

I'm not aware of any changes we need to make to the agenda or pull from consent agenda.

Is there anything, supervisors, that needs to be changed or pulled from consent?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Autista-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Number five, our brief announcements by board members and we'll go through our order speaking order for today.

Supervisor Price, any announcements this afternoon?

No, thank you Chair Galloway.

I have a couple, which is unusual.

But I wanted to point out that I saw yesterday Dr. Denise Bonds, as you know, Director of the Blue Ridge Health Department, announced on Monday that Albemarle County leads the state in the percentage of the population with at least one COVID-19 vaccination.

We come in at 58%.

So I know we have thanked our community many times over the last year, but I think we all want to send out a big yoo-hoo and remind those folks that haven't gotten their vaccination that there's still availability and they should do that.

But I'm really proud of our community.

And the only other thing I wanted to point out, which I think is good to know, this was the meeting where we received the Albemarle County Public Schools Board to Board and it's written.

So, but I thought that some folks in the public would be interested in knowing that Superintendent Hoss says the Albemarle County Public School Division is planning for five day a week

in-person instruction for all students next year, but they are also offering virtual instruction for elementary, middle, and high school for those folks that might choose it, which I think is and he is also saying that the school division will be hiring an in an all virtual school principal

and staff.

So they will actually be creating a system for that virtual learning school, which I think is pretty cool.

Just wanted to point it out, since it was not going to be presented orally today.

Didn't realize I was next.

Great, thank you.

I have a couple also.

In the

Chat, I put in a link to the article in the Bay Journal about salamanders and vernal pools.

And if people are interested in learning more about the vernal pools that we have been protecting here and also just vernal pools in general and the creatures who live there, then Claudette can help to share that link out to anybody who wants it.

Peeking ahead to Memorial Day, I know that the posts in Earliesville have been struggling with how to do some recognition and have decided, I think, to not have their ceremony, but have also been working with members of the American Legion Post 74 and the Paraguay family, who for years have been working to correct the spelling of Technical Sergeant Paraguay's marker in the city and the street name in the county.

We have made applications to the state, to Senator Cain's office to get help with army records and have failed all around because all the data apparently from World War II people was burned up in a storage fire 50 years ago.

So a substitute effort is now underway to create and place bronze plaque additions to our county memorial out in the front yard, the World War I and II monuments.

And these are to recognize the two residents of Albemarle County who were awarded the Medal of Honor.

And I'm just going to take one minute to read each of these very brief statements because others, in addition to I, may not have known about either of these people.

General Alexander Archer Vandergrift was born 13 March 1887 in Charlottesville and entered the Marine Corps in 1909.

He led American forces at Guadalcanal for the first successful major offensive in the Pacific in World War II.

He was awarded the Naval Cross and the Medal of Honor.

He was the first active duty Marine Corps four-star general and served as commandant of the Marine Corps from 44 to 47.

He died 8 May, 1973, and is buried in Arlington.

For Technical Sergeant Frank D. Paraguay, there were seven or eight children in his family, and the first

Several who were delivered by midwife had P-E-R-E-G-O-Y as their spelling on their certificates, and then the others who were born in the hospital had an R that was added, thus the confusion for many in the family and for the military records as well.

So Technical Sergeant Frank Peregoy, born 10 April 1915, Albemarle County, Virginia, enlisted May 31 in Charlottesville, County K, 116th Infantry, Reed,

Regiment, 29th Division, landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy, 6 June 1944, which was D-Day.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for action against the enemy on 8 June 1944 at Grand Camp, France.

Aragoy was killed in action six days later near Couvain, France.

and he's buried in the American Cemetery in Normandy.

And there's been a lot of interesting writing and research done by local historians about both these guys and so hopefully people will take some time to find out more.

and I want to correct my announcement last week about the Crozet Spring Arts and Crafts Festival.

Instead of 36 years, it is actually 41 years old, so I want to make sure to say that right.

There are over 115 artists and makers.

There will be music, food trucks, wine, beer, etc.

Please visit crozetfestival.com to find out all about the participating artists and to buy tickets in advance, which would be very helpful for social distancing.

As I said before, instead of great big tents and pavilions, each

Bender will have their own pop-up spread all across the field, so there will be lots of room for people to move around in safety.

And Saturday is supposed to be a gorgeous day, so hopefully everyone will truck out to Crozet and see our artists out there.

Thank you.

Yes, I just wanted to piggyback what Supervisor Mallek said regarding the American Cemetery in France, saying that was one soldier who was buried from here.

If you have not been to the American Cemetery in Normandy in France, you need to go.

That is something that is, in my opinion, life-changing.

It is so respectful, and it is a good way to honor all of our soldiers, but it is probably the most beautiful

Well-preserved honorific cemetery I've ever been to.

And having said that, I go to my brief announcement regarding Save the Monarch.

A few volunteers in Dardan Tau and in the neighborhood, we planted thousands of monarch seeds and no milkweed seeds.

We planted thousands of milkweed seeds for the monarch butterflies.

And we will be doing so again at Darden Tower at the Lewis and Clark Center this Saturday with these stouts.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, I have my usual.

The next three Saturdays at the Ivy Materials Utilization Center are bulky and this coming Saturday you can get rid of old furnitures and mattresses for free.

The following Saturday on May 15th you can get rid of

for free, like those dead humidifiers that you might stick out in your garage or small appliances, large appliances, whatever you want to get rid of.

And on May 22nd, for all those wonderful people that pick up tires along our roads, you can take, pick them up and take them over to the Ivy Materials Utilization Center for free.

So it's a great, that's a great weekend to get rid of tires.

and I just wanna thank Supervisor McKeel for straightening me out.

I was expecting to ask many questions of our school board chair today because I didn't realize that he was not gonna be before us.

So anyway, that was a very interesting board to board report that we received.

The first is a resolution recognizing A. Wade Wolfrey Jr., retired Fernal U.S.

Army.

Supervisor Malek will be making this resolution, and then I believe Trevor will be turning to you after the vote.

Supervisor Malek.

All right, now I'm finally ready.

Thank you.

It is an honor to be able to read this resolution having known and been a shadow working behind Wade for 14 years in helping him to get support at our congressional delegation for the work that he's doing.

Resolution recognizing A. Wade Wolfrey Jr.

Whereas A. Wade Wolfrey Jr.

served our country with distinction for 27 years, retiring from active duty at the rank of colonel in the U.S.

Army.

and whereas A. Wade Wolfrey Jr.

has served an additional 14 years culminating as a civilian senior executive in support of the Army at the U.S.

Army National Guard Ground Intelligence Center or NGIC in Albemarle County since 2007, becoming a defense intelligence senior level member in November 2009 and retiring from service as a senior advisor for enterprise operations to the commander.

And whereas A. Wade Wolfrey Jr.

was instrumental in the approval and construction

the Child Development Center, and the Remote Delivery Facility on Rivanna Station, and most recently in obtaining military construction funding for the design and procurement of an 80,800 square foot addition and multi-level 150,000 square foot parking garage at NGIC, which is currently scheduled to break ground in late 2021.

And whereas A. Wade Wilfrid Jr.

has been instrumental in supporting Rivanna Station and the Army at NGIC,

and its critical operations to the nation's defense.

He served as key liaison with the Defense of Airs Committee and Omaha County Executive's Office in establishing key regional partnerships to further support the mission, the soldiers and the civilians working at Rivanna Station.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that we, the Omaha County Board of Supervisors, do hereby honor and commend A. Wade Wolf, Virginia for his years of service to our country and to the residents of Omaha County and how we will miss him.

And I need a second.

Thank you.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Episto-Kirtley?

Absolutely.

Ms.

Malle?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Very good.

That motion carries.

Yes sir, thank you Chair Galloway and Supervisor Mallek for reading that resolution of recognition.

It's my honor to just introduce Wade to receive that today by the board.

I really appreciate the board's taking a moment to note Wade's significant contributions to the United States but to our region.

through the past 41 and a half years of his service.

I met Wade in 2018 through my role in the County Executive Office.

Wade has been a great friend to the region, working through the Defense Affairs Committee, and spent a lot of time with Jeff Richardson and I in 2019.

really just helping us understand the operations of the base, the challenges of the base, and nearly 2,300 staff work at the base in Albemarle County, right in the station.

And so we've really been able to understand obstacles, challenges, and in a meaningful way where we can start trying to help solve some of those problems that especially our soldiers face.

When you're assigned to a base that is in an area where there's a lot of services, the support functions are just embedded into that area.

Being in Elmar County in our region is a fantastic quality of life, but all of the military traditional support functions are a lot harder to get to.

Wade has been great in helping create those connections.

And then, you know, in the resolution talked about the, you know, this most recent edition, you know, that was, they should name it the Wade-Wolfrey edition, because that really was his effort to get that funding and to solve a critical need for the Army and a critical part of our defense.

Wade, it's been an honor and privilege to work with you over the past three years.

I'm glad to call you a friend, and I'm glad that you're still not too far away, that we'll be able to continue working together.

And so with that, Chair Gallaway, I'll turn it over to Mr. Wolfrey for a minute.

Good afternoon, sir.

We're still muted.

Sorry, we're still muted.

OK, how about now?

There you go.

All right.

Technical challenge.

First thing is I am not Heather, I'm Wade.

I'm probably popping up as Heather.

I'm on her computer today because she does this video teleconferencing quite a bit for work.

So first of all, hey, I'm really honored and also very privileged to have met all of you and worked with you throughout the last 14 years at the Rivanna Station.

It's a great place.

Albemarle County,

a wonderful county.

I love the mission statement.

I love how you guys organize and go after things and take the time to learn your customers out there.

We had a great time going to Richmond and educating some folks there more about what we do in our county.

So really, the credits to the board to support that.

Jeff Richardson, Trevor Henry, and Ann.

Ann, great friend.

Ann Mallek and I have worked very close together the entire 14 years.

So thank you, Ann, for everything you've done.

We've gone through a couple of folks at the DAC.

The DAC has been wonderful.

That stood up

back in 2014, I think, and it has gotten stronger and stronger every year.

But thank you for what you do for the soldiers in these vans working at Rivanna Station.

Two huge, three huge organizations there, the National Ground Intelligence was there first, and then the Defense Intelligence Agency there, and then embedded with both of us is the National Geospatial Agency.

So that's kind of the, it's been referred to as the crown jewel

of Intelligence, kind of how we do things jointly and we've got it there in our own backyard in Albemarle County.

Really appreciate you all's work and I want to say educating our new leadership as they're elected on what Rivanna Station is and what Albemarle County does, the importance of the central Virginia region because

My experience, the focus has always been on the coastal areas and the Northern Virginia areas.

So it's good to see Central Virginia get in there and get recognized as they so deserve.

And then also that's been great for us as well.

And the congressional delegation has really come around and helped us.

When for you all's work though, we've never seen this project or those projects come to fruition.

So thank you very much.

The project was awarded last Friday.

Happy Dancing that was in the streets on Friday night.

And then groundbreaking should be sometime soon.

Normally it takes about 45 days to mobilize.

So I'm sure you all will be hearing when that's going to occur and if it's going to be live or virtual this time.

So thank you again.

Great friends.

And I'm always just a phone call away.

Thank you, Wade.

Be safe.

Would any other supervisors wish to make any remarks?

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Colonel Wolfrey, thank you so much.

I think the resolution demonstrates in your career exemplifies what public service really is all about.

27 years in the Army and then continuing as a civilian in the Senior Executive Service.

We cannot thank you enough for what you have done.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate that.

Well, sir, thank you so much for being with us today.

We appreciate all your years of service and I certainly concur with my fellow supervisors and the remarks they made.

And our next resolution is a recognition and appreciation for Randolph Reinhart.

It is my pleasure to read the resolution of recognition and appreciation for Randolph Randy Reinhart.

Whereas Randolph Reinhardt was appointed to the Albemarle County Board of Zoning Appeals, BZA, on January 14, 2000, and attended his first meeting as a BZA member on March 7, 2000, serving Albemarle County with distinction for 21 years as a member of the Albemarle County BZA Zoning

holding the Office of Secretary to the Board of Zoning Appeals for 13 of those years.

