Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   11/17/2021

This meeting is being held pursuant to and in compliance with Ordinance No.

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 Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District,

Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville District Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District and myself, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District

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

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

With us today, we have our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Board Clerk, Ms.

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

Staff throughout the day as they participate will introduce themselves and the title at the appropriate time.

That will take us to the adoption of our final agenda.

Do we have any changes to the agenda or items that need to be pulled from the consent agenda?

None noted, so these would be any new items.

All right, hearing none, if there is a motion to adopt the agenda?

So moved.

Ms.

Ms.

Yes, I'm sorry.

I thought I turned off mute.

I apologize.

Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Abbisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

The next item, brief announcements by board members and we'll go through our order today.

I do have a couple of announcements.

Just to let everyone know that tomorrow evening, Thursday, November the 18th,

from 6.30 to 8.30, there will be a virtual meeting around our regional transit partnership plan with, well it's a, I'm sorry, it's a virtual meeting with

TJPDC and the Regional Transit Partnership around our regional transit plan that we're looking at for the community.

And so anyone that's interested in listening to that or in comments or following this transit work that we're doing in the community, this is a great opportunity.

So it's a virtual meeting from 6.30 to 8 o'clock, and you can go on to the TJPDC website and look under transit.

or under the Thomas Jefferson, probably under the MPO as well, but I know it's under the Regional Transit Partnership link.

So it's just a good opportunity to see what's going on and follow that work.

So I'd encourage everybody to take a look at it, at least listen if possible, but we'd love to have input and comments.

The other thing I want to do is to just let you all know that

I recently went out to the IV materials utilization center and dropped off about 10 cans of paint.

And I want to just say, Liz, thank you.

And to the Board of Supervisors and to the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, thank you.

It was a great process.

I was able to get rid of paint for free.

And then at the same time, I noticed

that something popped up on my screen, some information that said as of September, 42 containers now, not cans, but 42 containers of paint have been shipped out of our facility.

and they're saying, of course, the equivalence of 176,400 paint cans since the beginning of the program, August of 2016.

That is a lot of paint to get out of our community because just as as I was leaving the site and coming home on the 250 bypass I saw a huge splat of white paint where somebody, a can had fallen off of a truck or something and it just creates not only an environmental disaster

for us, but also a visual impact for our community.

So thank you very much Liz and everybody that has made this happen.

It was great.

I believe that that is all I have for right now.

Thank you.

Supervisor Mallek?

There we go.

Got to get cranked up here.

I think the only announcement I would have is that on Veterans Day last Thursday, there were four different ceremonies in Amarillo County for which we should be very proud.

And each one of them had large turnout.

So there's also information coming that I will share with everyone about a bill in Congress to actually increase the support for veterans who are

and re-entering civilian life and it needs lots of local agitation to get past.

All right, Supervisor Bryce.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Along with Chair Galloway, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley in person and Supervisor Mallek virtually, we attended the annual conferences of the

the Virginia Association of Counties this week and Supervisor Mallek was too modest to announce it herself but we can proudly announce that Supervisor Mallek has just been elected as the first Vice President of the Virginia Association of Counties which is a reflection of years of dedicated work

not just to our county, but to our Commonwealth as a whole.

We each had the opportunity to attend several group sessions.

And the one that I was most pleased with was one focused on civility in leadership.

And of all of the small groups, it was standing room only.

which is a reflection of the desire of people from across the political spectrum who are leaders in their communities to all work towards achieving a betterment for the community and to follow the Virginia way, which is we may be able to disagree on policy issues, but we don't have to be disagreeable.

So I was very pleased to see how focused the leaders of our Commonwealth are on

on having civil discourse.

All right.

Yes.

Thank you very much, Chair Galloway.

I also wanted to give a shout out regarding Veterans Day last week.

It's a local VFW and Supervisor Malek was correct.

There were a number of

celebrations for or remembrances for Veterans Day.

And I'm really very, very proud of everything that Albemarle does for its veterans.

I too attended the several sessions this past weekend.

this past week and one of them was on education and evidently there's going to be money coming out from the state for capital improvement projects for schools, grants that are available and such so I will be contacting our local school district but I'm sure they're on top of it.

Anyway, another one was innovative ideas.

For example, what we did with the removal of our monument that was without controversy that took a lot of staff work beforehand.

I mean, this just didn't happen overnight.

It took a lot of staff work beforehand so that the removal of the monument was seamless.

Another one was the Blue Ridge

Pardon me, the Blue Ridge Tunnel from in Nelson County.

And I will say I was surprised to find out that they were expecting 30,000 people a year to traverse.

And it's now 100,000 a year traversing the Blue Ridge Tunnel.

So that is really, really nice.

And something that meant a lot to me is Governor Northam was there.

and he said how they welcomed Governor-Elect Youngkin and his wife and he felt that they were good people, that they would do a good job.

And that was really nice to see that smooth, gentlemanly transition from one party to the next party.

That was very, very important.

And like Supervisor Price said,

The Virginia way is we may agree to disagree, but in the end we all come together for what is best for Virginians.

So I thought that was very important.

Thank you.

This is a combination of announcement and suggestion for further discussion.

because I'm not quite sure how late we're going to be tonight.

Back to solid waste.

Recently, at the MUC, we had a very large load of material come that the developer could have saved a lot of money

by removing the trash from the clean fill.

We have a clean fill place that's $10 a tipping fund and the regular MSW, which is $52 a time.

And if developers and demolition crew will keep the trash out, they will be able to tip for $10

a ton rather than 52, which when it comes to asphalt and concrete and dirt, that's some pretty heavy stuff and can make a big difference in what they have to pay.

So I wanted to make that announcement for anybody who is talking to anybody, but also to figure out a way in the future for maybe staff to coordinate

in CD when they're working with a developer to make sure that they know that they can save this money by keeping the trash out of the loads.

And so it's not for discussion now, but I just wanted to kind of make that announcement that that happened recently and happens from time to time.

And when it is dumped on the tipping floor, there's nothing Rivanna can do but send it off to the landfill.

So anyway, and that is

all I have and thanks for bringing up the main issue.

And I'm assuming that we'll get a full report.

I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but next time Bill comes before the board, we'll get a nice report on all those figures for this past time.

All right, thank you.

So as I was mentioned, I was able to attend BACO this past week.

I won't go too into detail, but if there are topics that I attended that others are interested in, certainly be willing to spend a little time to go further in.

I spent a session on the future of economic development in Virginia, one on the Children's Services Act, and I attended one on collective bargaining.

So those were the three topics that I could have

provide additional information on.

And then a few days before the VACO, I had the pleasure of doing a presentation as the Vice Chair of the Regional Housing Partnership along with Keith Smith, the Chair of the Regional Housing Partnership at the Virginia Governor's Housing Conference.

I can tell you that the session was well attended.

and a lot of questions afterwards.

Keith and others from the area were there to do a second presentation on the community land trust and Piedmont housing.

And then also Anthony Harrow of the Thomas Jefferson area coalition for the homeless was there doing a presentation on the premier circle project.

So both conference, well, at the housing conference, we had quite a bit of representation from our region.

and a lot of interest in the work we're doing here.

So be happy to follow up on any additional information as others would be interested in for that as well.

All right.

We will move to number six, Proclamations and Recognitions.

And we do have a recognition today.

and that is a resolution of appreciation for Lori Allshouse.

Let me change my view here.

Do we have Lori on the call?

There she is.

Good afternoon, Lori.

So what we'll do is I would very much like to read this resolution of appreciation for Lori Allshouse in the form of a motion and then we'll give Lori an opportunity to say a few words and then each supervisor will have an opportunity to make remarks as well.

but resolution of appreciation for L'Oreal's house.

Whereas, Lori Allshouse has faithfully served the County of Albemarle for over 20 years, most currently as the Assistant CFO for Policy and Partnerships, serving as the Office of Management and Budget Director for 10 years, and in the years prior, serving in multiple positions within the County Executive Office, and Whereas, Lori has shown superior leadership as a visionary in strategic business initiatives, a fiscal steward with a thoughtful approach, and an influential liaison between the County of Albemarle

and numerous community partners and boards.

And whereas Lori initiated the Board of Supervisors strategic planning processes, promoting a connection of strategic goals to financial resources and provided leadership in developing the county's five-year financial planning process, operating budget and the capital improvement plan.

And whereas Lori champions numerous partnerships within the community centered around mentorship and the development of others.

She spearheaded a fellowship program that mentored numerous fellows and University of Virginia interns interested in public service careers and collaborated with participants in the leadership Charlottesville program to bring an arts and music program to the county's juvenile detention center.

And whereas Lori is a highly regarded strategic partner for her state legislative work in collaboration with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission,

and as the county liaison to the UVA's Weldon Cooper Center, including community services, surveys, excuse me, and demographic research project and serving on various boards as a representative of the county executive.

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors that Lori Allshouse is hereby honored and commended for her many years of exceptional service to the county of Albemarle, its residents, the broader community in which we live,

and the entire Commonwealth of Virginia with knowledge that Albemarle County is strengthened and distinguished by Lori's dedication, commitment, professionalism, and compassion in meeting community needs.

And it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be spread upon the minutes of this meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors as a lasting, visible testament to the esteem in which Lori is held by this board,

and previous boards for her legacy of community service and the tangible results from her work to make Albemarle County better for future generations.

Signed the seventh day of November 21.

Second.

Very good.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Barres?

Aye.

Mr. Bea LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet?

Yes.

Yes.

And that resolution carries unanimously.

Lori, good afternoon.

I'm always, yes, applause.

We can give applause to Lori.

It's always nice to celebrate this moment, but it's also bittersweet in many ways.

But Lori, we'd love to have you give you the chance to make some remarks.

Or should I go, Mr. Richardson or Ms.

Burch, should I come to you first?

Lorie has to wait just a few more minutes.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, Nelsie Birch, the Chief Financial Officer.

I have had the great pleasure and honor of supervising Lorie over the last year and a half since I've been with accounting.

And as I prepared to give a few remarks here, I've been reflecting on Lorie's career.

And what really came out for me was the fact that she's been the face of all things budget,

all things capital projects, capital planning, five-year financial planning, financial policies.

and in a moment, you're going to see and hear more about the work that she's been doing in her new role that she's leaving on our outside agencies.

And I've been thinking about that and over the last year, it's been a little bit different as we've been reshaping our newly combined department of finance and budget.

Lori hasn't necessarily been in front of the camera as much with the board and the public.

And I just want to make sure that she knows and you all know, but she's had absolutely everything to do with standing all of us up as we come in front of the board.

And so she's behind the scenes.

She's kind of like a master puppeteer.

making sure that we're prepared.

She's making sure that we're working with the clerk's office to get the tickets in on time.

We're not the best, but we're getting better.

With her help, we're getting a lot better.

And really making sure that I, in particular, as a newbie to the county, don't walk into any landmines that I'm unaware of.

So she gives me some history lessons to prepare me

for some of the things that we engage on.

And it's only fitting that today is the last time that she'll be formally presenting to the board.

She actually has a formal presentation after this proclamation.

But I really wanted to share and to say that, you know, her professional legacy is within all of us.

Everything that you're going to see and that you continue to see is us using the work of Lori and making it better and making it different and making it change and transform to where we are today.

But on a personal note, you know, we'll miss her smile.

I will miss her patience and how she helps and connects with the outside agencies that we work with in internal departments.

But we and my hope is that we will continue to deliver little glimpses of Lori.

You'll see her in all of us as we come and share with the board all things finance, all things budget and all things outside entities.

Thank you Lori for everything you've done.

It's fitting that you're being recognized in front of the board and community today.

Thank you.

Kelsey, thank you very much for those wonderful comments.

And Mr. Chair, thank you for just allowing me on behalf of Doug and Trevor and all of the folks in the County Executive's Office, as well as our departments, to just say just a couple of things about BORI.

First of all, I look at what's in my office on my wall, and it talks about Albemarle County values.

and this is work that was done a long time ago and it's not just set on the wall but it's evolved as our community and organization has evolved and it's evolved as recently as last year when we created a new county value and that was community and that's about equity and how we serve everyone in the county and we're mindful of

of the services through the equity lens.

But when I look through these county values, it says Albemarle County believes in excellence in public service.

And we carry that forward through integrity, innovation, stewardship, learning, and of course, community.

That's our most recent county value.

And Lori may be

One of the people I've worked in my career who just truly, every day, she's able, even with hard stuff and stuff that keeps us awake at night, to always have those values woven into everything she does, everything she says, how she behaves, not just with her, not just with this board, but with her coworkers, with the people who come on board, the interns, people who are just coming into the profession,

She's an absolutely wonderful mentor to people who are just coming into the profession because of how she carries herself every day.

And so I just want to take that opportunity to say that we had a retirement get together earlier this week.

It was an unbelievable attendance from retirees who worked with Lori.

And so she's just a person who has this unique ability to touch

Her people she works with in a way that is a lasting relationship.

One person said on earlier this week, they said she's diplomatic.

And isn't that a wonderful word?

There were so many nice words.

I say all that though, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back over to the board.

This is the board's time.

And I think she's one of these people that we could speak about truly all afternoon about what she's meant to this organization over the decades she's been here.

There's something nice to say about her no matter how you slice her work and her interactions with others.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you both.

