Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   9/1/2021

Good afternoon.

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

meeting.

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with ordinance number 20-A16, an ordinance to ensure the continuity of government during the COVID-19 disaster.

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District,

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

Supervisor Donna Price of Scottsville District is out of town.

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.

As we do every meeting we have, or most meetings, we have our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson with us, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

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

And if everyone would

Thank you, Board, and if everyone would please now join in a moment of silence.

All right.

And we have our agenda and there are no items that I know of that will be pulled from consent for any other additions.

Do we need to make any changes to the agenda?

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Very good, our agenda is approved.

And that takes us to number five announcements by board members.

And Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, you were up first today.

No announcements.

No, no, I do have one.

I'm sorry.

I met with the Forest Lakes Holly Mead.

We had a community meeting last Monday.

And I listened to their concerns regarding development that's coming up.

I also had a community meeting with Batesville community.

And as always, it's a great meeting.

But it was all about the different SUPs and different commercial applications that are pending in the area.

And very much appreciated all of those folks that attended.

I am going to mention, unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend, but I appreciate Bea being there, as well as Doug for the groundbreaking, so to speak, of the Boys and Girls Club over on the Landsland campus.

I understand it was well attended.

Nice big tent to keep everybody cool.

and the Boys and Girls Club Board of Directors was there.

And I believe, Bea, it was a great event.

And that is really going to be a jewel for the campus, for the Lansing campus, to have a Boys and Girls Club there to serve that student population.

It's just going to be wonderful.

So I appreciate everybody's work on that project and look forward to its grand opening.

And I will say that,

Donna Price and I met, I believe it must have been the beginning of last week, with representatives from the Farm Bureau, had a good meeting and discussed some of their concerns.

And I guess that's all that I have right now.

Thank you.

I've had some correspondence with people thanking us for making sure that people can participate in our meetings from home and hoping that we will continue that access even if someday we are back together and have the pleasure of that.

And I've told them, I certainly miss seeing people in face, but I'm really glad that we have this, all of this work has been done to set up this technology for people.

The only other announcement is that there is going to be an OLLI course, which begins September 9th.

all about the Blue Ridge Tunnel from start to finish.

And it will be held at the weekly from September 9th to October 7th, Thursday mornings from 10 to 1130 over in the historic Wayne Theater in Waynesboro.

And so I just wanted to put that out.

All the information is under the in-person courses part of the OLLI website if anybody is interested.

All right.

The update I ran past in the hall the other day about the median work that was done on Araya Road trying to attack our weed issue.

Obviously, to keep it permanently that way, it'll take a little bit more effort, but at least getting the tall weeds and those things down.

So I appreciate that's there and I know that the community appreciates having that cleaned up.

And then still knowing that it's a county wide issue, we'll use what we've learned from that because it was quite the process with VDOT

We'll be able to figure out a game plan to be able to move that around to other areas around the county that have similar concerns.

But again, I appreciate Lance taking that on.

And we're getting the update on the update.

Appreciate that.

Yes, I forgot to mention, and thank you, Diantha, for mentioning about the Boys and Girls Club.

So I'm just putting in another plug for the Boys and Girls Club, which was a fabulous event.

And I also wanted to mention on Sunday was Seize the Day.

I believe it was the sixth annual event, and Trevor Howard was there, along with some of our staff, Amy and Bob.

So it was really good to see.

It was honoring the military veterans.

It was hosted by Mission Barbecue.

It was a great event with a lot of booths all over the place.

And so my first time attending, I really enjoyed that.

Thank you.

We do have a proclamation today in remembrance of the 20th anniversary of 9-11-2001.

And Emily, do we have some folks joining up?

There we go.

Chief Lance is joining us.

Good afternoon, sir.

Deputy Chief Childress is with us as well.

Good afternoon.

Proclamation and Remembrance of the 20th Anniversary of 9-11.

Whereas on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States endured coordinated terror attacks that led to tragic deaths and injuries to thousands of United States and other citizens at the World Trade Center site in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

and whereas hundreds of first responders, military and recovery workers provided immediate response and work and worked for months at Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site, on rescue and recovery efforts to free the entrapped and bring peace to grieving families and whereas in the weeks, months and years following the attacks, the brave women and men of the United States Armed Forces answered the call of duty

in Iraq and Afghanistan, in which over 7,000 US service members died and over 20,000 soldiers were wounded across 20 years to defend the security of the United States.

And whereas on September 11, 2001, the people of this country united in the face of terror

rushing to ground zero to perform rescue and recovery work, donating supplies, food and blood, supporting the families of those who perished, and enlisting in active duty ranks and enlisted reserves to support the United States at home and abroad.

Now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, on this 20th year since the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, and in recognition to this National Day of Service and Remembrance, honor all those who lost their lives in the attacks of September 11th, all who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country in the years that followed in service to our nation.

and all those whose life has been shaped by them.

Signed this first day of September 2021.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

And Chief Lance, Deputy Chief Childress, we appreciate you being here today.

I know that you were prepared to make some brief comments.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board.

I appreciate the opportunity to come speak with you today and remember this 20-year anniversary.

Just like I tell everybody, we always need to pause and remember those that lost their lives in the attacks, but also their families that survived.

I think sometimes we do forget the families that were left.

holding all that grief.

But the other thing I would like to say is it didn't end that day as you put in the proclamation.

This carried on for weeks, months, and years to our military that went on foreign soil to bring justice to those that were responsible.

So I always want to think about them.

What I always remember the most is how we as America came together to provide aid.

If you remember where you were that day, we all remember when it happened where we were.

How we came together as a nation to provide aid to strangers was something that was unbelievable, and I hope I get to see it again in my lifetime.

20 years ago, the unthinkable happened.

And we have a generation of high schoolers right now that weren't alive when it happened.

So it's our duty.

It's our duty to remind them of what happened and educate them of what truly happened that day and what America did.

I'd also like to thank all of our first responders in the military that ran towards the danger that day to provide life-saving efforts.

and put their lives on the line to save their neighbor and complete strangers.

I would also like to thank our local first responders for their support.

On behalf of my friends at the fire department, my colleagues, my friends with ECC, emergency management, everybody, I want to thank this board for your steadfast commitment to always remembering and honoring those who lost their lives that day and honoring the military and our first responders.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and members of the board for this recognition and remembrance.

Twenty years ago this community responded to events that we didn't see coming.

We may not have been directly impacted here, but anyone who witnessed the horror and felt its aftermath will never forget the immediate feeling of helplessness and the lasting impact to our daily lives and our way of living.

In the words of Howard Osterkamp, a Korean War veteran, all gave some, some gave all.

In the days following 9-11, Fire and EMS members across Albemarle banded together to try to do what we could.

By collecting cash and fire boots at intersections throughout Albemarle and Charlottesville, this community raised over a quarter of a million dollars to support New York City firefighters.

Over the past 20 years, ACFR has done its part in ensuring the deaths of 343 of our sisters and brothers were not in vain.

We have benefited locally from funding and grant programs made available by the federal government to recruit and retain volunteers, hire career volunteers, provide training, and invest in our health and wellness programs.

These actions make our community safer and more resilient.

All of this has been accomplished with support from the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

This proclamation from you on a significant anniversary of the 9-11 attacks is appreciated and underscores what you have done and will continue to do to ensure public safety in Albemarle over the past two decades.

Thank you, Deputy Chief Children's and Supervisors.

I will go through the round.

If you wish to make any remarks, you can do so.

Yes, I just want to say thank you to both of you, Chief Lance and Deputy Chief Childress.

Thank you for your service and what you're doing, what you have done and what you're continuing to do for our community to keep us safe, to protect us.

It is very much appreciated and very much so on this day, this very special day in remembrance of the 9-11.

Just sending out a thank you to all of our first responders and special appreciation for our local police and fire and rescue folks.

Well Chief Lance really nailed it when he said we all remember where we were because I was setting up my classroom for kindergarten computer and listening to NPR when this one happened and called the librarian down to watch it on a computer screen.

But I think all of us were trying to find, my daughter was in Arlington and the plane to the Pentagon went over her, you know, over her neighborhood.

Friends worked in the battery in New York.

We couldn't find them for three days.

And it turned out they were in Canada and couldn't get home.

But it was just a remembrance that I think we will always, it brings up a visceral reaction whenever we think about it.

And so it makes it even more poignant that we have every day our ACFR staff, our ACBD staff, and all of our public safety folks who basically live this kind of thing every day.

And I join my fellow supervisors in thanking you for being out there ready to respond to anything like this.

You know, we just had tornado warnings coming through the county last night and think of those who are going to run into it to help if need be and know that that'll be there.

It's something that saying thank you or being grateful for is not really strong enough in words.

The thing that I'm always struck by every year when September 11th has come around, like you said, we always remember where we were when that happened.

But beyond the hours of that morning, it was the weeks that followed that all the uncertainty that was with it and what that meant.

It imprinted that morning even more, I think, on everybody's memories.

But we appreciate you both being here today to join us with this proclamation and for everything you do.

So thank you very much.

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.

We do have an individual signed up today, so Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, if you would please go through the guidelines.

Okay, that makes it easier.

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.

A sign-up sheet is managed by the Clerk's Office.

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

When called to address the board, please state your name and if you live in Albemarle County, your Magisterial District, address 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 for the record.

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

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

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

Speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during each of the public comment periods permitting.

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, then star 6 from landline to unmute.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

This is Chris Hawke with the Piedmont Environmental Council.

PEC is a nonprofit organization supported by members throughout each of Albemarle County's magisterial districts.

I will be speaking to item 12 on today's agenda.

PEC is saddened to learn about our community's limited reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as of 2018.

While there is much work that needs to be done to meet our goals as a community,

PEC supports the county's increased effort to address climate change, including planning for carbon emission reduction, as well as planning for climate adaptation and other resiliency needs.

We emphasize the importance of focusing on climate change during the upcoming comprehensive plan and strategic plan updates, continued work on the climate action plan, and budgeting the infrastructure necessary for climate action implementation.

Thank you to the board for your commitment to addressing climate change both locally and globally.

Thank you.

We do not.

We will close from the public and move to the next item, number eight, our consent agenda.

No items were removed from consent.

Is there a motion to approve?

Is there a second?

Ms.

McKeel?

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Paulman?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Mr. Bea LaPisto-Kirtley?

Very good, the consent agenda is approved.

and we'll move to our first action item today, number nine, SC 2021-28, home state special exception.

But now, Lea is joining us today.

Oh, there you are.

Thank you, chair.

Let me go ahead and share presentation.

So thank you for

Your time and consideration this afternoon.

I will actually be presenting two special exceptions for the homestays.

First up is special exception 2021-28, homestay on Buck Mountain Road in Earliesville.