And whereas Randolph Reinhart has been a dedicated member committed to the mission of the BCA and that of Albemarle County, desiring only to give back

to that county that he loves and to serve a purpose for the community and whereas Randolph Reinhardt has been a positive force on the BCA using gentle words to make powerful points demonstrating a keen aptitude for redirecting conversation to key issues in a responsible and appropriate manner.

providing insight and thoughtful consideration to each case that has come before him, displaying kindness and respect in his collaboration with fellow members, county staff, and members of the public.

And whereas we as members of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors wish to extend our utmost appreciation

for the invaluable experience, leadership, professionalism, and insight that Randolph Reinhart has contributed, which has been beneficial to the citizens and staff of Albemarle County and whereas the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors wishes to extend our sincere best wishes

For every happiness in the future to Randolph Reinhart, whose term of service will expire on May 22, 2021.

Now there be resolved that the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors recognizes and appreciates the service of

Randolph Reinhart, 21 years of service on the Board of Zoning Appeals from 2000 to 2021, 13 years as the Secretary of the Board of Zoning Appeals, 2006 to 2019, and wishes him well in all future endeavors and do hereby offer honor and commendation.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

All right, very good.

That motion carries.

Yes, thank you Chair Galloway and Board of Supervisors for the opportunity to thank Mr. Rinehart for his many years of service.

I have found him to be a dedicated and dependable and honest individual who has provided balance and insight as well as thoughtful deliberation with the many challenges that come before the Board of Zoning Appeals.

For the 21 years he has served on the BZA with a gentle spirit and a graceful strength.

His guidance and understanding will be missed.

We wish him the best.

And Mr. Reinhardt, we have you here today.

Quite humbled by the words.

First off, I want to say how much I appreciate this honor.

It's been a true honor to serve my county and

Howard County, I should say.

I was born in the Medical Center some 74 years ago, and I've conducted myself with several businesses, and more importantly, as a citizen.

I don't need to tell you that we're surprised at what a professional staff we have that backs us up and gives us support.

And I have to, I could go around, but I'd forget someone and I know that.

But I've got to single out Ms.

McCauley.

She has been there the whole entire time with me or together or whatever.

And she is somewhat a go-to person that I have the utmost respect.

Our current attorney, Greg, was there many of those years.

and then of course Andy and the other staff.

I just, they make our job easier and I think each one of you as supervisors would agree with that.

Now I gotta put a personal note to Ann Mallek.

She and I grew up somewhat together.

She was more of a friend of my sister's than mine, but I was telling my wife this morning about your father, and I don't mean to get off, but what a peach of a guy.

If maybe a few of you might have known him, but John Huckle was an incredible human being.

But back to this, I just felt it was time and thank you for this honor.

And you are in good hands with the current board, and I hope that my position is filled with another qualified individual.

If I show a hand, would the supervisors wish to make a comment?

Thank you very much.

Yes, I remember all those attributes that were in the resolution were also part of Randy's character when he was in elementary school.

So I think that's just a really telling thing to be able to have that memory and to thank him for the many contributions in the community over all these decades.

So your successor has big shoes to fill, that's for sure, just like I do.

Well, Mr. Reinhart, in this day and age, having the feedback that you have gentle words to make powerful points seems to be something that is not on display much anymore.

So that really stood out in the proclamation or the resolution today.

So on behalf of the board and the Albemarle County staff and our citizens, we appreciate your years of service.

Thank you so much.

I am going to read this one.

Yes, I am.

This is a proclamation for Community Action Month.

Whereas community action connects individuals and families to approaches that help them succeed and promotes community-wide solutions to challenges throughout our cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

And whereas community action builds and promotes economic stability as an essential aspect of enabling and enhancing stronger communities.

which in turn promotes self-sufficiency ensuring that all Albemarle County residents and live in dignity and whereas community action connects hundreds of children and families in Albemarle County to greater opportunity transforming their lives and making our communities and our nation stronger and whereas community action serves the low-income population of Albemarle County

in its rural, suburban, and urban communities offering life-changing services that create pathways to prosperity by connecting families to job training, affordable housing, early childhood learning, child care and after school, college prep programs for teenagers, and whereas

Community Action will continue to implement innovative programs that create a greater chance at success for everyone, will continue to focus on a broader range of community challenges to ignite economic growth, and ensure all families can benefit and will continue to be a voice for the disenfranchised.

Now therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do declare the month of May 2021 as Community Action Month.

in recognition of the hard work and dedication of all Monticello Area Community Action Agency.

Signed this fifth day of May 2021.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

Price.

Aye.

Mr. Galloway.

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Galloway.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Very good, that motion carries.

And we have Juliana Arsalie from the MACA board member with us today to accept and make remarks.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm Juliana Arsalie.

I was appointed by you all by the Board of Supervisors to represent Albemarle on MACA.

I just wanted to say thank you for supporting the work that's being done.

As many of you know, MACA has been working in the communities in Central Virginia since 1965 to ensure all families have access to resources they need for a thriving future.

We believe in the promise of community action, that our work changes people's lives, embodies the spirit of hope, improves communities, and makes Albemarle a better place to live in.

In celebration of Community Action Awareness Month, I just wanted to highlight a few examples of the great work that's being done.

MACA has adopted a whole family, two generation approach to programs and services that aims not just to alleviate current challenges faced by families with low income, but to actually break cycles of generational poverty.

Our Head Start program is a good example of this.

Through Head Start, not only are we providing high quality education, early childhood education to students, but we're also committed to partnering with parents

to support their education and career goals.

I'm also very proud to share with you all, if you haven't heard already, that in addition to Head Start, MACA is going to be carrying out early Head Start.

So we're going to be able to provide services for children birth to three years of age as well as expectant mothers.

So that's just a huge opportunity we have to provide services for our community.

Also, during COVID, the effect of community action was especially evident.

In uncertain times, our community action work assisted low-income families with rent assistance that allowed them to stay in homes, which they otherwise wouldn't have been able to live in.

So it helped to provide some sense of stability in a really uncertain time.

There are a bunch of other programs that MACA is doing.

Hope House provides resources for homeless families.

There are rural outreach programs that have partnered with food pantries throughout our county as well as other counties.

Emergency utility assistance, project discovery, helping youth find and navigate college opportunities.

There are just a few.

There are many things that are being done by MACA.

Just thank you so much for recognizing the important work being done by the families and staff in our community.

Thank you.

Any supervisors wish to make additional comments here?

Yes, Juliana is a good friend and her and her husband both are very involved in the community and I'm really excited, besides being a neighbor, I'm really excited about hearing of the opportunities for earlier education, even

Prior to Head Start age, that is really exciting and please keep me informed of that.

And I like everything that you all are doing.

You're very selfless and giving and your community activism is greatly appreciated for the entire organization.

Supervisor Price, did you have a comment there?

Oh sorry, I did.

Oh and Supervisor Mallek as well.

Looking at the little squares, it's kind of hard to judge.

But I really wanted to thank Juliana and I'm like Bea, I was really pleased to hear the outreach for the younger children.

That is absolutely great news.

The earlier we can provide some help and intervention, the better.

So that's great.

And thank you for all your good work.

I've been following MACA for a long time when I was on the school board, as well as now.

I just wanted to thank you and be glad.

I'm so glad to hear about the continuation of the educational support for years as a museum educator for the Museum of Natural History when the bus would roll up with the little October children and to see how much they had learned and how much they had progressed when they came back in April.

It was a whole new world because they were sort of organized and calm enough to be able to take in so much more of what they were seeing.

Thank you very much for all you do and all these different programs.

Thank you very much for being here today.

The whole board agrees with the comments that were made, and we hope you have a good afternoon.

All right, so I will read this in the form of a proclamation to be approved by the board.

The proclamation celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month, whereas Jewish American Heritage Month recognized in May is a time for celebrating the history, contributions, and cultures of the diverse population of Jewish Americans, and whereas the first Jewish

Family to settle in Albemarle County arrived in 1757, and the Jewish community have played an important role in shaping, advancing, and enriching the fabric of Albemarle County ever since.

And whereas Jewish Americans, due to their long history of persecution, have often found common cause with movements working to expand civil rights

Liberty and Human Dignity for All, including the civil rights movement as well as movements in support of women's rights, the rights of farm workers, the disabled, and the LGBTQIA Americans and others.

And whereas the early history of Jewish Americans in Albemarle County sheds light

on the community's commitment to tolerance and racial equality through the example of the long-term common law marriage of David Isaacs, a Jewish businessman, and Nancy West, a mulatto woman and a skilled businesswoman during the 18th century.

And whereas the Jewish American experience has always been held together by the forces of hope, resilience, and striving for a better tomorrow.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, honor and celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month and renew our dedication to the work of building a fully inclusive tomorrow, one where a great diversity of origins is not only accepted but also celebrated here at home and around the world.

signed this 21st day of April, 2021, and will be signed by Ned Galloway, Chair, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Thank you that motion carries and we have with us Yurta Binte-Fereed.

I do.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

It's good to see you all.

As always, I just wanted to say a quick thank you for your continued commitment to creating more equitable society for all members of Albemarle County.

And I also wanted to take a moment to thank you for recognizing how inclusive and intentional histories are vital to not only creating visibility for the different segments of our community, but also for making sure that all community members see their experiences

Enfolded into the story we tell ourselves about life in Albemarle County.

On that note, I have the great pleasure of introducing our guest, Dr. Phyllis Leffler.

Dr. Leffler is professor emerita at the University of Virginia in the field of public history.

In addition to two books on public history, she has published award-winning articles on museum exhibits and on the history of women at UVA.

Dr. Leffler's interest in documenting people's lives and experiences led her to co-publish To Seek the Peace of the City, Jewish Life in Charlottesville, an exhibit housed at UVA Library and I believe it is available to view online.

She is also the immediate past president of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and currently serves as the vice president of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.

Well thank you very much and thank you Supervisor Palmer for reading that beautiful proclamation.

I'm pleased and honored to accept this proclamation on behalf of the local Jewish community.

We so appreciate the recognition of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and your commitment to diversity in our region.

The only synagogue ever known to this area is in Charlottesville, just a few blocks from where you meet.

And as a result, the heart of organized Jewish life tends to center in Charlottesville.

But as the city has expanded, more and more people have moved to Albemarle County.

Many, many Jewish families have founded a welcoming and comforting place to live.

As your proclamation states, Jews became involved in the mercantile life of this area in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

And when the synagogue was established in 1882, Jewish families had already laid down roots here.

The creation of a physical space for a house of worship, the same structure that exists today, was evidence of those roots.

Their participation in mercantile, civic, cultural, and political life was testimony to the fact that Jews were accepted and valued, despite the fact that they remained a very tiny proportion of the population, less than 1%.

But in the latter part of the 19th century and the 20th century, as the forces of the Klan returned and as concerns about racial purity spread, Jews were targeted along with Blacks and other minority and immigrant groups.

And the numbers in Charlottesville fell to a much smaller number than had been the case.

in the earlier part of the 19th century.

The Jewish community, though, itself became more diverse after the 1960s when UVA was more open to the hiring of Jewish faculty.

And as a result, the locus of expertise shifted from business enterprise to legal, medical, and academic professions.

Today, Jewish families can be found in almost every sector of the economy.

Still, we remain a tiny percent of the population.

And we know that throughout history, Jews have been persecuted both on racial and religious grounds.

Many of us are aware, keenly aware, that antisemitism is on the rise nationally as the Unite the Right rally of 2017 so clearly illustrated.

We know that antisemitism is but one form of white supremacy.

Hopefully, that makes us more aware and conscious of the ways in which other minority groups have faced discrimination and injustice.

We as a community are committed to confronting white supremacy by embracing diversity and working for racial justice in our community.

And I'm pleased to say that current Jewish individuals in this community are deeply committed to social activism.

There are Jewish residents who have served in key roles with organizations like IMPACT, Hospice of the Piedmont, Area Food Banks, Alliance for Interfaith Ministries, CASA, the International Rescue Committee, literacy volunteers, political leadership, and civil rights advocacy.

Our clerical leaders have been actively involved with congregate clergy and the clergy collective.

Hopefully in these ways, we will be able to contribute to making our community a welcoming place for all.

Thank you again for this proclamation of support for and recognition of the Jewish community.

I will be sure to share it as widely as possible.

Thank you, Dr. Leffler.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, and thank you, Doctor.

