Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   12/15/2021

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon everyone, and I call to order this regular meeting of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors scheduled for December 15th at one o'clock.

I would also note that this is the final meeting for the supervisors elected in 2017, Ned Galloway of the Rio District, Diantha McKeel of Jack Jouett, and Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District.

This morning we also had the pleasure of swearing in

for a successive term, Ned Gallaway of the Rio District and Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, as well as Jim Andrews, who will take over as the supervisor for the Samuel Miller District.

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

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District Supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller District Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District

and myself, Supervisor Price of the Scottsville Magisterial District.

Our Chair, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District has been called away on short notice and will join us as soon as he is able.

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.

All right board at this time we need to have adoption of the final agenda.

I've already been notified that 8.7 of the consent agenda the Southwood development project will be pulled.

Also would like to note that the final comprehensive annual financial report uploaded to the county website on December 13th.

Additionally, an error in minutes was posted for item number 17.

The correct minutes for item number 17, SP 2021-00012, the Education Transformation Center were uploaded to the county website on December 13th.

Are there any other comments with regard to the agenda from any supervisors or if not,

Thank you.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Albemarle?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

It's now time for any brief announcement by board members.

I just have a personal announcement and that is that I'm really going to miss Supervisor Palmer.

She's my hiking buddy, let me put it this way, she drives me on hikes, which is great.

And I get to see so much of Albemarle County because of her.

But besides that, I'm going to really miss her.

her thoughtfulness in everything she does and I'm going to miss her aiding me and her environmental stances.

You know, no one can hold up to her environmental stance.

I really, really appreciate that.

She's taught me so much.

I do welcome Jim coming in, Mr. Andrews coming in.

That's going to be, I think it's going to be a great addition, but I am really going to miss Supervisor Palmer.

I'm really going to miss you, Liz.

Thank you.

And Supervisors, we will take a few moments in just a little bit to recognize Supervisor Palmer.

Well, thank you, Bea, and I'll save my comments about leaving until when you recognize me.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

I do have a couple of announcements, but I just want to point out, Bea, that you and Liz can still hike together.

There's no rule against that, right?

Oh, I am proud.

You go with more than one of you at a time now.

Having said all that, I just want to make a couple of announcements.

As everyone, I think, is certainly at this meeting is aware, there have been recent, in the recent weeks, there have been social media threats against our local schools and Albemarle County Public Schools is holding a school safety community forum

via Zoom tomorrow night at 6 30.

And it's being hosted by the County Police County Schools Commonwealth Attorney's Office.

So I'm just making folks aware that that's happening tomorrow at 6 30.

and if anyone would like to join, I'm sure they would be welcome and you can find out more information in the link and everything on the Albemarle County Public Schools website.

But I think it would be a very informative safety zoom for certainly parents and people that are involved in our schools, are interested in our schools, which I hope is most people.

Anyway, and then the other second thing I wanted to just announce, we're pretty excited about is that

Our area transit system CAT is now assured of offering fare-free rides for the next four years, which is pretty exciting.

And the CARES Act had provided enough funding to CAT to provide fare-free rides for three years, but now we've received an initial grant from DRPT through the Department of Rail and Transportation.

and that's going to allow us to have four years of free fare riding.

And of course free is free to the users, but at the end of the day, the transit system still has to be paid for by the localities.

I feel like I have to say that, but it is great that this will supplement a lot and we'll be able to provide free fares.

So with that, Donna, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you very much and happy beautiful and Bill of Rights Day today.

Just to pile on with what Ms.

McKeel just said, I hope at the end of the fear-free period that ridership will be greatly improved and increased and the routes will be so radically changed to be where the people need to go and want to go.

that we will accomplish what many other communities do by having fair free at the beginning.

I mean, I know this was a result of financial disaster and I'm glad we're able to make use of it, but I hope the outcome will be as other communities have had.

This has been a great week for success stories for Albemarle County and I just wanted to report a couple of things.

On Monday I traveled to Goochland with Mike Culp to celebrate the announcement of the broadband award of federal and state dollars for Albemarle County through the Firefly.

and it was a mob scene held in a fire station and everybody was so excited but Albemarle County received many kudos for the quality of the application, for really pushing primarily to help organize everything to also to Christine Jacobs at the Planning District and their efforts to keep all the other counties organized as well.

This is a big deal.

Senator Kaine was there, he spoke.

Senator Warner was there, he spoke.

Governor Northam was there, who spoke also.

all very proud of their accomplishments.

I did afterwards pounce on Senator King to remind him and thank him for his past support of Rivanna Station and the funding for the improvements there and he was very aware and knows his responsibility to keep an eye on things up there for us.

I also spoke to Senator Warner about the continuing non-delivery of mail at Albemarle County.

He was rather horrified about my report, which was that most of the Western District, outside of the Crozet birth area, is getting mail once a week.

and for people who rely on their mailbox to be able to put their flag up and get their tax bill or their medical bill or anything into the system to be able to be paid and no one comes for five days, that is an unacceptable situation.

There are lots of people who are elderly or frail and cannot drive and this is their connection with the world.

So he assured me that he would be back on the program on this because he had been told all these great stories by the folks at the Charlottesville.

headquarters that everything was fine now.

So that was my job to go and report.

But the main thing I wanted to say was just to give real kudos to Mike Culp and his staff and to the reorganization and creation of the IT office to begin with, but also to Mike for his perseverance.

He is the go-to guy when any of our services fail over the last however many six or eight years that he's been doing this job.

For me to have to say to a citizen, I'm sorry I can't help you at all with your CenturyLink problem, but perhaps Mike Culp has a special person he can call.

It has been so, so helpful over that time.

The second was yesterday, the announcement out at Rivanna Medical in Donna's district.

Thank you.

Just to interrupt real quickly, but I'd love to hear Jeff's comments.

Maybe when our county executive does his end of the year report, he might be able to briefly summarize those.

And I'm going to follow up on a couple of those comments from the other supervisors.

Not only did we get this incredible body award, but I believe we're only counting the Commonwealth that has gotten one every year.

And not only that, but the leveraged amount

that the application that was put in, we put in a fraction of the value we end up getting back as a result of the way that Mike Holt and his team, the whole team, have worked together with the ABA board and everything that have this.

There is only one other jurisdiction in the entire Commonwealth that had a higher leverage ratio, but their dollar amount was a pittance, a fraction in comparison to the benefit that we're getting here.

And most of the communities

were approaching nearly a dollar for dollar contribution versus leverage, whereas our leverage was four times our contribution.

I mean, even higher than that, I'm sorry, four times.

Yeah, it was just incredible.

Ten to one contribution, four to one leverage, the value we're getting for this.

is unmatched around the Commonwealth.

And it's not just Mike Culp, although he has been the leader on this.

It's Tom Aboard, it's Charlie Henry who's been on that as well.

It is a lot of people working for years to keep us at the very top of these body awards.

and following up also on the Rivanna medical award that they've gotten and the benefit that that's going to bring throughout the spectrum of medical care.

It's a core business.

We're keeping it here.

Roger Johnson and the entire economic development team has done a tremendous job with that project gadget, as it was called, to keep that here.

It's another great story for Albemarle County.

Three other things I'd like to talk about.

I'm going to go from the serious to the upbeat to the humorous.

21 months ago, almost to the day, we met and started talking about the COVID-19 pandemic.

And at that meeting, I had estimated that if we weren't careful, we could lose 250,000 Americans through the pandemic.

21 months later, we have now exceeded 800,000 deaths from the pandemic.

and virtually all of those who are dying today are those who have not been vaccinated.

But in addition to the 800,000 who have died, there have been 50 million cases with 25 million of those having what's called long COVID, which means those individuals have continued to suffer for sometimes a very extended period of time from the consequences of being infected.

Over a million today are still unable to return to work because of the impact.

So the message is clear, you know, get the mask, wear a mask, we're not through this yet, and we're heading into winter, which is when the infection rates will increase.

On a much more positive note,

I'm very pleased to note that Thomas Unsworth, who I've worked with for a couple of years now as the clerk of the town of Scottsville, will soon be jarring the Albemarle County staff.

And so he's going to be moving up from the town to the county.

It wouldn't normally be that I would make an announcement on a personnel hire, but when it's from the town of Scottsville and the Scottsville district and moving up to the county, I'm very excited to see him working and sharing his knowledge and expertise with more people.

And then for the lighthearted, all I can say is 17 to 13, go Navy.

So that's what I've got for my remarks.

It was a great football game.

I hope you all got to see it.

And the best part about the whole game was it was close and it really wouldn't have mattered who won.

And do we have, if we can have her join us first because we don't want her to miss out on this.

Ms.

McCulley, it's great to see you today.

Excited for you, sad for us, but we do have a little recognition.

Thank you very much.

This is a resolution of appreciation for Amelia McCulley.

Whereas Amelia McCulley has faithfully served the County of Albemarle for over 38 years, spending her entire professional career with the Department of Community Development,

starting on May 23, 1983, as a full-time data entry clerk and rising to deputy director of community development, a position she has held for over two and a half years.

And whereas Amelia is recognized for her superior leadership in her 30 years as zoning administrator, rendering zoning determinations and completing her career without once having a determination overturned in court,

whereas Amelia's colleagues and customers acknowledge her fairness, her wisdom, and ability to make difficult decisions, her integrity and her willingness to address challenging issues and conflicts, plus her dedication, her love of and support of staff, her courage to take on what was difficult and not just procrastinate, and her relentless pursuit of getting stuff done.

and whereas Amelia championed numerous initiatives within the department to better serve the community and staff of Albemarle County, including but not limited to the development of the coordinated action response team, joining groups together across departments to serve community members in need, crewing the ladders for each division in support of professional development for staff,

The approach regarding blighted properties and evaluating each using criteria prioritizing public safety.

The creation of partnerships with departments and external agencies based on specific projects or areas of focus including Albemarle County Police Department, Fire and Rescue, Department of Social Services, the Virginia Department of Health and Virginia Department of Transportation.

to name a few, and in partnership with local farm liners working on numerous regulatory changes, which are now models for other jurisdictions.