Since this homestay and special exception includes two requests, one for the reduction of setbacks and one for an accessory structure on a smaller RA lot.

This special exception has been scheduled as an action item instead of a consent item.

There you go.

So as we know, homestays for parcels like this particular one, Three Buck Mountain Road, are a 2.4 acre rural area parcel, limited to two guest rooms by right, require 125 foot setbacks from all parcel boundaries, may use accessory structures only by special exception, and require the homeowner to be on site during the rental.

Additionally, as with all homestays, the property must be the primary residence of the owner, parking must be on site,

and neighbor notification is required along with annual safety inspections.

So for the smaller RA parcel, four types of special exception may be requested.

This application is requesting a special exception to reduce the setbacks for both side parcel boundaries and the use of an accessory structure formerly used as an artist's studio on the rear of the property.

Per the homestay regulations, special exceptions may be granted for homestays.

Granted, permitted, there's no detriment to abutting lots, and there's no harm to public health, safety, or welfare.

This proposal is located in Earliesville in a Finnish artist studio.

You can see that here on the map marked with a green star.

So following notice to the neighboring property owners, we actually received a letter of support for the application from the parcel owner most potentially impacted by the proposed homestay special exception marked here with a blue dot.

They noted that they encouraged approval of the special exception.

This exhibit shows the proposed location of the homestay, the homestay parking location, and the existing buffers on either side.

The existing buffers are largely evergreen and deciduous trees, a few bushes, and they do screen the homestay fairly effectively.

During a site visit this summer, staff did notice that some of the trees were damaged during storms over the winter and spring, but the applicants have already expressed their desire to replant to bring the standards back to what's shown on this exhibit.

with this consideration, the express support of the neighbor closest to the homestay and everything else.

But this is a single bedroom in an existing structure to rear of the parcel.

The house itself is only three bedrooms or three or four.

This would be a very small

increase, if any increase in the amount of traffic.

So staff does recommend approval with the following conditions.

These are very familiar to us now.

They are the parking and location areas, the existing structures as configured, and the buffering conditions as shown on the exhibit.

Thank you very much.

Let's see if supervisors have questions.

No questions.

Supervisor Connor?

I think she had to log off.

She's trying to log back on for communication purposes.

We'll back if she becomes available.

Supervisor McKeel, any questions?

No questions, thanks.

Thank you.

This is a great little location for sure.

I live in the neighborhood, but never even knew the studio was back there.

So that I think is some indication of the screening being effective.

My only worry, and I emailed Leah about this, and she said that they don't consider VDOT things for this size of application.

This, as you can see by the map, this is an absolutely blind corner exit.

People come flying down from the north, which is on the right, and then the driveway is right there on the corner.

with people going around the triangle for the general store.

So I do hope that there's a way to incorporate something in our communication to the owners about extra information provided to their guests about the care of exiting and to alert people because they may not know about the geography as well, especially if they arrive in the dark or leave in the dark.

So that's my special recommendation there.

And my question really for later is, does our letter to neighbors convey to the recipient that this approval would go with the land, not with the current operator?

And that's something that someone can tell me later.

So I thank you very much.

Right.

Supervisor Palmer, you were able to join?

I have solved all my audio issues by switching computers, thank goodness.

No, I have no questions and I can support this.

And I think Ann's question was a very good one about, do our letters to the neighbors explain that this goes with the land?

So I appreciate her asking that question.

I'd like to know the answer to that also.

All right.

Certainly.

I think one of the things that we

might be useful to keep in mind with this is that the special exception is only for the particular circumstances of the geography.

So no, the letter does not note that the homestay special exception runs the land, although it does.

But every new user who would come in would be required to go through the homestay zoning clearance process over again.

approval does not run

They would be able to apply for it, and it would be in the rear in that artist studio that does exist.

They wouldn't be able to build a new studio or add on to it or make more bedrooms.

But they would have to come in and apply for another homestay zoning clearance and go through the same process, talking to staff, getting a fire safety inspection, and making sure that they're following all of the existing allowances for the setbacks

and keeping it in the approved location.

Yes, Leah.

So if someone else were to purchase this, I understand they have to go through the whole zoning process or the home state permit process.

Yes, the special exception does run with the land.

So the way that I explain it to the applicants is that the special exception allows you to apply for the homestay zoning clearance, because otherwise they wouldn't even really be allowed to apply for it.

They could apply, but it automatically would be denied.

So this special exception gives them the opportunity to apply for the homestay zoning clearance.

The neighbors would be notified of the new contact for the homestay because that is part of the homestay zoning clearance process.

So they wouldn't be notified of a special exception because that one is already complete.

They would be notified that they are applying for a

zoning clearance, and that if there were any issues, they would need to contact the responsible agent listed in the new zoning clearance for the new owners.

Thank you.

Just a quick question.

What is the trigger if someone

for this, if someone purchases a property and they know that there was a homestay there, what's the trigger that they know?

I mean, I guess people look it up or I'm just, maybe a dumb question, but I'm just wondering what triggers it because I know we look them at the Airbnb ads.

Sure.

So yeah, we are currently still monitoring that with the third party software that we have.

That would give us a notice that there is a new listing at this location because the previous owner would probably not give them their Airbnb.

Log in information to continue the same listing.

And they would also need to apply for a new business license.

We also work with the finance department so that every time we get a new homestay business license, we share that information between the two departments.

Great.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Oh, it's your district, Ned.

Here I am with the motion language usually written in front of me.

I will do it.

I don't usually make a motion.

Second.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Lippisto-Kirtley?

Oh, there we go.

Very good.

It threw me off.

All right, number 10 then, we're going to be handling this one as well.

All right, so thank you again.

We're now at the second and last to our homestay special exceptions for the day.

But don't worry, we have more coming.

This request is for special exception 2021-27 for a homestay on Secretary's Drive.

This homestay is appearing on the action agenda because the applicant is requesting both the special exception to reduce setbacks and a special exception to increase the number of permitted guest rooms.

So we have already briefly gone over the homestay allowances and the regulations.

For this particular type of parcel, the four types of special exceptions may be requested.

And the two they are requesting is reductions of the setbacks and increase in the guest rooms.

In this case, the applicant is requesting an increase from the permitted two guest rooms to three guest rooms in total.

So, as we know, the homestay special exceptions may be granted permitted there's no detriment to abutting lots and no harm to public health, safety, or welfare.

This proposed homestay has three proposed guest bedrooms located in the home on the property marked here with the green star.

To the rear of the property, the buildings are sheds and farm buildings.

Neighboring homes are 192 feet and I'm sorry, 226 feet from the homestay on either side.

Staff has received no comments or concerns from any property neighbors.

So parking for the homestay as shown here would be located to the rear.

Staff does recommend requiring maintenance of vegetation to the west, which is shown in this particular image on the lower left side.

And additionally, installing screening between the homestay and the eastern property boundary, where there's currently a large grassy area labeled screening here.

Staff does not believe the increase in the number of guest rooms from two to three, nor the reduction of the setbacks, would cause any deleterious impacts to neighbors.

And as such, we recommend approval of this home state special exception request with the following conditions, including the parking and guestroom structures, maintenance and visit training, and the addition of plantings as shown on the house and parking location exhibit.

And these photos show the western side, the eastern side, and the welcoming committee.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley, any questions here?

No questions.

Thank you.

Yes, I have a couple.

Where is the primary residence on this property?

My apologies.

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me?

OK.

Oh, OK.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, now I'm remembering the text a little bit better.

The back of the property is over 125 feet.

I'm just wondering, can you hear me now?

Yes.

So we don't require any screening if it's over 125 feet?

Yes, correct.

OK, thank you.

I don't have any questions, just a comment that I thought the welcoming committee was darling.

I don't have any questions at this point.

I know that knowing she would be absent today, Supervisor Price did send a email to the board ahead of time, but did voice

support for the application as this is in the Scottsville district.

I can.

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

All right, I think we call the vote.

Ms.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

All right, very good.

The motion carries.

And that will take us to our next item, number 11.

This is our work session on the proposed 2022 legislative priorities, and Mr. Campner is going to lead us through this one.

Can you see the slides?

It is not loaded yet, but it is attempting to.

There it is.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair.

We'll begin with looking at the process that we have undertaken so far and where we will go after today.

Today, we will continue discussion of the possible legislative priorities

and the board's legislative positions and policy statements.

The objective is to wrap up the board's work in October with the target of meeting with the local general assembly delegation in November.

We will be now reviewing the items that have previously been discussed with the board and getting some

direction from the board on next steps and trying to nail down all of the priorities.

The first would be is the priority to enable civil penalties in lieu of criminal punishment.

And the purpose was to decriminalize a lot of the actions that are prohibited under the county code.

And in attachment A of your materials, you have a

a draft of a possible bill to kind of show the board what that kind of legislation would look like.

Probably the first element would be it would be optional to localities to take this approach by adopting an ordinance.

It would allow the localities to establish a schedule of civil penalties with

maximum amounts, which are geared to be more than what the current zoning civil penalty thresholds are that we currently have under 15.2-2209.

Under that

particular enabling authority.

The limits are $200 for the initial summons and $500 for each subsequent.

The civil summons could be issued by designated county officers, not just limited to police officers.

The alleged violators would have the option to prepay the penalties in lieu of going to trial.

And the final element of this proposed legislation

would allow the county to collect unpaid fines and penalties the same way that unpaid taxes are collected, but also impose a lien on property in those situations where the violators are also property owners.

of issues that came up where the board did not appear to reach consensus.

One was a suggestion that the county pursue the ability to obtain attorney's fees in these types of enforcement actions and also the ability to issue summons more frequently than once every 10 days for the same violation.

In our executive summary, you saw that staff does not recommend pursuing attorney's fees at this point.

I would sense a strong, I expected there would be strong opposition from the General Assembly and even reluctance from courts to impose attorney's fees, particularly in the first

first rounds of summons and penalties.

As far as seeking the ability to have summons issued more frequently than once every 10 days, the executive summary identified one situation where it may be appropriate and that would be where there is a violation that is posing a risk to

Health or Safety.

But having said that, the more appropriate response where there is a more imminent threat to public health or safety would be for seeking a different kind of remedy, and that would be injunctive relief, where the county could ask the court to require the violator to

correct the violation immediately.

All right, you want to suggest things just as we go through?

Yeah, that'd be fine.

Yes, so is a general approach of attachment A, that is acceptable to me.

I do have a question regarding number two.

Are the civil penalties appropriate if you go to, could you go to the other, the previous slide please?

Okay, so from what I understand that would allow it would be $500 for the initial summons up to $1,000.