You know, as history records and as our proclamation reflects, the Jewish component of our world population has faced persecution unlike that of probably any other group.

and so when we have these proclamations, some have recognized individuals, another an organization, but here we're talking about an entire demographic of the population.

It just means so much to me to show this inclusive nature of what we want our world to be and how I think Albemarle County is really trying to lead the way in that respect.

My previous church in Virginia Beach, Episcopal Church, had a very close relationship with congregation Beth Haverim and the highlight every year was Wednesday before Thanksgiving,

when we alternated at each churches or synagogues facility and we would get together as a community.

And as I've had opportunities to attend a number

of Jewish Religious Ceremonies.

I have always come away just so impressed with the love that is being expressed and shared in those communities.

And even here with Congregation Beth Israel, I had an opportunity to participate in a program for their high school students showing the inclusive nature of this community.

So we thank you for being here.

And the last comment, whenever we do these population demographic type resolutions, I always like to go on the internet and just do a search.

You know, to pull up the names of people who have contributed from that population group into our country.

And it is an endless, an infinite list of Jewish American contributions that have been made.

And we are so proud to have you as a member of our community.

Yes.

Phyllis, thank you for coming.

It's lovely to see you again.

Lovely to see you too.

And thank you for sharing some of the history of the Jewish families in Albemarle County.

I have no idea.

I always learn a lot when people come to speak to us this way.

And it's really important for our community to understand some of the facts.

And thank you for your comments.

They were just wonderful.

I really appreciate it.

So stay safe.

Thank you.

I just wanted to mention when my, this was for many many years I lived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh about a block and a half from the Tree of Life synagogue and my family was relatively young at the time.

We had moved into a neighborhood where there were a lot

of Holocaust survivors.

Many, many people had the tattoos on their forearms.

And it was incredible listening to the stories of my neighbors and the resiliency and how they made it through concentration camps and actually got to the United States.

And just an amazing group of people.

Thank you.

Dr. Leffler, it is definitely an honor to have you here with us today.

I know, as you've said in the past, you know, we seem to be living in this time where people feel they have a permission to hate.

And we have to, as you have shown leadership in reminding all of us that we have a responsibility to call that out and stand up against it as it occurs.

So

Thank you so much.

Thanks.

Thanks and bye-bye.

Be well everyone.

Bye.

So next on the list number seven from the public matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

Thank you Chair Galloway.

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

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak and the 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 and other supporting material, you may email them to the clerk to be included in the record.

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

If you exceed your allotted time as indicated above, your microphone will be muted after about five more seconds.

If a speaker does not use all allocated time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker and speakers are permitted one opportunity.

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 9 to let us know you want to speak.

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

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Grace.

If you can hear me, it means CenturyLink is working today in the Earliesville area.

My name is Gary Grant of the Rio District.

I'm a citizen community member, property owner, taxpayer, and voter.

Board members, do you remember the valid and reliable results of your 2020 community survey conducted from January to March 2020?

Do you six Democrat supervisors remember that you used the results to create your strategic plan?

Do you six Democrat supervisors remember that your strategic plan is connected to the when and why, according to your chairman, for your next $466 million spending plan of Albemarle taxpayers' money?

Do you six Democrat supervisors also remember the following?

Only one in five Albemarle residents is very satisfied

with the value of services received for his or her tax dollars.

Only one in 10 rates as excellent the leadership of your county executive's office and staff.

Only 9% of Albemarle residents rate as excellent the leadership of the board of supervisors.

Only 10% of Albemarle residents rate as excellent the job the county is doing in treating residents fairly.

Only 5.5% of Albemarle residents say they are very satisfied with the level of communication from county government.

Only 5.9% of Albemarle residents say they are very satisfied with the transparency and honesty of county government.

Do you six Democrat supervisors also remember the following community survey results upon which you based your strategic plan

and upon which you then based your next budget.

Less than a majority of Albemarle residents say that it is very important to allocate tax dollars to parks and recreation improvements, school facility improvements, other public building improvements, and broadband improvements.

Even addressing climate change couldn't win majority status.

coming in at 48.3 percent.

Is it any wonder, then, why some citizen community members, property owners or renters, taxpayers and voters would ask you six Democrat supervisors when and why questions about your leadership and your intentions with Albemarle County taxpayers' money?

Thank you very much.

And one side note, I would like to thank Supervisor Palmer for her recent email to me, thanking me for continuing to participate in your meetings.

Alright, thank you.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Hello, respected board members.

My name is Sid Patel and it's a riot district.

I would like to request not to increase cigarette tax.

All the retailers already suffering from COVID effect, mostly all business are down.

Many retailers and wholesalers in the business are selling cigarettes.

So this affects all of them.

As a retail businessman in our county, I do not want my cigarette business goes in other county near our county.

So please do not increase tax on cigarettes.

Mr. Galloway, please do not increase cigarette tax.

And please do not target smokers.

They are good people.

That's all I want to say.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

All right.

Board, our next item, number eight,

For consent agenda, we do not have anything removed from the consent agenda.

Is there a motion to approve?

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Very well, the consent agenda is approved.

And that will take us to number nine on our agenda, an action item today, the approval of calendar year 2021 tax rates and adoption of the fiscal year 2022 operating and capital budget.

And I believe before we go there, Nelson, our CFO, is with us.

Good afternoon, Chair Galloway.

It's such a pleasure to be here tonight with all of you this afternoon, I guess it's only 2 p.m., to bring us this last piece of the FY22 budget process and also the calendar year 2021 tax rates.

So I'm going to actually turn it over to Andy Bowman, who's our chief of budget.

who has just a few slides to make sure that both the board and the residents and taxpayers who may be watching have the context for which the board will take action this afternoon.

Thank you, Nelsie, for the introduction.

And while my teammates have split up the presentation, I do want to acknowledge that this is the final step in the development of the 2022 budget.

And there are two action items that Nelsie mentioned today.

The first is to adopt the 2021 tax rates and then to adopt the fiscal year 2022 budget.

I will share some introductory information just for the context of where we've been over the last couple of months before turning it over to the board for questions and discussion and action if our team could just pull up that presentation.

Thanks to you, and you can go ahead to the next slide.

Before we get into dollars and cents, to talk first about process, the county executive recommended a budget on February 24th.

What is shown on this slide is the process that has followed.

There has been a series of public engagement activities and work sessions with the board of supervisors, including last week's public hearings on the two items before the board's consideration today.

Going on to the next slide,

We start the budget process every year before we get to dollars and cents about kind of a framework about our goals and our values and as always our revenue recommendations are guided by our strategic plan.

The initiatives which are shown here on the left for those non-strategic objectives.

We also have in 2020 we expanded our organization's core values to include community

meaning that we expect diversity, equity, and inclusion to be integrated in how we live our mission.

And then also we have on the right this pyramid about how we have tried to strategically use one-time funding that is available during this time of uncertainty in the pandemic to ensure the county's financial foundation, support the economic outlook in the community in an uncertain time, and also to provide a workforce stabilization.

Moving on to the next slide.

I want to kind of another thematic slide that we have about a year ago really set out on the approach to manage the fiscal year 21 or the end of fiscal year 20 and the fiscal year 21 budget using a 366 model referring to the last three months of fiscal year 20, the first half of fiscal year 21, and the second half of fiscal year 21.

This budget is an extension of that philosophy that we add the next 12 months.

We're going to make it a 366-12.

We have learned a lot about the pandemic just in the last year about our services, about our revenues, and just the pandemic itself.

But we know that our economy and community are still stabilizing and adapting at this time.

I should note, not for today's business, but on May 19th, we were bringing to the board on the consent agenda for information, the third quarter financial report, which would again be part of our budget management in that 366 approach.

So moving on to the next slide for dollars.

And again, I'm gonna hit these relatively quickly because we've spent much time in work sessions going through these details to provide a high-level context to the budget.

The proposed fiscal year 22 budget is a total of $466 million, just over, and it is balanced using the same tax rate as the prior year.

Tax rates, I should say, of the prior year.

The total budget includes all operating capital and other funds for local government and schools.

Moving to the next slide, we will take a look at the general fund.

This is the revenues that are budgeted for the general fund.

And the general fund is the primary fund of the county and is where all local tax revenue is received.

Moving on to the next slide, this is the other side of our budget for the general fund expenditures.

This really makes up much of general government operations and also it includes notably the local contribution to the school division which is that large blue piece of the donut and kind of the bottom left of the chart and also the local contribution to the capital program and debt service which is that brown piece of about 30.5 million dollars in the upper left.

Moving on to the next slide, again just for context, in addition to the general fund, the board has spent substantial time in the past several months discussing the capital budget in fiscal year 21 and in fiscal year 22.

The fiscal year 22 capital budget totals 57 million dollars.

continues to support the maintenance and replacement and obligations that are included in the program.

This also reflects the CIP advisory committee's recommendation from their meetings in November and December to support projects that were paused in fiscal year 21-22 about this time a year ago and it moves those projects forward.

So going on to the next slide, there is some information that was included in the staff report

But I just want to highlight because there are two changes that are recommended to the proposed budget.

Neither of these are changed to the total amount of the budget.

It's just where dollars are being budgeted.

The first one of these is to reallocate $350,000 in the proposed budget that must be transferred to the Albemarle broadband authority to move that to the county's pandemic reserve at this time.

This is really based on the board's discussion back in March during the work sessions.

Just the idea knowing that there will be additional funding from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

It would be prudent to pause at this time to see what opportunities may exist in federal revenue before investing in local funding.

So this is not to say that there would not be an appropriation coming forward in the future for broadband infrastructure, but just to pause as we wait for guidance from the federal government to learn more about what may be out there and achievable for broadband infrastructure.

The second change is a reallocation of approximately $92,000.

This is really just a reorganization that takes a position in the Department of Community Development, kind of a housing-related position, reorganizes that to the Department of Social Services, and the intent there is to consolidate all of the county's housing efforts into the Department of Social Services.

So, going on to the next slide, this concludes my comments.

We'll turn it over to the board for any questions or discussion.

Thank you, Andy.

Supervisor Price, any questions here, comments?

No questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Boehling.

Thank you.

I have no questions at this time.

Andy, would you just make sure that we get a copy of your presentation?

Yes, I'll provide it to the clerk.

That's great.

My only question is, is there any possible delay?

I mean, does this reallocation for broadband have any implications for moving forward with our new program?

I would say at this time, I know that our committee director of broadband is not on the call, but we should be getting guidance from the federal government.

The latest we've heard is May 10th, and I know we're planning to come back to the board in June to discuss kind of ARPA framework and planning further.

Thank you.

I will just say at our broadband authority meetings, that question has come up.

and we were told by staff, and certainly Trevor can comment on this, but that it will not affect that as long as we're keeping good track of what's going on, which I think we are, so.

No questions at this time.

I have no questions.

All right.

I don't have any questions.

And if that's the case, then we can, we need to, we should do these as two separate motions.

Is that correct, Mr. Canton?

Yes.

Chair, I move that the board adopt Attachment A, the resolution to set the calendar year 2021 tax rates.

All right.

Any further discussion?

All right.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Very good.

And the second motion.

Second.

Aye.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

All right, very good.

The motion is carried.

Thank you, Board.

Thank you, Nelson.

I think this would be the appropriate time for me to circle back to the board on an issue that does not have implications to the fiscal year 22 budget but I did want to clarify that recently the board had asked for some additional attention to be spent on a program that I believe may go forward with the city

that several speakers came to the board recently about regarding legal support.

for potential evictions that are related to COVID.

And so what I'd like to say is that the staff will analyze this issue specific to Albemarle County.

I know that several board members have spoke with the County Attorney's Office.

Mr. Campner is coordinating with the County Executive's Office.

And Mr. Bowman mentioned that the ARP framework

is coming back along with hopefully the first tranche of money in early May or we think sometime around maybe between the 10th and 15th of May and Andy mentioned that we'd be back in June and so we will analyze this issue and be prepared to come back to the

of coming back with that RLP funding for the first tranche.

And if the board will be reminded in that initial framework that we suggested to the board, we did have a earmark associated with the human services side of programming for our community that involves social services, as well as the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

And so we've already involved those folks for some

Just wanted to make sure the board understood that we heard you and that we would certainly be back to talk to you more about that and the accompaniment of the broader strategy.

Perhaps a question, maybe more of a comment.

Mr. Richardson, thank you and I appreciate you bringing that up because we know our community is wanting to hear what the board is looking at on this.