And whereas Amelia's performance has been exemplary through her firm and fair administration of the zoning ordinance, while reducing the variances before the Board of Zoning Appeals from a high of 35 a year to between zero and two.

annually for creation, implementation, and enforcement of code to address an array of topics such as signs, noise, zoning proffers, and home states, the implementation of a change from criminal proceedings to a streamlined civil process for zoning enforcement, and whereas Amelia exhibited bravery in serving search warrants with Albemarle County Police Department protection on properties of known criminals with drugs, guns, and dangerous dogs,

Now therefore be it resolved that we, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, do hereby honor and commend Amelia McCully for her many years of exceptional service to the County of Albemarle, the Department of Community Development, the Albemarle County community in which we live, and the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, with the knowledge that Albemarle County is strengthened and distinguished by Amelia's dedication, commitment, professionalism, and compassion in meeting the community's needs.

Be 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 this board and previous boards holds Amelia for her lasting legacy of community service and the tangible results from her work to make Albemarle County better for future generations.

Signed this 15th day of December 2021, Ned Galloway Chair.

Call the roll.

Aye.

Aye.

Bea LaPisto-Kirtley.

Aye.

Ms.

Mallet.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel.

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Thank you and I turn it over now to Mr. Walker, Ms.

Velardo, Ms.

McCauley.

We can do it any way we'd like, Madam Chair.

Probably Jody Filardo.

And I believe that I know I would like to say a few words.

I think Jeff would as well.

I know the board members would like to have their chance also.

Yes, ma'am.

All right.

So Ms.

Filardo, I'll turn it over to you.

Mr. Walker, Mr. Richardson, Ms.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Chair Price.

Monday, May 23rd, 1983 was an auspicious day.

Ronald Reagan was president.

The song, Flash Dance, What a Feeling by Irene Cara was popular.

And Amelia McCauley started her professional career with Albemarle County in the Community Development Department.

Today, a 38 plus year career with one employer is rather unusual.

This long a career with a single department is unbelievable and what a career it has been.

Supervisor Mallek outlined a lot of the accomplishments Amelia has delivered to the county.

So I'm not going to focus on those so much today.

But Amelia has led our department with a laser focus on deliverables and a big caring heart.

She's groomed and supported young professionals on their way to rewarding careers.

She leads demanding as much if not more from herself as she does from her team.

Her passion for this county and our community are second to none.

And her ability to get things done is legendary.

For the last two years, Amelia has focused on preparing our department for her retirement.

As we've heard, she's led the team in building career ladders for each division, realizing our department is only as strong as our team.

She's taught folks how to interview and worked hard to bring staffing resources to respond to the needs of our customers and our department.

And she's done so much more that I'll never be able to recount it all.

And through it all, Amelia has done so with integrity, doing the right work,

in the right way because it's the right thing to do.

I'm so grateful to have had two years of working with Amelia and I look forward to continuing her work in creating a sustainable and productive community development department into the future.

Amelia, we appreciate you.

We love you and we'll miss you.

Oh.

First of all, just acknowledging how much I know Amelia likes this type of attention.

So just keep piling it on and I will keep my remarks brief.

There's so much that can be said, but what I'm going to focus on is the value that she added to the transition.

She became the deputy director at the time that the previous director was transitioning out, had already announced his retirement.

and there was a real concern about where the continuity of leadership was going to come from formally, structurally.

Amelia always was that continuity and she always was that leader and making the move to put her in a position where she could so gracefully transition from one directorship to another directorship.

I think we've now seen over the last two and a half years how well that has played itself out.

So the contributions that she made to this office, account executive's office,

to her director in her department with the outgoing director and then how well she worked to bring on a new director who

not only new to the organization, but new to Virginia was just incredible.

And so of all the things that Kennedy said, I wanted to focus just on the leadership, the graceful leadership that she exhibited.

And the fact that it was so smooth and unremarkable in terms of the choppiness that it could have been is exactly why it's worth pointing out.

Because we look back on it, it's kind of like, well, OK, it sometimes feels like Jody's been here forever.

Well, a lot of that's because of Amelia.

and how well she helped that transition occur.

So that's what I wanted to contribute today.

Thank you, Mr. Walker.

I appreciate Doug going first because I knew he would hit the bullseye.

And Madam Vice Chair, I'll be very brief.

Last Friday was the first time that our OLT, that's about 18 of our senior leaders in the county, last Friday was the first time we've been together in 634 days as a team.

We have been virtual.

since March the 13th, 2020.

And we met last Friday for a half day at the Fifth Street County Office Building for team building, critical updates, visioning for 2022.

It was a wonderful morning.

We did take a second as a senior leadership team to recognize Amelia and Jody did a fantastic job along with Doug and the staff of setting the table appropriately.

I want to share one story with this board really quick.

At one point in time last Friday morning, I stood up and the updates were being made.

Christy Shifflett, Nia Coltrane.

These were things that were important for our team to discuss and I looked across the room and Amelia had her head down because she was taking notes.

She was a week and a half away from retirement and Amelia McCullough was taking notes.

and that should tell this board and this community everything they need to know about Amelia McCulley.

I looked at that and I said, I can't even begin to think how we're going to miss her.

She was taking notes, board, because she was going to leave there and go back and dive in and work with community development on the things that she needed to pass along.

She was taking notes because she knew she needed to get it right.

As caliber person, we've had this organization that's been an honor to work with you, Amelia.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Ms.

Thank you, Madam.

Vice Chair and members of the board, thank you for this high praise and your kind words.

I'm humbled by it.

As Doug said, I love being the center of attention.

I love speaking in public.

So as a planner, I've planned to have my son Kyle here as an insurance policy so he can speak if I become too emotional.

Even though I can be a big, tough administrator, zoning administrator, I have a pretty soft heart.

When I think of how important this work is to me, how much Albemarle County as an employer has done for me, and how I value my colleagues, I am very emotional.

I want to mention that I also joined by other members of my family who have supported my career.

I've been reflecting a lot lately

about why I've stayed with the county for over 38 years.

As a professional planner, it's been an honor to serve boards in a community who are engaged and truly care about strategic actions.

I've been fortunate to work for people who value and practice good planning principles, challenging us to reach beyond yesterday's solutions to solve today's and tomorrow's problems.

Albemarle is known for the innovative, relevant and bold planning practices we utilize and it's been very exciting to be part of that.

Other localities throughout the state and beyond copy what we're doing or seek information from us.

Work for the county has provided a dynamic environment for my professional development.

The county encourages, supports, and rewards staff who stretch to learn more skills and expand functionality.

And I'm so proud of the many things we've accomplished as staff with the board.

Our board cares enough about this work to participate in our ambitious work program, and we all care enough to hold ourselves accountable for results.

Prior to deciding on planning as my degree, my early interest at UVA was environmental science and hydrology.

Working for a board and community that cares so much about environmental and sustainability values such as water quality and watershed protection has fed this passion and aligned with my values.

I love the fact, and this is just kind of a hanky little thing, but I love the fact that we devised our development area boundaries based on our drinking water impoundments.

So it results in an odd situation, such as the east side of Hydraulic Road being in the development area and the west side, which drains into the watershed, is in the rural areas.

The water quality values are also exemplified by the fact that stream health initiatives have remained a high priority

for this board and in our work program for many years.

In serving for 30 years as zoning administrator, I've always had a strong partnership and great support from the county attorney's office, county executive's office and the board and many other agencies, police and fire rescue.

I've learned so much from Greg Campner and Andy Harrick and together we've done the right thing, even when it's the hard thing.

We patched up the old ordinance and added new and improved regs, and I'm so glad you all are moving forward with zoning modernization.

I've also been fortunate to work with customers from all walks of life and from differing circumstances, trying to help them understand our regulations and our policy and then see how we can help them with their plans.

We've successfully had countless junkyards cleaned up, made illegal uses comply, obtained compliance with proffers, and made sites consistent with the approved plans.

I've also enjoyed the adventure and the challenge of work as your zoning administrator.

I'm going to tell a couple of quick stories.

I've been up in aircrafts of all type with local and state police, including taking off on a grass runway with no doors on the side of the plane so we could take photos for use in obtaining search warrants.

We've done stings, posing as a customer to catch an illegal sewage handling operation that was releasing raw sewage into county streams.

We've investigated and then searched for property that was approved for a special use permit with a maximum of seven cars on site awaiting repair in a commercial garage, and we found it had over 700 junked cars.

Incidentally, this same search warrant resulted in county police and state police finding evidence of wrongdoing.

It's been a blessing to serve with the work family of colleagues who are highly competent, caring, and work every day to bring their best work to this community.

Alma County has some of the best of the best from across the nation in their respective fields.

We have people who are so dedicated that they regularly put in long hours struggling for the elusive work-life balance.

These colleagues are people who, even when they're not at work, are thinking of how to improve something, thinking of how best to get our work done.

Now I'd like to thank a few key people, and this may sound a little bit like the Academy Awards for a minute.

Having people of this caliber in my life also contributes to why I've stayed for over 38 years.

First, thank you to the exemplar folks in our departmental leadership team.

I am always impressed by how highly competent, dedicated, and caring you are.

Next, I want to thank Doug Walker for his time, wisdom, guidance, and support.

This is a tough one.

Thank you to Jody, who has been the leader we've needed.

She's helped us change paradigms by looking at our work and how we do it in a key way.

One that considers the results of our work and the impact on our customers.

This includes aligning our culture, forging stronger relationships with our stakeholders, putting individual staff in positions utilizing their strengths, considering tools for doing our work better and differently and not getting stuck in how we've always done things.

From the day she arrived, Jody has always been a strong partner in our work, a mentor to me and others, and a truly fearless leader.

Thank you for this recognition.

Thank you for allowing me to grow, change, and develop as a person.

And thank you for allowing me to serve Almore County, a community I deeply love.

Thank you, Ms.

McCauley.

I know the supervisors all have something that they would like to say.

Thank you.

Well, I'm going to tell you all something that you may not know about Amelia.

Did you know that she was a horse woman?

She's a horse woman.

She knows all about horses.

She has helped me greatly just in this area.

What I really appreciate about her is her knowledge and also the fact that she understands our rural areas.