Oh, wow.

Thank you so much.

This is, I'm so touched.

This is actually a hard thing, right?

To sit silently and hear these things and it means a whole lot to me.

and I was thinking earlier when I was listening to your remarks as you went around the room and talked about different things and you mentioned the Virginia way and it's made me start thinking about the Albemarle way and there is something here.

You all have something really special and I just know it's here and I feel it every day.

It's why I love coming to work here at the county.

This place is just an amazing place.

So for all those starting their careers,

you're in for a wonderful, wonderful time.

I really appreciate all the opportunities that I've had working with the county over the years.

It's been an honor serving with such dedicated public service professionals and we're serving the residents and we're serving the land.

And this is one of the most beautiful counties in the Commonwealth.

And you all know that, you know, you drive in from any direction.

Albemarle County is just so beautiful.

And when we did the citizen surveys all those years,

When people said why they ranked this county so great as a place to live, it's the scenic beauty.

And we see it every day.

And I think that's part of our essence.

I think just living here, I think it gets into your soul.

So it's just been such a pleasure being part of this county.

We also have such hardworking, dedicated and visionary board of supervisors.

It's just been such a great group of Board of Supervisors today and in the past and I believe it's your vision, your leadership and your vision and how you hold this place together and how diplomatic and conscientious and caring you all are that makes us all great.

So I just want to thank each and every one of you for all that you do for the county day and night and what it does for all of us as those who work in this organization.

I believe with Mr. Richardson's leadership and Miss Birch's leadership and just watching all the work that's going on this year with your budget and your long-range planning and your development, you are so well positioned.

It's such a well-run place.

And I believe that you're going to do fine taking care of all the challenges that face us as a county and seizing all the opportunities that we have in the future.

So thanks again so much for an opportunity of being part of it.

along the way and for allowing me to be part of serving this great county.

Thank you, Laurie.

Good to invite the supervisors to make remarks.

Supervisor McKeel, you're up first.

Sure.

You know, Laurie, I've been around a long time and it's hard for me to think back to a time when you weren't the face of the county, you know, really for the county administration and finance.

and I really appreciate that.

And I know that over the years, I have challenged you in ways that you were always diplomatic with me.

And I appreciate that, I really do.

And you've always been willing to step up to the plate.

We would sometimes surprise you with, Lori, would you do this?

Would you take this on?

and you've always really been willing to step up to the plate.

You smiled and you did it and you performed the duty beautifully and you really have served the residents of Albemarle County well over the last 20 years.

So thank you very much and I hope you have lots of opportunity to enjoy our beautiful county on horseback during your retirement.

Thank you very much.

It was a treat, a cold but beautiful day for Lori's outside party.

And the attendees at the party were an example of the impact that she has had.

From Bob Tucker and Roxanne White, Mark Graham, Larry Davis, four recently retired members of the DSS department, and at least 100 other folks, new and long time.

and many had wonderful things to say about her justifiably.

To me, I think she represents the face of the process improvements we've made in the budget.

The budget department was the most terrifying one for me when I joined in 2008 and was always going to get

Find the most analytical citizens I could to help me and meeting with staff members to understand what all those spreadsheets were all about and how to ask the best questions to make changes.

So those process improvements, the debriefs that she invented right after the budget process to make sure that while things were fresh in our minds, we were able to write down

the things that could be done differently that might make an impact.

Just the readability of the budget for someone who's not a financial wizard is really important and the fact that the information is accessible to citizens who want to dig in and do research and participate.

She also has been the representative who works with the applicants from the arts community and all those other partner agencies who do not qualify for the or do not participate in the ABRT side.

And they're really important to our success and need more help perhaps than agencies who are more staffed up with professional staff.

So that is so appreciated and helps to

really improve the quality of life for many, many different parts, all parts of our community in different ways.

I did learn about dodgeball with Doug and tennis with Tom.

And so I am volunteering to take on the dodgeball role because I think that's going to be a lot of fun.

And I will learn a lot from that too.

I feel like I should make some sort of comment about this dodgeball, and a former employee will want to whip some dodgeballs at us.

I don't know enough.

Supervisor Price, you're up next.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Ms.

Allshouse, this is really a bittersweet moment, and I was crushed that I was not able to attend your farewell on Monday, being rich in Norfolk for the VACO conference.

I had it on my calendar for a long time,

I don't know the exact count.

I think we have about 50 or 60 public meetings a year as supervisors.

And for 19 of the 22 and a half months I've been a supervisor, they've been virtual.

And I don't know how many people know that for a good bit of that time, Ms.

Alshaus and I were semi-sweepmates here at the office because not having good internet out in the county,

I would come to the OMB conference room, which I guess now we need to rename since y'all moved downstairs.

But I would see Lori every time I came in for those meetings, and of course we'd have briefings and everything.

And so with an organization the size of Albemarle County, people come and go on a fairly regular basis.

But Ms.

Allshouse, yours is affecting me a little more than some of the others because we really have worked so closely.

and your resolution really costs all the many ways in which you serve the public community, not just in your role here, but just as the person who you are.

And so I'm going to break my own equal dignity rule here and just say, Lori, we're really going to miss you, but we know you're not going far.

And I'm very pleased to know that in addition to our professional collegiality of working together, I'm honored to call you friend and to be your friend and

and I only wish the very best for you.

So in good Navy fashion, may you always have fair winds and following seas.

Ms.

Allshouse.

I'm really going to miss you.

I feel very pleased.

I feel very special, the fact that I've been on less than two years, and so I've had the best of the best.

I don't know what happened previously, but all I know is it was great having you, and I agree with Supervisor Mallek.

I wouldn't have been able to understand a lot had it not been for your calming presence.

when you explain the budget and your thoroughness.

You also said something, you said serving the residents and serving the land.

I'll add a third, serving the people of Albemarle, the staff here and the supervisors, keeping us on the straight and narrow.

by your calming presence, by your ability to explain things was extremely, extremely helpful.

I'm just going to miss you a lot.

I know I'll be seeing you soon.

We have a secret little plan together.

And also I wanted everyone to know that Lori does come from the Rivanna district.

So I'm just putting that out there that that probably had a lot to do with, you know, her success also.

But I really, really appreciate everything you've done for our county.

You're kind of the essence of the county, of the attitude of the county, of the can-do attitude of the county and of serving everybody in the county.

So it's much appreciated.

Best of luck to you.

My goodness.

Secret meetings and dodgeball and all kinds of stuff.

Anyway, I of course agree with everything everybody has said.

And my, on a personal note, you know, those Saturday night emails, you know, answering all these questions during the budget time were very much appreciated because for whatever reason I was frequently reading my emails then because that was when, as supervisors, that's frequently the time we have to do our work is over the weekends.

So I was always kind of amazed at the late night emails coming in during budget time explaining all the detail that we peppered you with to understand the budget very much appreciated.

And I will say, as a supervisor, we get on and we're not a specialist in anything.

Sometimes I feel more like we're here for refereeing or something like that, but we have to learn, but we can't be an expert.

So never being condescending, always being very steady in your explanations and very calm, even when the questions seem probably ridiculous to you.

It's very much appreciated, all of it.

All that you've done, and yeah, well, I think we'll all miss you.

I've had eight years of your explanations, and I will miss them.

Supervisor Mallek, did you have another comment there?

Or did I see the hand?

I thought I saw the hand raise come up.

That worries.

Laurie, I will say this.

The phrase in the resolution of appreciation says superior leadership as a visionary in strategic business initiatives.

And I'll tell you what I think that means.

Supervisor Palmer and others mentioned that we've learned a lot from you.

And I remember from my school board days when you would come in and like Supervisor McKeel said, you were the face of kind of the finance end of the county.

But when the orientation

when I became a member of this board happened.

Your thoughtful approach to making sure we were up to speed and it wasn't so it didn't come across as look buddy you need to you need to fall in line with how we do things it was setting me up for success to be a good supervisor and the approach that you took that was really felt and appreciated.

But then after a budget cycle or two, when we would come in and do a review, how do you think it went?

And this is where I think being a visionary comes into play.

I think some folks can fall into after 20, 30 years of working somewhere, they can follow into that this is the way it works.

Especially when we're talking about numbers and finance and budget, this is just the way it works and you need to fall in line and figure that out.

But with every question that I've seen myself and others ask, you always had a curiosity to understand the new angle or the new look on how this stuff is being viewed.

And that I really appreciated.

And that's what I think a true mark of a visionary is.

It's never just this way and this is how we do it.

There are always new ways to learn and think and new questions to ask.

And I think that's what helped keep you engaged over the years.

I think that I believe that that curiosity was part of what made you enjoy the line of work that you have been doing.

But like I said, I think that's a true mark of being a visionary in this type of role.

Thanks to each of you.

Thank you so very much.

I'm very touched.

No, no, not hard questions.

No hard questions for me today.

All right.

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you, Lori.

We'll see you in a little bit.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

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

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

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer,

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

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

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

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

address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

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

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

and speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during the public comment periods per meeting.

And back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

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

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

Thank you.

All right.

Hi.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me and see me?

We can hear you.

Perfect.

All right.

Well, good afternoon.

My name is Robin Mattern and I reside in the White Hall Magistrate.

I would like to address the six Board of Supervisors today in regards to the Turb and Light project at Dardan Tau Park.

This project was approved and budgeted for in the spring of 2019.

The start was delayed and then unfortunately the pandemic hit.

I asked the six of you to please revisit, revive, and restart this very important community project.

It is an utter embarrassment that we do not have a single all-weather, all-season lighted sports facility in our community.

Youth and adult sports organizations including soccer, lacrosse, flag football, and others are forced to rent the high school turf fields at high prices and off-peak hours.

Just last week, I was picking my kids up at Albemarle High School from their 8 to 9 30 p.m practices three times.

In 2018, the Albemarle County Parks and Rec Needs Assessment specifically recommended a major upgrade to the athletic fields of Darden Tow Park as a high priority.

This was then approved and budgeted for.

Please do not sweep this under the rug.

It was a priority and still is a priority.

Darden Tow is in dire shape.

There are ankle breaking potholes throughout the surface.

Yet our community is forced to play there because there are very few other options.

The footprint is there to make a beautiful sports facility that would be an asset to our community for a lifetime.

There is parking, bathrooms, and shelters already in place.

As a mother of two active children who play multiple sports almost every weekend, I am driving to neighboring counties in our state for games and tournaments.

I am staying over in hotels and eating in their restaurants.

With a renovated Darden Tow, we too could host tournaments and bring revenue and jobs to our local communities versus spending it elsewhere.

No one was hit harder in the pandemic than hotels and restaurants.

We owe it to them to help generate business.

Turncations, a term that merges tournament and vacation, are an increasing trend in the sports tourism, particularly with youth sports.

Charlottesville would be an amazing destination for families to attend a tournament and then further explore all we have to offer.

In 2019, Henrico County hosted 186 tournaments, which generated an estimated $66.2 million in local spending.

Just think if we had a small portion of that.

I'm aware that the county is anticipated to have a budget surplus of $13.2 million.

Please consider using part of this money towards this project and or use the money that was already originally allocated to it.

I can attest I'm sharing this very important message

on behalf of our community.

Please give our youth and our community this great asset.

Thank you.

All right.

Good afternoon.

Well, thank you.

Before I begin, I want to add a personal thank you to Lori Alshouse.

I've had occasion to work with her over the years, and I'll always enjoy the experience.

And Lori, thank you very much, and I wish you the very best.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Terry Newell, and I live in the White Hall district.

Since 2009, a sign along Old Trail Drive has read future site of Community Park.

I'm delighted today that the Western Park is now beginning to become more than a sign.

I want to give special thanks to Supervisor Mallek for never forgetting the promise of this park, to Tim Padolino for shepherding the process of getting it started, to the board as a whole for approving the use of proffer funds, and to the wonderful staff at Parks and Recreation for the yeoman work they have done.

I'm especially delighted as a grandparent that the first part of this park to be completed soon is a playground.

This is a promising start, but the playground is just part of phase one of the three phases of the park

in the adopted 2018 Western Park Master Plan.

Given the growth in Western Albemarle and citizen requests for more infrastructure, the Western Park offers a wonderful way to help meet the need for more outdoor recreational spaces.

And as you know, the Western Park has been listed as a priority development project in the recently approved Crozet Master Plan.

Of the park's 36 acres, 33 will be left in their natural state crisscrossed only by walking trails.

This is essential to protect the biodiversity of this special area and to enable current and future generations to have this natural area to appreciate and learn from.

The three remaining acres of the park include picnic areas, athletic fields, the community garden, and other active recreational spaces.

I'm speaking today to ask for your support for funding at least the rest of Phase 1 of the Western Park and a more detailed plan for Phase 2.

The rest of Phase 1 will include restrooms, an entrance, and limited parking to get cars off Old Trail Drive, allowing safe access to the park, landscaping, and a small amphitheater.

The Crozet Master Plan calls for the completion of Phase 1 in one to two years, with funding through the Capital Improvements Program.

Phase 2 would provide sports field, basketball courts, natural play areas, additional parking and restrooms, and a bridge over Lincoln Hole Creek.

In the 12 years it's taken to start the park, Westman Albemarle has added hundreds of homes and major apartment complexes.