For the second summons, it's more than $1,500.

and we would be saying don't transition into criminal or we're not saying that we're saying we could after 5000 transfer to criminal yes okay okay good all right so if you go back to the other next slide

So I don't see any problem with the appropriateness of the penalties.

And I don't agree with attorney's fees.

I'd like to have attorney's fees, but I think that would add too much into the mix.

um and does the board want enabling authority to issue more someone's if we can only go up to five thousand and the first one is five hundred then a thousand and fifteen hundred we're going to be getting to five thousand pretty you know in you know maybe a few months so i i don't know i'm i'm kind of wavering on that one i don't know if we need it once every 10 days unless it's a

Health, public health and safety issue, then that would be, that would be, I'd want to be able to go in more often.

Okay, a couple questions.

On number two,

I know with the zoning violations having dealt with this with the neighbor several years ago that if they correct the problem, she had five $5,000 zoning violations.

and she just corrected them all and didn't have to pay was my understanding.

Is that the case?

And how do we work that for this kind of violation of ordinances?

If they correct whatever problem they've made, I'm just trying to understand.

The objective for code compliance is to get compliance.

So if a violator, the practice has been if the violator can correct the violation before trial, most often, if not always, the county will dismiss the case.

We'll call them first time offenders if I may.

If we have what we call a repeat customer that is not as likely to happen and although we do want to achieve compliance first when the county starts to invest resources in that cleanup

in order to get that property in compliance then we will proceed forward in requesting the fines.

That doesn't mean the judge will always assign those fines to us or to that case.

There may be circumstances in which the judge feels that compliance is

without the fine is appropriate.

He'll suspend it if they come into compliance within a certain number of days when we return to court.

Otherwise, we have had a combination of compliance with the fine suspended or compliance with actually they had to pay the fine also.

A lot of it is also that they'll have to pay the fine a few times before they get motivated to actually do the compliance.

So it could be a number of situations.

This was a five zoning violations that went on for years.

and I have to admit I was livid at the staff time that it took and the people coming out to the house and then for her not to have to pay anything for all that staff time.

So I am okay with two and I guess the ordinances that we're talking about here, could you give me just some examples?

I mean, some of these would be zoning

issues, right?

It could be violations of the subdivision ordinance, water protection ordinance that is not otherwise dictated by state law, the noise ordinance in Chapter 7, which the board has an amendment on its agenda tonight.

And those are probably the ones that

Okay, so I'm okay with two.

I'm fine with dropping three and four out of the mix.

And in general approach to attachment A, is that acceptable?

You know, I'm a little bit

I mean, I assume yes.

However, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if there are some things that will creep up as we move forward with problems with it.

And I guess moving forward is the only way we would find that out.

So I'll go with a yes for one and two and a no for three and four.

Yes, thank you.

I think I am in general agreeing with what I think the other supervisors have said.

But I have a question for clarity.

Understand these are violations for local ordinances.

And I'm assuming that enabling civil penalties

is the first step and I understand that.

I guess my concern for whomever wants to answer, the frequent flyers that we have, I mean, we have someone in my district and very close by, we've been dealing with that particular junkyard for 12 to 15 years.

So this would not, that frequent flyer would come under

The criminal, because of his frequent flying, because it's never been completely cleaned up, he does better than as soon as his, I don't know, address frequent flyers for me.

Yes.

The frequent flyer I'm thinking about, we've never... Right, it's less than that, yes.

Yeah, if we're able to leave the violation,

what we call open then we would continue under the same notice.

If the notice becomes stale then we would have to start anew under the code sections.

When we have a frequent flyer, what we try and do is get an order from the judge for compliance so we start to deal with contempt.

We actually have a case right now that is in that process.

where we hand it, not necessarily hand it over to the courts but we involve the court more because a contempt is a criminal violation as opposed to a civil and that's how we proceed with that.

Our notices are done under 2209 in the code of Virginia.

So we follow and it has similar language to what you're looking at in 1429 that allows us to progress to the different levels up to the 5000.

but we can ask for the order of abatement from the court and they can assign it and that's how we proceed sort of to that next level.

Okay.

Just want to make sure we're not doing anything that makes it more difficult to deal with the so-called frequent flyers.

And I recognize there are not very many of them, but the ones that we have have just really consumed an enormous amount of staff time and frustration by neighbors.

Yes, ma'am.

So you don't think that this in any way

No ma'am, I think it, lack of a better way to put it, kind of ratchets it up a little bit from the two as we move the amounts higher or request that the amounts get moved higher.

There may be some additional tools in the toolbox as we apply this to other sections of the county code through this section, chapter 7 and some other places.

Yeah, okay.

And I understand the fines add up and that what happens at this point is that people are put on a payment plan, and so they just continue to pay on their fine.

And I'm assuming some people have been paying on those plans now for 10 and 12, 15 years.

It is a tool to ensure that at some point the fine is paid in full.

And do we have that period of time on the books?

I mean, is it acceptable?

What, 10?

For unpaid taxes, it's three years.

So those fines would be considered taxed just as if you were not paying?

Collected the same way, yes.

OK.

Also, it doesn't prohibit us from continuing enforcement action, meaning if you're on a payment plan and you end up having a violation again or anew on that property,

Okay.

All right.

Well, in general, I don't disagree when I think I heard the other supervisors say the general approach is acceptable.

I think yes for number two, and I'm in agreement about attorney's fees and number four as well, so I think we're good.

Thank you.

I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into things here as far as all this agreement is concerned so far.

The general approach is fine.

But as Ms.

McKeel has said, there are many of us who have been dealing with certain places for years.

And I will say that 10 days is an eternity for a neighbor who is trying to get something fixed.

And what I have seen in numerous occasions in the White Hall district is

A person who is given their notice of violation, who waits the 10 days, doesn't do anything, and then at the last second comes out and does a minute amount of repair, which means that then zoning is not, doesn't have the authority to do anything for another 10 days.

It ends up being a year before you even blink.

And so I would very much support leaving the suggestion in for number four.

in order to be able, if we could get it, to be able to give our local staff more authority to deal with these things on a shorter time frame.

No one is going to say you have to fix a big problem overnight.

But you have to start, and you have to show an interest and a willingness and start an investment in getting this fixed in order to avoid what will turn out to be very, very large fines.

So I'm just going to differ in the fact that I would like to keep number four in there if I have persuaded enough others, a few, to do that.

Because I think it will really help us to make a substantial change.

Without that, we're not really making much of a change except increasing the fines, which the judge may not give us anyway.

Whereas if we're able to get after people more frequently, it will, I think, cut down on the staff time required to go back

for 15 years to Boonsville, for example, into a hazardous situation as well.

So I just ask people to think about those things.

All right.

We'll get back to the questions.

I'm not disagreeing with one or two.

I'm fine with the, it sounds like the attorney's fees is a visa for instance, so I'm okay with agreeing with others on that one.

Number four, I'm fine with

I'm not pursuing that either.

I understand the concerns that have just been expressed.

Did you get declared?

Yeah, for number four, which was the only one that was not unanimous, it looked like three, support, not pursuing more frequently than once every 10 days.

I'm going to make one additional comment on that or a question.

When you're issuing a new summons, just having past conversations where summons are involved, I mean, the staff and manpower for that, what does it include?

If I do a summons in 10 days and turn around or do one in five, I want to do another one.

Yeah, and Lisa Green our manager of enforcement is here also and can speak to that but it's an increase in staff time so one of the things that we have to balance is the hundreds of violations that we're working on throughout the year and making sure that how we treat the individual violators is basically equal under the law so we try and have a routine or a rhythm

with ones that are more severe or on the health safety are more frequent than some other ones.

Lisa, did you want to add anything?

Ms.

Lisa Green, Manager of Code Compliance.

I think Mr. Shugaboda has said everything that I would have said.

We only have one court date, which is every 30 days.

And so that is when we're able to, whether it's five or ten, it would increase the amount of time we would have to go back.

Right, there were hands raising, so I'll go back through, just keep everybody on track.

We've got an hour scheduled for this whole thing.

I'll go through the order.

Yes, I'll just make this quick.

I understand what Supervisor Mallek said, but if we do that more frequently, and they do a minuscule amount of improvement, and we do it more frequently, that is going to cause more staff time.

Is there a way, and I guess this is a question for Mr. Sabota, is there a way to say that if we come out and by the 10 days visit the property,

that there has to be a substantial improvement.

If there's not a substantial improvement, then there's a new violation or a new something.

Yeah, that's currently our current practice.

okay and it's just a question of frequency depending on the number of inspectors and the available time in relationship also to the number of inspections they're doing for commercial or building permits so we can come back to you and this may be something for the board to talk about about a kind of enforcement update or enforcement how we do things but I think if

Thank you.

Yes, Greg, when you were talking in the beginning you said that the staff reviewed the situations where, and I'm talking about number four, where this might be applicable and there was only one situation that, and I think it was a health safety kind of thing, that you've determined was

appropriate for this and in those cases an injunction might be better.

Can you just say a few words about that evaluation and why those were the only situations that this was appropriate?

I think you used the word appropriate and that kind of stuck with me.

Well, we're talking in degrees of severity of whatever the violation is.

There are some violations that can go on for years and nobody knows about.

There are others that have immediate impact.

I think of the spillage of allowing a barrel of oil that's on somebody's property to spill and it's encroaching towards a waterway or something like that where there is some

There's some immediacy and urgency to making sure that that gets corrected.

Injunctive relief might be the fastest way to do it.

We have to make the case.

We have to be able to get in front of a judge.

But that is the kind of circumstance that I'm thinking about where there is that direct and immediate harm that might be happening where waiting 10 days and

And maybe my concern gets a little bit at what Liz was talking about and how Greg was answering.

But for example, I'm trying to figure out public health and safety.

And I recognize, I hate to keep going back to these frequent flyers, of which we don't have many.

I understand that most people can be educated, and they clean up, and they do what they're supposed to do.

But for example, it

We've had one instance where it seems like to me the individual is playing the Lisa and her staff off against the police, for example.

15, 20 bags of trash and garbage collects on a yard.

along with the junkyard, but that's an addition.

I consider that a health or safety issue for the neighbors on a quarter acre lot in a neighborhood.

And then in order to take care of the problem, they move it onto a trailer and to the road.

So then it becomes a police issue.

And when the police start dealing with it, they move it back onto their private property.

There's gotta be a way that the neighbors don't have to have refuse garbage

They take their walk, they're walking by, especially in the heat.

So is it a team that we need to work this out?

There's got to be a way that this type of frequent fire can be, this situation can be addressed.

So, and I'll have Lisa jump in if she wants, but I think that is going to be a discussion for us as part of

either a work program or also how do we go about doing enforcement as opposed to, because we don't need, the way I see it at this moment is we don't need enabling legislation to go ahead and do that.