She understands the importance of keeping some of our large properties so that Albemarle continues to be as beautiful as it is.

and she understands all that.

Very smart, very helpful.

I will say I think the phrase or the sentence you used, Amelia, really sums up you and many others in our county.

You said, see how we can help them with their plans.

That just really resonated with me.

See how we can help them with their plans.

You are always, you consistently strive to see what we can do.

You just don't say, well, we can't do that.

You consistently look to see how we can help our residents of our county, which makes us so great.

I'm going to miss you very much, but I do have your personal cell phone number, so I do plan on calling you.

I'm not going to let you off the hook because I need your expertise.

And lastly, I get very emotional too, so I might need your son's cell phone number so I can use him as a backup also.

He did a great job.

Thank you, Amelia.

Ms.

Shue would love you.

Thank you.

Well, I'm just going to say that I don't want to say goodbye.

So I'm going to ask you if we can go kayaking now that we both have some more time.

So I will be hitting you up for that as soon as it gets a little bit warmer.

And I'm assuming you're going to be spending some time out on rivers.

Thank you.

Needless to say, I mean, I can't add anything to what everybody else has said.

I think you're wonderful.

Thank you.

I will say that this is one of the few recognitions, Amelia, where I've been watching the screen and people grabbing tissues

and I will say I even saw Greg do that.

We're all very, very sad to see you go.

I will say that in looking at this resolution and the fact that you have been with us for 38 years, you must have started, you know, this resolution is so long and it has font that's about this big.

I mean, tiny, tiny little font and it's a page.

So I'm just figuring you probably started working for us when you were five or six.

Baby Salmon, I'm not sure.

I feel like the first time I really had a chance to work with you, Amelia, I was thinking about this the other day when I was first elected to the Board of Supervisors and we were talking about illegal signs and I loved your sign jail down behind the county office building.

That was the neatest thing.

We just, well, anyway, it was great fun to take signs down there and just throw them in the jail.

I especially appreciate, on a more serious tone, I really appreciate, especially for my urban ring, the coordinated action response team, and you're helping me work so hard on blighted properties.

Those two really jumped out for me, and what I think generated a lot of our phone calls.

I do think that I can beat Jeff.

Jeff was talking about a week and a half ago, and I think you and I were talking just days ago about some changes that we thought might be possible and you were going to take them back and have a discussion.

So, Jeff, she was actually chatting with supervisors days ago, which brings me

To my last point, which is if I could take, if I could sing, and you know I always say my Beagle at my house sings better than I do, but if I could sing, I would take poetic licensure on Kenny Rogers' song, You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Amelia, because we have a lot of great things going on right now and we are truly going to miss you.

you have really led us forward in a wonderful way.

And just kind of piggyback in closing, I hope you won't be a stranger because I could surely use your expertise on bamboo.

Maybe we can figure out a solution for bamboo in this community in your spare time.

Thank you, Amelia.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to save my bucket full of goofy things for another time, but I do

Thinking back to the 1983, when it really began, we moved back to the farm in 1982 in the fall.

And having become a local government junkie during the 16 years I was away from town, I immediately joined in the audience group the usual suspects on the upper right corner, upper left corner from stage view.

and so got to see many, many years of wonderful presentations and analysis and helpful responses to finding solutions.

I think many people mentioned that already of finding where the answer was that could make a big, big difference for the county and also for

for applicants.

But Amelia is one of those people who can share bad news and make you feel glad about it.

In other words, she can tell you what you don't want to hear, but in a graceful and kind way so that when the citizen goes away, they go away with a positive feeling instead of a bitter one.

And this is such an important ability when we're trying to build community and to keep people feeling positively about interacting with our local

agency.

The signed jail has already been mentioned.

It's a very good sport because, I mean, Dennis Ricker and I were coming 10 and 15, you know, it was who could pick up the most in one week and bring them to the jail because there was a time in the 2008 to 12 where we were just

over one and they would breathe at the corner.

Someone would put one up and then overnight 12 more would appear in the same place.

So those all had to be collected with proper photographs and everything.

So there was documentation for court.

But it was discouraging when people would just say, oh, that's all right.

You can keep it.

I don't need it.

I'll pay the $100 fine.

I don't care.

It's just a constitutive business, which was very frustrating from my naive and idealistic point of view.

There certainly are a lot of very dangerous and sort of scary places where I know our inspectors have gone.

I worry about Ashley all the time going up into Fox Mountain and places, you know, make sure she has police escort with her because we don't want her to get or anybody to get

get lost up there.

But my father was a federal veterinarian in 1942 and was shot at out of Black Rose Hollow because people thought he was a revenuer.

And of course the place was covered with stills, it probably still is, I don't know.

So I'm aware of that extra element of danger that inspections undergoes.

And we have the folks on Miller School Road with all the dogs and everything.

And we have the folks, the garages out in Markwood.

So I mean, it's just, you've been everywhere for all these years and made such a difference to our success.

And I'm so grateful.

And we know where you live, so it's okay.

Thank you.

You know, Miss McCauley, when I read this resolution of this proclamation with the tiny little font with the magnifying glass so I could read all of it, I mean, really, it was amazing.

I've got four things I want to comment on.

The first one is your remarks.

Typical Miss McCauley, in your remarks, you spoke not of yourself, but you spoke of others.

And you spoke of the teamwork and the accomplishment that you all have achieved.

but never referencing what you had done, it was always what others have done and that's just so typical of your ability to always deflect attention from yourself and give credit that you have earned to others.

The second one, the second point is when I got to that last whereas which is kind of brief so I'm going to read it.

Whereas Amelia exhibited bravery in serving search warrants with Albemarle County Police Department protection properties of known criminals with drugs, guns, and dangerous dogs, all I could think of is, I'm a pulley and I carry a badge.

And I mean, that just kind of popped into my mind of the expansiveness of the responsibilities that you have had.

The third one is that this proclamation is very much like a eulogy, only you're alive and you get to hear it.

And just how wonderful that is for someone to be recognized at the end of a professional career with the respect and honor that you have earned.

And we're really glad that you got to hear it.

And the last point is that after two years now on the board, I've had the opportunity to form some pretty significant professional relationships with a lot of senior people on the staff, and the only.

and I repeat the only positive aspect of your retirement is that I hope and look forward to this becoming more of a personal relationship and a friendship whereas in the past it has been the professional relationship because now upon your retirement there will no longer be that, you know, modernization aspect that we would talk about in the military and I'm really looking forward to having the continuation of a personal friendship.

So on behalf of

The board, the county staff, and our community members, we thank you for everything that you have done for these many and very significant 38 years.

And with that board, it's time to also have some farewell remarks for one of our own, Supervisor Palmer.

This is her last meeting.

of the Board of Supervisors.

Solicitation on my part.

Supervisor Palmer has reached out to me to help me resolve and address this significant matter.

No short timer's attitude here.

Supervisor Palmer, you have served your community with honor and distinction.

And one of the sad things about this is you're there and I'm here and we can't have you come up to the podium together.

But I'd like for our community to see this absolutely beautiful plaque

that is presented with sincere appreciation to Liz Palmer for her dedicated service and leadership as a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from January 1st, 2014 through December 31st, 2021, enhancing the quality of life through public service.

And that's the 15th day of December.

And I know the glare makes it a little difficult, but this is absolutely one of the most beautiful plaques that I have ever seen.

And I know that you will be very proud to hang that.

And in addition,

this absolutely stunning clock in a beautiful hardwood case with the seal of the county.

I know the light's not very good there for you to be able to see, but inside here it has a seal of the county.

Absolutely stunningly beautiful.

And if I had thought about it, I would have given it to you this morning when you were here for the swearing in of the other supervisors.

And I apologize for my neglect and not thinking to do that, but we will get it to you.

I get to go again.

I am so excited.

Oh, and by the way, you can give me the clock because I know that Supervisor Palmer, she and I will be going hiking again so that I can

Give her the clock.

But everything I said before, I don't want to get emotional, but I'm going to miss you very much.

And thank you.

Yeah, just a couple of thoughts.

Liz, I remember when we first ran for the Board of Supervisors together, that first election was, looking back on it, it was actually kind of fun.

I remember standing in my front yard and taking pictures for the election together.

And it has been a very interesting road that we've taken for the last eight years in the county.

And I really appreciate your work.

And I am truly going to miss your questions.

I always learn something from your questions, even though sometimes I think, oh dear,

It's going to be another five minutes.

But at the end of that five minutes, I've always learned something.

And so I appreciate that very much.

And I hope you have a lot of opportunity to hike with Bea.

I'm assuming it's real hiking and not riding in the golf cart.

Or maybe you hike and Bea rides in the golf cart.

Just teasing, but enjoy it and don't be a stranger.

Certainly we welcome your thoughts and your feedback over the next period of time.

Thank you.

Very good.

Well, since I think working with Liz goes back probably 20 years or more in the water protection ordinance and legal voters, and I know that she's going to stay here and I know that she's just changing roles, I'm not going to fall apart because I'm still going to be talking two or three times a week about a whole lot of issues that we've been working on together for so many years.

And maybe sometime soon, some of them will actually get finished, which would be really great.

Sugar Hollow, the pipeline, all these different things that are still underway, but we're still plugging along.

So I just, I know the world will be changing and, but I look forward to seeing you often and we'll keep at it.

Thank you for your wonderful phone calls to help ferret out the details of things I might have missed because it's always been very helpful.

Thank you.

Yes, now that I've composed myself, I did want to say that I don't think any other supervisor has as much knowledge as Supervisor Palmer regarding the reservoirs, the importance of our stream health.

and I thank her because she has taught that to me, how important it is and how vital it is for the economic development of our county, for the benefit of our county, for the health of all of our residents and that's something that I'm very, very appreciative of and that wouldn't have happened without her basically taking my hand and leading me and I'm really appreciative and I look forward to learning more because of the pandemic we haven't been able to

do as much, I think, as we wanted to.

So I think we're going to be doing more now because she'll have more time, too.

Thanks.

And I apologize.

I should have let Supervisor Palmer go first.

OK.

I won't take up too much time, given that we do have a meeting to go to.