A couple of points, which I believe

are relevant.

One is that I think we all recognize the impact of the economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as it affects housing and homelessness.

So I support and concur that it would be more appropriate to look at using potential funds from the ARP

rather than being put as part of our regular budget.

It separates the two and it identifies seeking to provide some relief as a result of the pandemic from funds that we would be receiving from the pandemic rather than making this a regular line item in our budget.

The second thing is I would really like county staff to analyze this from the perspective of economic impact, not specifically from the standpoint of tenants alone, because I think we have to recognize that there is an impact on both tenants and on landlords.

And not every landlord is a large corporation with deep pockets coming from a military background.

I know that there

many people in the military or in civilian industry that may have to move and are unable to sell a house and basically have to rent it.

And many individuals, that for them is their retirement, their stock market investment, if you will.

So I think what I'm trying to say really is that it is a complex situation.

We cannot necessarily be all things to all people.

I think the clear consensus from the board at our last meeting is that we are interested in trying to provide some measure of relief.

But again, those main points would be that it be separated from our regular budget line items, that it's related directly to the funds that we get associated with the pandemic.

In speaking with other supervisors, a comment was made that it not be specifically to fund positions, but it'd be more to provide relief.

Other supervisors wish to ask any questions or make any remarks?

A question to leave for future research and consideration.

Having gone to small claims on my own and been facing three well articulate, expensive suited lawyers on the other side,

I know what it feels like in a small way to not have the skills and the ability to get success.

I was not facing being thrown out of my house, but just trying to get reparations for damage that was done.

So I would like to know about, in the future, how these evictions are impacting our families

That's not COVID.

And perhaps someone can in the local Legal Aid Justice Center or someone has details already about the numbers of families in the county who have been impacted over the last several years or whatever.

It would help us understand if there is more that we should be considering outside of COVID.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments here?

You know, before I should have, you know, sometimes we just plow through this agenda, but I should probably note, I mean, the adoption of the budget is not a small task.

It's our biggest responsibility and one of our biggest tasks that we undertake each year.

So Mr. Richardson, your team does an excellent job.

Nelsie, Andy, thank you.

It's hard to put into words how much effort and work goes into this every year.

I've certainly, as I'm sure other supervisors have made public remarks as to our being impressed with you last year, went on a dime, you had to make a turn.

and to change the budget in the face of the pandemic and really to work through this budget with still some unknowns and bring forward what you have so that we can confidently vote to adopt is much appreciated.

So again, thank you to you and your whole team as you work through this budget cycle this year.

All right, we will move to our next item.

On the agenda, number 10, this is a work session on private streets overview and Megan Medastep is with us.

Oh, there you are.

You're on the right.

Good afternoon.

Can everybody hear me okay?

My computer fan is running loud.

Oh yeah, that happens to me too.

Good afternoon Chair Gallaway and members of the board.

So we are here before you today with the private streets information as you requested.

So this first slide is just an outline of the topics we're going to cover.

I'm going to talk about the history of private streets within the county, the existing private streets approval process, and then I'm going to turn it over to Frank to talk about the street standards, the pros and cons of public

versus private streets, the bonding and inspection requirements, and then turning it back over to me, I'll talk about some examples of private streets and go through the potential solutions to reduce private streets and then there'll be opportunity for discussion.

So in 1974 was the first time private streets provision was added into our subdivision ordinance or subdivision text amendment or an STA.

In 1983, following the addition of those private streets, a committee was established to evaluate.

There were some issues that I found that was noted in that STA.

And so that committee looked at whether or not we should continue with private streets and recommended

that we should continue with private streets but there should be some more stringent regulations and so in 1983 those more stringent regulations were added in this subdivision ordinance.

In 1988 at the end in 1989 VDOT proposed changing their subdivision design standards and this resulted in the formation of a private roads committee in 1989 by the planning commission

And this committee provided feedback to VDOT with a number of concerns.

One of the key changes that VDOT proposed was to increase the design speed from 20 miles an hour to 25 miles per hour.

And staff provided a memo to the board at that time outlining the concerns that were raised by the committee and by staff.

In 1990, following that, VDOT did adopt the subdivision design standards without the changes recommended by the committee.

And so following that, a new committee was established, the Private Roads Committee, to evaluate private street standards as well as if private streets should continue based on those design changes.

A staff member at that time predicted with the VDOT changes that an increase in demand for private road usage in smaller development of 20 units or less would occur and that actually is what the majority of our private street requests are today.

So in 1991, there were two subdivision tax amendments that were adopted to revise the private street standards.

And those standards were to VDOT's mountainous terrain and rolling terrain standards at the time.

And as part of the STAs, the private roads committee provided input and recommended that private streets do continue.

They stated private roads serve a definable public purpose, and therefore private road provision should be continued in the subdivision and site plan ordinances.

In 1998, a subdivision text amendment was adopted to allow two lot subdivisions and family subdivisions to be approved by the agent, that's our administrative approval.

And then in 2004, another subdivision text amendment was adopted to permit additional agent approved private streets under 14233 B in today's ordinance, which include non residential uses attached units.

Now I'm going to move on to the private street process.

The main regulations regarding private streets comes from the subdivision ordinance, and this chart outlines the types and justification for private street requests as well as who has the authority to approve these requests.

The chart was included in attachment A in the executive summary, and I'm happy to go into more detail if requested, but I'm going to quickly run through, just summarize what's in the chart.

So in rural areas, the private street justifications that are approved by the Planning Commission include alleviating significant degradation to the environment and general welfare.

and two lot divisions and family subdivisions are done administratively in the rural areas.

In the development areas there are three types that are approved must get approval by the Planning Commission and those include neighborhood model development and I'll just clarify that neighborhood model doesn't mean neighborhood model the Zoning District but neighborhood model principle is one of those principles that are in a comprehensive plan.

And then there are two lot subdivisions and general welfare by the Planning Commission as well.

The attached residential and non-residential uses and family subdivisions are administrative.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors, Frank Pohl, County Engineer.

So this is a comparison of private road standards versus public road standards.

And I wanted to point out that we have VDOT here, which are the public roads standards.

They also follow AASHTO standards, which is why I say VDOT slash AASHTO standards at the top.

VDOT does have a 20 mile per hour

Standard, they use AASHTO for that, but they don't allow us to, their subdivision road design guide does not really allow use of that except for certain circumstances, which is very rare.

So I left it as AASHTO and did not include that as a VDOT option.

So this basically is our current table that we use.

It's in our design standards manual for private streets.

As Megan mentioned in Section 233B, the multifamily non-residential has the lowest standard.

This is what you'll see in like an apartment complex or a townhouse subdivision where you might have some parking that backs out into the street, perpendicular parking.

The turns are more like a stop condition.

and the design speeds are pretty much pretty low it's 15 mile an hour all we design speed and that's in that that middle column there for the county six lots or more are based on a 25 mile an hour speed limit so we follow VDOT subdivision road guidelines for that

There is a potential for some roads to be reduced to the 20 mile per hour AASHTO standard in certain cases, and those would have to go to the Planning Commission for those waivers.

Next slide, Megan.

So these are some pros and cons.

It's probably not all of the pros and cons that you can think of, but I wanted to highlight a few critical ones that we think

belonged on this slide.

For public roads, of course, a big pro is it's VDOT standard.

So VDOT maintains it.

They not only maintain repaving, but they also maintain operational maintenance, which includes snow removal or ditch clearing and resurfacing.

For private roads, the pros are it does allow for a more urban design neighborhood model.

tighter streets.

And for the biggest thing that we decided on for private streets was the environmental degradation or impacts.

And that was used as justification to allow private streets in the past.

Cons for the public streets are, in most cases, they don't allow for those urban design type projects.

And the roads are limited to 25 miles per hour.

Sometimes we have roads that are 20.

But, you know, I think we all have experience where you find yourself even going over 25.

So I think that was a, you know, that was decided and shown on as shown on Megan's slide by VDOT.

they are considering or reconsidering lowering that to 20 miles per hour is my understanding.

Another con for private, excuse me, a cons for private streets are the biggest con for private streets is maintenance as we've discussed in the past.

And those streets most likely will never be adopted by VDOT in the future.

One other con for private streets which we experienced this past

year was the potential for one of those streets to be closed and this was during the replacement of the Ivy Creek culverts over there in Ivy.

And if they're private streets we have no we can't keep them open basically it's up to the private entities or the owners the HOA's to to do that.

Next slide.

and I wanted to point out the road inspection and bonding requirements.

They are basically the same for public and private streets, but I wanted to quickly go through what those steps are.

For private streets and inspections, there is a process where the bonded inspections occur at certain stages in a project.

We do not have on-site inspectors

Inspector,

They require reports from those inspection reports to be submitted during a reduction or release.

Actually, VDOT doesn't have bonds, so it's a county bond.

And when we get those reductions, we do get VDOT involved on public streets to help us with review of those documents.

So there are third party inspections required for these various components of the pavement.

We require as-built plans, certifications, and as I mentioned, we do not have a dedicated road inspector.

So we respond to the bond inspection requests as they are submitted.

And for bonding, we do bond both public and private streets.

The developer can decide to either build it or bond it.

which means that, again, it means just that.

They can build it, but they would have to build it prior to recordation of a subdivision plan.

So that limits their ability to sell lots.

So that's why they typically bond a roadway.

And we want it bonded because if they end up selling all the lots and don't complete the road, then we have a ways or a means to do that through the bond.

As I mentioned earlier, there are releases

and reductions and we have to follow state law.

Those are the code sections with regards to that.

There are timeframes that we have to respond within and then also certain requirements for those responses and certain obligations to reduce or release bonds if the requirements have been met.

and the bonds do include all items associated with a roadway.

So it could include inlets and pipes, sidewalks, signs, landscaping.

We even include the testing and the VDOT surety in case we have to pull the bond for maintenance.

It's a one-year maintenance surety that VDOT requires surveying and

Stormwater piping, but not stormwater.

There is a separate bond for stormwater facilities that's covered under the WPO permitting process and bonding process.

Those are not included in the private or public road bonds.

Thank you Frank.

Now I'm going to walk through some examples of private streets that have been approved.

Approximately 112 private streets have been approved either administratively or by the Planning Commission in the last five years.

47 of those were in the development areas and 65 in the rural areas.

Some of these examples are in this chart and I'm going to go through some of those or all of these actually.

So you can see the design and justifications for approval.

We most frequently see requests in the development area related to our neighborhood model principles and VDOT suburban design standards not always allowing for more urban street design that would allow for particular parking or slower design speeds.

I briefly talked about how the changes in VDOT standards in 1990 and as you saw in Frank's chart and how he just mentioned with the design speed being increased it also increases the width of streets, increases the curvature and sight distance and all of those have an impact to the ability to create a more urban and neighborhood model form of development.

So the first example I'm going to walk through is Bamboo Grove.

You might remember this development.

It was just approved last year.

It's a small development in Crozet with six houses and a private street here was approved.

So the ordinance requires the frontage be provided on a public or private street when a property is subdivided for the lots.

So in this example, the property includes a stream.

You can see here the stream buffer, which limits the area for development.

So due to the request for perpendicular parking here to meet county parking requirements, the street couldn't be public.

So we might ask ourselves, why should we have a street at all in this small area?

kind of development.

Well the frontage requirement was needed for the subdivision of the lots so this could also this kind of development could also be done without subdividing the lots as a condominium and a street would not be required at all.

A nearby example of that is Crozetco housing where the units weren't subdivided and there are access ways to the buildings within the development.

The next example is Riverside Village.

This is the plan view on the right top of the screen.

And this is an example of needing a private street to meet the frontage requirement.

This one is different from Bamboo Grove in that alley access is provided to the back of the units.

You can see at the top of this plan and at the bottom.

And the pathway you see in between the houses is, that's actually the private street.

It's reinforced pavers to meet the fire rescue requirements and the bollards can be removed in emergencies.

So this is a design that's a great example of the neighborhood model that we strive for in the county.

There are a number of examples of this kind of development where lots are facing a common space or amenity that were approved as part of a neighborhood model rezoning.

The code of developments would allow frontage on a amenity.

But they still would require the private street approval for subdividing.

Some other examples include Old Trail, 999 Rio, and Southwood.

So this is Stonefield as an example.