More development is coming.

We owe it to our children to provide more safe spaces for them to exercise and play.

And we owe it to the community, especially senior citizens, to provide more places to picnic and enjoy the outdoors without having to drive long distances.

I know the county has many pressing capital improvement needs, but I believe this is one of them also.

Please help all of us in Western Albemarle see the Western Park grow into the county resource it has always promised and intended to be.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Neil Williamson and I serve as the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization focused on central Virginia's local governments.

I would anticipate all of us have experienced the waiting list at a restaurant at some point.

Perhaps trying to get dinner on the road after a long day traveling, you arrive to a full parking lot and see servers and cooks scrambling to get the food out to all the hungry patrons.

You notice some servers are engaging in idle table banter that is clearly extending the time it takes to get the order.

When you ask the host how long the wait will be, they provide their best guess and you have your name added to the list to be called in turn.

What if you had to pay to be considered to be put on the wait list?

What if the host recognizes your presence, but says they will not put you on the queue yet, but they'll do some sometime soon?

When you look around the foyer again, you see many potential customers standing around the foyer, not waiting for a table, but waiting to be added to the list to get a table.

What if there's absolutely nowhere else serving food?

You are not lost, but you have no idea when you might get something to eat.

That's the situation in Albemarle County's Community Development Department with building permits right now.

Last Friday morning, the Free Enterprise Forum learned

There were over 300 commercial and residential building permits that had been received by CDD but had yet to be entered.

This, coupled with the increasing review times, has resulted in an untenable situation.

Today, it is taking more than four months to pull a building permit in Albemarle County.

The community development leadership, as well as the other department heads, are keenly aware of the situation and have been struggling to find solutions.

They have been transparent and communicative throughout this effort.

Together, we have been working with the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association and community development to fix this restaurant.

But it's getting worse.

This regulatory bottleneck does not help anyone.

Today, the Free Enterprise form is asking the Board of Supervisors to help tackle this unnecessary regulatory impediment with four steps.

One, authorize the County Executive to dedicate the funds required to properly process the existing backlog and future building permit applications.

2.

In the spirit of the famous Land Use Reform Committee, LERC,

and the Development Initiative Steering Committees, Disc 1 and 2, establish a broad-based committee charged with reviewing and streamlining the development procedures to get permits approved and completed in Albemarle County.

And for, and perhaps most importantly, receive a quarterly report regarding permit processing statistics on your consent agenda.

Working together, we can get community development moving again.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

This is Burt Miller, and I reside in the Rivanna District

Thank you for listening this afternoon as I want to speak a few minutes about the comments Ms.

Mattern made on the Dardan Tau Park and the situation with the fields there.

There's a famous saying, if you build it, they will come from the movie Field of Dreams.

We have a piece of property in Dardan Tau that is an immaculate piece of property.

It goes along the river.

It's very well located.

There's restaurants and hotels nearby, but it looks great from far, but it's far from great.

And what I mean by that is if you go up onto that property and you look at the fields, the condition of the fields, the amount of usage we can get from those fields, it's really not serving the community as well.

The sports tourism business in the United States, depending on where you look, ranges from 15 to 25 billion dollars a year.

It's an amazing amount of business.

There are teams from all over the East Coast that traveled to areas like Williamsburg, Roanoke, Richmond, obviously, and Northern Virginia.

Those sports teams from soccer to lacrosse to softball to baseball service any number of children and families.

We are not servicing our community as one of the

really feature cities in the state of Virginia, we don't have a facility that can service those families and those type of events.

Those type of events create an amazing amount of money for the hotels.

I believe, if I'm not mistaken, the Hampton Inn across the way from Darden Tow put themselves there because of the idea that our fields had been approved to be resurfaced.

So far, once it was approved, it obviously was not allowed due to the COVID pandemic, and that's understandable, but we need to move forward

in getting those fields redone and those fields lighted in a way that can serve the community and add tax dollars back to our community.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We will close from the public.

So moved.

Bomer?

Yes.

Mr. Price?

Aye.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Mr. McKeel?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Very good.

The consent agenda is approved, and we will be able to move to our first work session today, number nine, personal wireless service facilities ordinance study.

Looks like there's a hang up.

We'll just take a moment to try to resolve that.

All right.

Good afternoon, sir.

My computer is running very slow today, having some issues.

I'm Bill Fritz from the Community Development Department and I want to thank you for making time for your agenda today to discuss the study of and possible changes to the personal wireless service facilities regulations.

Excuse me.

The Community Development Work Program includes reviewing the PWSF regulations and the board has allocated $100,000 for consultant work.

Staff wants to ensure that we put out an RFP that meets the board's expectations for the scope of work to be done in the review of these regulations.

The county's PWSF policy was adopted in 2000 and the regulations were adopted in 2004.

The policy has never been revisited and changes in the regulations have been largely limited to keep up with changing federal and state regulations, court decisions, and changes in technology.

The RFP proposed by staff would be the first comprehensive review in 20 years.

The work of the consultant would include meeting with the public and industry using best public engagement practices, a Planning Commission public hearing, and a Board of Supervisors public hearing.

The consultant's work would be comprehensive and it would include updates for technology, updates for state and federal law, and they may include changes such as revising or eliminating avoidance areas that cause by-right tier two facilities to be classified as tier three special use permit facilities.

could include revisions to the ordinance to eliminate the need for special exceptions that have been routinely approved.

It could include allowance of facilities at greater height or lesser design standards and areas of poor coverage.

These are just some ideas.

Any, all, or none of these changes may ultimately be recommended by the consultant and other things may come up.

The listing of them today is listed as potential items, and it's not meant to limit other ideas that may be worthy of consideration.

What we're looking for today from the board is an endorsement of the engagement process and the wide-ranging scope of review of the consultant.

All right, we can go through, see if we have questions at this time.

Supervisor McKeel, questions?

Mr. Fritz?

Yes, good afternoon, Bill.

I'm pleased to see this on the agenda because certainly we have a very old policy that needs to come into the 21st century.

I guess I have a question, Bill.

Help me out a little bit about, maybe it's ignorance on my part, but help me with policy versus ordinance.

You and I chatted recently about our policy is so old that to just go in and rewrite or

This policy is probably not the best use of time or at least that was my thought.

And I'm trying to figure out are we, because the policy is so old that to be honest with you, I would just start over again with an ordinance.

I'm just trying to get a sense of what your thoughts are on policy versus ordinance.

and let's get to the meat of it.

Let's not worry about this old outdated policy and let's go for community engagement, all of those things I am certainly in favor of, but I'm trying to figure out the process or not the process, the document that we would end up with, which I hope would be a modern ordinance around our cell tower

Vision for this community.

Am I making sense here?

That's a great question.

The policy is, it's a component of our comprehensive plan.

It's actually the addendums to the comprehensive plan or attachments to the comprehensive plan.

And that set the framework, the guide to say, okay, this is what we have envisioned.

Now go prepare a zoning text amendment to achieve this particular vision.

And that was done back in 2000.

and then the ordinance was adopted in 2004.

We could go back in and do that comprehensive plan analysis and what we're recommending instead is instead of doing it as a comprehensive plan analysis.

And I guess you're not asking us today to go in and specifically say, I mean, we couldn't have a work session that would allow all six of us to go through and say, we want this, we want that.

No, that's exactly right.

We have no specific proposals right now other than the ones to say we're going to update to get the technology terms and so forth correct and to make sure we're consistent with state and federal law.

What we're saying is we're going to have this, we're going to look at the whole thing.

Everything is on the table for consideration and that ultimately we will bring this to the public and we'll bring it back to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors and have a discussion about potential changes to the ordinance.

Okay.

All right.

Because in my view right now, our policy really deals with the negatives.

Correct.

because it's so old, because all of the positives have come through in the last couple of decades, right?

Safety, I mean, I could go through the list of why we need to be looking at our cell tower, the way we apply cell towers.

And we need to be addressing the benefits.

There's more to cell towers than just visibility, which seems to be the magic word in this community.

So I'm hopeful that that's what you're talking about, is looking at it holistically.

Doesn't mean we're going to be building cell towers everywhere, right?

But certainly just updating into the 21st century the way that people have to use cell towers, whether it's

or telemedicine or safety or education or economic development.

Okay, then I think I'm good.

Thank you.

I think the process you've laid out framework-wise is good.

I guess it sounds like

All the work gets done with the industry first, and then the public comes in later to get to react as far as your stakeholder group.

So that's a concern.

It's like saying you're going to buy a big expensive investment, but you're only talking to the salesman instead of having doing a scientific approach or whatever.

So I just wanted you to be aware of that.

And perhaps you have reassurances based on who the consultant skills are, whom you will hire.

that would take care of that concern.

You had asked about questions to add to the list.

I think something to be included that we discussed at the board meeting a couple of months ago is future implications of FCC changes due to the court action.

So that we are not making a change that ends up being thrown out because something else is done.

And this is again, taking the mantra of

the salespeople that this is a way to achieve broadband and the county has made a dedicated investment and will continue to make a dedicated investment that broadband is delivered through fiber.

And so I just don't wanna allow that again to complicate the whole discussion with this whole policy review.

Supervisor Price.

I totally agree that we need to move forward.

I don't really have much more to say.

We need to update our policy and acknowledge the changes in technology as well as the needs, not just buyers, but the absolute needs for connectivity through all different mechanisms that are available.

Yes, I agree with everything that Vice Chair Price said because we do need to update our policies and we do have a great need out there that we have to make sure that we can provide to our residents.

So I commend you on updating everything and going for the latest technology.

I'm fine with what you presented, Bill.

Thank you very much.

My only

request.

And I don't know if this is possible, but as you're doing, as the consultant, I guess, is doing the outreach, it's always nice to throw a little education in there.

And there is the perception in a lot of the rural areas that the reason why we don't have cell phone service in some of the areas is that it's the county policy not to allow cell towers.

And

Switch laptops, I'm getting used to this new touchpad.

I mean, I'd agree with that as well in an education standpoint, understanding the different, the complete difference in context from 20 years ago versus today.

Both what

The board at the time and the community at the time thought about this, the mindset of the technology versus what that is now in terms of more of a necessary utility than a passing fad.

You know, but it's always a good idea to be able to go back and understand why things were put into place first and compare and contrast that to what those priorities could be today and what those changes are.

So I would hope in that outreach and in the discussion, I'm sure the board will be having that discussion.

That'll be part of it, but everything else definitely supported them.

I think we have what we need.

We have direction.

We'll prepare an RFP.

Thank you very much, sir.

Hope you have a good afternoon.

We will move to number 10, long-range financial planning.

Andy Bowman should be coming on board here.

And others.

Andy, where's, oh, the square's moving around.

Oh, there you go.

Hi, good afternoon to the chair of the board.

All right.

Now I'll ask Laura Van Sant on our team to go ahead and pull up our presentation.

While she's doing so, I'll publicly thank Laura.

She's a senior budget analyst in our Office of Management and Budget.

One of her many responsibilities is a lot of the lead analytical work that goes into putting this presentation together.

So I wanted to thank her for that.

I should also comment, it's very odd to have a five-year financial planning conversation and not have Lori Allshouse involved in the presentation.

As the board recognized Lori earlier in the meeting, I just wanted to take a moment to publicly thank her for myself and on behalf of the Office of Measurement and Budget for all of her contributions over the years.

And this definitely feels different without her giving this presentation.

So we'll go ahead and... One second, I lost the screen.

Sorry about that.

So we'll go ahead to the next slide.

I'll start by saying that no board action is requested today.

This is a work session that is designed around two desired outcomes.

First, we are seeking to inform the Board of Supervisors on the county's long-range planning assumptions, including our updated fiscal year 22 financial picture, and how that proposed plan aligns with the strategic priorities.

The second thing is that we will be seeking board supervisors' initial feedback on that financial plan.

So we can go ahead to the next slide just to cover some other basics.

To orient where we are in the overall budget process, last month, the board held a joint work session with the school board related to the capital improvements program.

And starting next week, that capital improvements program discussion will continue with the CIP Advisory Committee.

That work will extend into November.

and we'll also have another five-year financial plan work session in December.

Those two work sessions in the five-year financial plan are going to be emphasizing different things.

Today is about grounding ourselves in financial planning assumptions and receiving feedback on that plan.

On December 15th, we'll hold another work session that will be geared more towards guidance on future policy discussions and information that will inform the fiscal year 23 budget process.

But that's kind of the just sort of where we've been, where we are today, and what's ahead as we work through the fiscal year 23 budget process.

So going on to the next slide, I should note that while we're holding discussions around long-range planning, there's also a significant update underway to the fiscal year 22 budget.

That is going to be coming to the Board of Supervisors for action on December 1st.

I'm going to take a moment and deliberately step out of the long-range planning mindset and speak to the fiscal year 22 budget.

And actually to help us with this mindset, since some of us are auditory and some of us are visual, I actually changed the color theme of this slide from blue to green to emphasize that we're not long-range planning right now.

This is just a slide about the annual budget, the managing current year, fiscal year 22.

So at the November 3rd Board of Supervisors meeting, staff provided a financial update based on the preliminary close of fiscal year 21.

Staff indicated that this update combined with the continuing improving revenue trends into fiscal year 22

would lead to an amendment of fiscal year 2022 budget on December 1st, and those revenues for county government would be applied in support of workforce stabilization efforts.