So as part of this discussion, it doesn't need to be a part of that.

That is something that we can look at from a staff level.

and analyze that and see how we can accomplish that goal because we also don't appreciate the cat and mouse game and normally what we would do is we would still follow through with that original violation even though it was moved to the road so we would

We're trying to be conscious of those games, and we have certain individuals who play them regularly, so we're more wary of those folks.

But I think that particular suggestion is a good one, but we don't need enabling legislation to do that.

That's something in-house that we can work on.

Well, yeah, except it's been ongoing for quite a while, playing those cat and mouse games, and you guys know that.

But I appreciate what you're saying, Bart.

Yes, ma'am.

I guess just to add from what's the point of the new summons, the new summons is a new fine, which gets us to $5,000.

in fewer than a month as opposed to four or five months.

So to me that's a really good reason why we want number four.

Greg must have had a reason why he was putting it in there to begin with.

And I guess the only other question Bart has not answered is what are the benefits of having number four?

Because we talked all about how much more work it might be, but it might be different.

So what are the benefits for number four?

If we're able to get to the violations quicker than every 10 days,

If that was something that we can accomplish, then we would reach the $5,000 cap sooner.

And the other question about the injunction, do we have to have a chain of summons to get an injunction for something horrific, or is one summons enough?

Injunctive relief is a completely separate remedy.

Yes, and thank you for this discussion.

So the next priority is one that

was around last year as well.

And this is creating a new class of building type, public use agricultural buildings.

The purpose is to protect public health and safety.

These are the structures that are at farm wineries, breweries, distilleries, and other ag operations where the buildings under current law do not have to meet the minimum requirements of the building code.

At the July 7 work session, the board agreed that this was going to take a joint effort with other localities and in a follow-up conversation with Supervisor Price, it was recognized that the agricultural community, including the Farm Bureau, would also need to be included in the separate for the legislation to succeed.

At this point,

in particularly in light of the fact that the state did this study a couple of years ago, which really went nowhere.

This is probably going to be a multi-year project.

Okay, yes, I thought that Supervisor Price is concerned

What is regarding the next to the last one, the minimum erosion and sediment control for ag and forestry operations?

I thought that she, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I thought she was in favor of this.

This, to me, if I understand it correctly, adds minimum standards for any farm buildings or structures where there's on an agricultural entity,

that could be used for weddings and wineries and things like that, but it would be subject to certain regulations to make sure that it was safe.

Yeah, let me be clear.

What Supervisor Price suggested, and this was in a conversation that she had with me after the July 7th work session, or it may have been in an email, but she thought that the forward

This kind of bill had a chance of being successful.

It needed to get some support or at least have some participation from the agricultural community up front.

Right.

And my understanding, I've spoken with the Farm Bureau, and my understanding is that they are supportive of making sure the structures that are used for public use, such as a barn and things like that, that they are supportive of standards that would make those buildings safe.

That was my understanding.

I'm going to react.

Supervisor Mallek can speak to this quite a bit.

I'm not sure about Supervisor Price.

This has been a long ongoing situation.

Supervisor Mallek and I met with our representative from the General Assembly, Chris Runyon, maybe even a couple of years ago now, I'm losing track of life, who said basically he was not going to bring this forward and questioned whether it could pass because there was a lot of opposition from

from the agricultural community, but from the people who do wineries, breweries, cideries also.

One more regulation.

And our staff person, Mr. Dillinger, did a lot of work on this when that report was actually

I have heard that the Farm Bureau is interested in some really basic safety issues, but I have not heard whether they are interested in actual legislation or whether they would support that.

You know, it's more regulation and that's something that is frequently frowned upon.

But I think Ann might be more up to date on where the Farm Hero is on that.

But I don't know.

I think this is particularly important to have those very minimum standards.

And we're talking pretty minimum standards.

So

I guess I would just add that I thought that the Farm Bureau was in agreement about very basic minimum standards.

I agree that it's really needed.

I thought when it came forward, there was a lot of confusion around the bill itself and what the impacts would be.

maybe because of the way the bill itself was written.

I'm not sure about that.

And I see that in our report it said it really would be only going forward, all the current buildings would be grandfathered.

Isn't that correct, Greg?

That's the idea that we're proposing right now.

What hung up the committee work a couple of years ago was the

the difficulty and the cost of retrofitting existing buildings.

Well, this just explains, or not explains, it points out to all of us really

the power that the wineries, distilleries and brewery industries have in Virginia.

And I'm not as sure, I'm not sure that this is as much of an issue with the Farm Bureau as it is with the wineries and distilleries and breweries.

And you know, many of our concerns and our residents concerns, our ability to address those concerns has been taken away

based on the influence that this group has in Richmond.

I mean, I'm just saying, isn't that correct?

Or is that, am I wrong on that statement?

It's correct, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so I'm thinking that the Farm Bureau really, my opinion is that they would support a basic level with the Farm Bureau.

What we're talking about here are the wineries, distilleries, and breweries.

Okay, for the two years plus that Greg Kamner and Amelia McCauley, Michael Dellinger, and David King, representing the winery industry, worked on the draft that we could not get any further for various and sundry reasons.

It was for the minimal safety thing to get the people out of the building.

And the way it was described in our draft would have been affordable for even people who have existing buildings.

It was not sprinklers that cost a fortune.

This was exit signs and doors that open out with a panic bar that anybody who has a shop should be required to do to get people out the door.

So I would say that when I spoke with the Farm Bureau people about this particular issue at the end of the picnic up on the mountain recently, Paul Haney said, well, why didn't anybody get in touch with us about this?

Well, we never got that far, first of all.

But he said this is a perfectly good safety issue where the Farm Bureau should be able to help the county to be able to get minimum standards for safety.

for these buildings.

If people want to put a tractor or their livestock in some building, that's different than having 300 people in there.

And some states have actually required that for all these farm buildings, there's a sign at the door that says this building was not constructed to safety standards and to reach your own risk.

Just like many farms have, arriving as a dangerous activity, you participate at your own risk, signs that are actually circulated, shared with us by the state VDACs people in order to have a clarification of risk and who's responsible.

But this is such a bare minimum.

I really hope that we will not wait until 10 people burn up or more.

to get somewhere.

And Mr. Dellinger's former county was one where they did have a middle of the night fire that just about caused disaster.

A child averted it, but rescued the people.

So it is important, I think, to go forward if we can.

I really, just because somebody says, oh, I don't like it,

doesn't mean that we shouldn't have better reasons to go forward with something.

I had conversations during the summit last week with the Agriculture and Environment Committee at BACO and we will have more discussions in November to see

about getting this forward.

The state committee was a disaster, probably intentionally so that the administration didn't have to deal with this issue.

They just punted it to a study.

And instead of the study having the original 25 people representing 25 different organizations who were directly involved, they had hundreds of people and gave all of those even very tangential complaints, sort of equal standing to people who were actually really involved in it.

and going to be affected one way or the other.

But Martha Walker, who ran the committee, did very clearly say that counties are the ones who should be making these decisions.

So I think we should be asking the legislature for the authority to make these decisions about having a minimum structure.

So that's my plea to keep going with this, because I think it's worth a shot.

Nobody knows what the legislature is going to do, and it's definitely worth

Well, this point has certainly put things out on the table and then put them there and consistently back them up, even in the face of some other things that we thought were not going to be approved or no motion or moving on, but the consistency of it being in front of people

I forgot to say probably the most important thing, which was if the board chooses to have this as a legislative priority, it is much stronger argument for me at the committee at BACO.

That's your answer there Greg?

Well, I think what I'm hearing is keep it as a priority and we seek the basic minimum standards at the least.

Okay.

Thank you.

Impact fees.

You're well familiar with this.

This is a multi-year project.

A number of localities, including Albemarle County, are already engaged.

OK.

Thank you.

PhotoSpeed monitoring devices.

There were a couple of ideas with this.

As the board is aware, this is a law that's been in effect for a little over a year now.

It's limited right now to school crossing zones and five-way work zones.

And what the idea has been

would be to expand the enabling authority to allow localities to decide whether they can place these devices on rural roads or other roads where speeding is identified as a problem.

Here's a summary of the discussion of the July 7th work session.

There was a

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley has been focused on rural roads because of the difficulty in enforcing on those roads where it's unsafe to pull over violators.

Other supervisors have advocated expanding the enabling authority to include any roads.

And then there was also a comment

from David Blount about having localities designate the roads by ordinance.

So I assume that this will continue as a priority.

All right, we can address a couple of those questions there.

Yes, thank you very much.

I'm still in favor of the rural roads, and I'll tell you why.

I mean, I know Diantha has talked about all roads.

But when you have, and I know when you're

When you have a long stretch of a rural road, in order to do this, you also have to have signs up that designate photo monitoring is in place.

So maybe if you're in an area where you have parked cars, where people park their cars on the side, you may not see that sign.

So I think long stretches of the rural roads where it's virtually impossible for the police to ticket someone because if they do stop someone on a two-lane road, it's going to cause a mile-long backup.

Trucks are even more difficult.

And truckers are very aware of a speeding apparatus.

They will slow down.

which is beneficial for the community.

So I think and I've spoken with Chief Lance you know we just do not have enough officers to be able to monitor all of our roads to check for speeders.

I mean

They should be used in areas where you can pull someone over.

But on some of these rural roads, like I said, you have a long stretch of a rural road.

People tend to go really fast.

And they're even crossing the double yellow line.

In fact, we had someone killed on Route 20 a couple months ago.

I mean, this is something I'm really in favor of.

I mean, actually, I'm in favor of it for all roads.

I'm trying to think of what will get through the legislature.

In other words, we started with, we were able to get the photo speed monitoring devices for the schools.

which is very much needed at Albemarle High School.

So I see this as the next step and then if this is successful, then we can go a little further.

But I mean, if we can get everything through, that's fine with me too.

But I was doing the slow approach.

But I think the rural roads, do we want to just give us the

the ability to have that and to have the signs put out there and to put the photo cameras out there.

I think that will do a lot to make our roads safer and make people heed once they realize there's a photo monitoring device there to heed the speed limit.

So I don't really know what the best strategy is with respect to getting it through the General Assembly.

So if somebody can speak to that, it'd be great.

I'm basically after rural roads because that's just, as Bea said, it's just really, really hard to monitor that.

But I also don't understand the costs and how we would do that.

Do we move them around, you know, staff and costs associated with doing all roads?

So I'm not answering the question.

I'm basically

I wish we could get them on all the roads.

Ned, it might be more efficient.

I'm sorry.

I thought you were through that.

I'm sorry.