In Stonefield, the image on the top right is looking down from hydraulic into Stonefield and Main Street crosses here.

On the top left, basically where you're looking down on the street and then Main Street cross here.

So this was a private street for a few reasons connected to the VDOT requirements.

First, the trees were too close to the back of the curb for VDOT's requirements for a clear zone at the intersections.

The four-way stop was proposed at the intersection with Main Street, as well as VDOT would not approve a reduction in speed due to the traffic counts for the development.

So it was important for the county to have slower speeds in the stops in this neighborhood model development in Stonefield.

The last example I'll walk through is Green Law Farm, which is in the rural areas.

And this is located off of Dudley Mountain Road in the southern portion of the county.

So this is Dudley Mountain Road here.

So this is a Rural Preservation Development, or RPD, that clusters the lots to allow preservation of a larger portion of the property, and that preservation track is

Keeler.

So in this example VDOT was requesting that the street be extended to the property line to meet their secondary street access requirements.

So they wanted this street to continue on and connect

provide for a future connection just to the south here.

So staff supported this private street since it was in the rural areas and an extension of the street could be seen as encouraging future development in the rural areas which doesn't align with our growth management policy outlined in the comprehensive plan.

Now I'll walk through the potential solutions that were outlined in my report.

The first is a multimodal system plan.

So this is a plan that would be adopted as part of a comprehensive plan update and would look at all of the modes of transportation to develop a comprehensive transportation plan that shows all the transportation networks.

As part of this plan, it may be possible to establish urban design standards for streets within the development areas that are acceptable to EDOT and would be public roads.

Staff believes that with the establishment of more urban design standards that are acceptable and will be approved by VDOT within the county's development areas that the number of private streets could be reduced.

And VDOT requires this plan in order to adopt those design standards.

So we would have to do this multi-modal system plan in order to get more urban design standards.

Additional research and exploration of this option would need to be done in coordination with BDOT which can be included in the scope for the multi-modal system plan.

So all of the solutions outlined on this slide would need to be considered with other priorities within the community development work program that you'll be hearing about next up in the agenda I believe.

So there are three additional solutions that were outlined in detail in attachment A.

The first is revising the private improvement maintenance agreement template.

While the county does require a maintenance agreement for all private streets, we think that additional language could be explored to strengthen the requirements for the long-term maintenance.

In addition, the approval of private streets

Administratively or by the Planning Commission allows for conditions to be imposed that are deemed reasonable and necessary.

So staff can implement a policy and procedure to require a condition of the approval of private streets to require public access easements over the private street right away where necessary and that would alleviate that issue that I talked about earlier.

Both of these solutions related to the long-term maintenance and access would require additional staff time, community development staff time, and from the county attorney's office.

The second solution is revising the frontage requirement in definition.

As you've seen in my presentation, there are a number of requests for private streets due to this requirement relating to the neighborhood model.

The staff believes that this definition requirement are outdated and revision to the ordinance to require safe and convenient access is determined by the county engineer and fire rescue in lieu of frontage along with other frontage language within the ordinance could result and reduce private streets.

This would require zoning and subdivision text amendment that again would require community development staff time and county attorney staff time.

The last solution outlines a number of process and text amendments.

These include establishing a board policy statement to discourage private streets, shifting the decision-making of approval of a private street from administrative and planning commission to the board, further restricting the qualifying criteria for consideration of private streets, and exploring prohibiting private streets.

Option one would require additional staff and board time to develop a policy statement.

Options two, three, and four would require a subdivision tax amendment, which would require additional staff time and would require from the county attorney's office as well as engagement with the development community.

In addition, option two would result in additional staff and board time for review of all private streets and may lengthen the time for review of development proposals.

So I know we kind of presented a lot of information today in a short amount of time and I posed some questions for you to respond to.

Thank you, Megan.

Mr. Dostit, thank you for your presentation.

This is a lot of information.

I kind of feel like we're making sausage here in some ways when we have to deal with the public private roads and clearly as a reality there's a huge difference between the rural area and the development area.

Being a resident on a more than mile-long gravel private road

In the development area, in the rural area, I don't think we could prohibit them.

It would be practically and economically impossible I think to do that.

The development area or developments is really the bigger area of concern.

You know, my initial reaction is let's just ban private roads, but then you look at the reality of the development blocks, the size of the property, the constraints that are imposed based on geography, water protection, you know, slopes, whatever it may be.

It appears that one of the biggest issues that we have with private roads is ensuring that we have an adequate mechanism to ensure that funding

is regularly set aside so that when the private roads need to be resurfaced or maintained or improved, that the funds are actually there.

And the anecdotal information I've got is that the first maybe three to five years, the process we have in place seems to work.

But once you go beyond that, the residents start to, you know, rebel against having to make their annual assessments.

The homeowners association doesn't

I believe they have financial resources to compel compliance and so then we go through a period of time after the bond has been released or whatever that the roads deteriorate and we don't have a financial mechanism for them to be maintained so the residents then turn to the county and say we want the county to take care of this and that was the whole reason why the private road was allowed in the first place was because the residents were going to take care of it

So I really look forward to hearing from the other supervisors as well, particularly those who've been on the board for a longer period of time.

I like the multimodal.

approach that seems to me at least to the multimodal system plan seems to provide the greatest opportunity for those that we do have private roads already monitoring the compliance with the collection of funds to ensure proper maintenance becomes critical.

And I think that is probably where I would be in terms of the four options that you gave under process and tax amendments.

I don't think we can prohibit private streets just because of the reality of lots and those other constraints, as I mentioned.

I'm not in favor of number two, shifting the decision.

and obviously I would like to see more public rather than private streets but recognizing that there will be occasions where they must probably must be approved and where we can trying to restrict where private streets are approved but I don't think we can eliminate them.

Thank you and thank you Chair Galloway.

I may have some further comments later if possible.

Yes, thank you.

I don't disagree with anything that

Supervisor Price said, Donna just said.

My concern from the very beginning has been the maintenance.

Ural's presentation was wonderful and it looks great, but what you didn't do was you didn't go back onto some of these private roads that were approved a decade or a decade and a half ago and take a look at what they look like now.

and I understand that's maybe not in your purview with this presentation and that's okay.

But I think I may be, I'm looking at the supervisors.

I think I may be the only supervisor that lives in a urban neighborhood with a speed limit of 25 miles per hour that is on a public road

not in a gated community or a community with a strong HOA.

We have no HOAs and I represent a good number of those communities.

No HOAs and private roads and I know some of you do represent other areas like that but I've watched them over the last 40 years fall apart and

it's lack of maintenance.

So what I'm interested in is not to stop private roads completely.

What I'm trying to figure out is how we move forward to make sure that they are maintained so that we're not, that the neighbors on those private roads don't feel like they've been abandoned

or that they don't have any recourse because most of the time, or maybe not most, many times they don't have the money or the wherewithal to spend millions of dollars to bring their roads up to just qualities.

Did I disappear?

Are you still there?

Something happened with my feed.

I'm sorry.

I can still hear you.

And I thought I disappeared and I was off screen.

You all couldn't even hear me.

Sorry.

So my concern is how we maintain a quality of life in these neighborhoods that are on private roads

after the first decade.

I talked to someone, actually a developer in our community, and maybe Frank you can help me with this because I was asking him about what the URL's presentation talks about.

The County, the Property Owner Associations Act of the Virginia Code, and it requires every association to be registered

I mean, I'm not sure that that even happens.

You can go to many of my neighborhoods that are on private roads, and I don't think the majority of the people even are aware of this, of this state law.

Certainly they haven't been collecting fees.

So help me a little bit, Frank, if you're the right person, with how this State Property Owners Association Act of the Virginia State Code works.

Because that's maybe the protection that was supposed to take place for the homes and the homeowners or the property owners, the people that have rental property even.

Well, I'm pulling it up and the one problem that exists in the older neighborhoods is that they precede that law and so a number of the subdivisions in the urban ring that may have loose associations or things like that

are not property owners associations at all under the state law.

Well, they have homeowners associations that were written into their, when the properties were sold, they knew they were supposed to be collecting for their roads.

But they preceded the act.

So I lived in a phase of Dunlora.

that is much more recent and so we have to maintain a minimum balance in our capital fund

to our main improvement is a stormwater management facility.

And we're required by law to have assessments that are adequate to maintain the minimum capital funding.

But these older subdivisions don't have those same requirements.

And so I think you and Supervisor Price described that some of these older developments that aren't under the mandate

For whatever reason, they decided that they were not going to impose the types of assessments that allow them to maintain all of their improvements.

I can recall a subdivision south of town where they needed to upgrade their stormwater management facility and they were reluctant to increase their annual assessment above, I think it was something like $27 per year.

Well, so I would be number one, because I realize this is a work session and we're just kind of talking and brainstorming right now, I would be really interested in knowing for the new ones that have been approved, how this Proper Owner Association Act, how that

Word gets to folks, right, and how we deal with that.

Because my understanding is that after five years, the developer backs out, turns it over to the neighborhood association, and at that point, what happens?

That particular issue depends on how the original declarations are recorded.

I know of one subdivision where the owner maintained control of the association for

15 or 20 years after the first lot was sold because of the terms of the declaration.

So I think that's something that we maybe should be looking at, right?

If we're allowing the product road.

For the most part though, the multimodal system, I'm good with, I think that's great.

And I guess, oh, you put the questions up, didn't you?

That we're supposed to be answering.

We just approved Premier Circle,

I guess I'm using examples here, but we're just a premier circle with private roads.

That's concerning to me because that is really a mix of different, it's supposed to be at some point, a mix of different types of houses and units.

So maybe that will be a test case.

Going forward, does the board support staff exploration of urban design street standard adoptions and development area?

Yes.

So from the first question, yes.

The multimodal I'm comfortable with.

Does the board have feedback on the frontage requirements, maintenance agreements, and public access and process?

I would really like to look into this more carefully.

And I think I've sort of spoken to that already.

I'm not sure I need to add a lot more.

Does the board have any additional questions or private street concerns?

And I think I may have addressed that as well.

I'd like to hear, though, what other board members have to say.

Thank you.

I will take the liberty also of asking a bunch of questions and probably and then in a backwards way answer some of Megan's questions as I go.

So I guess my major concern

is the overarching concern is what do we do with older or existing private roads wherever they are, urban or rural, and is there any way to get them back under control better?

That's probably a state authority question for Greg, so maybe I'll stop there and ask if he could answer that.

We can start with its private property, but the question that we have with most of these private roads is what do we, even if we could make them public, what would we do with them?

Because they can't come under VDOT state maintenance, and at least right now we don't have

the capability to maintain streets.

It's possible that, you know, there are streets, there are private streets where there's enough land where they could be expanded with additional right of way, but then there's the

uh the cost to upgrade the road to meet VDOT standards and who will pay for that and you know we could we could look at a type of special district which might be able to do it but if we're dealing with a small street with a with a small number of owners the tax

The additional assessment burden may be significant.

It may be.

Maybe I'm being too much of a Pollyanna, but maybe if we had the multimodal system plan, then could that be used to also provide an avenue for

The multi-modal plan really does direct into more urban areas as opposed to rural areas and a lot of the rural area approvals of private streets are for family divisions and two law divisions.

We don't get a lot of

I know I shared the Greenlaw Farm example but the majority of private street requests in the rural areas can be smaller for family visions and things like that.

One of the options is you know to move away from the private street terms

Okay, well that answers another question, so thank you, that's great.

I think this requirement in some ways has held back a lot of the Bamboo Grove type of efforts that have been raised in the last four or five years because they didn't have a way to subdivide, meaning the requirements we had where everybody had to have their own little street thing.

So that's good.

Let me move down the thing here.

So I hope I'm just mixing things up.

But somebody mentioned, I think it was Frank, that five and six lot subdivision was some kind of a threshold when I thought anybody over two houses had to have a public road standard for three and up.

Our standards do go down.

We do have a standard for three to five lots.

I just did not mention.

It's in my table.

OK, so I wasn't off base.

I just didn't have the whole story.

Environmental degradation, can you say a little more about that, that you would have a narrower road?

Yes, so you can have steeper roads potentially to avoid fills that would expand into let's say a valley that's a stream.