But I do want to say a few things.

I have to take a few minutes just to thank the community and all the people who have contacted me over the last eight years and explained it to me and taught me.

It never ceases to amaze me the community that we have and the expertise that we have in this community and how they're willing to put themselves forward and explain things.

I don't think I ever would have understood the trash industry had not all those haulers and trash people come out and explain that to me and drive around and tell me all about trash trucks.

And just a plethora of other things.

There's not time to talk about it all.

And I do want to thank the board for all the time that they've spent with the thoughtful discussions that we've had.

I've learned a lot from board members

My planning commissioner Karen Firehawk has just been wonderful over the years and I can't not say the staff who taught me an awful lot and I gotta just say something about Greg Campner because

Your patience with all my questions and all the board's questions, because I know that they're all asking questions just as much as I am, has just been so helpful.

Just this morning, I got an email from him, unmuddling this problem that I had in my brain.

The thing I want to live for is to see the Sugar Hollow Pipeline decommissioned, and Mallek knows that.

Well, so that's how long I have to live.

And I'm not quite sure when that's going to happen, but they're gonna have to roll me in on a wheelchair.

I do want to just take a couple minutes to throw in because I feel like this is the last time I can really speak to you guys as a board member.

as an advocate for a couple of things.

And one of those is, I know that you all know this, but I can't help but throw it out that the recycling situation is changing rapidly.

And if we do not have that paper sort in

in place in a few years, we're going to not be able to really keep up with the changes.

We really, really need that.

And right now, I know staff is evaluating it.

It's, you know, the place now is the facilities, the possible place to put other facilities up on Berkmar.

and I hope you guys will keep that in mind because it's not just the Northern Convenience Center, it's also that paper sort.

The other thing that I just want to put in a plug for is we all know times are changing, we can't get

enough volunteers for the fire department because it's hard to work for nothing.

Same thing with politicians.

It's hard to do the job that you guys are going to do and continue to do without reasonable pay.

And there's all sorts of issues with that.

Last time I checked, we were at $8.32 an hour.

We now have a minimum wage here in the county for all the other employees, which I think is somewhere in the $17 an hour range.

If we're really going to get the kind of diversity that this whole board has talked about, socioeconomic, age, race, whatever, I think you really need to address figuring out how to compensate

yourselves going forward and future boards.

And those are my two plugs as I leave.

And that's it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer and as the neighboring Magisterial District Supervisor,

The Samuel Miller and Scottsville have a great deal in common and the things that Supervisor Palmer and I have had an opportunity to work jointly on from Solid Waste and Fifth and Avon and a number of other projects has really given me the opportunity to work closely with her in a way that I have not had the same type of connection with the other supervisors.

And as with all of your colleagues, I share our benefit from your experience and your words and

And again, typical, this is our time to honor you and you finish talking about things that need to be done in the camp.

It's just public service.

At this time, we'll move to matters from the public.

And I do understand that we have a speaker.

So I will go ahead and read the rules for the speaker.

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

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

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you exceed your allotted time, you will be asked in your comments, and as mentioned, your 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 each of the public comment periods per meeting.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

If participating by phone, please press star 9 to let us know you want to speak, and if by Zoom, please remain muted until you are called to speak.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is Ed Donahue.

Can you hear me all right?

Yes, please go ahead.

Great.

I want to address an item that's on your agenda for action coming up in a short period of time here.

Your matter number 21-556, and it happens this is in the Scottsville district.

We've exchanged emails over the last day or so.

The issue is we are pursuing the county's personal awareness facility policy on behalf of a client, Crown Communications, and we are looking to modify the existing site again in the Scottsville district.

We need additional height in order to address a coverage and service issue.

Specifically, Crown wants to be able to deploy FirstNet from the particular site in question.

So the height in question, the height proposed is to go to 70 feet.

Staff has been supportive of the replacement monopole and the increased height.

The only issue is the offset antenna, so non-flush mounted, which are first knit.

We've tried to address staff's concerns by a couple of things.

We gave you a letter

provided you a letter from AT&T and also a letter that we compiled and gave you a list of three or so other sites that had been approved in the county of greater height than is proposed here and also non-flush mounting and those are first net sites.

So what we're asking for is the board to consider the many approved sites that are FirstNet in the county which are non flush mounted.

And as the board well knows FirstNet is a very important service being deployed by AT&T.

It is a

first of its type interagency platform such that the first responders and EMS, fire and rescue can communicate with each other in times of urgent need.

So it's very important and it's important that we done at this site, it's important that it be done soon and in order to deploy the services here we're going to need to ask you for some discretion on your requirement for flush modern antennas.

Thank you.

We'll now move on to the consent agenda.

And item 8.7, the Southwood Redevelopment Project was pulled.

I can just say I'm not quite sure you want to handle this Donna, but mine are, and I'm not expecting a lot of discussion.

I just have some things I want to point out for it and it's for information only.

Thank you, Supervisor Palmer.

I think we'll go ahead and pull it and then we can cover it.

in comments later.

So do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended, removing item 8.7?

So moved.

All right, a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Mr. Price?

Aye.

Mr. Bea LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Mr. Keel?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

Yes.

Excuse me, I just dropped some papers.

All right, and at this time, we will address item 8.7.

So Supervisor Palmer, you had specifically requested a move, although I will note for the record that I also have questions.

Sure.

So the reason why I asked for this to be pulled was a couple of reasons.

First of all, I thought it was important to draw the public's attention to it.

A lot of times people miss what's on the consent agenda.

And of course, affordable housing has been such an important issue.

And this is not to in any way diminish the importance of the Southwood project.

We all know it's extremely important.

and needs to be helped along.

But these are really process questions.

So for the public, this information, the consent agenda goes over what we have given to Southwood in

This memo in the consent agenda says that we've invested a little over $5 million to the redevelopment project so far.

And that we have a performance agreement that we have estimated about $100,000 in staff time that's been put towards it.

And that it goes over a little bit more detail.

But then it talks about

retiring a project manager for the redevelopment project at 170,000.

And it also talks about a matching grant from the Virginia Brownfields remediation and economic revitalization program for $500,000.

And then it goes on to say that we could take that out of the housing fund reserve.

intended to support housing initiatives.

Now, just to follow up, the grant didn't go through, so the $500,000 is a bit moot at this point, moot, excuse me.

But I wanted to bring this up for a couple of reasons.

And we had talked about, first of all, we had talked about in our housing,

policy about having a process to allocate funds to housing projects.

And so would this be evaluated, these kinds of things for South would be evaluated in the context of the budget next fall, excuse me, next winter, or was staff considering

weighing those against other opportunities for affordable housing.

And so that's really my biggest concern.

And under what circumstances is this whole discussion going to take place?

Again, is it in the context of other affordable housing initiatives weighing against whether we want to do a land trust or whatever?

or are we talking about trying to make this decision in the budget period.

The other thing that I think needs a thorough explanation for the public is what the project manager would actually do.

Is it a grants manager?

Is it more for planning?

We had a planner who was dedicated

to Southwood did a great job.

She's now been hired by the law firm that Southwood is using to work through this process.

So, I mean, excuse me, Habitat is using to work through this process.

And so they're very well equipped now with a project manager that understands the process and the academy's process.

So those are the kinds of things that I think I just wanted to bring that out, those questions out to the public so they were aware

Thank you.

Absolutely.

We are planning to come back in January with some other projects that are out there.

These would all be discussed at the same time and could be against each other.

I'm working on a way to evaluate those, just sort of putting the final pieces together on that.

Excuse me.

In terms of what the projects manager would do, that person would really be dedicated to Southwood with the CDBG grants.

It's a complicated process and really needs a dedicated person to look at that who would be able to work with the Department of Housing and Community Development to make sure that we're on track to meet the CDBG grant goals.

and objectives coordinating communication between CBD, so the planner on the project, the work that I'm doing here, what Habitat is doing and all really project partners within the county and outside of that.

If I could, Madam Chair, for the benefit of the listening public, the CDBG is Community Development Block Grant.

It is state and federal money that has to come to the local government.

And so the requirements for compliance are tied to the local government.

And so it's not a grant to Habitat for Southwood.

It's a grant to the county.

This is true for all Community Development Block Grant funding.

in the past.

Our previous director was quite an expert in CDBG and his focus on that work frankly will require an enormous amount of his time that then wasn't available to do the policy work that we're now enjoying from Dr. Pethia

and her focus.

And so the need to be able to use our housing office talent to be able to do the work that is important really requires us, we believe, to have a dedicated resource that has expertise in compliance and administration of the Community Development Block Grant, which is separate from the work that the planners are doing on the CBBG side.

And I believe, Dr. Pethio, that the $170,000 is a two-year

estimate for the cost of that knowledgeable resource to be able to make sure that we are compliant with all of the grant rules which are significant.

That's correct.

Right.

At the moment they would really be focused on the Southwood grants.

We don't have any additional CDBG grants lined up at the moment.

The county does have a limit on the amount of CDBG funding we can have at any one time.

So it does limit how many grants we can have open.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I'll go around the other supervisors just to see if there are any other questions on this item.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

No questions at this time, thank you.

Supervisor McKeel?

No questions, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you and again I would just simply repeat that I also had been interested in pulling this from the consent agenda.

I believe it's very clear the county is very supportive of the Southwood redevelopment project.

There have been however a few

items that have come up that do necessitate a very thorough review of expectations so that we don't have an anticipated additional expenses.

And I know everyone with county staff will be working on that.

And we can move on to item number nine.

2021-00038, the union run wireless facility special exception.

And will that be Ms.

Yes, thank you.

Very good.

Thank you.

I will start sharing my screen.

Okay.

Can everyone see the slideshow and the title slide?

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Rebecca Ragsdale, a planning manager with community development, and I will be joined by Bill Fritz, who's also in community development as a development process manager and the manager of our wireless facilities update that you recently heard about.

This is a request for two special exceptions that are associated with an existing wireless facility

referred to as Union Run.

There are two requests associated with it, which we'll get into a little more detail about the site and the policy and staff analysis.

The first request is to reduce the setback for the tower.