Today, that information is incorporated into the five-year financial plan, and I'll elaborate on some of those assumptions in a few slides.

The details of that will be coming on December 1st.

I felt it was important to acknowledge this as well.

We're also considering long-range planning.

We're also, at the same time, managing fiscal year 2022 budget management.

So stepping back in the next slide, stepping again away from the 22 budget, back to this nice blue border, I want to focus on the five-year financial plan.

Just as kind of some introductory concepts, because it's been about two years since we've had one session on this topic.

Long-range financial planning is part of the county's adopted financial policies.

It was not done during the fiscal year 22 budget process, given the significant amount of uncertainty due to the pandemic and just the response to the pandemic.

And though much is still unknown, it's important to restart this process again because of the value it can provide.

And I'll say this next comment around five-year financial planning and budgeting as someone who has the word budget in my job title.

I often remind myself that long-range planning and annual budgeting are two separate activities.

Usually when I'm presenting to the board, it's about budget changes that will go into effect in a matter of months or even immediately.

But today is really about long-range planning and what may happen in future fiscal years, not what's just right in front of us tomorrow.

So with long-range financial planning not about next year and kind of looking to you on that, it should provide a framework to begin to illuminate some discussion around questions such as, for example, are the counties operating in capital budgets in alignment?

In simpler terms, another way to think of this, that if the county is planning to construct a new facility in the capital budget, are we able to open and operate that in a future general fund operating budget?

Or to say it perhaps even simpler, are the decisions we're making today, can they be afforded in the future?

And as we look at that long-term trajectory of what we assume in terms of revenues and expenses, there'd be questions for the board's consideration in terms of what strategies or policies can be considered to change that long-term trajectory.

Long-term trajectory of the five-year plan recognizing there is much unknown in the future.

This planning can also provide a helpful framework to inform the annual budget process and ensure that funding recommendations are aligned with the county's priorities.

And finally, I should note that these assumptions are based on the best information we have as of today.

We'll look at some scenarios later in the presentation as part of this consideration.

But again, this is just to try and set the framework for a discussion we haven't had really in almost two years, that this is kind of long-range planning rather than just budgeting.

So this will have a different tone and feel than a typical work session that we told with the board in March for the annual budget process.

So covering some background for intended outcomes, the budget schedule, and kind of the introduction to long-range planning principles,

There are going to be three topics to cover in today's work session.

The first is to review some revenue and expenditure assumptions and how those align with the county's strategic priorities.

Second, to look at some scenarios for consideration.

And third, to allow time for board discussion and response.

And speaking to that board discussion, we'd like to do staff

When we come back to the discussion at the end, I'm going to provide some questions in advance for the board to consider as we talk through this presentation in terms of receiving the board's feedback in terms of what the plan does well, what may be missing, or what areas may require additional information.

And certainly if there's other questions in the content that's come up, we'd be happy to address those as well.

So with all of that introduction to set the stage, I'll start diving into some revenue and expenditure assumptions to inform our long-range financial plan.

I will also talk about that connection with the strategic plan.

So I will start on the next slide with the revenues.

This is a projection of revenues from fiscal year 23 to year 27.

And I'll start with that projection for fiscal year 23 to 27, is that we're assuming an average annual growth rate of 3.8% in general funding growth.

And I'll say that kind of back to this is where planning is different than budgeting.

The intent is not necessarily to predict what's going to happen in fiscal year 23, but where might we be in the out years as we approach fiscal year 27.

We can certainly expect that some of those years will exceed 3.8%.

Some of those years will fall short.

Again, it's trying to get that long-range trajectory and outlook about where we'd be headed in the future.

So 3.8% was not a number that was pulled out of thin air.

We did some analysis to go back and try and identify, with so much unknown, what might be a reasonable growth rate in general fund revenues.

So we actually looked back about 15 years or so, all the way from fiscal year second to present.

which we said, you know, what is the, over that time, the average annual increase in general fund revenues?

And it is 3.8%.

And we looked at that time period, and that includes the strong economy right before the Great Recession.

It includes the Great Recession.

It includes the recovery years where there's sort of a slower stagnant growth.

included then following that some strong local economy years.

It includes the pandemic, and also through all that change, it includes years where both the real estate tax rate was raised and lowered, which would have a significant impact on that 3.8%.

So we felt we had a pretty good representation of kind of all different types of different economies and environments.

That 3.8 was a pretty representative assumption of what may happen in terms of the long term.

But a question on the board's mind may be, in a time of so much uncertainty,

How recently can we plan for that out-year growth or even whether it's 3.8%?

And that's a good question and one we've been thinking about in the Office of Management and Budget.

So what I'll show later is some scenarios of what does the financial picture begin to look like if we exceed or fall short of that 3.8% annually and what implications does that have?

But before we get to those scenarios, I'm going to take a moment to discuss the significant change that's happening in the fiscal year 22 budget process.

I've noted on the slide that while that annual average of 3.8% has been true over the 15 years, we have done a reprojection of our revenues for fiscal year 22 and are currently forecasting an increase of 5.1% over the fiscal year 21, actually.

So I'm going to take a moment on the next few slides.

I'm going to do that mindset shift again.

Jumping back into the 22 budget, kind of this green color, really to cover this for two reasons.

First, I think more than in a typical year, we are seeing a really significant change in our revenues based on what happened at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 21 and how that is continuing into fiscal year 22.

Next, my comments are intended to help bridge the gap between the county executive and staff report on November 3rd regarding how fiscal year 21 ended.

and the information that will be shared again and covered in December 1st with that budget amendment.

So in the fiscal year 22 budget, staff projected an improved revenue picture compared to fiscal year 21.

But based on how fiscal year 21 ended in the fourth quarter and how this fiscal year 22 is performing, it is clear that improvement is happening much sooner and stronger than was anticipated.

So I'm going to cover some large revenues drivers to explain why this is, not just in fiscal year 21, but fiscal year 22 as well.

Now I'll start by noting property taxes, which is primarily real property and personal property.

Those make up 68 percent of the fiscal year 22 general fund.

And at this time, we have not changed our assumption for the calendar year 22 reassessment for real estate of plus 1.75 percent compared to calendar year 21.

However, an update on that is forthcoming very soon.

On December 15th, our county assessor will be before the board to give the results of that.

And at that time, when we have a long-range discussion on the 15th, we can incorporate that information in that time.

What we have been doing, while we sort of have not modified the real estate reassessment assumption, has been watching very closely with the Revenue Administration Division.

What is the impact of all the supplemental buildings that happen throughout the year where projects, whether it be new construction or land divisions or other adjustments will be picked up?

And we are seeing stronger growth that's being anticipated by those changes in property values unrelated to the reassessment.

So more to come on December 15th around that.

That's sort of where we are on property taxes.

I'll go to the next slide to look at what we call consumer-driven taxes.

And we can go ahead and show this chart.

This is a chart the board has seen before, but there's a lot of lines and a lot of colors, so I'm going to take a moment to talk through it.

These are the actual sales, meals, and transit occupancy taxes that have been received by the county by quarter for the last three years plus one quarter.

I'll start kind of as a reference point, is the yellow line, which was fiscal year 19.

There was no pandemic all year.

So I sort of think in my mind, that's the baseline where we've been.

Fiscal year 20 is the green line, and as the board has seen this before, that was performing very well through three quarters before significantly declining in quarter four due to the onset of the pandemic.

Next we move to last year, which is that purple line.

So we start in quarter one, significantly below the yellow line, kind of catch up to it in the second quarter, begin to eat past it in the third, and we have a little more separation in the fourth quarter.

So now we are here, just having preliminary close the first quarter, and we see that red dot all the way above where we were at the green line in fiscal year 20.

and I'll say we have the preliminary October data, which will be of course in quarter two, so we don't have full quarter two yet, but we're seeing that trend continue at least through October.

So this is a very different place than the last time I was before the board with this information about five or six months ago in terms of where we've been in the pandemic and how these revenues are changed.

That recovery is not equal across the sales, meals and transit occupancy, but there's been significant movement in all of those to be stronger than where we've been, not only in the last six months plus through the pandemic,

and even prior to the pandemic as well.

So moving to another notable change that's happened is looking at recordation and seller's taxes.

This is a chart that looks at those two revenues together from fiscal year seven all the way prior to the Great Recession to the pandemic.

And as is evident from this, we had a record year, sorry, no pun intended, a historic year in fiscal year 21 for recordation and seller's taxes, where those were 52% above the fiscal year 20 actual.

and because I think when we first looked at this data, I wondered to myself, was fiscal year 20 blip and it kind of lowered by the pandemic?

That does not dare to be the case looking at this graph.

The second question we had in our minds when we did this analysis is, well, was that a one-time blip we're seeing in 21?

Where's it going on in fiscal year 22?

And then now we have this chart on the right that shows that we're not through November, but we have the data just based on the timing of when that is collected.

We are seeing that fiscal year 22 through November is running 10% ahead of where we were in fiscal year 21.

So this is another, just one of those items in a couple of local taxes.

We're just seeing almost unprecedented rate of change taking place, even as the pandemic goes on.

The final one that I'll highlight is around business, professional, and occupational licenses, also referred to as BPOL shorthand.

Again, same time range, looking fiscal year seven prior to the Great Recession, all the way to currently.

And as we thought in the pandemic about what might happen to BPOL taxes,

We looked back to the Great Recession and we saw when that took place there was a kind of three years of declines in these revenues from fiscal year 9 through 11.

A decline of 6% followed by 1.2% and then an additional 0.1% decline.

So the budget that anticipated as we worked through this that we would see a significant impact that would be comparable to maybe what we experienced at the start of the last recession in fiscal year 9.

A very different recession but again in terms of order of magnitude and shifts that were happening in the economy.

While the last recession was more real estate driven and other attacks, there also wasn't some of the other business activity challenges that occurred in the onset of the pandemic.

So now that we have the data that fiscal year 20 was closed, because so much of this data arrives at the very end of the fiscal year, we can see that those revenues did in fact decline, but it was only by 0.2%.

So while they did decline, the performance was much better anticipated in the budget, and now we're in a position that fiscal year 20 was closed to update our assumptions moving forward.

So in summary, on those last few slides, we shared kind of how November 3rd, we saw the difference in the fourth quarter was changed and really seeing this, a little more of the details in terms of those particular revenue changes, what's driving that, and also how that's continuing with fiscal year 22.

And again, more information will be coming around this on the board's December 1st meeting.

So I'm going to shift gears once again back to the blue slides.

And for those who may not be a fan of that, we're going to be in the blue slides for the rest of the presentation.

We're going to focus on long-range planning from here on out.

So we've talked about revenue assumptions, and now I'm going to move to the expenditure assumption, which is the orange line on the slide.

The first year is balanced based on a series of assumptions, but we can see on this slide as time goes by, the net result of those assumptions is out of balance.

So now when we look at this picture, it's a question of what are those expense energy assumptions?

How do they align with the county's priorities?

And what might be able to be done in the long term to change that long-term projection and trajectory?

I'll note that while we always present a balanced budget, and certainly we balanced the first year in the plan, it is normal because, again, we haven't done this in a couple of years, to have those out years be out of that balance and then kind of create that framework for those strategic discussions about how we might think differently in terms of our operations, our finances, our strategies, and so on.

I'll note that one major assumption is that with revenue growth, we are assuming that the allocation to capital and debt

as well as school division operations continues to follow the county's formula for allocating tax revenues among operations and capital debt among county government and schools.

So we're continuing with that assumption.

I should note that earlier I talked about the capital plan, the operating plan needing to talk to each other.

So we have assumed in the general fund that as there are county government projects that are going to have operating impacts, that is one of the assumptions we have modeled into this picture.

and then the school division, there's no, I guess, kind of carve out for those operating tax that would be intended to be addressed through the formulaic revenue growth.

So to dive into some more specific assumptions, because this is just a very high level chart, we'll go ahead to the next slide.

I'll start just with a framework that expenditure assumptions are guided as they are usually in our budget and long-range planning by the nine strategic priorities that have been identified by the Board of Supervisors.

and the underlying bar of quality government operations.

Additionally, during the pandemic, we used that pyramid on the right that's really been used to guide funding recommendations around kind of our base financial foundation, the economic outlook and community support, and also our workforce stabilization.

I should, of course, acknowledge there are things that also guide our long-range planning outside of that.

We've had discussions with the Board about a framework for funding around the American Rescue Plan Act that the Board has endorsed.

But we have things such as our county values that inform our funding decisions, such as our newest value of equity, I'm sorry, community, and how we begin to ingrain that look of equity as we assess new projects and programs in the impact statement.

So lots of guidance, but these are the ones I'll be speaking to today in terms of that timely strategic plan.

So I'm going to start actually with the underlying bar of quality government operations.

So some kind of think of that 10th box in addition to the nine in that slide.

There are several expenditure assumptions and I'm going to take a moment and talk through these because there's a lot of bullets on this slide.

And I should note that in the county executives, you know, November 3rd comments, workforce stabilization would be part of the December 1st fiscal year 22 update.

And that is also being reflected in our model for initial planning purposes.

Certainly we can update that as we need to as we work in December.