If you had a steeper or a sharper curve,

vertical curve on

That brings up my other point, which was for probably 15 years, that 30% difference was the shell game of the day because the road that was designed for the public road

was often put in in a very meandering fashion to stack the deck data-wise so that they would then have more of a chance to do the straight up the mountain short road.

And I remember being as a citizen in quite a few fights about that through the previous decades.

Okay, very good.

Let me zoom down my list here, see if there's anything else.

So this, the frontage aspect, does state law require it?

Or is it VDOT requiring it?

That's a county regulation.

All right, I'm going to stop.

Thank you very much.

As far as multimodal design, yes, and yes on number two, and you've answered my question.

Yes, thank you very much.

I'm in concurrence with what a lot of the previous supervisors have said regarding establishing a board policy statement to encourage public streets and discourage private streets.

I would like to see that.

I think we do need to

I think we need to maintain

flexibility for the staff to maintain flexibility because there will be instances where a private street makes sense, maybe because of the curves, maybe because of the height or the width of the street, whatever.

So I do like that, but where

That isn't, well, we don't have to have that.

I would like to see more public streets.

I think they're easier to maintain.

I know in my area, I've actually had people say we want to go private or excuse me, public, but yet they can't afford to upgrade their private street

to a VDOT standard.

So VDOT will not change your status from private to public unless you upgrade your road to VDOT standards, which of course in many cases they cannot do.

So I think it is beneficial to go more toward encouraging

public streets.

I did have a question I think Megan brought up.

Yeah, so typically we see private street requests for 20 homes or less.

Okay yes and I think something like the bamboo grove where they are you know it's not a huge number of homes and everything and to be able to put in a private street so they can have that development not a problem.

Shift the decision making for private street from administrative and planning to the Board of Supervisors?

No.

I would much rather get the input from the Administrative and Planning Commission to us.

For the restrict qualifying criteria for consideration of private streets, that is something I would be interested in, in an effort to make things more public.

Also connectivity.

I know we're encouraging in our developments connectivity, definitely support that.

And I do support number one regarding the multimodal system plan.

So I think with that,

First comment is that this is a huge subject.

Thank you, Megan.

To start off with, you know, I have so many complaints about private streets in especially the rural areas.

My worst one, just for information, is a road that was built in the 80s

extremely economically challenged people living on the road.

It is a gravel road that is now overgrown and almost impassable and VDOT of course cannot do anything about it and the residents have no ability to pay for it and it certainly was put in before any regulations of any type.

And so you have that extreme

situation.

And it's to me I have wondered if it should come under some classification in our equity work when we have folks like that in the rural area that just there's just no way and they're almost incapable of getting to their homes now.

And then we have the neighborhoods where people just

don't want to pay or there's a turnover.

It's new people, there's a turnover.

The other, and they don't recognize their agreement to maintain the road.

One example is an education situation that I can think of where the newer homeowners do not understand that regular maintenance will save them money in the long run.

Their neighbors can't talk

their new neighbors into putting money in gradually and then the road completely deteriorates and then they have a huge expense which then people start saying they can't afford.

So I have seen a lot of these

I would like very much for the maintenance agreements going forward.

I have no idea what to do with the crumbling ones we have now, except for, again, I am interested in speaking at one point about some kind of qualifications for particularly poor individuals in an equity program.

But I would like very much on the maintenance issue to see if we can strengthen that at all going forward.

Something as you suggested that mirrors the VDOT maintenance agreements.

And of course staff time is always the issue, but the frontage question seems very reasonable to me.

The multimodal I have a question about would that take care, one of my big concerns is that we are encouraging green infrastructure.

And very often in these neighborhoods, new neighborhoods in the urban area, if you're encouraging green infrastructure, it can be better implemented with a private road.

And so that's a question that I have.

I'm not sure in the research that I've done that VDOT has approved urban design standards through a multi-modal plan that included things like permeable beavers and what you're speaking about, but we could certainly include that as part of the conversation, although I'm not sure VDOT would then allow that.

I'm thinking of Crozet Avenue, where we did do something that required a maintenance agreement between us and the county, excuse me, and VDOT, which are those biofilters along the sides of the road there.

I think if it were a private street, they would want to enter those agreements through the county because they would be, that's what they're doing.

They don't have agreements with developers anymore, is what we're seeing.

So for sidewalks that are outside of rights of way, they're requiring

Thank you.

less expensive from the standpoint of the developer putting it in rather than putting in pipes and drains and whatnot, I guess in some circumstances.

So I'm interested in exploring that and I would like to make sure that we're not making it impossible for some of this stormwater green infrastructure.

We have that wonderful example right out in front of the county office building of a rain garden and it's so lovely and it gets so much attention that I would hate to

and say, well, you know, we have to narrow the street a little bit and it can't be a VDOT.

We can't put in something like that.

So anyway, my other question is this connectivity issue where in the, and I didn't realize this, that VDOT actually requires the connectivity because I have situations, they probably predated that VDOT qualification.

But when we have a road that's a private road that should connect to a public road, and neither side wants that connectivity because they have this wonderful cul-de-sac that they love, who trumps whom there for VDOT?

I guess if it's the public road coming later we can't force them to connect to a private road.

We would have to get the approval of that development for that connection unless there was right-of-way dedicated to the property line to allow for that connection to occur.

But we often see those where even between public and public where one

development doesn't want to connect to another development and then that connection doesn't happen.

So is the public to public decision removed from a local board of supervisors now?

The county also has connectivity requirements.

So if the developer wants to alleviate that, it would be reviewed by VDOT but also by the county and then the planning commission ultimately.

Okay.

And I think that's my questions for now.

The frontal, that's just the road frontage, that's just to be able to, you know, build a group of houses away from the road so that maybe there's a courtyard and people have to walk to it.

There could be other situations like Riverside Village where they're on a common amenity.

They actually have access through an alleyway as opposed to a street because the frontage definition specifically states the frontage must be given from a public or private road.

That's where we're getting into having to have a private street where

It's basically their alley and their accesses from the back.

We have a number of those in Old Trail.

But also, like you gave the example of needing a courtyard to walk or the Bamboo Grove example where they wanted to put perpendicular parking and allow perpendicular parking on a public street.

And one more question.

A lot of these private neighborhoods, they may not have an HOA, but they just have a road maintenance agreement.

Does that make it easier for us to require that extended maintenance agreement?

The maintenance agreement that

who currently require in the subdivision ordinance, it's an agreement between, it's usually between the developer and the developer's successor who, you know, think of the two or three lot subdivision and the subsequent purchasers.

And so eventually that agreement is enforceable

by the owners of the lots in that subdivision against one another.

The county is not an enforcer of those agreements.

So if we strengthened the maintenance requirement that the developer puts to their successors,

that it's still out of our hands and if a group decides to simply let their road deteriorate and let the next people who buy the houses deal with it.

We have no say in that.

Question mark.

The way they're currently drafted, we have done some maintenance agreements that did not pertain to streets where we identified the county as a third-party beneficiary, identifying some public interest to protect where we had the right to

Step in and enforce.

That's something that could be looked at.

Yeah, I understand completely.

I'm just trying to figure out where, you know, where the lines are that could be drawn, not that we would necessarily draw them there.

and one more, this is just a comment of another thing that I've seen and I don't know that there's any, you know, solution for it but where the developer, we have a crash in the market or we have something bad happening, the developer goes out of business, declares bankruptcy and then no agreements are made on

road maintenance or storm water management.

And if the problem ends up on one person's property instead of the other, the whole six people's property that's in this little subdivision, it's really problematic and pits neighbors against neighbors.

And I'm sure that others have seen these issues happen

where one person in the neighborhood has really just pulled the short straw.

No two ways about it.

So anyway, that's all I have to say.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think that you've made some good starts there with the staff recommendations and I would go along with them given your time and allocation of staff resources.

I guess I'll be quick because we're running out of time on this topic.

I share Supervisor McKeel's concern for the long-term maintenance and others concern the same.

So obviously the additional language to strengthen the requirements for that I would be in support of.

The frontage piece I'm okay with that as well.

I wonder in the multi-modal I'm

would like to explore that.

I wonder with those items being explored or changes happen to help us along, how that would then ultimately change the process and text amendments that you have here.

I wouldn't be at number four yet, explore prohibiting private streets.

I wouldn't be in favor of shifting the decision making on number two, but I just wonder if we had

more type of streets that could be considered public under VDOT with a multi-level and we had more guidelines in place to help for the long-term maintenance.

You know, would we think of these process and text amendments in the same way?

So for what that's worth is how I'm looking at those four items.

I think I said I was all right with exploring the frontage requirement understood there and would not object to that.

I think I touched on all your questions there, Megan, you had up in front.

We are at time here, but I know Supervisor McKeel, you had an additional question and Supervisor, a couple of people.

So why don't we just do another round here?

Because everybody's sending me notes.

No, I think everyone else has covered the concerns I had.

Thank you.

Yes, I really appreciate hearing from the other supervisors.

This is always a great exercise in hearing what the other supervisors have to say and I really appreciate it.

I have a quick question though.

We cannot be the only community that is struggling with this problem.

And I see Charles is on the call.

Quickly, I was wondering if Charles could address any experience or any thoughts he has

Sure.

Thanks, Supervisor McKeel.

Charles Ratling, Director.

I know in my past, some other localities, they required many private streets to go ahead and be built to public design standards and wouldn't really compromise.

Therefore, you wouldn't get into the issue.

I, though, recognize that we have some unique development proposals, as Megan has mentioned, with alleys and

kind of different type of requirements.

They're a little different.

So that's where we kind of did some research on other localities or in an urban environment where they do just have unique urban street types that don't have the width.

It's just not possible.

But they still have street trees and they still have sidewalks, utilities, and all the stuff that we have.

And that's what kind of led us down that road of the urban design standards that are part of a multimodal plan.

So as Chair Galloway mentioned, I think kind of exploring that and going down that road will

Thank you.

One extra question that I had written down the other day.

So, going back to these rural roads, which were built with easements over property 20, 30 years ago.

How does the county prevent a substandard private street from now being used for commercial purposes when it doesn't meet any of the intersection requirements that VDOT has?

And this is not for now.

Please think about this as you're doing this whole process because we have more than one in the very close to the growth area, but rural area, which is places where they're taking a lot of the consequences of the growth in the growth area.

And a lot of neighbors are really up the creek about how to deal with this and are really looking for some

regulatory support in order to not have to go toe to toe with their armed neighbors.

I always worry when we have neighbor versus neighbor situations because we're not having rules that we should have to protect everybody fairly.

So that is, as I said, that is chapter two, but I think it's a really important element as we try to find solutions for some of these other questions we've already talked about today.

Seems like if a mode doesn't meet the standards, it shouldn't be allowed to then be the host for heavy trucking and commercial parking and all sorts of other things that are going on.

Yes, I've been thinking about this.

I do like what Mr. Rapp said regarding having the private streets meet certain standards.

So the question is, how do we pay for that?

I think if a development or

private homeowners or anything want to have that.

I think they should be able to, I'm just throwing this out as an idea, maybe pay into a fund where we actually have a dedicated person in the community on community staff that actually goes out and examines

those roads to make sure that they are up to a certain standard.

Evidently from what I'm hearing from the presentation is we do not have anyone like that.

They don't go out and make sure that the roads are up to a certain standard.

So maybe if you want a private street you contribute, you have to pay a fee that then helps to pay the salary of a person who goes and checks on those streets.

The other thing that Supervisor

Palmer brought up regarding an equity issue.

You have streets where people absolutely cannot pay.

That's one issue.

You also have an area where people can't afford to pay but don't want to pay and haven't been paying.

It's a radical idea.

Perhaps we can repair those streets, but if they don't have a fund where they're putting into it, then there's a lien against someone's property so that the streets are maintained so that the taxpayers don't pay for those streets.

But when that person's home is sold, we recoup the

All right good I don't have anything in addition here thank you Megan and Frank

Community Development Fiscal Year 2022 Work Program, one of our favorite topics.

Good afternoon.

Hang on just a minute while I share my screen.

and hopefully you can see the front end of my screen.

Ms.

Oh, interesting.

Let me try again.

Ms.

Yes.

Hang on.

I'm getting there.

Okay.

Thank you.

All righty.

Good afternoon, Chair Galloway and members of the board.

My name is Jody Filardo.

I'm the Community Development Director.

I have with me today Amelia McCauley, Community Development Director or Deputy Director and we will be presenting this afternoon.