For a 70-foot tower, the setback would be 70 feet, and they are seeking a reduction

as well as the second request, which is an increase in the antenna projection from the flush-mounted standard, which is 18 inches to no more than five feet, eight inches.

The site is located along some roadways at Shadwell.

It's tucked in the corner of a property that's accessed off Richmond Road, and it's adjacent to I-64.

You can see it with the blue.

asterisk, and it's titled Tower Site.

It's actually part of the larger Edge Hill property.

It's separated by I-64, however.

To the east is a property off Louisa Road that's developed as a church.

We have the Luck Stone Quarry across the road and then the Shadwell Market and other commercial uses across Richmond Road.

As I mentioned, this is a request associated with an existing facility.

There is an existing 50 foot tower that's about 10 feet below the tree line.

And the request is, there are a number of requests under our ordinance.

One of which is to replace the monopole wood to metal replacement, and then increase the height of the tower relative to tree growth, which would take the tower up to 70 feet.

and then the two special exception requests before you are related to the increase in the antenna projection and as we mentioned, the setback reduction.

Another piece of information that we included in the staff report and we think is important to note is in terms of this site's location, it is located with the red stars on the map.

I know they're big and bold.

The red stars indicate the entrance corridors as part of our review process

Not only do I review it, but also Mr. Fritz and then our entrance corridor ARB staff.

The purple line for Louisa Road and then going a little bit on Richmond Road and then North Milton indicates a national scenic byway.

And then nearby is the Southwest Mountains rural historic district.

Jumping into the particulars of the special exceptions, the first of which

you see in the staff report that staff supports is the reduction or the setback in the fall zone easement.

When this tower was approved, it was approved as a special use permit prior to the provisions that we have now in section 5140.

Variance was actually approved to allow a 50-foot tower, but their request right now is to allow the 70-foot tower.

On the right of the screen, you can see the distances to their property in red and then also the dashed

line is where the 70 foot falls on the adjacent property.

In this case, the adjacent property is subject to a special use permit and developed as a church, which requires a 20 foot buffer along that shared property line.

So there is nothing on the church property that would be impacted within that 70 foot buffer.

In addition, they provided an engineer's report that the actual design of the tower would be such that if there was some failure, which is not common,

that the actual fall zone or where it would fall would be about 16.2 feet, which is well within the Edge Hill property.

So for those reasons, staff had supported that request.

The antenna protection has generated a number of emails and our recommendation around that has still, the applicant is still responding to that up until

You know, comments under other matters from the public and there were a number of emails.

But as I mentioned, the request is up to five feet, eight inches, which is an increase from our flush mounted standard of 18 inches.

It's a tier two tower, which means it's a treetop tower.

So, flush mounting is a very important concealment element.

In the staff report, we mentioned that we were looking for some more technical explanations and some more information.

Staff, we have processed several first net requests for antenna projection, but this is the first where visibility has become an issue.

We have reviewed this request under the wireless policy, which points us to visual impacts.

So based on that policy, we felt that the increase at this site would cause additional visual impacts if it was not flush mounted.

But as far as the technical explanations or the request for additional information related to FirstNet, the applicant has not provided information that stated the design

is the exact design is mandated by federal or state law.

We understand the three foot separation is needed, but they haven't provided any information indicating that there are any other alternatives available to them in terms of the two sets of antenna and in terms of how they must be melted.

Mr. Fritz is your expert if we need to dig deeper into the technical issues, but that's the kind of thing when we

We got the information from the applicant and we had the concerns about visibility.

We brought that up with the applicant right away.

And they wanted to stay on schedule to get to you within 90 days.

And they did not wish to defer.

So that was where we left it in terms of information we had at the time of writing a report.

And the reason behind our recommendation, we reviewed these special exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

Each of these tier two sites are different and I will show you an example of a couple tier two sites and a picture of this one and go into that visibility analysis in a little bit more detail.

Acknowledging, I think all of you received the latest explanation about the three feet from the applicant was the last information we received and that was late this morning.

So the photo on the left is the existing facility, as I said,

We're analyzing this as a tier two facility, which is a treetop facility.

Now the total height is not limited by the ordinance.

The key is height relative to the surrounding trees.

So it was mentioned that some of the other examples, they were actually taller towers.

Well, they had taller trees around them and a different site context in terms of a wooded backdrop or distance from the roadway and other factors.

So in this case, like those other sites, the tower is below the tree line right now.

I didn't ever know this tower was there until this request came in and then it was kind of hard to find.

You heard about the adventures in zoning earlier when you were talking about our department, but

So these are some examples just to give you some information as far as what the site, the tower looks like now.

And then across the road from it is another tier two that has flesh-mounted antenna.

Now as a tier two, the ordinance allows the tower to be up to 10 feet above the tallest tree within 25 feet.

So that's how they would be able to achieve that 70-foot height under the ordinance.

to give you some context there.

And as I said, each of these are analyzed on a case by case basis.

So the other sites that were mentioned that did have this mounting approved had a different set of circumstances.

So we have some recommendations for you.

If you choose to approve the setback reduction, we recommended approval of that with the following conditions relative to the tower height and location of where the tower would be on the property.

We've explained our concerns with regard to the antenna projection request.

and we've recommended that that be denied.

Should the board wish to approve it, we've offered a condition of approval in terms of a maximum projection.

So I would be happy to answer any questions.

And as I said, Mr. Fritz is here.

Thank you, Ms.

Ragsdale.

Yes, thank you very much, Ms.

Ragsdale.

Could you go back to slide number nine?

I don't really have any questions, but thank you very much for the photos you showed.

I'm personally, I'm not in favor of the extended going out to five feet, eight inches.

I just think it's a rural area.

You're now getting way up there and it's going to be very visible.

I like you.

I go by there a lot.

Never even noticed it.

So I'm not in favor of it being widened from the top.

I don't even know about the 70 feet.

I think going to 70 feet could be required under our current ordinance, correct?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Rebecca, for the explanation.

I'm a little bit confused.

We have other first net antennas up there around the county.

I'm most familiar with the ones we've reviewed through the special exception process, and they've been about three feet

We've had some other antenna projection requests that might have been, excuse me, I said some have been up to three feet and there's a few up to five feet.

We have different tiers and different types of facilities.

So there's some facilities out there, lattice towers that were approved to have antenna that could project further.

So we are not, unless something has come through

as a special exception and specifically citing FirstNet, I don't have a way of knowing all of the antennas that might be out there on different types of facilities.

They've been in five feet.

But I think there might have been one other example where we've approved the antenna projection up to three feet.

And our analysis has focused on the wireless policy and reviewing them consistent.

We're reviewing them as a wireless facility.

So we haven't emphasized in our reviews whether it was first net or not.

What I'm going for is, is there a technical reason for this to have to be the feed eight inches?

That's the real question.

So they've explained there's a dedicated spectrum 14.

There's two different types of technology.

on the tower, some related to FirstNet and then the other commercial wireless antenna.

And in order for them to function, they need that three-foot separation.

I'm going to go back to the slide that has that snippet of their explanation as far as technical as we've gotten.

And that's on the screen there at the bottom as far as the separation, but what we have not explored with them or

been able to discuss as alternatives for the sites that are more visible.

They're all certainly a range of options in terms of tier one, tier two.

I mentioned some of the tier three sites that are out there.

So that's where we are with that.

And so this special exception is needed for the projection.

And then you asked about the 70 feet in height.

in order for them to go up to 70 feet.

Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out what their need is from a technical standpoint.

It sounds like you guys don't know.

I don't know if Bill knows.

Bill Fritz knows.

I think that's one of the more important questions.

Is this something they really need for safety reasons?

I mean, I know FirstNet is important.

So based on the information that I've seen from the applicant,

I have no reason to dispute that the two bands that they're using, the first net band and the commercial band that they're using, need to have this separation.

So it needs this separation, but that separation can be achieved a variety of ways.

It can be achieved the way that the applicant's proposing, which is to increase the standoff on this tower so that they can be separated in the same horizontal plane.

or they could be separated vertically by mounting some antennas higher and some antennas lower and the other way of maintaining that separation would be to put the commercial part of the system on one tower and the first net part of the system on a second tower and as you know our policies geared towards visibility

And we know that a lot of these towers can really only accommodate a single user.

And so to accommodate two users on this one tower, they're proposing to have the standoff.

That's based on the information I've seen.

It does.

Thank you.

That really does answer my question very nicely.

Appreciate it.

Thanks.

This is entrance corridor.

sometime in the future.

Okay, thank you.

So I would hope they would have come back with some discussion about alternatives, so I can't help but agree with your analysis, at least thus far.

Yes, thank you and I don't really have any questions for staff right now.

Well, I have one for Bill and then I'd like to hear from the applicant and may have some questions there.

You know, we know you all are looking at the policy and entrance corridors and everything.

Would you just give me

Briefly, the ramifications of hearing this today before that review takes place.

Sure.

It's a great question.

Thanks for asking it because as you know, staff really listens to the board whenever we have one of these special exceptions to try to gain guidance on how to process the next special exception that comes along.

If you deny it today,

We're going to make the presumption that the policy that's in place right now continues and we keep moving forward with that particular policy.

If you were to approve it today, depending on the words you say, if you approve it, is that you, for example, if you say the first net aspect of this is very important to us, we're going to hear that if it's for public safety, that

That could allow for special exceptions to be approved more frequently.

That's an example of what we might take away from the meeting if you choose to approve it.

Okay, so we could very well end up in a situation if we deny this

that all of our policies going forward would be denied, staff would assume that

We're not looking at safety and for cellular use as well as telemed and all those.

I'm a little confused.

Okay.

The only precedent you will be setting will be to while the current policy is in place to keep maintaining that policy, we will not hear you say, we don't want the policy changed.

Those are two very separate things.

Until such time as the policy is changed, we would continue to process these applications with only an analysis of the visibility, not with the consideration of FirstNet or something else.

That does not mean that when we're developing a new policy that we may not say FirstNet

Emergency Communications, telemedicine should receive an extra consideration when a special exception comes on.

Yeah, that adds a little bit more clarity.

And so where does that leave all of these, not all, I mean, I don't know how many are in the pipeline, but where does that leave an applicant like this?