And workforce stabilization is also where we begin in that first column of the left of this slide.

So we've made assumptions without getting into a lot of dollars, just concepts.

We've assumed there will be a compensation study and phased in implementation of the recommendations from that study over the course of the five-year financial plan.

We've included assumptions for market salary increases for personnel,

as well as the impact of the performance of the county's health insurance fund to make assumptions and tell kind of what that outlook is over five years.

We also have a five-year model for our health insurance fund.

This also includes the impact of the establishment of the county government human resources department at this year 23.

And we're also going to include the impact we're calling critical staffing needs where, as the county executive alluded to, on December 1st, we'll address some funding from the revenue update to address some critical staffing needs.

A portion of those would be included in that are also included in this base model.

So next, moving to the middle column of financial foundation, I'll start with core systems modernization.

This is a phrase the board has heard over the years in a few flavors, whether it be business process optimization or the work that's done through the process.

Sorry, I almost called them by the wrong name.

The performance and strategic planning office led by Christy Shifflett and her work over the years through many of our departments countywide implementations.

As the board has heard before to really explain what Core Systems Modernization is, the technology systems we use across county government, they're disjointed,

They're antiquated.

They don't allow for the community to interact with our government as we would expect them to.

So over the next few years as an organization, we would be embarking on new financial systems, new human resources systems, and new community development systems, and all the related systems that are connected to those to enhance our customer and our employee experience.

This will not only improve our relations with customers, but also provide that enhanced recruitment and retention of our employees, because we'll have systems that are more operational, that are integrated and connected with each other, and much more easy to be trained on as they are standardized.

The second point I'll mention is part of the Financial Foundation.

Again, it's that point of the capital budget and the operating budget talking to each other, so that as we consider capital projects in the future, and just a few examples that have already been identified,

the completion of the course project, the initial phases of Biscuit Run and Park, the Southern Convenience Center.

As those facilities all become operational or are renovated, the additional impacts are incorporated as an assumption in this five-year financial plan.

So third, moving to this third column, we have what I'll call current services, which includes a combination of things.

First, we know that there are some ongoing costs for current services that will need to plan pickup.

a plan to pick up.

There are some grants that are being phased out.

There is the NC Community Center grant, which will be expiring in the coming year.

The board is also aware that we have two FEMA safer grants that are providing 20 fire rescue positions to support fire rescue services in the community.

There's also some pickup of ongoing costs related to fleet replacement.

One of the strategies to get through the pandemic in the short term was to hold back on those fleet replacements.

We're proposing, as we began in fiscal year 2022, to continue a process to get back to a normal level of maintenance and replacement based on a combination of ongoing and one-time funding.

The other items in current services is that we would plan for just a certain number of positions to support increased service demands to maintain service levels.

This is just the concept of very high level.

As our community grows, we have an increasing number of service demands or requests for service.

So for some of those positions where it's not as simple as we can process and prove our way out of those, whether it be something that's foundational as a police officer or a child protective services worker, allowing room in our plan to make sure that we're accommodating those growing demands on those services.

Finally, the board requested that the fire chief, fire rescue chief, prepare a long-range plan to support the fire rescue system.

This plan takes steps to begin to address that over the five years.

with services such as increasing the penthouse fire engine to 24-7 and the related impacts that would take place with the city fire contract.

That's just a very brief summary of a lot of things, not a lot of dollars, but just more concepts in terms of the items we've heard from the board or been directed by the board or thinking of those other just kind of basic financial planning principles we need to be accounting for.

So I'll move next to our sustained focus on strategic priorities.

And some of this, I think, will kind of relate back to the report that Christy Shifflin gave to the board on October 13th, but also where we've been in recent budgets in connecting what the five-year plan looks like in the future, including the work that's about to come ahead with the CIP advisory committee.

So I'll start kind of talking through each of the nine objectives.

In climate action planning, there is the implementation of current strategies that would be underway.

There would also include the exploration of the plastic bag tax and related services that was pursuant to the Board of Supervisors direction on October 13th.

And I'll say not only really the climate action planning as there's ties to economic development in other areas.

So without worrying about maybe what the right boxes for this, I just felt it was important to acknowledge that we would have the Southern and Northern Convenience Centers, the Capital and Operating Tax would be identified as part of this five-year plan as well and worked into those assumptions.

Moving to next on school space needs, funding has already been provided and or work is ongoing at Red Hill Elementary, Scottsville Elementary, Crozet Elementary, Mountain View Elementary, and the design for High School Center 2.

And there will certainly be future facilities that will be considered next by the CIB Advisory Committee.

Really as a follow up to the information that the school board and school staff shared with the board on October 20th at that joint work session.

The third box related to the court's complex expansion and upgrade, the remaining capital budget,

It does include that in the next five years, that final phase, and the related operating impacts are included in the five-year plan as well.

Moving on to the next three boxes, I'll start at the top with outdoor recreational parks and amenities.

This one also is going to be a topic that will be taken up by the CIP advisory committee starting next week, such as future phases of Biscuit Run Park and the related operating impacts.

Looking at infrastructure planning, a lot of this language is around water resources.

Dedicated water resources funding balances that exist for consideration in future capital improvement planning.

And finally, with the Rio 29 area development, there have been resources provided to create that plan in prior years.

And the next steps that were identified back on October 13th were really about leveraging private entity interest, looking at economic development and infrastructure planning in the long term, that may tie to future economic development or transportation leveraging efforts.

So moving to the last slide around our sustained focus on strategic priorities.

We had the economic development program.

We are proposing a not really forward discussion today, this will go back on December 15th, to invest some of the one-time fiscal year 21 year in funding into the economic development fund.

As we build our plan in the out years, starting in fiscal year 24, beginning to allocate ongoing funding to the plan in fiscal year 24.

I should make a note, there wasn't a clear place in this presentation to really put this in.

I have the statement in italics.

It's not really related to this priority at all, but it's a very similar mindset as we look at the county's housing fund, where we would take a very similar approach to economic development, where we would invest one-time money from year end fiscal year 21 to kind of shore up that fund as a starting place.

And then as we look to fiscal year 24 and the out years beginning to apply one-time funding for that.

Moving to the middle box around aging, urban neighborhood revitalization.

Once again, this will be a work around the transportation leveraging program that will begin next week with the CIP Advisory Committee.

Finally, broadband.

The board spent much time in the past year and discussions and strategizing around this.

We have allocated $4.5 million of the American Rescue Plan Act to leverage additional grant funding through the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative.

We're waiting to hear the status of that grant application.

So jumping back with all of those assumptions, that's kind of starting with where we were.

We've made assumptions on those things, and this is what our financial picture looks like.

So I spent time talking about the assumptions, about the things we do know, and now it's time to acknowledge the things we don't yet know and how that influences our long-range planning.

So again, as I said earlier, our assumptions are based on the best information that we have today.

I'll put on the slide a number of unknowns.

A couple of these could be favorable, some could be unfavorable, and some will just continue to be unknowns, or we may add even more unknowns in the future.

The pandemic is ongoing, and while we have a good understanding about what that means to our operations providing services, we are still in the pandemic and just need to be aware that there could be unforeseen impacts that happen in the future.

One thing we're watching closely is inflation and the impact as we're currently in an environment that's different where we've been in recent years.

We know just recently the federal infrastructure bill has been approved and we're watching very closely to understand the impacts of that on top of the American Rescue Plan Act funding the county has received.

I mentioned earlier in the unknown that will be known shortly is the reassessment on real estate that will be coming in December.

We also have some more, maybe more 23 or fiscal year 23 unknowns around the revenue sharing calculation with the city of Charlottesville.

We typically don't find that out based on the data available until early January and also working with the state for the Virginia retirement system.

We have received encouraging news that those rates may decrease, but we have not yet received the actual rate.

So we haven't had enough data or really something to go on to put a number to that yet, but that will be changing very soon.

So with all these unknowns, what might that revenue picture begin to look like if things got better or worse?

So this chart is very similar to the one we've seen before, but this is where we begin to consume that scenario model.

First, I'll talk about the line that's sort of the bottom of this page.

It's kind of a dot followed by a dash of blue, and it's below the orange line, the lowest one there.

This really asks if revenue growth is 1% less than our base projection.

So we're assuming 2.8% annual growth rather than 3.8.

What does that begin to look like to our five-year plan?

And so for perspective, 1% fiscal year 23 would be around 3.5 million.

So that's kind of what that swing would be in terms of that chart that we've sort of zoomed in.

The axis is a little difficult to read.

So we can see now that our plan is no longer in balance, we're out of balance, and that becomes to be exacerbated as time goes on in the out years.

The second line is the dotted line at the top where just that kind of smaller dotted blue line all the way through.

And that's just, what if we had 1% revenue growth greater than we assumed?

Under that scenario, the assumptions and the outliers are actually within balance.

So these assumptions are not intended to represent the best case or the worst case scenario.

And there are many scenarios we can assume differently.

I've just looked at two on the revenue side.

We can make different expenditure assumptions.

We could make all kinds of different ideas.

But I've provided two very simple ones just to provide some perspective to the board, show how it ripples in the plan,

and the short term can be compounded in the long term.

And also the ability as we think, not as maybe a budget mindset, but as we think in a long range planning mindset before we head into the budget process, what are some of those strategies and different decisions we can make that influence that long term in the out years direction of our five year plan?

So not for today's discussion, but we're setting the stage for some policy questions to gauge the board's interest on December 15th.

I've divided these into three columns that will be coming back for more information on the 15th.

First of which was alluded to on November 3rd.

We have $13.2 million in one-time funding from the general funds fund balance available after policy, appropriated, obligated, and planned uses.

Staff will provide a recommendation for the board's consideration.

I'll be clear that no action is required of the board on December 15th.

That is just providing direction where we can then make a decision at a later date in the context of the fiscal year 23 budget process.

Next in the middle is a recognition that real estate taxes make up 55% of the county's general fund budget this year, 2022.

And then calendar year 2020, the state provided additional enabling authority for localities.

The board has already approved the cigarette tax and directed staff to explore cigarette tax.

There are other options that could be made, that have been made available by the state that the board could desire to pursue as well, if you think about what does that long-term mixture strategy look like.

And finally, there's another option in that third column as we explore tax relief programs, of course, within every lens.

And December's staff can provide an overview of what the current relief programs look like and what other enabling authority may exist as we consider all of this as one strategic package in our long-range financial planning picture.

Again, just to foreshadow that conversation that will happen on December 15th.

So to wrap up my comments, I'm going to turn it back to Chair Galloway for the Board of Questions that we hit on earlier in terms of

Reactions of what the board plan does well, what may be missing, what may require additional information that we can bring back to the board on December 15th or longer.

But this is really our time as staff.

I've been certainly talking for a while to answer questions and give as much time for the board discussion as possible.

Thank you, Andy.

All right, board.

So we have some questions we want to attempt to address, but you may have questions as well for Andy or other staff.

So we'll go through and see how we go here.

We've got the time allotted.

Supervisor McKeel, you're up first.

I guess, Andy, thank you very much.

This was really a great overview.

and certainly shows us some of the discussions we'll be having in the future and I really appreciate that.

But this was very helpful, lots of information.

I really, let's see, the questions you wanna answer, what does the plan do well?

Well, I think you've hit the highlights for me.

I was particularly interested in the slide about government operations and what we were gonna be looking at in the future.

And I certainly agree with, I mean, I agree with

everything that I think I see in this presentation.

I'm struggling right now to think about anything that may be missing.

Maybe the other board members will be able to point out some, but right now areas requiring additional information.

I certainly think

I would be interested in some point, and I don't think it's really relevant to your presentation today, I'd be interested in a discussion, though, about how bonds, floating a bond, you know, going to a referendum for a bond might help us with our school's facility needs.

I don't know that that's really appropriate or what you're looking for today.

but it is certainly a discussion that I would like to have as we're talking about the capital improvement program and how the schools can get some of their facilities funded and how that might look.

You do point out rightfully so that while we're always excited when we receive these grants that eventually they run out.

Just a comment.

They phase out and then we are faced with picking up whatever good things they brought us.

And that's always really important to remember as we're accepting grants.

I think that's all I have right now.

I'm sure my fellow board members will have some outstanding ideas and I'll say, boy, I wish I'd thought of that.

Thank you.

I apologize.

Right as you were getting to, I think, the scenarios, my computer crashed.

So I have missed slides, I think, 19 through 25.

So I will come back at the end if something else comes up, and I will listen to the meeting, what I missed, to try to catch up.

I'm very glad to hear the focus on the business process optimization because I think that gets to the core of what a lot of our citizen frustration is going on right now.

I don't have a clear enough understanding going forward about how the previous ARPA funds and the next tranche will affect these things and that you're probably planning to continue to explain that as you go along.

But that is a knowledge gap that I have right now.

And I'll just step off and take notes.

All right, Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, Mr. Bowman, this was a great, I mean, an absolutely great presentation, tons of information.

And really, really do appreciate it.

It's also helpful having those slide numbers on there, because it makes it easy to be able to say, can you go back to one, which I'm going to ask you to do now.

If you'll go back to slide number 22, please.

Yeah, that one there.

That one is very interesting because, and I don't remember the exact figure at the beginning, it was like 3.82, 3.86 is the average increase over the previous number of years with 5 point something percent last year.