I was just going to say, it might be more efficient on this one to hear from the supervisors and then let the staff address all of our concerns, because I think they're all going to be very similar, if that makes sense.

Well, because I don't disagree with Liz.

And I just don't think, practically speaking, it would go through the General Assembly for all roads.

And while I don't disagree that we probably need them, given our high fatality rate in the state because of our rural roads, I would think that the

The way to tackle this might be to start with designating specific roads by ordinance and allowing us if we could get an ordinance where we could designate specifically roads that we thought needed to be addressed.

Just seems like to me that might be the most logical

after all roads.

I just don't think that's going to fly with the General Assembly.

And it remains to be seen in my head, while I think it's great that we have the school zone right now, the General Assembly gave us that ability.

Our police department is still looking at that.

They're going to have to come back to us and they still let us know they think they can even do that.

I was just hoping there's... You're breaking up there, Diantha.

Did she just... She went away?

She went away.

If I could just make a comment while we're waiting for Diantha to come back, I do know that there are entities such as in Maryland where they have a third party that actually installs the photo monitoring devices, collects the money, a portion goes to them, a portion goes to the county, and they take care of that.

So we're not using additional police force or staff to do something like that.

And this has been, it's widely used in

I am strongly, strongly in support of this.

I think that I would rather go for a general ability to make a decision rather than, or having our police department designating or using crash statistics or something, rather than saddling ourselves with designating roads by ordinance ahead of time because that's just going to bury us in our own bureaucracy.

Other states and Washington DC have found this to be fantastically successful.

Once people have gotten to find once, they don't know where the cameras are going to be.

and therefore it makes them behave more likely everywhere as opposed to us having to pick that by Buck Mountain School on Buck Mountain Road, by Broaduswood School on Buck Mountain Road is one, and by Albemarle High School is one, and by Kehl is, by Mountain View Elementary School is one.

I mean, we'll make ourselves insane trying to do that.

So I think that we need to just go for as much authority as we can get on this and

see how we can do.

What I have found over the last 20 years of working with the legislature is that they don't like the piecemeal approach.

The people who have been there for a while say, well, we just gave you authority last year to do something.

Why don't you do that?

And so I'm reluctant to ask for half the pie right now, and then we might not get the other half.

So I guess if we can figure out a way to keep it as simple as possible, it's another thing working on with other communities

to get something going.

I think this would benefit many, many jurisdictions, not just us.

And as Diantha already raised, I mean, just earlier this year, Albemarle County had the highest accident death rate.

And four or five years ago, I think it was 2017, we were the highest death rate in the state.

Not per capita, but in the state for our rural roads and the way people drive.

So that's a pretty embarrassing statistic that I hope we will never see again.

Getting people in the pocketbook seems to be the only way to get compliance.

They don't do it for safety for individuals or people at their mailbox that get run over, as happened on Earliesville Road a number of years ago.

Greg, you had some general reaction here.

I mean, Supervisor McKeel brought up the likelihood of all roads versus certain roads or specific roads.

I think what I'm hearing is a willingness to go beyond just rural roads.

I recognize that in the executive summary, David Blunt shared with me in a meeting I had with him that the enabling authority we do have right now was a compromised bill that originally was going to include residential areas.

The concern that we have in our county are the crashes and the number of deaths, which would indicate high speed.

So if we were to

pursue these devices in locations at above 35 miles per hour, then that takes us out of the more traditional residential areas.

So we avoid that issue and have it on secondary roads.

I would expect that the General Assembly will want signage

in areas where it's going to apply.

And I'm basing that on the fact that the enabling authority that exists now, we're in school zones and in construction zones where there are signs that are posted that you are in a particular type of zone.

That's something that we should be ready to accept.

It doesn't need to be our first pitch.

So I think we have direction.

I see that David has joined in.

Yes, if I could, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly agree with what Greg has said.

I think one of the challenges that we do have, I'll just tell you up front, is that this is a new law.

with the exception of only a few localities in Virginia that have been able to implement in the existing authority for school zones.

I don't think that widespread use is in place.

I know of a number of other localities that have been looking at it, some of the larger ones.

you know that some of them are testing that technology some of them are looking what their ordinances might look like but there hasn't been widespread use of the law yet as it as it was passed on on very very close votes two years ago so I think that's always a factor to consider when you take something

to expand an existing law that's new and hasn't been utilized to the General Assembly.

I think we need to take that into consideration.

I do think based on what Ms.

McKeel said that what she put out there in terms of the limiting of it through a local ordinance and as Greg expanded upon,

to be looking at stretches of road with certain speeds, where you have certain vehicle trips, where you have crash data, where you have fatal crash data.

All right, any additional comments here, Greg?

I mean, I would think if the ordinance, I mean, I like the idea of what was mentioned about the speed threshold over that, one with the data.

The ordinance, I think having the ordinance, honestly, the posting of the signs, I would think all of us would, I mean, that's part of the deterrent is the sign.

So, but I think the ordinance process even helps too to say that it's specific to that.

So I would be in agreement with that.

I think so.

Thank you.

I'm agreeing with David on what David said.

I just think our best chance is to use our data because we have the data, we have fatalities, we have crashes, we have wrecks, and if we use it in certain areas, obviously the signage has to go with it.

That's a given.

I just think our chance is better if we're saying we have certain roads that we want to declare

unsafe and by ordinance designate those this way.

We just got emails saying, oh, there's a speeding problem.

Yes, that's exactly right.

And we have the data for crashes and fatalities.

Yes, thank you.

This is one we spent a little bit of time at the July 7th work session.

This was related to state technology and the consensus of the board was to adopt resolutions supporting the studies and encouraging the General Assembly to provide

funding for the anticipated needed technology modernization.

Well, I'll just throw out the idea that I would think having the resolutions passed and voted on before we meet with the legislature,

Greg, about this idea, I was really looking at, and I agree with his comment here about the Virginia Employment Commission, that is a given, but I was reacting to our problems with the health department through COVID and their lack of ability with technology.

to help us deal with the COVID.

So while I think it's great to say the Virginia employment, another example would have been the inability of the health departments through their technology services to be able to deal with the COVID emergency.

That to me is the biggest, was the real crisis we had.

The recordation tax issue.

This was an item where there was

A lack of consensus and the discussion on July 7th focused on pursuing a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing through a recordation tax or merely earmarking existing revenues or raising existing taxes to fund an equivalent amount.

OK.

Yes, I'm not opposed to having a part of that.

That means that every house that is sold or purchased, then a part of that would go toward our affordable housing fund.

I just don't think this is a priority.

I think we have other options for affordable housing programs and so I would, I just don't think of it as a priority to do.

Certainly affordable housing is something we're really working hard on and struggling to address.

I do like the idea that Donna brought forward because I think this is something we could establish that is ongoing and it just creates a funding stream that

isn't at the whim so much of our local discussions.

I mean, you have it, and it just creates a fund.

I would probably be in favor of keeping this for right now, yeah.

Since we've been talking and dealing so much with affordable housing, I think this would be a way to get at it in a consistent, fair way that creates a funding stream that

While it might not be stable in that it certainly follows the market to some degree, I think I would be in favor of this.

I think there is an appropriateness to the source being in the housing realm that I think may be appealing to some legislators.

I guess one thing we talked about, because none of us knew really what the dollars were talking about, even in a huge year like 2020, where there were lots of housing sales and very high prices, are we generating enough by this proposal to make it

worthy of the effort that's going to be involved to get it passed.

I just don't know if it's $5,000 or $50 million or what we're talking about here.

And I thought that was something we had been looking for when we discussed it last time.

So I may have missed the report, in which case someone can educate me later about it.

I'm certainly happy to continue to consider it.

I just don't think I don't have enough information right now to know that I'm all in.

The county share, working from memory, the local recordation tax for 2021 was, I believe, about $2.5 million generated.

So if there was a percentage increase on top of that, it would be relative to that.

My memory is fuzzy on this.

Is this the moment we had the conversation about we can do this?

Was that?

No.

Well, we already have the authority to impose a recordation tax.

which is a percentage of the state recordation tax.

But the revenue that's generated goes to the general fund.

It's not earmarked.

And so what Supervisor Price was seeking to do was to have an earmarked portion.

And if you need a parallel approach would be the enabling authority that we have for the transient occupancy tax which we obtained legislation for which allowed us to go above what was

then allowed for counties by requiring us to earmark what was over the two cents for tourism.

No.

My point the last time was that if we're going to the state and asking for things that we can already do,

then I feel like I start getting looked at across the table like why are you doing this when you are asking for us to give you more authority and here's one where you're trying to limit future people's authority.

This becomes such a reverse between local control and state control.

If we can earmark it and we can have the authority to do this already,

Then we should do that and make it a part of the budget conversation.

I'm going to jump in and say I agree.

I didn't realize we had the ability to do it.

I mean, I hear what Supervisor Price is after, was trying to give it an official kind of

It was that and her concern that in a down year that the function will not be earmarked.

But it's just for a board that has consistently asked for more local control, we're basically saying here we want you to limit our local control.

I'd like to do this in-house because we've got the ability and not muddy the waters with other priorities on this one.

I think Jeff was trying to say something.

Thank you.

Not to prolong the conversation, Mr. Chair, but I was going to ask if the board, while the board has this topic fresh on their mind and we do have local control, is this something that the board as we move toward the budget process would like for us to examine more closely?

I would think so.

I would think that this would be part and parcel to housing Albemarle work because that policy continues to be put into place.

How we get money is where and put into place.

OK, so I would take that in the context of the board giving general direction that at the appropriate time in the budget process that we would be working back with the board on this discussion today with our local legislative authority to examine the pros and the cons, as well as the financial impact of doing something like what's been presented today.

Thank you.

I agree with that.

Thank you.

I'm just going to go out really quick.

I don't have any problem looking at it, but I think we should be very cautious as we go through here.

Limiting ourselves, given that affordable housing, we have a huge, huge, gigantic need, but it isn't the same every year.

And the pressures that we have will change over years.

And so restricting ourselves can be

can have future problems.

And I'll leave it at that.

Mr. Jenner.

OK.

Establishment of erosion and sediment control standard for agriculture and forestry operations.

At the July 7 work session, the board agreed that this priority will require a joint effort with other localities.

the ag and forestry communities and the BECO will need to be involved.

I agree.

So I'm very, very much in favor of this.

This was a topic and the board, we discussed it quite a bit.

We all know this wouldn't go anywhere without the ag community getting involved in it.

I'm curious if

if the next stage, I'm sorry I'm losing my voice, the next stage or the next discussion of our STREAM Health Initiative will help define what this statement ought to be.

I heartily agree with this.