Okay, so we're talking a year, so we're talking a year, okay.

Yes, we would consider while the ordinance has a provision that says substantially the same request can't come in within a year of it being denied, my personal opinion is, and I would want to check with some other people, but my personal opinion is that if we change the regulations, that that's not substantially the same request you're coming back for.

So we may change the regulations and they may still need a special exception, but the special exception criteria may include if it's for a first net, it should be approved.

and we would be in a situation of potentially recommending approval in six months to a year.

So you could theoretically deny it today and that's not going to be, well it's been denied and we're never going to look at it again.

We're going to say it was denied but it was denied under the rules that were in effect in December 2021.

It costs money and time to the applicant, sure.

All right, that's very helpful, Bill, for clarity.

The focus that Rebecca has made in this review is using the existing policy and the existing ordinances and evaluating a special exception.

Right, and I will say, and this is probably just a comment, and I don't know if it's the right time or not, but

We allowed or supported a cell tower over on Albemarle High School property.

And it is not, right now, it is not, the last time I talked to the school division, school board about this, it's not serving its purpose right now because it was not allowed to be tall enough.

And I think there were some antenna problems.

I'm just saying that we need to be careful if we're gonna approve

that we make sure we approve them at the point at which they are useful because, anyway, then that's just more of a, I guess, a general comment.

We don't need to get into that right now.

I think anything else I have, I'll be asking at a later date.

Thank you.

OK, so this is a public hearing, right?

So we're going to be getting a full presentation from the applicant?

No, it's an action item.

OK, very good.

So then I will continue on as is.

I guess to start off with, I think as a general rule, our policy, whether it's in zoning or anything, has been to use the ordinance we have adopted

until it's changed because it is risky in all ways to make decisions because we don't like the policy as opposed to upholding the law that's written.

Separate from that, number one, the five feet, five eight inches which is mentioned is only on one side.

The diameter is really almost is over 11 feet.

and I want people to think about that when we saw those pictures of the flush mounted ones, those were 18 inches or i.e.

3 feet.

So it is a huge increase that they are proposing to put in a place in the entrance corridor, way above the tree line, that is, and also with just thinking that they can shove this through without answering the questions or providing the alternatives that others have used.

The second thing that really troubles me is that they are using FirstNet as the excuse because we need it, of course, but then instead of sticking with the FirstNet tower, which will be their, should be their obligation, they're saying, but we're also going to continue on and want to double and triple and have all these other antennas on there too.

Therefore, we have to break the rules and do something that's 11 and a half feet wide.

So it may be even more because the width of the tower up there is probably 12 inches, at least.

So that does put it all over 12 feet.

So I am very happy with the staff recommendation.

I think it upholds our ordinance that is currently under review, which is fine.

But it does have good reasons for a decision that the staff recommendation shows.

I really don't want us to be vulnerable to companies who decide they're just going to say they're going to do this in order to not have to follow the rules.

There are ways that others are doing this to meet the rules, and that's what I hope these people will be held to do.

Thank you, Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Yes, thank you very much.

That's what happens when you have to go first because you listen to all these other concerns and it generates questions.

Mr. Fritz, thank you very much.

It is.

Yes.

My understanding is that the letter that they sent, and I think Ms.

Ragsdale still has it up on the screen there, they talk about how the

Band 14, which is the first net, and their LTE, which is their commercial side, don't work well in proximity to one another.

I'm paraphrasing, obviously.

So the LTE is the commercial side of AT&T's offering.

Okay, so when you say commercial, you mean regular cell service out to everybody?

The non-firstnet side of the authority.

The non-firstnet, okay.

And any specific questions you have about how the applicant and county have worked together would be best with Ms.

Ragsdale.

But I do believe that that's what she did say.

So I'm concerned about

and I think Ms.

Mallek, Supervisor Mallek brought it up where by you're using FirstNet to increase commercial viability and I'm afraid that that might be a way for them to get their foot in the door to do this in other locations.

So that's what I'm very concerned about.

The fact that we have FirstNet, I don't have a problem.

Even the height, okay, if that's going to help out FirstNet for emergency responders, no problem.

But I am suspect of wanting, I realize they want to do it on the same pole because of the fact that then they can save money, but I think it is an entrance corridor and it does go against our

current ordinance, maybe that will be changed, maybe it won't because I think it's very important to have cell service, but I also think it's very important to not have these large towers everywhere that destroy the beauty of the landscape.

Thank you.

Yes, and I apologize because I was mad.

I was assuming I was going to have a chance to ask the applicants some questions.

So that was my mistake.

You know, you get into this role.

I would like to ask Bill, I guess, or maybe Rebecca would be the right, I don't know, whomever.

Help me with more clarity about what commercial means.

AT&T was awarded the contract to provide service, the first net service, which uses a separate piece of the radio spectrum.

And that's what they're talking about here, the band 14.

So that's using a separate piece of the spectrum.

AT&T also operates, if you have an AT&T phone or your AT&T customer,

AT&T has a piece of the radio spectrum that they provide that service on and have been providing service on.

And that's what this tower has been doing for quite some time.

And what they want to do is they want to use it for both FirstNet and the LTE side of the operation.

They're using this one for the LTE network.

Okay.

So I'm sorry, so just so you know, so think of it, when FirstNet was originally talked about, some people said it's a cell service provider for emergency services.

So you were going to have AT&T and Verizon and Sprint and T-Mobile and FirstNet.

So it's almost like you have these different

companies, if you will, even though FirstNet's not a company.

So we have many situations where we have a tower that's approved, and it's really approved just for a single user because our treetop, our encouragement of treetop towers, they really just don't facilitate two providers.

So you're not going to have two

commercial providers on one tower.

And what they're doing here, based on what I've reviewed, is by increasing the standoff, they're able to have two providers, FirstNet and AT&T.

So you'd have to separate, even though AT&T is the FirstNet provider, FirstNet is sort of its own standalone system.

They're providing both services on this one tower.

I have no reason to believe that they couldn't do flush mount and provide FirstNet coverage from this tower.

And I have no reason to doubt that they can't use a flush mount to provide both FirstNet and LTE.

So they could

I don't have any evidence that they can't comply, that they could do flush mount and provide either the LTE or FirstNet on this new tower, modified tower.

Likewise, I don't have any evidence that would indicate that they wouldn't be able to build another tower on this site or elsewhere in the area.

and provide coverage also by having two sites.

And as Ms.

Ragsdale noted that this site's difficult to see, which is the goal of the ordinance, that if you had two sites that you can't see, that's preferred over one site that you can.

So it may be possible to do two.

We have no evidence to indicate that's not a possibility.

So that's our

And that would be what I'd want Ms.

Thank you.

Like I said, there has been a couple of requests

of more information from the applicant and our willingness to talk about the options like we've pointed out to you at this meeting.

They have indicated that it is in the information that they provided that it was a critical site to serve 64 and to serve FirstNet.

But like you said, it is also serving commercial carriers as well.

As far as the process, I mentioned that it's 90 days.

That's what we have for review and then working back from your board agendas.

And so we've provided the information we have to date.

If you have particular questions of the applicant, with this being a special exception,

We process a lot of special exceptions as an action item.

So the process is no different than what we do for home stays where we're not having a back and forth and bringing the applicant back in.

But your options for action are approval, denial, or possibly deferral.

Unlike some of the other special exceptions, we do have the shot clock.

And when we say the shot clock, that's the federally mandated timeframes for reviews, which is 90 days.

We're at the end of the 90 days.

I think the applicant has indicated they'd like action, but they're also had the question about being brought into the meeting, which we have not set up for that for special exceptions as action items.

And that was my mistake.

Yeah.

Well, I should have known it wasn't a public hearing because it's in the afternoon, but that was my fault.

So another question.

Is that, I know that when you say telemedicine, I know I've, my daughter and I have used it.

You just call someone and then through the computer, you set up an appointment like over zoom.

Yeah, telemedicine is not a specific type of bandwidth or frequency.

So there are,

Medical Technologies and they're using the commercial spectrum.

Yeah, I thought that was the case.

So that's something to consider.

And I have another, just to confirm, Rebecca, you didn't have any abutting property owner concerned about this.

Right, we do send a mail notification of the request in the meeting and

Yeah, that was in your information.

I just wanted to double check that you hadn't all of a sudden had 15 come in, you know, or something, all right?

I'm going to call on Supervisor Mallek in just a minute, but I do want to remind you that we had set aside this to be finished by 2.30 this topic, so I do hope that we can kind of keep it concise going forward.

We're at 2.50 now.

Thank you.

Is there a sense of how much of this 90-day shot clock has been used up

trying to chase applicants for information.

Well, it was deemed complete.

It was complete to process, so staff did deem it complete, which started the 90-day shot clock.

It was deemed complete in October, so it came in at the end of August, but deemed it incomplete and asked for more information.

uh it was primarily just clarifying what their requests were and including in the plans the antenna projection or just making sure the narrative addressed the two special exceptions that they were asking for so there's completeness and then they're you know technically technically complete and then as we do our analysis um in the you know i keep saying in the limited time that we have for special exceptions it identified some more questions um and we we've asked the applicant um

If, you know, based on our recommendation, would you like some more time for further discussion?

The deferral is really up to them, I believe.

The county attorney's office is helping make sure that we're compliant with the shot clock and where we are on that.

And the applicant has also been in touch with them.

You've seen the emails with various staff up until the staff report.

The only other follow-up is in our boilerplate conditions,

Well, that is kind of the purpose of the easement.

They have not obtained an easement from the abutting property owner.

I don't believe there's anything in our ordinance that would address that.

We didn't put forth the condition of approval that addressed that.

So any approval that is given would be contingent upon them getting the easement from the church.

Okay, because I understand that wouldn't be our job.

All right, and so I have a few comments as well.

I'm very supportive of getting FirstNet expanded as far as possible into the county.

Having said that, and first off Ms.

Ragsdale, Mr. Fritz, thank you for your presentations and comments.

What really struck me was the bolded

Language in our board materials under special exceptions number two detailed technical explanations have not been provided by the applicant to justify the standoff distance and why alternatives are not available.