So to put a range of plus or minus 1% on there is fairly substantial.

I mean, that's up to about a 20% variance over the average range.

And I think it's important for our community members to understand that that can be fairly significant, recognizing that last year's increase was unanticipated with a great economic recovery before anyone thought it might happen.

And this ties in with a number of the other slides, 14 and 20, where you talked about at the beginning, the difference between revenues and expenditures in the out years as we move forward, which reflects a lot of work that we have to do to be able to make up for some of that.

Could you go to slide number 23, please?

The one that shows the additional taxes, meals taxes, transient occupancy taxes.

I don't honestly know exactly what we charge.

for taxes here in Albemarle County since I don't usually stay at a hotel here.

Having just come back from Norfolk, staying at a hotel where we had the BayCo conference that you pay for the room and then there's a state hotel tax of 6%, a city lodging tax of 9%, a city occupancy tax of $3,

a state tax for the tourism development financing program of 1%, a state tax and additional access fee of 0.5%.

If Albemarle County is not collecting all of those same taxes that our other communities and the Commonwealth are collecting, then if we now have that enabling authority, I would definitely recommend that we look to match the other communities.

I don't think people generally will

make a decision whether to stay or not stay because there's a little bit of additional tax that the local community requests.

And I really appreciate your focus on a couple of things.

One that we not only in our community members really need to understand this.

It's not just what we can afford to build through our capital improvement program, but what we can afford to operate.

And as was just mentioned, those grants in another area, those grants will go away and those are costs

that have been providing services that we have come to expect and want in our community.

And we're then gonna have to pick up those costs as we move forward.

And finally, I just really appreciate the recognition that we have to look at a major review of the county's entire compensation program because we are behind some of our surrounding communities and what we're able to, or what we have been paying

Many of our very valuable workers, and we cannot afford to lose them to have them move next door.

Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bowman.

Supervisor Price was correct.

There's a ton of information and I'm glad you have slide number 23 up here because that's what I'm interested in.

And I'm glad we won't be taking any action on December 15th because I think there's a lot of

a lot more information we will need to mull over before we decide where the 13.2 and one-time funding goes.

I think the making sure that we have additional hotel meals or hotel taxes that the other counties implement is important.

I think it's important though to maybe

on a, you know, slowly get up to that and not, you know, basically phasing some of those prices in, not all at once, but a, you know, a slow momentum.

And then regarding any term programs, I'm interested in seeing what we can do, especially with schools, regarding a

Referendum of Bonding for some of the schools.

So there's a lot here to unpack and it's going to take us a while, but thank you very much.

I very much enjoyed the presentation and look forward to getting more information.

Thanks.

So can you remind me, Andy, when we got the ability to collect sales tax from internet sales,

I believe the change in the Supreme Court decision, I'm going to go back in the notes to that slide, I believe it was the

the increase what I showed earlier in consumer taxes from 19 to 20.

There were several factors that drove that.

It was around, I believe, fiscal year 20 where we had just the impact of that.

Andy, I was just going to add, I believe it was January of 2020 when we started to be able to tax those if memory serves.

I just wanted to help out there, but I don't know the actual breakdown.

Okay, it's a curiosity.

I actually thought it was before February of 2020, so that's good information.

And I guess I'm in the same thought process as Supervisor McKeel right now.

Tomorrow night, and I know this isn't the place to discuss this, but tomorrow night,

We have our community meeting for the fifth and Avon where phase two of the habitat project at Southwood is going to be discussed with a potential maximum of a thousand units.

And so I'm like wondering where all those kids are going to go to school and are we going to need to revise this five-year plan

to be incorporating something to do about those schools.

That large, very, very large development that is, and I don't know what the timing is on that, but that's where my brain is right now.

And I would be very curious to know about the internet sales because during the pandemic, it seems like that's been how people have been

Well, people do a lot of their shopping that way anyway, but during the pandemic, we certainly have seen a dramatic increase in the cardboard coming to the recycling centers.

So I know a lot of online shopping is happening.

So anyway, those are all my comments for now.

Thank you.

Andy, do you guys have, and if you don't have it now, you can provide this at a later time.

We're certainly going to have plenty of time to talk about this stuff.

But your one slide had a fiscal year 22.

It was 68% of revenue was from property taxes.

Yes.

We can provide that as follow-up.

I believe we might actually have a bunch of documents.

Thank you.

So I don't think anything was missing.

I was very happy that the investment that will be put into economic development and affordable housing is there and agree with the additional comment about

You know, I saw two phrases as it comes to salaries.

It was right sizing and market adjustment.

And if the slide went by and those two phrases were not connected to salaries, they should be.

Because it's not just that we have, that we may be behind or lagging behind, but then we have, you know, that's the right size portion, but then we have to be ready to continue to do the market adjustment as we move forward.

That's what allows you to keep and retain

You could right-size it and then find yourself two years, three years down the road out of whack again.

So I appreciated that that was in there.

I don't know what the approach will be.

I know staff does a good job of this.

I mean, we know we've got a change in governors happening for this budget cycle, and you always track what's going on at the state level and how that impacts the local, you know, the local situation.

So we're in the habit of doing that.

And now you've done that with the ARPA funding that has come down.

So this infrastructure bill, I think, is going to take

White Hall.

There could be a way in this planning, because that's going to be over a handful of years as well.

But we understand very clearly that if, whether it's broadband or wastewater, we've dedicated some money to broadbanding.

But if the state and the feds come forward with additional broadband monies, do we need to make sure the local dollars are going to that broadband infrastructure?

Can that be redirected elsewhere?

We don't know any of that yet.

But that's going to play out.

That could play out with wastewater infrastructure.

It can play out with roads, local matching.

My guess, or maybe my suggestion as a process, as we continue to plan as we would, I think it's smart to go, well, what do we have?

What do we know we have?

Let's plan for that.

Let's strategize that way.

But we have a, I don't know, in our budget time, we often park items, and we're going to return to them.

But we should probably start thinking about if local funds freed up because it comes down via infrastructure bill or through whatever, then we have already had the conversation of the priority projects that that money redirects to versus coming back to us and going, hey, we've got $3 million here we don't have to put towards broadband because the broadband money is coming down from the feds.

Then we go, what are we going to do with this $3 million?

I'd rather it be more strategic to be thinking about, but that's a possibility.

And we could start having those conversations so it's not just reacting to whatever it is that pops up.

So that's something that I would just suggest could be part of this process, if it makes sense.

You know, we talked about the pandemic and what we've gone through.

I think we should all be aware that we don't know what the next pandemic will be.

This pandemic obviously can still have shelf life and continue to go, but we could have a different or new health crisis that we're unaware of or something that rises to this level.

I think we do a good job of planning for those type of things, but obviously want to keep that in mind.

I think that's all I have right now.

In terms of the questions that you asked, Bandi, do you want to put those back on the screen?

Did we hit on your questions that you were hoping the Board to address?

And then actually, Supervisor McKeel, I see your hand up.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, I really wanted to just add that a couple of things, maybe just because I went first.

I referenced government operations, but Andy, I just want you and staff to know that that's when I said that I was talking about employment compensation, critical staffing needs, systems, all of those things that other supervisors have mentioned, I agree on because they are critical.

to our work, right?

And it certainly goes to the heart of some of the comments we heard from the public this afternoon.

I do know, Andy, Donna made some interesting comments when she was talking about checking out of the hotel.

right when she was at Vaco and all of those.

I think it would be really good, and I don't know that you have to do it today, but my understanding is that some of those taxes that she referenced, we don't have the ability to institute based on we are not a city, we are a county, and I think clarity on all of those for the Board of Supervisors would be really important as to what we can do and what we can't do.

And maybe that's more of a comment, or maybe you want to answer that quickly now.

But Donna's right.

Cities are able to do all of this that my understanding is that we don't have the ability to do.

So with that, I'll thank you, Ned, for letting me have one more shot at it.

Sure, yeah, there's certainly maybe not full equal authority with the cities, but there's more flexibility than existed two years ago.

And I didn't know if County Attorney Greg Camper saw his camera turned on, if you wanted to add anything to that.

Yeah, the local enabling authority is the one that we impose, just the basic local transit occupancy tax.

There are also, there may also be regional

That would be a good discussion for the future, I guess.

Just a quick discussion for us so we all understand.

And we may find that with the new General Assembly, some of what we've been given, we may find is not so given anymore.

And Supervisor McKeel, if I can add, that is our plan for the December 15th conversation is to at least tee up what do we have the authority to do and really make it relative to the other areas, most notably the city of Charlottesville, because I think Supervisor Price or someone mentioned, you don't typically make your decision about what hotel to stay in based on the taxes you pay.

and so there might be some equalization or some rebalancing there just to be consistent with our neighbor.

And I believe our enabling authority allows us to go to at least the rate that they charge.

The cap on counties was lifted.

Mr. Chair, thank you.

I believe it's a great discussion.

The staff is always appreciative of guidance and the thoughtfulness that the board goes through in trying to give us your

what you're thinking and how we need to be beginning to prepare to go through the FY 23 budget process.

Several board members said things that I took note of and it resonated with me.

First of all, one of the board members was talking about our five-year planning.

and talked about a meeting with Southwood and the growth that we've got and the need for us to keep an eye on our schools and capacity.

And the board recently went through a joint planning meeting with schools, a discussion with schools and also the CIP Advisory Board will be meeting next week.

So where I'm kind of going with this is that I want to say first that we see our partnership with our schools as being very valuable, not just as we begin our budget process, but we really are meeting with our schools' leadership every single month.

We're meeting with our steering team every single month, all 12 months of the year.

We're talking about our operational challenges, our capital needs, our capital challenges.

And with this encouraging revenue news,

One of the things that we're doing is we're looking at capital, but we want our capital to also be connected and inform our operations.

And I believe one of our board members said that today.

It's not just about capital, but it also is about once we build capital, how does that affect operations?

I remember recently in the last several years that we talked about High School Center 2 and it having an operational cost of $1.6 million a year.

That's what it costs to staff it and open it.

That's old news.

That's old data.

But where I'm going with this is that, you know, as we look at our capital needs on the local government side, we're not just looking at capital and strategy, but we have to look at the lines of five-year cost operations.

And we're working with our schools also in what I see as a real strong economy that continues to improve.

We also have to anticipate not just what the capital needs are, but what the operational needs are too.

So that we're able to afford things as we open it up.

And those are the discussions that we're having with our school partners.

And we want to continue to have those.

And we want to do that also with the school board and the Board of Supervisors.

And it's our hope that we're able to meet everybody's expectations as much as possible.

So I just wanted to make those points.

And then this leads into next week, on the December 1st meeting, where someone earlier today said, decisions that we make today, do we have an ability to afford that tomorrow?

and our judicious conservative management over the last 18 to 20 months.

It's going to put us in a position where we can begin to address some needs now.

And we'll talk more about that on December the 1st.

But what it won't do is it will not hamstring our fiscal year 23 budget process in no way.

I think we're good.

All feedback is helpful and I appreciate the board's time.

All right, very good.

Thank you very much, Andy.

All right, board, then we have actually got caught up.

So we are at basically three, we're close to the recess.

We are scheduled for a recess at 3.15 to 3.30.

If it's all right, why don't we just stay on the schedule and come back at 3.30 at the end of the recess, build an extra minute or two in there.

Thank you, Travis.

We are coming out of our recess for number 11, the county's partner entities in the fiscal year 2020 cost allocation plan.

And Lori Allshouse, our noted VIP today.

Good afternoon, Lori.

Yeah, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you very much.

I'm going to start this presentation.

I'll be joined with others along the way.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this information about our project.

As you know, I'm Lori Alshouse, the Assistant Chief Financial Officer of Policy and Partnerships in the Department of Finance and Budget.

Here with me today are Nelsie Burch, who's the county's Chief Financial Officer, Nusha Dao, who is the Manager of Policy and Performance in the Department of Finance, and two representatives from Maximus Consulting, Incorporated,

Mr. Cleggston, who is the Vice President of Financial Services, and Jason Jennings, who is the Director of Cost Accounting and who's been a lead on our cost allocation project here at the county.

We're very appreciative of their work.

We're really glad they could be here with us today, and they're here for your questions after our presentation, if you have some on the cost allocation plan.

Ms.

Dalenile will be presenting the information.

Cost allocation plan has just been completed in October.

We just have 11 slides for you today.

Our representatives from Maximus, as I mentioned before, are here for questions, and Ms.

Birch may provide supporting context along the way and will also be available for any questions today.

We'll provide time at the end of the presentation for any questions or comments by board members.

So here's our agenda.

We'll start off by providing you with information on the partner entities project.

We'll provide you with information on the background of what we worked on, what we did, what we learned, and the results of our efforts.

We're going to share with you information about the cost allocation plan.

The cost allocation plan is something we've done every year here at the county.

This one's a little bit different, and we'll share with you why later.

It's a finance-related document that provides us with information primarily about the cost of the internal departments in the county, the administrative departments such as finance, information technology, and human services.

They're sometimes called your administrative support services of your county or your central services, depending on how people view them.

and it's going to share with us how those costs are spread across all the other departments as well as our partner entities.

It also shares information on how costs are shared.

These support costs are provided to the county schools as well.