Also with us are our division heads who are standing by to assist.

It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Amelia and I will provide an update on the department's work program.

Your community development team has been hard at work since we last spoke on a wide array of projects.

Case in point, this photo is from a recent Southwood tour hosted by Dan Rosenzweig.

of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville with the county, as represented by Deputy County Executive Doug Walker and Chief Richard Branham of the Monacan Tribal Nation.

Dr. Stacey Pethia, housing policy manager, was also able to attend.

The tour was undertaken as the first step in establishing meaningful connections between the Monacan Tribal Nation and the team working on Southwood.

It's just one example of good work taking place despite the pandemic.

Today I'm eager to share some facts and figures on the department and then I will set the stage for our fiscal year 22 discussion.

Amelia will share more detail on the individual projects ahead.

If possible, it's our intention to work our way through the 20 slides in one pass, leaving time at the end for your questions.

Overall, in fiscal year 21, our staff size dropped by 10.7% due to retirements, resignations, and transfers.

In support of the entire community organization during the pandemic, we have held seven positions frozen until recently.

However, as you're aware, the building division is a customer facing division in contrast to the frozen positions over the last year and to keep the county development projects moving.

We have continued to actively recruit building division staff, hiring a replacement residential combination inspector one, a returning employee as a replacement community development assistant two, plus two replacement permit technicians for our intake area.

Looking to the future when the frozen positions might thaw, in lieu of replacing staff into the frozen positions in a like-for-like way, the CDD leadership team took this opportunity to reorient our frozen positions to serve our greatest needs based on pinch our pain points suffered,

Positions offering the broadest positive impact, revenue producing positions, and those needed to improve sustainability.

Thankfully, we are now moving forward to replace three of seven frozen positions and are actively recruiting for a principal planner, a co-compliance officer, and the principal planner for transportation to be working on capital improvement projects.

Following the recruitment efforts, those welcome replacements will result in a significant training obligation for senior staff to bring our new members up to speed.

We look forward to working these staff replacements into the organization over the course of the upcoming year.

Once the remaining four positions are unfrozen, we will be seeking a deputy county engineer, a senior zoning planner, an intake specialist to staff our front counter, and an erosion and sediment control

Inspector.

Moving forward from here, as new vacancies occur, we're continuing to hire and train replacements, as is the case with the senior planner position for which we are now.

While we started out the fiscal year with approximately 47 percent of our staff working either in the office or the field, that number has increased to about 60 percent of staff with

As the county moves to our new normal, whatever that may be, we anticipate being able to continue to offer teleworking positions in our planning division.

Changes in how we work have spurred innovations in our work.

Since we last met with you, Michael Dellinger, our building official, spearheaded the take-home vehicle pilot program for our building inspectors.

This pilot is running from April 1st to July 1st.

We believe enabling inspectors to start their days from home allows inspections to take place earlier in the day and provides better customer service to our building community.

Initial results look promising.

After July 1, we will evaluate and share the data to determine whether to continue the program or to expand it for use by our other inspection teams.

In concert with that program, we adjusted two other processes, the request and inspection process and the Albemarle County Service Authority permit reviews.

We moved the deadline for request for inspections from 4pm back to noon.

on the day before the inspection is needed.

This enables us to print out and assign inspections to the staff the day before.

It also enables our building inspectors to reach out to the requester to confirm inspection times and readiness and to provide more certainty for our building community.

As for the ACSA process change, collaborating with them, we now have builders obtain clearances directly from ACSA before submitting applications to us.

This has reduced cycle time in our process as we no longer need to send applications out to ACSA for review and stop our review process while we await the review results.

Instead, the builders and developers now have direct communication with ACSA to resolve any questions or concerns without us being in the middle.

Thus far, this process changes yielding good results with initial results indicating a reduction in review times with ACSA from over two weeks to less than half a day.

While we're excited about process innovations, we wanted to show what we are experiencing in application receipts in the year of the pandemic compared with the prior year.

The department continues to be driven by day in, day out delivery of the array of new applications we process on behalf of the community.

All divisions are involved in that work, and much of that work results in presentations to various boards and commissions, including the Planning Commission and you.

Looking at our building permit applications in particular year over year, these are tracking at levels like the prior pre-pandemic year, although the volume appears to be increasing slightly.

Interestingly, though the volume is similar, we're seeing smaller projects as indicated by the 10.8% reduction in reported job values.

We continue to watch these trends as they do impact the work load.

Looking forward from last September, we experienced delays in our estimated completion dates due in large part to pandemic impacts on community engagement.

At the same time, we recognized your desire and our need for better resource estimates.

We are an eternally optimistic team, and we're realizing this as we compare estimates to actuals.

Due to the complexity of our projects and the number of stakeholders, agencies, and other county departments with whom we interface, plus the number of guiding codes and master plans, assuring we do a careful and thorough job reviewing applications is a significant undertaking.

To support our estimating into the future, we are working with the Project Management Office to enable better project level resource tracking

In fact, last September you asked me for resource estimates on our projects, and we're working on getting you more definitive data on exactly what it takes to complete a project in CDD.

For now, though, we've put together some estimates for you.

We asked our project leads and managers to share some estimates of work hours spent on projects completed or nearly complete.

The first three of these smaller projects were more easily slotted in for work as staff became available.

Each of them also had limited public engagement processes needed.

This slide, however, shows medium or large projects that are underway.

Most of these projects have been ongoing for the past couple years and we're pleased to be bringing the projects to fruition.

With several of these, there will likely be related follow-up projects and or zoning ordinance updates driven by the policy changes coming forward to you in the future.

Thus far, these projects are consuming significant resources.

In addition, due to staff attributes, delays in these projects also cause delays in future projects dependent on limited resources.

As with completed work, we've asked our managers to estimate the ongoing efforts of these projects underway.

We selected a few projects to highlight the hours of staff time expended thus far on some of these projects.

These estimates are accurate as of the end of March.

For example, on the housing policy comprehensive plan amendment, thus far, we've had about 1930 hours expended and we're not done yet.

Section 33 zoning text amendment for legislative process revision is at 310.

Form-based code, also known as Rio 29, is at about 4,500 hours.

Rivanna River corridor plan phase two, in which we are not the lead agency but are simply participating, that's already at 600 hours.

The Crozet master plan is at about 5,500 hours.

and the Esri Enterprise License Agreement implementation is over 7,000 hours thus far.

Although we've not yet started, the wireless facilities policy and ordinance work will be accomplished with management from staff, coupled with the help of external resources.

The project duration is estimated between 12 to 15 months.

As before, with the first wireless facilities policy and ordinance, staff time up front prepares for consultant work, and then staff time follows the consultant's work to amend codes consistent with the policy.

Thanks to finance and budget, funding for this project has been identified from the operating board Strategic Priorities Reserve.

As you're aware, the Stream Health project is ongoing.

The board can anticipate more decisions coming to you as the stakeholder and staff work evolves.

Now we're going to lay out the approach for the work program for fiscal year 22.

Beyond the medium to large size project work underway, as presented on the previous slide,

We want to share three other categories of work we are undertaking in fiscal year 22.

Investing capacity, modernized zoning, and then a comprehensive plan update in concert with zoning updates.

We're showing all this information on one slide, acknowledging it is very busy.

This slide is intended to depict both the duration and variety of the multifaceted work ahead of the department this year.

Each of these categories of projects is captured in the swim lane or row with the approximate timetables across the top.

As I covered the work in the first swim lane in the previous slide, I'd like to spend a few minutes discussing a new category of work with you, a category we're describing as invest in capacity, shown here in the second swim lane.

We also consider this the right work to accomplish the long-term sustained process improvements for our customers and the county.

As the county moves toward urbanization, you and the community we support are asking for faster and more efficient services from community development.

To be responsive and true to our public service covenant, we are pursuing modernization efforts in three categories, systems, performance, technology, and outreach, in collaboration with other county departments such as information technology, finance and budget,

Community and Public Engagement, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, and the Project Management Office, to name a few.

We believe this work will result in long-term benefits to the entire organization and our customers.

Let's review each one briefly.

This year, we are deploying new intake application software, enabling a more understandable, easy-to-use front end on our application submission process.

We are using this change also to update and streamline our processes as we do this work.

We will be starting with the five most frequently used and complicated application processes and then adding in additional applications until the entire application process is fully integrated into this new approach.

The purpose of this work is two-fold.

We are improving the usability of our customer-facing processes and we're preparing the department for the re-engineering of the processes for the eventual selection of a replacement for CountyView, our permit tracking software.

That replacement is anticipated as part of the county-wide core systems modernization effort newly underway.

With both our front end project and the county replacement, we are fortunate to have the support of the county's project management office in constructing and implementing the project approach and plan and the IT department in figuring out systems integration.

We also appreciate the support of finance and budget in funding this effort.

To get a better handle on our resource needs, we're also collaborating with the PMO to evaluate and implement project level tracking.

The PMO will assist us in identifying and implementing solutions in a way that incorporates the change.

the change management necessary to affect this successfully.

We're also standardizing the software tools used by staff who review plans so they can provide comments on the electronic submissions directly.

And we're installing larger monitors to enable more efficient reviews of these plans.

Additionally, we will work with both Community and Public Engagement Office and the Office of Equity and Inclusion

on rightsizing public engagement and outreach to align with the complexities of our projects.

We hope to increase the predictability of our engagement process and ensure the inclusion of as many diverse community voices as possible.

And finally, last September, we shared the notion that updating the comprehensive plan and performing the related zoning ordinance

work was the right work to do to build capacity.

As the initial scope came forward to you, we heard your desires to get the results delivered faster and your interest in addressing long overdue zoning modifications.

We listened and are responding to those concerns in the following slides.

Up next, Deputy Director Amelia McCulley is going to share our approach on both the zoning modernization

Thank you, Jody.

I'm going to go through about nine slides and end with the opportunity for feedback and questions from the board.

You may have noted at this point in the presentation that this is a different approach and a different work program style than in the past.

I'm gonna break it down into component parts and explain the basis for our choices.

Next slide, please.

No, that's the right slide.

ODIA shared work program projects that are underway as well as those that build capacity.

And I'm gonna talk through the other details of the work program in the categories of A, modernizing the zoning ordinance, B, comp plan and related zoning ordinance work, and then C, the list of initiatives not currently resourced.

Let me share some of the foundational work that we did to formulate the work program.

We evaluated how much time each department position has available or could have available for work program projects outside of mandated work, such as permits and applications.

We heard and appreciate the request for us to provide information that allows the board to better see the project resource demands.

We recognize that when it's provided in a simple list, it seems that each project takes the same amount of time as each other project.

We asked staff to estimate how much time they spent on completed projects so that could inform and illustrate staff resource needs going forward.

We also work together to provide our best estimations of resource demands in three categories based on size or amount of staff resource.

for the initiatives that are not currently resourced.

And you'll see that in some upcoming slides.

Our first approach to identifying projects is that you need to finish what you've started.

This includes a list of work that's underway.

We also need to schedule work not yet begun, but that the board is funded such as the wireless facilities policy and ordinance.

The comprehensive plan work is discussed with the board as a high priority and will occur incrementally in phases.

We've identified zoning ordinance work that corresponds with that policy work in the comp plan so those intersecting efforts can align and be scheduled accordingly with work products in each phase.

A long standing goal of the county attorney's office and of ours is the modernization of the zoning ordinance.

We also heard from the board that this work should be prioritized.

this work program prioritizes beginning with that work as the right work rather than continuing to defer it for other work.

I'm gonna share some of the details of this modernization work in the next slide.

Next, thanks.

So we've developed a prioritized modernization list in collaboration with the County Attorney's Office.

We also looked for opportunities to provide efficiencies of effort with

and other projects, projects that could serve more than one purpose.

For example, it serves the purpose of modernization, but it also implements comp plan policy.

The first of these zoning ordinance modernization projects is to clean up outdated language relating to special exceptions, waivers and variations.

This will include clarifying the process, for example, whether an application requires a Planning Commission waiver or a Board of Supervisors special exception based on the Virginia Code and Case Law.

I'm really excited about the second project.

It's large and it's substantially impactful modernization effort.

It's one that will immediately update our regulations and make them easier for everybody, including the lay public to understand.