Bettina Rigg, she's the Secretary of Agriculture, has explained to me in response to my complaining to her for years that the BMPs that are used were written in the 1950s and are nowhere near where they need to be for today's farming practices, forestry practices,

the changes in climate that we are seeing.

They supposedly have some working group behind the scenes working on this, so we would not be making a discussion about something that nobody's working on.

But we need progress on this and we need it much faster than we're getting it.

People, some people in the ag community think, well, they told us a few years ago that the county had already met all of its requirements for pollution for the bay.

Well, nitrogen and phosphorus were doing very well.

Sediment, we are totally failing.

We are way behind our goals for sediment, and sediment is what is the biggest carrier of the phosphorus that causes these algal blooms and all that kind of thing.

So if we are serious about wanting to do something with our erosion standards to meet our Chesapeake Bay obligations, then we need to figure out a better way to do it.

We have stormwater issues that are complicated by erosion, and

Management of ag land will have a really significant impact on our success for stormwater.

It's not just bricks and mortar structures.

There are management practices which agriculture can do that will help with that.

So while there may be some pushback from some individuals who say, I don't want to do that,

we need to have the county as a whole consider are we transferring costs from one group who doesn't want to do something to somebody else who has to pay for concrete structures in an urban area.

That's not fair.

And so we need to be having this.

This is one way that would help us to get some better discussion on so many different issues.

There are so many places in our ordinances where

We are requiring developers to do all sorts of really expensive things.

But then it says, agriculture and forestry are excluded.

Without any minimum standard, that's just, I don't think that that's a 2021 approach that we should be having.

So I heartily support this.

Thank you.

This is the final slide.

Just a couple of the existing legislative positions and policy statements from 2021, just a couple of updates.

One thing with net neutrality is that President Biden did issue an executive order several weeks ago, asking the FCC to restore net neutrality rules and doing a little bit of reading.

because the internet has changed since they were first put in place in 2015.

Those rules may be a little bit different than what they were originally.

Also, one of the board's positions last year was to request the General Assembly from continuously extending the sunset provisions that came about during the recession in 2009.

They stopped extending that particular section.

They adopted a new one that now extends sunset provisions on the auspices of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And those sunset provisions have been extended to July 1, 2022.

So we will modify that particular policy statement and position when the

2022 version comes to the board.

Are there any, I'll just go through and make sure there aren't any other questions for Greg on any other items.

Are we going to go through our legislative priorities from before, or have we done that enough?

You've gone through the new ones.

Oh, I just had a question about one that's already on the table, been approved, and is in our legislative priority, ongoing legislative priorities list that's in our packet.

This is the open space easements, our continuation of the open space easements

legislative priority.

And we're going to talk about our ACE program on the 15th, so I'm not expecting to get into any particular detail on this.

But I've had some questions, and I think others may have also had some questions as a result of the recent article on mercury.

And so I'd like, Greg, if you can, just say a couple of words about the

the priority that says fully allocating the land preservation tax credit transfer fee for stewardship of protected land and restoring the individual cap on use of land preservation tax credit to $50,000 and how that, if at all, relates to our ACE program.

It's part of the board's approach and the county's approach to preserving open space land.

The ACE program functions a little bit differently because unlike the programs that are the program and the easements that are eligible for the land preservation tax credit,

The county purchases the easements under the ACE program.

And so there's that distinction.

The other distinction is that the land preservation tax credit probably primarily benefits, and as the Mercury article indicated, primarily benefits people who are eligible for

the charitable donation deduction and can make use of those tax credits because those tax credits can be used over a 10-year period of $20,000 per year, which means that those are people who have income.

If they don't have income, they can sell their tax credits to others who have income

to which those credits can be applied.

The ACE program was designed to, I think the term that was used way back 20 years ago for those who were maybe income poor but land rich.

So that the way that the county values or purchases these easements

Depends on the amount of income that the owner of the property has.

So the greater the income that an ace seller has, the county will pay a lower percentage of the appraised value.

So that an owner who has gross income of below $55,000 per year, they'll be able to receive 100% of the appraised value.

and that diminishes as the income increases all the way down to 4% of the appraised value for owners who have greater than $205,000 per year.

So they're all part of the same constellation of programs to preserve land, but they've

OK, thank you very much.

Yes, only that the county does receive matches from one or two of these programs, and I always get the letters mixed up, that will go towards, one of them is for scenic, support of scenic properties only, another is for

Prime Soils, but they are matching what county budget puts in in order to supply funding for the ACE program.

And so in years when the legislature has cut the land preservation tax fund or whichever one it is, then they divide the available money among the applicants who have it, which is eight or 10 counties, I think, at Virginia Beach, who is one of the bigger participants.

and then sometimes we get a lot and sometimes we get a little 150,000 or 500,000 it depends on what the size of the pool is so I think that the goal for years in the legislature and for administrations and certainly for Amarillo County for 25 years or more was to try to preserve open land especially in the watersheds and especially for agriculture prime soils for food production etc so that

I look forward to our discussion about ASA will be coming up in the future, but I have a quick question, Greg.

I see under our local government administration and finance, this idea of the June primaries being moved.

Right?

Support legislation to move.

I think that is a great idea.

And I would imagine the school division would love to join us on that one.

It doesn't cost any money.

It's kind of a no brainer.

Could we somehow or another, if the other board members agree,

Elevate that because it gets that primary June out of the school division and out of the schools when they're, you know, when they're closed and it just would help everybody.

It would have avoided a lot of hula's this year for sure.

So I don't know how other board members think, but it doesn't cost any money.

And I can't imagine that the General Assembly would push back a great deal.

So if we could elevate that somehow or another, it might be nice.

Yeah.

No objection, it looks like.

OK.

All right, I think we're good to go.

3.15 was our recess, so we go ahead and take the recess.

We'll just have a couple extra minutes there.

That's all right.

We'll come back at 3.30 and pick things back up.

Travis, you'll give us the high sound that we're all clear.

We are coming back from our recess and moving to number 12, which is our climate program update.

And I'll wait to see some new windows popping up.

Here comes Gabe and Greg.

See Lance joining us.

And Trevor, I believe I'm going to Mr. Harper first.

Mr. Harper, good afternoon.

Hello.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody.

Good afternoon.

I'm Greg Harper, chief of environmental services.

Today's update on the climate program will be delivered by Gabe Daley, the climate protection program manager.

Gabe has been in this position only since May, as you know.

But for more than a year before that, Gabe has been contributing to the county's climate work as a part-time temporary employee.

Gabe will be pausing several times during his presentation to see if the board has any questions.

And Lance Stewart and Andy Lowe will join Gabe and me to provide responses.

Great, well we can dive in.

Thanks everyone on the Board of Supervisors for

So just wanted to say overall, our goal for today's presentation is to update the Board of Supervisors on progress toward implementing our climate action plan.

And we're not requesting action in particular from the board today, but we're certainly interested in your comments, questions, and feedback.

So I'm going to cover four areas of our work over the last number of months and really almost last year since the adoption of the Climate Action Plan in October 2020.

So we wanted to tell you a little bit about some of the Climate Protection Program development that we've been engaged in this year.

We'll talk a little bit about some implementation of actions that are in the Climate Action Plan.

And then a big item, we want to share an update and some of the high-level takeaways from our recent Greenhouse gas emission inventory report for the year 2018, which is the first greenhouse gas emission inventory that we've done since 2008.

So helpful for the filling in some data there and some information about where the company is.

And then we'll say a little bit about our current work and next steps

The way that I've organized the presentation here is to invite questions after each section.

Everything is, of course, about climate action, but they're somewhat different topics.

And so we thought it would be helpful to give you all an opportunity to ask questions, make comments after each of the sections.

Of course, you can talk about more anything that you'd like at the end as well.

And I'm happy to toggle back to different slides.

So first off, I wanted to share a bit about climate program development that we've been engaged in over the last year.

County.

It feels important to give some global context.

I imagine that many of you were aware of or saw the news about the latest IPCC report on international intergovernmental panel on climate change releasing their sixth assessment report, I believe in the first or second week of August.

And there's three key takeaways that if you've been already gathered from reading some of the summary documents I wanted to mention during our time today.

The first of those key takeaways is that this report increases certainty in what we've already known.

Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities like burning fossil fuels, deforestation, other sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

are causing climate change.

So this report increases the certainty in that knowledge.

One element of this report that's new and helpful is that it also increases our scientists' ability to make causal attributions between local extreme weather events and global climate change.

So that was something that the research over the last number of decades was saying we're expecting to see

because of climate change.

And then the report also increases, certainly, a sense of urgency here for our action.

And I think it speaks to the importance of the leadership that the Board of Supervisors has taken in setting targets for reducing emissions, in adopting the climate action plan, and work with staff.

And I think this report really drives home the work from yours.

So then for our local context, this is information that you all know.

But since you have a lot on your minds, I thought I would just give a brief refresher.

The county created a climate action plan, which staff, community members worked on for the course of a couple of years between 2018 and 2020.

And then the board adopted that plan on October 7, 2020.

What's interesting is so we came together with a lot of collaborative work between different staff from different departments in the county as well as folks from the community with participation by supervisors in the development of the Climate Action Plan.

We didn't quite have a program to house the Climate Action Plan and to be able to house the implementation of that plan going forward.

So one of the conversations that

For the adoption of the plan last fall was the importance of having a program around the plan itself to help organize implementation, to help organize continued planning like focusing on climate adaptation and resiliency planning, as well as other elements of climate work.

So we felt like it would be really helpful to have a program.

Development within the climate sphere, you could say, for the last number of months.

I was just at a conference last week for the Resilient Virginia organization.

They had a couple of convenient speakers from the state government of Virginia, as well as one person from the climate office in the White House.

And both of those speakers mentioned the importance of a whole-of-governance approach.

So that's something that we feel like is really important here in Albemarle County as well, is to be able to bring a whole-of-government approach to our climate action.

That certainly touches on the work of many different departments.

So that's a little bit of context.

I got a message saying that I'm not being heard all that well.

So let me pull out my headphones and just see if that's any better.

I wanted to avoid a potential echo.

So I pulled out my headphones.

Is that any better?

Okay, so what have we been doing in terms of program development?

So early this year, we had four facilitated conversations with staff from January to March.

We work with staff from multiple different departments, about a dozen people participating, and we formed these conversations with folks who were involved in the development of the Climate Action Plan, as well as some folks who hadn't been

from the Project Management Office, for example, also participating in those conversations.

The purpose of this series of conversations was to identify lessons learned from the development of the Climate Action Plan, what went well, where was there room for improvement, and then to identify needs and practices for moving forward with the implementation.

What can we learn from what we've done, and how can we set ourselves

So the outcome of these conversations was to create basically a program structure, a program that I mentioned to house the transaction plan and its implementation.