While we completed this cost allocation plan for each year, Maximus is our new group that we're working with.

They're very experienced and thorough.

They provide more cost allocation plans than any other firm in the nation.

And so this year, our cost allocation plan is more robust, and that's why we're bringing it to you today.

It has much more detail about the administrative support we're providing to our departments, our partner entities, our commissions, and committees across the county.

So a little bit of background just to give you some context.

On page 61 in your adopted fiscal year 22 budget, there's a chart that's called expenditure by type.

So it's another way to kind of look at your budget from different lenses.

This chart shows you that the county provides nearly $26 million in direct programmatic support to a variety of outside entities.

And these entities include regional joint operations that are established together with the county and others.

such as the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

It includes multiple nonprofit organizations that we work with like the SPCA.

And also the $26 million includes even those agencies we fund through the human services ABRT funding process.

The reason I'm sharing that with you today, just to kind of share with you the magnitude of how we work with outside entities here in Albemarle County.

There are many, many community benefits, as you know, from these partnerships, and they provide critical and valued services all across the community.

So in addition to providing this direct funding to these outside entities, there's much more that we do.

We provide a direct administrative support to over 50 entities, and again, this includes committees and commissions and those types of things as well.

such as fiscal services, legal support, information technology support, human resource administration, facility management.

And we're also going to talk with you a little bit about grants management because we do manage grants for a number of outside entities.

The services that we provide range from complete stand-up administrative support across the board like we used to do for the Albemarle County Regional Jail to much more limited support

such as payroll services that we provide for KTEC.

Our agreements vary also.

Some are very, very detailed, very thorough to some agreements that we have from the past that are just verbal agreements.

So many of our agreements are quite dated right now and also they also need to be carefully reviewed and updated.

And I failed to mention, if you want to step back, I'm sorry, Ms.

Dow, I slipped past a very important

a moment here on the slide.

It's important for you to know that the county collects fees for fiscal agent services from eight of the partner entities.

And so I wanted to make sure that we pointed that out.

There are some entities that provide fees directly to the county for these services.

Thank you.

So now I'd like to just share with you more about what we did.

We clarified our relationships.

We looked at everything we were doing for all these different partner entities.

We studied them.

We organized the agreements.

We categorized all the information.

We also assisted the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail to stand up its own administrative services.

We revamped our grants administration business processes and we incorporated the administrative fees, requesting administrative fees to support these services that we provide associated with grants.

And finally, as we mentioned earlier, we contracted with Maximus who provided this fiscal year 2020 cost allocation plan for us to really provide us much more knowledge about what we're doing in these areas and to guide us in our future work.

I'll now turn the presentation over to Ms.

Thank you, Ms.

Allshouse.

My name is Newsha Dao.

I've been with the county for over a year now.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to share more about the items Ms.

Allshouse mentioned.

First, we collected all the agreements we could find related to partner entities

and centralize them in one repository on the county's internal website.

All county departments have access.

For the first time, partner entity agreements are easy to find located in one place.

We included historic and current agreements.

Secondly, we assisted the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Since 1977, the county has provided fiscal agent services to ACRJ.

In January of this year, it was mutually decided that the county would no longer serve as the jail's fiscal agent, and we would help stand up their administrative services.

In January, we provided project management services.

I'm sorry, my slides are not advancing.

There we go.

Sorry about that.

In January, we provided project management services to assist with the transition.

I worked as the project manager on the county side, and we helped the jail hire its own project manager.

We worked in detail through finance, accounting, human resources, benefits, payroll, and other areas to ensure a seamless transition.

As of July 1st, the county was no longer the jail's fiscal agent.

While we no longer collect the fiscal agent fee, which was $160,000 this past year, we have reduced the associated work for a number of departments.

In finance and budget, this resulted in the removal of 151 positions from our payroll system.

And from now on, we will no longer be providing up to 17,000 accounting transactions per year.

We coordinated the development of a new MOU, and per this agreement, ACRJ remains on the county's health plan while they research the plan that's best for them.

Sorry.

Thirdly, we improved grants administration.

In fiscal year 2021, we received $20 million in grants.

$17 million of that was CARES funding.

Usually we receive about $3 to $4 million per year, so this was a phenomenal year.

It was an important year to get proactive and improve our processes to be competitive because we knew there was more federal funding coming.

We refined the grants management business processes to be more efficient and effective.

We have a dedicated grants team, which includes a grant accountant for the first time.

She ensures funding is dispersed on time and focuses on grant accounting services.

We systematically request administrative fees when partner entities grant funding either flows through the county as a pass through, when we apply with a partner entity, which happens on many occasions, or when we apply on behalf of a partner entity and contract with them to do the work for the community.

Now I'd like to turn the presentation back to Ms.

Thank you.

So as we discussed earlier, as we mentioned, we conducted a more robust cost allocation plan this year.

A copy of it is attached to the executive summary that goes with this presentation.

The plan is 300 pages.

It's very robust.

We were required to do this every year for some of our federal and state funding, but we wanted to really do much more work this year and have a more thorough analysis that included a strong focus on our partner entity efforts.

This project was led by Mr. Jennings, who worked closely with Ms.

Dahl to ensure we incorporated even additional information and details that were provided directly by our internal departments.

The plan was completed in October 2021, so it's fresh off the press.

It utilized financial data that came right from our system, so when you heard the word transactions from Ms.

Dow, it took all these transactions, these financial accounts of everything that we were doing, and they also used allocation statistics.

Maximus is a company that does more cost allocation plans than any other company across the nation.

So they use a lot of their algorithms and statistics that they use in preparing these types of plans.

And they allocated these costs.

They used our cost accounting code structure, and they did it in accordance with the federal cost allocation principles that we adhere to.

They provided a cost allocation across all of our county departments.

so we know, for example, how much financial services that we're providing to community development.

So it really shows us how we work amongst ourselves and between ourselves.

And it also provided data regarding, of course, the one thing that Ms.

Dow and I were really focusing on was the county support for our partner entities.

And as I mentioned earlier, we do have representatives with us today, and they'll be available at the end of the presentation for any questions you might have about the plan.

So next slide.

So what did we learn from it?

So we did this work.

We worked a lot with the partner entities.

We're really thinking about like, what does this tell us?

So when we got this plan back, what we found, what we learned was our unreimbursed administrative support services limits our capacity to serve our local government departments and our partner entities.

We learned that in every case, county government's costs to provide administrative services exceeded the amount recovered in the county in fees in 2020.

We provide an equivalent of about approximately $3 million in unreimbursed direct services to our schools, and equivalent of approximately 1.6 in unreimbursed direct services to our partner entities.

and then the thing that we learned not only from the cost allocation plan but from all of our work this year that we really strongly believe that dedicated contract management resources centralized will really increase the county's efficiency and effectiveness in working with agreements and with our partner entities and other agreements here in the county.

So with that, what are our next steps?

We think that this plan

can really help inform a lot of things that we do.

The first thing is it'll really inform our conversations with our partner entities.

We can work with our partner entities with this data and talk with them about whether to increase our administrative fees to cover the cost of the services that we provide.

Alternatively, we may want to provide services in kind, some or all services, or we may want to reduce the amount of services that we provide.

So it's a great conversation starter.

And with that information and with those conversations, we'll prepare or amend existing agreements as appropriate.

The plan does more for us than that.

It really will help us with the continued development of the county government's human resources department.

This is going to provide a roadmap for our new director so she can clearly understand

the HR work that the county provides for each department and our partner entities as she develops her staffing plan.

Also, the results can improve performance of the county's internal business processes.

This could be used in support of the new Office of Performance and Strategic Planning and will inform the core systems modernization project.

and finally, this data will be really useful in the development of the fiscal year 2023 budget.

And soon, we will be presenting some ... Well, the Department of Finance and Budget will be presenting a recommendation for some dedicated resources to centrally start managing these agreements.

So I want to thank you.

This is all we have today as far as the presentation part.

I want to thank you for the opportunity

to share this, my last presentation with you all.

This is my last presentation and Ms.

Dowell's first presentation.

So you're getting bookends here today as far as speakers.

I want to thank you for this opportunity today.

We do believe this project will provide lasting benefits to the county.

It's going to improve our partnerships with others and our service to the community.

I want to just recognize Ms.

Dowell and say how wonderful it's been to work with her on this project as a new county employee.

She's going to be wonderful.

And we welcome your thoughts, comments, and questions.

This concludes our presentation.

Thank you, Lori.

And let's go through and see what questions we have here.

Yes, first I want to say thank you, Lori, very much.

We're sure going to miss you.

And welcome, Ms.

Dowell.

Thank you very much for being here.

And both of you have great smiles, and that's lovely.

Thank you.

I must admit, when I first picked up my board packet and looked at the size,

For the public, they don't realize it, but our packet probably has two inches of information regarding this agenda item.

It was almost overwhelming.

So I truly appreciate the work that this board packet agenda item indicates.

And I guess, Lori, just to be clear so I understand, this presentation is really for information.

You're not asking for any board direction today.

You're going to be coming back to us at a later date with recommendations and suggestions.

Okay.

I will say that this is great work.

And I do think that this is an area that has needed attention for some time.

I guess a lot of us didn't realize how many

departments and agencies.

When we talk about supporting 70 joint operations and agencies within our community, my first thought is, wow, the work that we're doing in our HR department or our business office to support 70 agencies is in fact incredible.

And while I really appreciate all that good work and understand

how these memorandums of understanding have happened over the years, we can't be everything to everybody.

Just to say it very clearly from my perspective, and if we're going to continue to support many of these agencies, we're gonna have to recoup our costs.

We can't continue to lose money because that's money that we could direct to other

work that the county needs to do.

Having said that, I don't know how the divisions, it's, you don't want to talk about that now.

There are some that maybe needed to be treated one way, some another.

I will say that you mentioned the Albemarle, Charlottesville Regional Jail, and we went through this process and

The regional jail is now handling their own, right?

Our own.

And it's worked out very well.

I think Doug could probably speak to this maybe better than I, but at least from my viewpoint as the chair, it's worked out very well.

And I will add that part of it is it's actually better for the jail while we've had to absorb a higher cost, right?

We're actually getting our work done quicker.

Because with all due respect, when Albemarle County is supporting 70 joint agencies, there were many meetings where Superintendent Coomer would say, I submitted this to the county but have not heard back yet.

And we had to wait often to hear back from the county.

And now we're able to just do the work ourselves.

and that's not a criticism for staff at all.

You guys are doing the work for seven days.

So I'm just trying to be really clear that in a way it's been a win for the jail to take over our own accounting.

And I think other organizations might find that's the case as well.

But certainly I look forward to more recommendations from staff on this.

on this endeavor.

And I think it is really a great, while we're working on our systems and updating our software and all the other work we're doing, this timing is perfect.

So thank you very much.

I hope I've answered your questions that you wanted, Lori.

Am I getting to what you wanted as far as discussion today?

Absolutely.

Okay, great.

Well, thank you for this presentation.

This is an eye-popping series of figures that is really amazing.

So what jumps off the page was eight of our 70 agencies are the only ones who are paying in the overhead.

Did I understand that correctly?

and the others are just getting a free ride, even running HR and things like that.

So that was just a kapow moment for me that I'm really glad you're working on changing that.

And that there was a range of services, but was there also a range of cost?

So if someone had a full suite, were they paying a whole lot more than someone who had one little chapter done?

And I maybe should have found that in the 300 page document, but I didn't.

Yes, Supervisor Mallek.

It's a great question.

The fees vary.

It's usually a percentage.

So a lot of the ones we charge are like 2% on your budget, or in some cases, 2% on your revenues.

In some cases, there's a fee per quarter.

So they're not all consistent.

That's something that we found across the board that wasn't consistency and it didn't have the range.

And that's what's so exciting about Maximus' cost allocation plan, because then you can look at it and you can go, this particular agency takes this buffet of services from the county, including HR, the attorneys, these kinds of services, but yet they're paying this fee where

Someone else that fee might be right for, but depending on the amount of services that you get, that the fee should be possibly structured differently.

So I think that's why we're saying this is going to start these conversations with our partner entities, because now we have data.

You know, we had a theory that we were paying more, you know, we were getting less than what we were having to put out for all these internal departments.

But now we have the data that truly backs it up and can be a starting point.

Ms.

Mallek, do you mind if I add something to that?

I'm so sorry to cut in.

I think what I want to make sure we drive home is there was a disconnect between what was being charged and the actual cost to do the service.

And so what that has done, and it's kind of connecting back to Ms.

McKeel and what she said, is we've got to have a recognition as we move forward

that we need, if we end up charging the true cost, we're not still staffed to do that thing.

Procurements, HR, other things that we've promised.

And so there is kind of to Supervisor Galloway, Chair Galloway's comment earlier, there's got to be a right sizing as well.

If we are going to provide a service that meets the expectation of some of our external partners.

right now it's very disconnected and this is the first step is kind of the recognition of it and then okay we've got some decisions that we can make we've got some choices which was what that last slide was trying to get at is we can either cut back on services or we can beef up our resources to be able to service these entities or we have to just say you know

County taxpayers are going to have to pay for this.

The other point that I wrote down as either Lori or Nisha was saying about centralization and standardization of process.

in house is so important because over decades, individual departments have different operations that have floated along and different outside agencies are being, some people have to pay for field use and others don't.