It appears that over the last day or so we have received the technical explanation as to why they cannot put the two different transmitters, for lack of a better term, flush mounted against the pole

but if I understand Mr. Fritz's comments they could set them vertically so that they were an appropriate distance whether that does or does not meet their needs based upon the height of the hole would be a different issue and it also appears that the two separate polls would clearly cover the situation.

I have a procedural question however and that is when county staff identified

that the technical explanation had not been provided, did county staff go to the applicant to request that information?

And if so, when was that done?

Ms.

Yes, thank you.

It was towards the end of our review process.

We needed time to do our review and to come to these conclusions.

And at that point, working backwards from the board agenda deadlines, the legal deadline, it was a week or two where before that, that I let them know where staff's recommendation was.

And that's when we had a discussion about additional information and there were items that were emailed to me after the staff report was already in process.

and I offered to update the packet, so that resulted in an update to their application request.

And then they've sent ... After that, they emailed another request or another attachment that didn't make it into the packet that Tracy Thiemack emailed you all directly and then ...

There were a couple more of the direct emails to y'all.

What I was getting was very general in terms of, yeah, this is FirstNet.

This is how FirstNet works and the importance of FirstNet, which we know it's very important.

But we weren't drilling down into, we haven't had that discussion about, as we pointed out, the alternatives and working with them to find alternatives that would both meet the ordinance, the policy, and FirstNet.

I appreciate that and also appreciate that until you've done your review you don't know what you don't have so you know my question was not met in that direction.

So if I understand things correctly if the board approves attachment F which changes setbacks

that then would allow county staff to administratively approve both the request to change from wood to metal and the increased height because now the setback has been approved and that's all that attachment would do, correct?

That's correct.

And then attachment G is the one that would apply to expanding the diameter of the antennas on the

and I would add as my comments that it does not appear to me that sufficient explanation for alternatives has been provided while I do accept the explanation, the technical explanation as to why you cannot do both of the different systems flush on a horizontal plane on the same pole.

With that, is there any other questions or comments by any supervisor?

If not, because this is in my district, I would like to take the privilege, and I would move that the board adopt attachment F as contained in the board materials.

Second.

And will the clerk call the roll, please?

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

Ms.

Kirtland?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Ms.

Ponder?

Yes.

Thank you, Board.

That now brings us to attachment B. It is in my district.

I am not, however, in favor of this.

If there is a supervisor who desires to move adoption of attachment G, I am open to hearing such motion.

I would just reflect, I see that motion being raised.

As it's stated on the screen,

moved to adopt the attached resolution.

So I move to deny the special exception to reduce the increased antenna projection.

Second.

All right.

And any other discussion?

The clerk will call the roll.

Ms.

Aye.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

I got a little confused on whether that was an affirmative or a negative motion.

I apologize for that.

All right, board, we are right at three o'clock.

We did have a recess scheduled for

Oh no, that's coming up later.

At this time, we'll move to item number 10, a presentation on the FY21 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

And Ms.

Usher, I understand that you will be taking the lead on this, or Ms.

It is me, yes.

Thank you, Chair Price.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

Nelsie Burch, the Chief Financial Officer for the county.

I've let Shenandra off the hook for today, but the next time I promise you'll get to hear from her as we present this.

So I'm really excited

To kind of pivot the board, the next three presentations and discussions are financial in nature.

And as I was preparing my comments for this afternoon's presentations and work sessions, I was really reflecting on the fact that this combines the past, the present, and the future of our financials.

And the first item up for today is going to be about our comprehensive annual financial report.

It's an opportunity for the board to hear from our external outside auditor.

I see that Ms.

McKeel has the comprehensive report in front of her.

And so in a moment, I will turn it over to Mr. Foley, who is our auditor, who will provide some comments to the board.

And his comments will be in nature related to the process, the numbers, and the outcome of the audit.

after that the board's going to move into the discussions related to the annual reassessment on real estate property and that is really a current indicator of our local economy and then that conversation along with the FY21 comprehensive report is going to feed into the third conversation we have in the work session

on our five-year financial plan.

So they really all do play together.

And we'll try to thread that needle for the board as we move through.

But first things first, we do have a conversation with Robinson Farmer Cox related to the audit.

I just have a few comments about it before we get started.

Sorry, David, just give me one more minute.

This is the second audit that has been conducted since I've been the chief financial officer for the county.

I'm really happy to report that it is a clean audit and that based on the conversations that I've had with Mr. Foley as well as Ms.

Usher with Mr. Foley, it has and we are continuing to build and improve our processes for getting our audit conducted and I'm really excited to share that with the board.

Last year we recognized there were a few areas that caused us some challenges.

One of them was reporting on our fixed assets, so tangible items that we build or maintain.

And the other was our grants, our grants process.

The Board heard a little bit earlier today about our Community Development Block Grant.

We have grants reporting needs that finance has to take the information that's in the field and do something with it.

And so we recognize that we didn't have a dedicated grants accountant, nor do we really have the structure in the Office of Management and Budget to be able to

McKeel.

We were able to

through the needs of Robinson Farmer Cox through our annual audit process.

So I'm really excited, and I wanted to connect that for the board.

I really appreciate your support as we work through this.

As of today, we have a fully staffed accounting function, but for the position that you all just approved mid-year two weeks ago.

And so that has been, I think, a first since I've gotten here that we have a fully staffed accounting team, and it's really exciting for us.

So with that, I know you all are running a little bit behind, but I did want to introduce and make sure you both refresh your memory to Shandra Usher, who came to us about six months ago from Georgia.

She is the assistant CFO for operations.

Shenandra is the person that I turn to when you all have questions about how we function, how we operate, and a lot of the internal workings of our department.

She is in charge of that.

She recently hired Mr. Click, Dennis Click.

This is his second week.

He is our new controller.

And so not only were we challenged in this audit period just because we weren't fully staffed, but we also had a resignation of our beloved controller, Cecilia Baber, for those of you who were able to meet her in her time here.

And so Dennis has joined us.

I'm super excited for the work he's already bringing.

He has a lot of experience in accounting and auditing.

having worked on both the local government side but also on the private side with Virginia localities across the state.

And so he understands schools and the complexity with schools and our local government county accounting.

And so it's really exciting that Dennis is here.

So I welcome him.

Thank you very much, Nelsie.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

Thank you very much for having me here today.

As Nelsie said, we completed the audit for the county's fiscal year ended June 30, 2021.

So here to present the results of that to you all.

We did meet with the audit committee last month and went through the audit and the report in detail.

with the committee.

So I'll kind of give a little more of an abbreviated version of that here today.

So just before I get into the actual report and the results itself, just kind of wanted to go over the three main pieces of the audit that we do for the county, what's involved in the audit that we perform for the county.

And really, there's three main pieces to that audit.

One, of course, is we audit the financial statements to make sure that the county's financial statements are prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

And then the other two pieces of the audit we do in accordance with government auditing standards, one of which is in addition to just looking at the numbers themselves,

We look at the county's internal controls that it has over its financial reporting.

So as part of the audit, we'll review those controls, look to see what controls are in place, and then also we'll perform tests of those controls to make sure that they're operating as they were designed to.

And then the third and final piece of the audit

that we do for the county is the federal compliance audit.

So for all the federal grant programs that the county has, there's all these compliance requirements that the county has to comply with when it's carrying out and extending its major federal grant programs.

So as part of the audit, basically OMB provides a compliance supplement that lists all those

the compliance requirements.

And so as part of the audit, we go through that and test to make sure that the county is complying with those grant requirements.

Of course, a big piece of that this year was the CARES Act.

With all the amount of funds that were expended, that was a big piece of the federal compliance audit.

So as such, they're included in the county's annual financial report or there's three different reports from us.

Is there questions or?

Okay, sorry.

So included in the annual report, there's three different reports from us that communicate the results of the audit.

And I'm going to share my screen to pull the report up.

And so the first report from us is towards the firm of the report in the financial section.

It's on PDF page 25.

And this is our independent auditors report.

So in this report is where we state we did perform an audit on the county's financial statements.

This report talks about management's responsibility for the financial statements, which

Management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements.

This report talks about our responsibilities as auditors, which we are to issue an opinion on the county's financial statements.

Also states that we did perform our audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards.

And at the top of page two of this report,

is the opinion that we have issued on the county's financial statements.

And we have issued a unmodified opinion on the county's financial statements, which is the cleanest opinion in order to get can give on the set of financial statements.

Basically, an unmodified opinion means that the county's financial statements have been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles.

So that's the first report from us on the financial statements.

The other two reports from us are in the back of the report in the compliance section.

And the first one starts on PDF page 213.

The first report back here is our report over the county's internal controls that it has over its financial reporting.

This report was clean as well, no material weaknesses or

Significant deficiencies were noted in the county's internal controls that it has over its financial reporting.

We feel that the county has strong internal controls over its financial reporting.

And the third and final report from us is two pages over.

This is our report on the county's compliance with its major federal grant programs.

This report was clean as well.

There were no significant deficiencies or material weaknesses noted in the county's compliance with its major federal grant programs.

Also, no other items of non-compliance were noted as part of the audit.

So again, all three reports from us were clean.

It was a very clean audit.

Also, no other items

of internal control issues or concerns were noted that needed to be included in a management letter.

So again, it was a very, very clean audit for the county this year.

That's all I have on the report.

Just would like to end with, you know, thanking and commending the county staff and finance team for

for all their hard work and efforts that go into producing this document and getting ready for the audit.

As Elsie said, and they can tell you, there's a lot of work that goes into getting into being prepared for an audit and providing all the information that's needed to be reported in the annual report.

And standards keep changing, and they keep adding more and more to these reports.

I swear I think we add, seems like we have to add about 10 to 15 pages every year to the report.

So the amount of work that's required to get ready for the audit and to have all the information and to be able to get the audit done on time and to be submitted and to be able to make all the statutory deadlines, it really is a big task.

And I echo what Nelsie said earlier, in the past couple years there were some items, capital assets grant reporting that took a little longer to get pulled together.

And there was significant improvement in that as far as the timing of when the finance team was able to get that information to us as auditors.