So the program structure includes a few elements.

It's basically a framework to implement, monitor, and as needed, update or refine the climate action plan.

It has clearly defined roles, responsibilities of staff who will be involved in different departments.

And it also makes clear accountability in terms of the organization, where we're needing to report to, who we're receiving input from.

in terms of our work.

And we really tried to balance the need for this whole variant approach that I mentioned, interdisciplinary collaboration across departments while also respecting staff workloads, which is going to be important for this work going forward.

So I wanted to share one just kind of slice of the program structure of one element of it so you can get a visual and it's not all text.

So there's obviously other elements to the county organizational structure that you can't see here, but wanted to share some of the simple image.

So these are five key aspects.

Really two of them are examples.

Three to four key aspects of this program structure and how we see it functioning.

So in the center,

you can see labeled program team.

We've got about six on that representing facilities and environmental services departments, communications and public engagement office, office of equity and inclusion, and community development.

And so the staff on that team are not, you know, carbon stone, but that's who we started with.

And most of the work so far

At the current and next steps, the end of the presentation is going to be in that realm.

So far, the work that we've done has been in the realm of the program team.

We're also working to create an equity team that will help us apply an equity lens to climate action and support community engagement, communications and engagement team to really help us craft meaningful engagements with community stakeholders as we go forward.

And then what you can see in the top and the right are just example of what we're currently calling task forces.

But what we've realized is the Climate Action Plan has 135 actions.

They run across

waste management and landscape agriculture and natural resources.

So there's a lot of actions, there's a lot of moving parts to be able to organize.

And so our idea is to form task forces around particular sets of actions that are particularly related and that we know we want the input from a number of different staff on those sets of actions to move them forward.

So just two examples here.

One of them, the green one, renewable energy.

That's certainly a big one.

There's some local context in that there's interest in different companies, perhaps requiring land to start solar farms, solar utilities.

I've been receiving some proposals in that regard.

So we feel like forming a renewable energy task force would be a really good use of

resources and helping staff to coordinate better about those kinds of issues.

Another one that is a little bit more in-house is sustainable operations policies and procedures.

And so we're currently working on an effort to help revise and update policies for local government operations around making sure that we're adopting best practices in terms of sustainability and resources.

One of the things that has come up that's been communicated to me and our team via lens has been the interest of you all on the board in terms of being plugged in to what we're doing with the Climate Action Plan.

And so we've taken that seriously.

We know that each of you are interested in client action.

And so we put some thought into different ways that we can be sure to be involving you all as a block of leaders in the community with what we're doing going forward.

We've put that into three bubbles, inform, engage, and seek direction.

And so in terms of reform, we of course want to be keeping you updated, at least on an annual basis, like in some ways I'm doing now, almost a year after the Climate Action Plan and option, and we have a couple of other ways that we hope to keep you informed throughout our work.

We also know that some of you have expressed

We have this bubble here for engaging individual supervisors, perhaps some key

as there is interest.

And then, of course, we're going to be seeking direction from you, certainly in the annual budget process, but also in decisions on particular local ordinances, board policies in the coming months and years that relate to helping us implement and achieving our community-wide targets.

So I wanted to pause there.

Give us quite a bit of information focused on our program development and just see if you had any questions, comments,

Thank you, Dave.

No, thank you.

But thank you very much, Mr. Daley, for your presentation.

Now, I have all kinds of comments and questions that are more in the weeds, but not in this broad sense.

And thank you.

I don't believe so.

No questions, but thanks for going over the process and what you all are thinking and how you're structuring this.

Just one.

I'm so excited, first of all, that for the 11 years since LCAP, this is the most progress we've made in all at once.

And I'm really, really glad.

Absolutely.

Yes.

So we have been in communication with folks from the finance department, from the procurement office.

And so the short answer is yes.

If you'd like more information, I can turn it over to one of my colleagues to share a little bit more.

That's enough for now.

I don't have any questions at this point.

Can I have, I do have a question.

I was trying to type quickly to let Ed know, but let me just ask one question on process.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you're working with UVA and the city in this process?

For the moment, it's mostly so we have conversations basically myself and my two counterparts in their respective offices and departments at UVA and the city.

So the climate program manager at the city, Susan Elliott, and then Andrea Trimble, the director of the office of sustainability.

We have conversations every other week to keep each other appraised about what each of us is working on.

So just wanted to summarize that and make the point.

So the climate action plan is, I think, rightly ambitious and complex.

So there's 135 actions.

Many of those actions overlap with existing programs, while some call for new initiatives.

And so I think it's just important to call out the importance of this background work, so to speak.

I think sometimes the program development isn't the same as your tangible deliverables policy changes.

the world, the new solar farm that you can see across the street.

And so I do think that this kind of program development work is important in terms of having set us up for success in the long term.

So just wanted to close with that note before moving on to the next couple of updates.

We wanted to share in terms of actual documentation

that we've gone ahead with so far.

So with some early opportunities that have come up, we've been able to proceed with.

Some of these you may have heard wind of, but I'll mention them here.

One of these pertains to home energy performance.

So the county has a contract with Albemarle as an improvement program and the local energy alliance program, AHIP and LEAP, to engage in energy improvement investments in the homes of lower income residents.

We had 15 homes that were retrofitted with better installation, with improved appliances to help reduce homeowners' energy bills largely through switching from fossil fuel to electricity appliances and then of course the weatherization, providing more insulation to help folks who were losing a lot of heat, particularly in the winter in their homes.

I've been leveraged with funding from other sources.

So it's been a good example of a multiplier effect of the county providing some support and then other support coming from elsewhere.

And I was in a presentation yesterday where we heard an update from C3 and LEAP, some of the other work that they've been engaged in with a different set of homes, and heard some really great details about that pilot project.

So I'm excited about scaling this kind of work up as we go forward.

Second one is the electric vehicle charging stations that you've probably seen outside the parking lot of the county office building on McIntire.

So this is helpful in the big picture in terms of expanding local electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

We installed recently this year seven charging stations

on property 6 here in McIntyre and 1 at 5th Street for a total maybe one time capacity of 11 vehicles.

And Lance actually sent me today some statistics that we thought you might find interesting.

I don't have a visual for it, but wanted to mention that we actually had over 400 individual charging sessions in the month of August, and in the lifetime

We've avoided about 7,700 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions through providing these chargers as opposed to what might be gasoline-powered vehicles coming in the road.

And we're also seeing a growing frequency of use of the new charging stations on the county property from when we first started.

more people becoming aware of the opportunity that this new charging infrastructure provides.

And then a big one I also wanted to share.

It's ongoing and more information will come out soon about this in detail, but we're currently engaged in a climate vulnerability assessment.

This is a really important first step in resiliency and adaptation planning.

So the vulnerability assessment essentially is a technical analysis to, as it says, predict heightened risks from climate change and look at how those directly impact our infrastructure and built a natural environment here in Albemarle County.

So the vulnerability assessment is being worked on and prepared by the consulting team.

It's at no cost to the county.

Piedmont Environmental Council received a grant to be able to fund this, and they approached us about partnering

do this vulnerability assessment and essentially provide the funds to do so.

We've received some updates midway throughout, and I can say that Scott is quite excited to see the kinds of information that this is going to provide.

We're expecting a final report in mid-November, at which point we'd very much like to share in more detail about this report with the board.

But one thing that I wanted to mention, just

and also climate vulnerability assessment is.

I have sort of stock photos of three of the biggest extreme weather events that we are expecting to see more of locally and regionally.

And this is based on bigger data sets, climate modeling that's been done.

So the top image being flooding, the lower left image being water stress.

Also possible to have intermittently with severe rainfall.

with a fellow trying to cool down with a bottle of water there.

So that's information that we already know is in store for the Virginia people, those three being kind of the top three of the range of possible intensifying extreme water events.

What the vulnerability assessment is going to do, it's going to take that broad information and then put it together with specific on-the-ground information we know about the county, including

So just another quick pause point before we move to the Greenhouse Gas Commission report.

That's a great question.

Hello, everybody.

Board members, it's great to see you today.

That is something I don't have at my fingertips, but I can tell you that by far the great margin of charging sessions is by the general public.

There are, I believe, two county employees with electric vehicles, including Superintendent Haas,

and some other individuals who may occasionally, actually like Gabe, have a hybrid electric vehicle and charge.

So we're seeing just an enormous increase in visitors both from within town and outside of town.

I know that part, not statistically, but because we see them so often these days that they'll often stop and ask them questions as I'm coming into or leaving the building.

We're just thrilled with the success.

I think I'm OK right now.

Thank you.

I'm particularly interested so far in the vulnerability assessment.

Will part of it also talk about policy considerations or changes that should be made or are needed?

for flood and runoff prevention, and so did the protecting of downstream people and property everywhere?

Great question.

My sense is that the vulnerability assessment is going to provide us with the raw information about risks that we can anticipate, and then it will be for us to work to make sense of that and come up

Okay, so now for the star of the show, greenhouse gas emission inventory report.

There's going to be a little bit more visual in these slides, so thanks for bearing with some of the text previously.

First off, I just wanted to refresh for everyone, this probably isn't necessary, but just in case it is, some context for

You know, what are we doing?

What's the greenhouse gas inventory report?

Is this technical document?

Why do we do it?

So, like I mentioned earlier today, we know that greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change.

If it's mega climate change, we need to reduce emissions.

Albemarle County has targets that the board set in the fall of 2019 to reduce emissions by 45% from 2008 levels by 2030 and to achieve a net zero emissions by 2050.

So what a greenhouse gas emission inventory is all about is it's basically our main tool to be able to monitor progress toward meeting these targets as we move ahead.

And you might remember this graphic that we have in our Climate Action Plan document where there's this rather large gray area that conspicuously says no data.

So what the 2018 report does for us is it fills

We actually have more of a chart that comes up to almost the present day.

These reports, because of when data becomes available from the state government as well as the EPA in terms of how to make the calculations, they pretty much always run two years behind schedule because of being able to certainly complete the calculations properly.

This brings us much closer to date from where we were.

So you can see here an actual line.

Where it becomes a dashed line is sort of an idealized projection moving towards our targets.

Of course, we don't know what that'll look like.

That's an idealized line and the target's not there again for you.

So we calculated that in 2018, the community-wide emissions per county were 1,419,367 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

And carbon dioxide equivalent is just a fancy term that takes the major greenhouse gases.

So methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide

So this is our grand total number that we calculated for 2019, excuse me, for 2018.

A couple things I want to point out that you can see on this chart.

We calculate that we saw a 10% decrease in community-wide emissions between our last inventory in 2008, which is the baseline for the county's targets.