Where we have outdated terms and very specific uses such as food and grocery stores, including such specialty shops as bakery, candy, milk, dispensary, and wine and cheese shops, they will be put in broad use categories

and placed into a table for easy reference.

The current ordinance reflects an archaic way of classifying uses.

With this modernization project under item number two, we'll join others utilizing the best practice of broad zoning use categories with tables of uses.

This project will result in an immediately visible positive update and improvement to zoning regulation in Albemarle and I can't tell you how important that is.

The third project, setback simplification, will better allow anyone to understand setbacks on any particular property.

Currently, it's not an immediately straight answer as to what the setbacks are.

The current requirement is overly complex.

You have to first assess properties in 500 feet in both directions, measure existing setbacks, and based on what you come up with in that measurement, you're either in an infill or a non-infill situation,

and it's either one answer or another.

This work, the setback work will tie into the implementation of the application intake software that was listed and discussed under investing capacity, better allowing self-service for those who are trying to file a complete application.

Number four is an example of one of those intersections that provides an efficiency of effort.

Our density bonus requirements are outdated and inconsistent between zoning districts.

they're intended to provide a bonus for measures and improvements above and beyond the ordinance requirements.

One of the current bonuses is in fact an ordinance requirement.

In work on density bonuses, we can also find the intersection and implement the affordable housing bonus density anticipated by the housing policy.

When the comp plan amendment was at the planning commission last night, we heard from several speakers

that it's critically important to provide incentives such as density bonuses coincident with implementing the new housing affordability goals.

Next, we'll talk about the concurrent work on the comp plan and related zoning ordinance amendments.

This is important work that will align our zoning ordinance with comp plan policies.

We've borrowed a slide from the presentation to the commission

on the four project phases of the comp plan work.

Each phase will include distinct and parallel updates to the comp plan and zoning ordinance.

Each phase will conclude with updated portions of the comp plan document.

We will apply the lenses of equity and climate action planning to each project phase.

As a board is aware, there's also a list of additional projects that we share with the work program.

Projects made it into these lists if one or more of you indicated an interest in them.

So in the following three slides, we group projects based on the staff resource demands in three categories.

Small, less than 500 staff hours, medium is 501 to 2,500, large is 2,501 and more staff hours.

This is our best estimate

of resource needs.

Better estimates would require scoping and development of a public engagement plan.

We also sought alignment between our understanding of these projects and where we could find intersections with comp plan or zoning ordinance modernization phases to provide efficiencies and effectiveness of efforts.

And of course, as projects complete, we can deploy any available resources on this work.

Before we get into the specific list, I want to go through a few things that I'd like you to keep in your mind.

First, this is our best guess.

We don't have project level tracking yet.

So it's our best guess.

As you know, we've set schedules and for various reasons, sometimes we find that they can't be met as intended, or that we actually need more staff resources than we originally planned.

Secondly, scope and public engagement for each project drive timelines and resource requirements in large part.

The number of stakeholders, especially if they have competing priorities, also drives up the time and resource needs.

And number three, one of the tools that's listed under investing capacity category will be important as we undertake these projects and Jody talked about that.

That's completion of a template for engagement based on various project characteristics that will incorporate an equity lens.

This first list is those projects that we categorized as small resource demands, less than 500 hours.

An example of work that's been completed that would fall in that category is fill and waste, 330 hours.

Another example is rural area landscape contractor by special permit, 73 hours.

Within this list, which is, I believe, the longest list, I'd like to just take a minute and talk about that item C, stream health.

You saw in one of the prior slides ongoing stream health work, and that relates specifically to the work that the natural resources manager is doing with the stream health initiative, which I think is being called phase two, and it's focused primarily on the rural areas.

In this list, when we say stream health,

There are four things that are anticipated, and we're not saying that we would do all, but I need to mention them so that it's clear what we're talking about.

First is increased erosion and sediment measures within qualifying watersheds.

Second, reduced land disturbance area.

Third, incremental land disturbance on one property over time that remains under the threshold each time, so incremental land disturbance.

Number four is the ag road exemption that was deferred on April 21st that got pulled at the last minute based on comments we received.

To undertake this portion of some of these stream health initiatives, new resources are likely required in engineering for enforcement, inspection, and review.

An example of a project in this resource category is a housing policy which comes in at just under 2,000 hours.

For those projects that are within the medium staff effort category, we've suggested pairings with the comp plan work where relevant.

An example of that is the comp plan and zoning ordinance work to support Rivanna Station, which I've called the fence production overlay in our list here.

This comp plan work can be folded into the land uses discussion of the comp plan, and then implemented into the zoning ordinance and zoning map if that's the direction the board takes.

The final category involves the largest amount of staff resource demands, and an example of that is form-based code at 4,500 staff hours.

Next, please.

To summarize, we believe we're continuing to target the right new work.

First, we're proposing that we complete what we've started

that we make commitments and schedule what involves staff resources that the board has already directed us to do, such as the wireless policy.

Second, we're investing in tools to improve our capacity and customer service capabilities.

Third, we intend to no longer defer, but instead begin work on modernizing aspects of the zoning ordinance that can be addressed before comp plan updates.

we're tackling the longstanding need for zoning modernization, which has been repeatedly deferred.

Fourth, we're phasing the comp plan and zoning work together and incorporating those items from the initiatives list, not currently resource lists, where we can.

As usual, we will be back before the board midway through the fiscal year to report on progress in any additional capacity.

We do believe that our resources are fully deployed with this plan

The work of this plan is important and is consistent with what we've heard is interests of the board.

We also believe that this work is what best and strategically supports our ability to address needs now and for the future.

This concludes our presentation.

We'd be happy to entertain any questions.

Thank you, Jody, in a minute.

Thank you for your presentations.

I'm almost speechless with the amount of work that y'all are doing in community development and in recognition in particular of your 10% reduction in personnel last year.

makes it even more outstanding what y'all have accomplished is you've got people every day doing work for the community and at the same time the Board of Supervisors where we're constantly coming up with new ideas and new things to do your work.

I guess the comment more at least towards me if not necessarily to other supervisors is we have to be careful because we sometimes do sort of a fire and forget.

You all come in and talk about a project you're working on and as far as we seem to be okay that's done when really you're just starting on the project.

Now that you know in our minds you say you know you've got that done here's another project for you to do.

So it's difficult, I think, to really be able to prioritize all of the many different things that you've got.

I'm very impressed with the way you're trying to coordinate different components into a more consolidated sort of a process as you move forward on it.

Yeah, I mean, and just even preparing this presentation took a great deal of time.

which is time that's not being spent on other things that we've asked you to do and I recognize that.

So I literally am almost at a loss for words.

I think sometimes we are continuing to add so many priorities to you that it just makes it difficult to accomplish the ones we've already asked you to do.

I concur with what Donna just said and I have a couple of thoughts and let me first say that I really am, your work has been outstanding and I don't even know how you get done in a day.

or a week.

I know it's just incredible and I really am supportive of modernizing and getting all of this work done.

Much of it is started and to get it finished modernize our zoning.

I just think that's great.

I'm just wondering to sort of piggyback a little bit off of Donna, the supervisors all have

projects that we are interested in and some of the projects have come up over and over again and I think you've captured many of those like the wireless piece and you know the some of those.

I'm just wondering if it would be wise for the board of supervisors and staff to work together over this next at least the next year while you all are doing this work

When, for us to say consciously, the supervisors, we're going, we recognize that there are new projects that we want to bring forward or new things that we want to talk about.

Recognize that they would go on a parking lot list.

We're getting updates from you all twice a year on the work plan.

And so at

and that you all would recognize that those new projects we mentioned or efforts we'd like you to undertake are not going to be done.

You're not going to work on them right now.

You're going to go on a list.

And at the end of six months, when you come back to us with the next point working plan, maybe we look at that list and prioritize it based on what you all have been able to finish through.

What I'm getting at is,

I looked over the weekend at the public-private parking work and I'll use that as an example because I think that was my suggestion because I was a little frustrated at times about public versus parking.

How much time did you have to take away from what you were doing that you just showed us on this screen

to get that done, to present to us, to say to us, we haven't time to do this right now.

And while I certainly greatly appreciated hearing it, I learned a lot.

At the end of the day, you can't do it all.

And we have to sort of think about if you're trying to finish this work that's in the plan, you're trying to deal with the comp plan, you're trying to modernize the ordinances, maybe we should take the next year

and say let's just if I have an idea that I would like looked at he goes on a list and the staff knows that we're not expecting that list to take

four or five or 20 hours to present something to come back to us even if we get four or five knotting of heads so that you guys have the time to get through the next year and finish what you're doing now.

I just think that's teamwork.

All of us could work together and say what you have right now is the priority and let's not

interfere with your work by giving you more work than at the end of the day you're going to be presenting to us and you don't have time to do it anyway.

And I hope I've explained what my little brain has been thinking about all weekend.

And I have no idea where the other Board of Supervisors would come down on that.

But I visualize a parking lot and we all know things can go on the parking lot.

At the end of the day, six months, we have a chance to look at that list again, kind of like what we do with our legislative packet, right?

A little bit, kind of a similar process, goes on the list, and then we come back to it later.

And I'll stop with that.

Oh, and I do have one more question, Jody, I guess it's for Jody.

I'm still a little fuzzy on the staffing piece.

And so at some point, I'd like to have a better understanding of your staff.

You know, the first couple of slides you showed, I think it was with the staffing.

But I'd really like to hear from the other supervisors and from staff if you think that idea of a parking lot list and not having to be distracted, that's my main interest right now.

Oh, no, I got to find my hold on.

Wait, don't go away.

Ah, come on.

There we go.

Oh, I was afraid I was trying to find my mute button.

Thank you.

All right, so

I agree.

I thought we had a parking lot because of all the things that were not prioritized.

So I think that's a fine idea.

And we need to think about it more clearly, perhaps.

I guess each one of us probably has a different philosophy.

I'll just share mine.

And that is, to me, a high priority is work that can prevent

other huge investments of staff time or chasing round and round and round and round or something because of clarifications, technical things that we have to fix in our ordinances or something which is a really high risk environmental disaster or something in the small category.

I'm looking at the

Oh, wait a minute, not the small to medium category here, that slide 18.

I'm thinking, well, when we get to the prioritization thing, if we, after seven years, do some work on the defense production overlay, while it is timely and before

some conflicting things come in which make it never possible.

Those sort of timely decisions are really, really important to me.

So I'm trying to sort of organize my brain.

And then there are things which

I hope are not as complicated as I thought.

I mean, there's been lots of conversation recently in the Whitehall district with back and forth with staff about a person who would like to be able to have a dog grooming business one dog at a time.

And it's really no different in my mind than piano lessons with a student coming one at a time, which is certainly allowed with no employees as a home occupation.

I don't remember why 15 or 20 years ago that was an expressly excluded item.

And Amelia is probably the only one who's been around long enough to have the answer.

So it's just one of those things where something like that that might really help people throughout the district to have a very small home business.

I have this ridiculous approach that if we could just take out a couple of words or put in a couple of words without making Greg go crazy, then those are things that have high impact positivity and shouldn't have to have extensive public

roundtables and all that kind of thing.

But the presentation I think was very helpful.

I've tried really hard to concentrate and take lots of notes because it was very complicated to follow, but that's understandable.

That's what your life is every day.

And the only other thing I guess to leave so someone could respond to it more some other time is the

I'll just use the Three Notch Trail as an example where we have an offer of outside money and outside staff to do either a short section or a pilot or phase one of something that could be a longer project over 15 years.

And so that is put down into the giant category, but perhaps if it was just a small section and had a much more limited scope, it would be

in the smaller section and we could use that as a pilot to understand how these VDOT projects really work and what the burden really is on staff because I certainly don't know.

And that's a very rambling response and I'm sorry but that's the best I had to offer right now.

Yes, mine won't be long because I do agree with a lot with what Supervisor McKeel has said and also some of what Supervisor Malek has said and Supervisor Price.

I am fully in support of the consolidation that you've done, where possible.

I'm also

I think that's something we need to focus on.

That's something that will take us into the future.

That's something that will prevent

you know, it will give us a very good blueprint along with the community and the developers of where we're going, what we expect, what we're going to do.

So modernize as quickly as possible.

I think it's long overdue.

I do know that we're emphasizing on a broadband.

And I think with that, and let me ask a question of either Jody or Amelia,