Those kinds of inequities are a really big problem out in the public.

And so I think having this kind of study that you're doing will really help to get everybody on the same and proper page and somebody with the skills to manage all this is gonna be doing it.

and that'll be really important.

Supervisor Price.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, Ms.

Alshouse, Ms.

Dowell.

Thank you for your presentations.

Ms.

Birch, as always, your additional comments.

I totally concur that the work that is being done is critical and there must be an allocation of costs that pay for the services that we provide.

So that is the bottom line.

I'm really struggling, however, to understand some of the data that I see in here.

And I don't wanna take the board's time, but I'm gonna ask to have someone sit down with me and go over, because as I read through here, and I will just throw out a couple of examples, there are things I just don't quite understand.

So for example, Schedule A, page C-35, the Albemarle School Board has zero cost allocation for building depreciation.

and I don't understand that since they're in the spaces, you would think that they would also have some depreciation.

If you go to page C44 for summary of allocated costs, the school board $2,123, both of my CACs, the 5th and Avon CAC and the village of Rivanna CAC,

have a cost allocation higher than the school board.

So I don't wanna spend a lot of time on, you know, right now on those specifics.

I just don't understand how some of this is calculated.

And so at a different time, I would just appreciate someone Ms.

Birch from your office sitting down with me.

I will save my 300 pages so they don't have to be printed again.

So I have a better grasp of exactly what it is that we're looking at here.

The work itself is critical.

Yes, thank you very much.

I'm gobsmacked with all that information, which is critical to how we do business.

The recouping of actual costs, the in-kind possible services, and I think there was a third one that I can't remember right now.

but I think those are I like the flexibility that you're showing you're not just saying okay we're going to do this and this but you know there's a variety of I think Miss Alshaus referred to the buffet approach and I think that's really good because that's based on need and affordability of those that we are serving and we

I like the fact that we have to come back on services or beef up staff, which goes to the buffet approach.

What can you afford?

What can we afford to do?

And it's all part of our fiscal accountability, frankly, that I think we know that we owe our citizens and we owe our county

I'm kind of surprised we weren't already doing this, but we weren't, but now we are and maybe that goes hand in hand with all the systems and the software improvement that we're going to, that we're investing in now, which I think is critical.

So it's updating how we do business, and I think it's very critical, and I thank you very much.

And I do agree with Supervisor Price, again, that I would like to sit down with someone, and I too will save my 300 pages to go over that with somebody.

And I want to just mention right now that we do have Maximus representatives with us today, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Kligston.

I know that they would

They've been sitting down with us a lot, so I think we've gotten a lot from them.

I think they said we were one of their customers that they've spent the most time with because we've been asking so many questions of them, but I bet they would probably be willing to also help with these questions and answers because it's their product.

and they know how their algorithms and how all the information flowed through these documents.

So I just want to recognize them and mention that they're here today.

That would be very nice.

And yes, I do not expect them to go through the 300 pages tonight.

Of course, I agree with everything and appreciate all the work.

My one suggestion, though, I was kind of along the lines with Donna when I tried to wade through this yesterday.

going, I don't understand this, I don't understand that.

I think I'm going to skip sitting down with anybody since I'm not gonna be on the board for next year.

But my suggestion that I think would be really good for the public and for everybody is to have a good executive summary with this document.

There really isn't that in with the document.

I think that Lori actually gave us a pretty good executive summary.

And so I think that would be a nice added plus for this document going forward.

And that's all I have to say.

Yeah, I don't have anything new to add.

I certainly agree with making sure if we're providing services that we were keeping the cost and all that's done.

And if we're not, we understand the rationale behind why we are.

I'll only add in addition to wanting to understand this document.

So not only did you make us dizzy, Laurie, with your retirement, but you decided to leave us with a document

Well, I'll leave it at that.

But here, I'm just going to reiterate, for those who have the interest in wanting to understand the document, maybe a little bit as to why.

When we put our eyes on these things at the level that we are used to looking at this, the insight, I hope, can be valuable to those who are used to being down in the weeds.

And if we can't make sense of the view, then we can't add anything to

to the conversation.

And that can be frustrating in our position of wanting to help and to do that.

So whoever is best who can do that, that's great.

That's not to say that what was provided here, we got the high points.

That's great.

I wasn't anticipating that.

But I had like others questions about, wait a minute, allocation units and over.

And maybe it's just me being a little unsettled that I couldn't

logic, get the logic behind it.

But once that's explained, there could be valuable input coming back from the board when we go through and go, oh, this is how this works.

Mr. Gallaway, do you mind if I step in here?

And we will absolutely do that.

I think

Your thoughts and comments are really helpful in how we navigate this in the future, so I definitely have that in mind as we think about the current plan.

This gets updated annually, so it's not a one-and-done thing, and it's just that this is a much more robust plan, as you've seen.

and we wanted it to have its moment not only because of that but also because I did want to share that I really pushed for this to be in front of the board because this is representative of an effort that we started thanks to Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive,

and some of his work with the jails, that we needed to take a look, a deeper look.

And so when Lori moved over from from OMB and became the assistant CFO for policy and partnerships, this is really the work that she's been doing for the last year and a half.

She has focused with Noosha to really try to understand

and she was the perfect person for it because she already knew the partners and she could go and grab all of this information and get it somewhere that we can start to do something from it.

And so I am super, super proud of this work.

I think it's one of the best things that Lori can leave us because we didn't have it in this comprehensive way before.

And so we will continue to iterate on this and figure out how best to

to get the board and the public to understand that this is such a valuable piece of information and also how and what our relationship with our outside entity and outside partners are going to be in the future.

And then lastly, it's really more of an awareness than anything.

And I know that in my time here, many board members have talked about, you know, are we giving away our capacity?

Do we need to do something differently?

Something doesn't seem right.

And this is that awareness that we now have a tool

and we've got a structure in place that we can start to answer questions and evaluate our relationship differently.

And so I'm really excited and I'm so happy that this is actually the moment that Lori gets to hand this off and we've got to take it and run with it.

And she brought Nisha along and then her successor starts on Monday and she's got a week with him in order to train him

on what we've been doing here.

And so I think we're in a really good place to be able to help the board along and help our entity partners who are going to need to understand this as well.

So we've got to be able to refine that.

So thank you so much for those comments.

Thank you.

And I mean, it's just one thing, right?

If you get it and you don't get it, you either input your own logic in, which could be dangerous,

or you just have to put it aside until you understand the logic or you could toll the logic.

So I fully expect you guys got all of this down.

I didn't mean to be flipping away that suggested otherwise, but I don't want to be inserting my own logic.

So I was like, oh, got to close this file now.

Thank you, Chair Galloway and Ms.

Burch, thank you.

And those comments were really relevant and we really appreciate it.

I think what you get from the sense of the board is that we all

Also appreciate the necessity of the depth of the detail that has gone into this work.

I just need the magic decoder ring so I can understand what it is that I'm reading.

No, but I would like to just provide, if you don't mind, just an opportunity for Mr. Cleggston to say a few words.

He did say something to me today that I'd like him to share.

I said to him, I said, how are we different than anyone else?

Or how are we like other people?

They do this all over the nation and the state.

So anyway, I thought maybe he could share a few words with the board, if he wouldn't mind on that.

Please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, from Maximus, we enjoyed working with with Lori and Nuesha and the county.

It's been a good relationship.

They have challenged us in many ways, and I'll just mention what Lori was talking about that, you know, we work with a bunch of cities and counties in Virginia and North Carolina and lots of other states, but

You probably have more partners than anyone else that I work with in terms of the outside entities that you support.

Normally, we work with Chesterfield County, they may have two or three or four of these different entities.

Thank you.

And Chesterfield County is larger.

Very good.

Well, thank you, sir.

All right.

Well, thank you both.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Okay, board, we are to our closed meeting.

Yes we do.

I move that the board go into a closed meeting pursuant to section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 to discuss and consider the annual performance of the county executive and under subsection 5 to discuss and consider the expansion of three existing Albemarle County

businesses identified as projects HOMA, Cardinal, and Stark, where no previous announcements have been made of their interest in expanding their facilities at new locations in the county and under subsection 6 to discuss and consider the investment of public funds

related to an economic development project in the Scottsville Magisterial District where bargaining is involved and where, if made public initially, the financial interests of the county would be adversely affected and, under subsection 8, to consult with and be briefed by legal counsel regarding specific legal matters requiring legal advice related to a land use application.

Okay.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Mr. Beasler-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

All right, very good.

Travis will let us know when we are no longer recording and

All right, thank you.

We are coming out of closed meeting.

Yes, it is.

I move that the Board of Supervisors certify by a recorded vote that, to the best of each supervisor's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting.

Palmer?

Now we're broadcast.

I was not seeing the broadcast.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Calaway?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

All right, thank you very much.

There are no motions coming out of closed meeting this evening.

And our first item tonight, number 14, from the public.

Matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

All right, very good.

We will close from the public.

All right, we have an announcement related to tonight's public hearing number 16, ZMA 2019-08, Ryo Point, formerly Parkway Place's zoning map amendment.

It's brought to our attention today that the notice that was provided via signage that then directs to a website was done incorrectly, that the landing page for the website was not accurate.

So that brings the public notice into question.

And because of this error, we will need to defer this application to do the proper public notice process.

So the board will be doing that.

It is likely, provided nothing changes.

But obviously, a public notice will have to go out.

But the earliest that could occur will be December 15.

but if that changes then of course the appropriate public timelines will have to be adhered to and that notice will be put out.

So again that public hearing will not be heard tonight due to the inaccurate notice and the board would like to apologize to both the applicant and to the community members for this error but the proper public notice must be followed so at this point we will defer and follow the correct process and bring this matter back before the board.

With that then the agenda we're going to move to the next item on our agenda number 15 from the county executive and this is report on matters not listed on the agenda.

Yes, sir, Mr. Chair, members of the board, we sure do.

And as always, we appreciate the opportunity to have this time, not just for our board, but for our community and for also our staff who may be watching this evening.

Thank you very much.

OK, we'll forward the slide, please.

Plus each year, our Albemarle County Police Department partners to present a community drug take-back day.

The drug take-back event is a way for community members to safely and securely dispose of unused, unwanted and expired prescriptions.

over the counter medicines and drugs.

There are no questions asked at these events and items are collected and then they are safely incinerated.

The program has a lot of benefits.

It keeps drugs out of the hands of those they were not intended for and also out of our waterways.

Thank you to the Albemarle County Police Department and to the community partners Wegmans and Sentara-Martha Jefferson Hospital for a successful fall event.

We expect to be out again in the spring for this event and it's very popular.

At our most recent event, the pictures here, shown we collected a total of 728 pounds of drugs and related drug materials.

Okay?

Albemarle County Police Department supported two community events to celebrate Halloween this year, one at Southwood and one in Crozet that emphasized pedestrian safety tips.

Down in Esmont, the Love Albemarle Cleanup was only the first of a series of events to celebrate the fall season and Foster Fellowship.

Over 300 people participated across these events, with over 4,500 pieces of county being distributed throughout the community.

Albemarle County Police Department is working hard to raise awareness about the hazards of distracted driving, which contribute to the high number of fatal crashes on county roads.

On November the 9th, officers were out on the most dangerous roadways in our county doing proactive enforcement for distracted driving.

Most often, it's a cell phone being used by the driver.

82 vehicles were stopped, 76 drivers were ticketed for using handheld phones while driving.

Our police department wants to remind the community to focus on operating your vehicle when you're out on the roads.

It helps to keep you and everyone else safe.

Our Fall Love Albemarle community litter cleanup series wrapped up with the final event on Saturday, October the 30th, and that focuses on roadway litter in Esmont, mostly along Porter's Road.

To recap, we organized events this fall in the east side by the Milton boat landing central along the Rivanna River near Darden Tow and south in Esmont.

We had 90 volunteers participate in the three events and we estimate that we picked up over 1,000 pounds of trash.

We expect to be back picking up in the spring.

Today we launched our second community read, which is a reader

on racial covenants and the legacy of that practice in Albemarle County.

Racial covenants are deed restrictions that carry with land inserted by the seller.

Racial covenants were a common practice across the United States until they were banned in the 1940s.

This topic is timely due to the upcoming comprehensive plan review.

The reader is available on our website through our regional library and at our little free libraries in Albemarle County Parks.

Board, this is a banner that's currently on our website.

and it ties to the application processing delays that our community development department is currently experiencing due to a number of issues.

I will remind the board that you received a memorandum from our deputy county executive.

He sent that to our board on October the 28th and that was a detailed memorandum talking about the challenges with work volume and the delays that we were experiencing in the community development department.

Along with that, we are identifying solutions both with contract help, outside assistance, along with positions that have been previously frozen that have been unfrozen, and we are aggressively recruiting to fill those positions.

To focus for a second on the volume, we're on track this year to receive 3,500 building permits alone.

That's an increase of almost 15% over the last year.

In the first three months of fiscal year 21, July through September, we received nearly 700 new permits with a construction value of over $88 million.

From August to September only, the number of permits received went up 56%.

For the same time period, our job values went up $1.5 million or 5%.

In the span of that month, we saw more permits, but smaller job values for permit.

We're working this issue through some process optimization.