10% drop from that 2008 total

You are total in 2018.

I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment.

So what that means going forward is between roughly now and 2030, we need to see another almost 40% reduction in community-wide greenhouse gas emissions if we're to make that 2035.

So a couple of things to point out here.

After the number of staff, some folks said, wow, we dropped emissions from 2008 to 2018.

I was expecting that we were going to increase from 2018 to 2018.

What's going on here, especially with the fact that we know that the county's population has increased during that same decade.

You know, population increases generally means that the emissions-producing activities increase because there's more homes being built, there's more buildings, there's more vehicle traffic on the roads.

So what's going on here?

Well, that perhaps counterintuitive trend we believe can mostly be explained by a couple of factors.

So those factors I have on the bottom of this slide for you.

Seeing greater in energy efficiency in terms of motor vehicles, building appliances, so increases in miles per gallon for cars that are driving along the road.

We've seen more energy efficient appliances in their homes.

And then we've also seen changes in the sources of electricity generation

in the electric grid.

So this is a big one in terms of emissions from building electricity use.

So between 2008

and 2018, we saw natural gas in terms of a fuel source for generating electricity in our region of the country basically take over and replace the lion's share of what had been coal in 2008.

And so natural gas is certainly still a fossil fuel, but it does burn what sometimes said

We're guessing that some of the explanation for decreasing emissions despite the growing population and growing activity has to do with changes in the electric

So that graph here, this is a big picture.

This shows everything.

Well, what about those categories that we had in the action plan that referenced vehicles, transportation referenced buildings?

We want to briefly show you just a little bit more detail.

So this is similar information to what's in the graph.

We're just highlighting the four years that the county has conducted greenhouse gas emission inventories.

And so we have these broken out by

So a couple key things to see here is that transportation has actually increased slightly in terms of its percentage proportion of the four areas, the four

But in absolute terms, transportation went down slightly.

Stationary energy, which is buildings and the streetlights that the county operates, that also went down slightly, both of those for the reasons above that I mentioned with energy efficiency, NPG for cars, and the electric grid.

You do see here, pretty evident from the chart, slight increases in the size of the chunks for

emissions from landfill and organic waste that he composes in landfills, and then from agriculture, forestry, and other land use.

So this is just for posterity.

If you want to reference the information later, this slide just has everything I just shared with you.

What about local government?

So there's a few things to note about local government.

In this inventory, and this is a change from past years, we report local government as a subset

So if you go to our climate action plan document, you'll actually see local government is a little slice of the pie in the climate action plan.

And in terms of our research for how best to do these inventories, that actually represents a bit of a double counting for our local government, because we're taking the information about fuel use from our own receipts, but we're also reporting that information.

Local government vehicles show up in terms

The best practice that's recommended by various documents is to report local government as a subset but not actually a slice of the pie in terms of the overall community wide emissions.

That's an important point to make.

In terms of absolute numbers, the goal for local government is 26,625 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.

And the local government represents about 2% of the community total.

So an important takeaway here, we're doing work with the

That's something that's really important for the county to lead by example.

And we are only 2% of the community-wide emissions.

And so when we think about the kinds of actions in the climate action plan that we are going to be looking at, taking, this is a small slice.

And then there's a lot of other work to be done more broadly.

We introduced a new element to our inventory that's in the appendix this year and we may look at how we can incorporate it in certain ways going forward.

But this is something that our whole team is very excited about.

We essentially looked at emissions and

out of the atmosphere

And so we've been able to estimate emissions and sequestration from forest and trees as well as from land use changes in the county from 2008 to 2018.

And so what we're able to calculate from this is actually our forests are

We are not crediting that sequestration towards our reduction targets.

And the reason that we're not doing that

There's a couple.

One, we talk about this in the climate action plan that we will only credit reductions from sequestration based on new policies and programs that we develop or choices specifically to preserve land going forward.

And the way to think about the more kind of natural reason about this is, you know, these forests and trees would be doing this for us anyways, regardless of whether we were here deciding that it's important

Medical Environmental Health.

But what is really important about this is it speaks to the value of the forest that we have.

It speaks to the value of the past policy with respect to the rural area and the importance of maintaining the health of our forests.

Because certainly that will catch against us if we see large-scale deforestation.

For example, some of these forests that would be on us in terms of human decision making.

So we're not going to take credit for what nature is doing for us.

But going forward, certainly we'll try to include in our accounting both emissions and sequestration from human activities and programs and policies that we work with.

So zooming back out to the emission inventory,

A few broad takeaways that we wanted to share is that emissions decreased from 2008 to 2018.

We need to see greater reductions in our emissions in the coming years.

The Climate Action Plan is going to help with increasing those, with increased reductions

conducting biennial inventories will support monitoring and evaluation.

And one point that I did want to make is that we worked really hard to use transparent calculation methods with this greenhouse gas inventory.

So we have an Excel file that folks can look at every step that we took, the assumptions we made, and just to be able to be transparent to the community about how we learned about making these calculations.

So I want to close this portion with just one final chart here.

And that is these two vertical lines, the blue one and the green one, are showing when the board set the emissions reduction permits and then when the climate action plan was adopted.

And so I know that there's despite

dropped in emissions from 2018.

Some folks have said, well, hey, it looks like there's this elbow between 2008 and 2030.

It looks like we're not on track.

We haven't reduced emissions enough.

And so one thing that I do want to say to clarify is that the board didn't set reduction targets until 2019.

We didn't adopt the climate action plan until 2020.

So the reductions that we do see here from 2008 to 2018 are largely due to sort of more regional and national changes that have taken place in terms of the electric grid, car manufacturing.

And so now we're poised to really be able to monitor and evaluate our own actions that we take locally over the next number of years.

So I want to take another pause for questions.

I imagine you might have some.

And I don't know that there's anything I can do about it, but can I just ask how my sound quality is?

It's a little electronic at times.

No, the sound didn't come through that well, but I don't really have any questions.

I think we're moving in the right direction.

I have some comments and some questions.

First of all, thank you.

Clearly, you put a lot of effort into this.

And I think we all really appreciate that, trying to clean up these

these numbers, it really makes you think about the old saying of all models are wrong, some are useful.

And I do appreciate that you have some pretty concrete information on transportation and buildings to go off of.

Do we need

legislative authority at all to do to deal with our new buildings for instance do we need legislative authority to require I think we do I think I've asked this question before more stringent energy efficiency requirements on new buildings and with respect to large or old buildings there's been an awful lot in the news lately about retrofitting with these

New facades for buildings.

I know I've read New York City is going to try to do this.

And I'm just wondering also if we would need some legislative authority, if you've looked at that at all, to get a program like that going, or is the state looking at that at all?

Yeah, I think those are really great questions.

Thank you, Gabe.

You know, I would hesitate to say, definitively, whether there's legislature that allows that.

I think that in the future the board may want to consider putting that in our, we just talked about our legislative priorities and certainly not this year, but in the future that probably would be really good information for us to know if we're going to really tackle the building issue.

The solar farms, I'm assuming that you, when you look at those, you're going to look at

So most of the solar farms, unless they're going to be rooftop, they're going to be in the rural areas.

And to avoid having a lot of complaints about solar farms and the soils that they're using and taking up and that the land that we're, you know, it's all private land and there's all kinds of issues here, but to have better criteria for approving these things for the board

in the future and more criteria to give individuals that want to do that on land some information about what they need to stay away from or land that's more suitable for that and areas that are more suitable for that.

We've certainly gotten requests from the public to develop some kind of criteria.

So that's just a request.

I want to say just a couple things about the landfill issue and the trash issue.

While I really appreciate trying to get better numbers on that and recognizing that it's

that we still don't have good numbers and it's probably going to be very difficult to do that.

It's still a relatively small portion of our whole.

But the Solid Waste Committee spent a tremendous amount of time back a couple of years ago working with TJPBC trying to get some better numbers and of course Cherise Franklin is still coming to our meetings.

and trying to work with us to get better numbers on the amount of trash that's actually collected.

But the Solid Waste Committee has been very, very interested in getting an ordinance through that would require trash haulers to actually say how much they're picking up in Albemarle County to do reports.

And I have never really championed that when it first came up.

and brought it to the board because we were so involved in just getting the new transfer station open.

We wanted to try to get more people in that business, more carriers to deal with rural areas.

But I think we're to that point.

And Lance is very familiar with this subject.

The Solid Waste Committee has asked him many, many times about it.

to have just a consideration of whether that would improve our numbers.

I'm sure it would.

And we know that COVID has changed our trash quite a bit.

We also know that home deliveries have changed it quite a bit.

And that's a lot of fiber going into landfills with all the boxes and whatnot that don't get recycled.

So those numbers have changed.

The other thing I just wanted to mention, and you say in your report that you don't have the information and very clear, but your methane

Collection and use at landfills.

Most of our stuff at this point still goes to Shoesmith.

I don't believe Shoesmith does any collection.

I know Amelia does.

They're owned by Waste Management, and I'm not sure if it's up and running and how good it is, but I know that they've certainly had methane collection for electricity use.

just knowing that it's a larger company.

Now that Shoesmith has changed hands too, that's another issue.

So I would, for the next report, try to get some more information on that because I'm pretty sure there's not much collection of methane.

I think it's all being flared.

For the most part, it's just being flared like it is at Ivy, and for good reason.

I mean, at Ivy, it's for good reason.

And that's just a comment and I appreciate your difficulties.

You've explained it pretty well in the report, your difficulties.

I guess we're calling it a fulo or whatever, agriculture and land use and whatnot of measuring that.

But I suspect that as that's refined over the next several years, we're going to see that being quite a bit higher.

And certainly land use is very important in resiliency.

So those are just comments.

And let me just see if I have any other

questions here.

Oh, and I'm very excited about your forestry one, too.

I think that was wonderful, and thank you for including that in the report.

That was really helpful.

OK, so I think that's got me, and I'll stop there.

Yes, thank you, Gabe, for the great information so far, and I really appreciate

the work that this has taken and you really had to backtrack a lot to get us at baseline.

And I really appreciate all of that hard work.

I have a couple of questions.

Maybe, let me just start with, we're talking a lot about climate change and storms and all of the

heavy rainfalls and the rain bombs we're getting right now.

And I'm looking out my window right now.

We got two and a half inches of rain last night.

It's raining now.

Are there any discussions at all?

And maybe it gets to what Liz was asking a little bit about the General Assembly, or maybe it's even a bigger picture, but we talk about, oh, we've had four or 500 year floods in the last five years.

or we've had two 1,000 year floods in the last decade.

Is there any discussion at any level about changing those criteria?

I don't even know who does that.

I don't know if it's the insurance companies.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And what does it mean to have four or 500 year floods within a year?