Thanks, Mr. Foley, for those comments.

And just before I turn it back over to your price, I would be remiss if I did not publicly thank Shenandra Usher, the Assistant CFO for Operations for leading this effort, as well as Lindsay Huff, who is a longtime county of Albemarle employee, who's recently taken over the helm of the accounting unit.

And she's been here about a year.

And this was her first official audit.

So I'm super excited of the team and what we're developing and building here in the county.

And I'm proud of it.

And I know the board will be too.

So thank you for letting me share that.

Thank you, Ms.

No questions at this time, but thank you very much, Mr. Foley, for your presentation.

Thank you.

One quick question, but first I just want to thank you all for recognizing our staff and all their hard work.

While I think the supervisors recognize that, it's really good for the public to hear that from someone besides just us.

So thank you very much.

Let me just have a quick question.

In looking at this and truth in advertising, I did not read every line and every page.

so it's yeah there's a lot of pages having said that I did sort of well obviously I read parts of it I noticed on I don't see a page number on my copy but I have a hard copy number but anyway under public schools it says that Albemarle County Public Schools have grown by 5.72 percent um over the um you know the last decade

And then I got to looking at, I noticed that it talked about our unemployment rate, which was great.

And I was looking to see how much you all stated, Albemarle County had actually grown over that same period of time, and I couldn't find it.

And it seems like kind of a lack of digital question, but is that person in here somewhere?

Or maybe you don't need to deal with that and it's not in the report.

And I don't want to belabor this because I know we're running short on time.

I don't have it at my disposal right now.

Supervisor McKeel, are you referring to the budget growth?

Is that what you're talking about?

off the top of my head, I do not know.

I know we produced it in the budget.

And so we will go back and connect that for the board.

We'll take that as a takeaway.

And the public schools was their enrollment growth, right?

and I thought it would be interesting to compare that, to have that number for sure with the county and then with the budget.

I just thought it was interesting.

So thank you very much and I appreciate the good work and the report and I'm really glad we're in good shape.

The other thing I was going to add to that is that specific percentage may not be in the report, but there are kind of towards the back of the report, there are some statistical tables and it's basically

10 year trends.

So if you're looking for like actual revenues or expenditures, you can see how that's grown over the, you know, a 10 year period.

There's also, I think there's a stat table back there that talks, that includes the population and that shown

on it for a 10-year period.

OK, thank you.

And your point is a great one, Ms.

McKeel, that we will connect.

I think what you're saying is the narrative doesn't connect some of the statistics in the back.

So we can do that much more clearly next year, because we actually produce that introductory letter.

Yeah, I just think it's good for the public, right?

And good for us to know.

Absolutely.

And Supervisor McKeel, anecdotally, not statistically, my recollection from our recent discussion of redistricting is that the population of the county grew by about 10 to 12,000, which would be about 10% over the last decade, but I'll leave it to county staff to get the actual figures on that.

Thank you.

I am another who really benefits from narratives, as you know, so I appreciate all the work in there.

And also, remembering to the first budget process that I participated in in 2008, it was smaller than $200 million.

And just the whole new size of everything means it's so much so important that we're doing the job that you all are doing for us of keeping track of the pennies.

And I would just like to add, Ms.

Birch, Ms.

Usher, Ms.

Huff, who we didn't see tonight, but we heard about, and Mr. Foley, Mr. Clark, thank you all for your presentations today.

And I concur with what Supervisor McKeel said, that this is important for our communities to see.

This type of result does not happen overnight.

years of work to build a culture.

When I was in the Navy, I used to do what we called administrative inspections and called them inspector general inspections of commands.

And it is, it's a culture.

It's a culture of efficiency and public service.

And that goes beyond just the financial office, although y'all are responsible for this part of it.

And it goes to Mr. Richardson and Mr. Walker and Mr. Henry and Mr. Campner.

and all the other leaders here in the county who have instilled a culture of responsibility.

And the outcome is a wonderful report like this.

We can now move, Ms.

Birch, I think you're ready to move into your second of three and your trifecta.

Absolutely.

And as Mr. Lynch, our county assessor gets prepared here, I will just introduce him.

It looks like we have Pete Lynch.

is going to be leading this presentation.

He is our county assessor and he is joined by his deputy, Billy Taylor, who is also a long time Albemarle County employee and in the last year has become Pete's deputy, which we're very excited about.

So Billy is also here representing the real estate office.

So thank you, Pete and Billy for being here.

Thank you, Nancy.

Chair Price, honorable board members, thank you very much for allowing me to speak today.

I am going to speak about the reassessment, which sometimes can be boiled down to one number, how much did the reassessment change, but I think it's very important and I always try to give kind of a background of how we develop that number because

in how we determine their assessments and understand also that if we get one number, which I'll give you in a few minutes, very few properties within the county will actually have that change.

That is only an average overall.

So I will get into kind of the breakdown of how different properties change and how the fact that other property or a variety of properties will

Now, we are doing this presentation today a month earlier than we would normally do.

We normally send the reassessment notices at the end of January, and because of the mail issues that we've had, I wanted to mail the notices earlier so we have a target date of November, I'm sorry, January 14th.

to mail the notices this year.

And in order to do that, I wanted to be able to get in front of you before that mailing.

So that is why we are real early.

Now, one problem with that is that we are not completely done with our work.

Sales are continuing to happen through the end of the year.

Platts are continuing to be recorded and worked in my office.

So there's several things that I've marked on my presentation that are around a number or they will go up slightly.

I do not expect the results to change appreciably.

I expect there might be slight changes here and there.

And the reason why that's important is

Any information up to that date that happens in the market can be used to contest the assessment, so we want to make sure all of that information is included in our determination of the assessment.

I will also follow up and email the board prior to the notices going out with the results, the final results that we have so that you will have that information prior to the notices going out.

At the same time, in that email, I will include a sample notice so you can see

And I believe attached to the executive summary today, you have an updated FAQ.

And I will also include that in the email in January.

It will be the same version.

So I'm going to share my screen.

All right, so this is the results of the 2022 reassessment, but also it's really includes our operations for the 2021

annual year as we're developing that reassessment.

So the three main functions in my office, not just the reassessment that we conduct every year, and the reassessment actually includes a review of approximately 20% of properties each year so that we will look at every property over a five-year period.

That's our goal.

We have not reached that goal completely, but we are moving much further and closer to that.

on those properties because we have some good sources at that point.

And we update our model, our valuation model, which is used to value single-family residential properties.

And the vast majority of properties in Albemarle County are single-family residential.

And I'll get into more details about that.

We also pick up new construction by checking permits.

and the improvements to the tax rolls.

We also, a second part of that is, we are required to add properties to the tax rolls on January 1st as they stand that day.

So if a property is 50% complete or a building is 50% complete that day, we have to add that to the tax rolls on January 1st and then we would pick up the remainder of the building at 100% whenever it's done during the year.

The third main program is land use administration.

We conduct a biennial revalidation and I'm going to get into some details about that later in the presentation.

This was a revalidation year.

It was a very difficult revalidation this year for multiple reasons and the mail was part of that.

We review the revalidation applications.

We do fieldwork over the period between them to make sure that the uses that they report are happening and that all other requirements are met.

And we reviewed new

So here's the big number.

So 8.32% is our overall increase for the assessment base for the current year.

As you can see by this chart, which goes back to 2008, which was our first annual reassessment, this is by far the largest increase we've had.

If this graph went back further, you would see some very large increases in the 2005-67 time period.

Those were even higher than the 8.32% we're seeing this year.

And I just want to make a comment about that growth that we saw in the assessments in those earlier time periods were due to some

issues that really revved up housing prices that was not sustainable.

I do not believe that that is the case when it comes to our current increase.

Certainly, I don't expect this to continue from what we know now.

It's possible that with inflation, the way we've been hearing about the reports on inflation, that if

mortgage rates go up, that would slow down and possibly dampen the price growth.

So all of those will come into play as we move forward, but at this point we have a pretty solid, we have a lot of solid support and I'll show you that for that 8.32% average overall increase.

This slide, and I won't spend a lot of time on it, just breaks down that increase by magisterial district.

And the only thing that really stands out here is Scottsville with a much higher increase than the other districts.

I don't have information on why that is.

It just happens that the neighborhoods that are within that district, I believe, saw more price growth or value growth than the other districts.

This is a state property class, and just to quickly go through it, urban residential is basically properties that have water and sewer.

That's the definition of that category.

And again, the things that really stand out on this page are that apartments are going up quite a bit, 11.8% overall for apartments.

They are definitely seeing some value growth.

Commercial is more or less flat.

It's different based on the type of property within the commercial sector, but

This is a slide I presented to you last year and I'll explain because it looks a little busy, but I wanted to leave on last year's changes so that you could see what happened this year compared to last year.

So in the kind of gold color is the last year's changes with a lot of decreases, except for mini storage, everything else went down.

I put the single family residential on the right side just as a reference, but the commercial is all the other items.

Hotels suffered quite a bit last year.

They have not recovered much at this point.

Shopping centers also went down a lot.

They have recovered some of what they lost.

Medical offices and offices went down last year.

Medical offices, it kind of makes sense to me that medical offices are

being more utilized and demanded than the regular offices.

And that's why those values are going up.

The offices themselves, last year they went down, but we weren't quite sure where they were going after that.

People stopped going to their offices, but they kept paying the rent.

At this point, you know, those leases are turning over for lower amounts, lower rents, and we're starting to see some more effect on those office buildings.

Apartments, as I said a little while ago, are going up substantially, warehouses up, mini storage actually kind of flat, and the reason for that is they are seeing more expenses, and then general commercial, which is your in-line fast food restaurant

Again, a little busy, but I think this makes sense if I explain it.

This is eight groups of value ranges for single family properties only.

So if you start in the top left, it is single family properties up to 150.

I've provided the count in each group, count of properties, and the average change for that group of properties.

but next to that I also provided how many sales, how many valid arm's length sales took place in that price range and our median ratio, our ratio study that tells us if our model is working for that type of property.

So at that lower end, up to $150,000 range, there were 59 sales

and the median ratio is right around 100, just barely over 100%.

And we've talked before about the ratio study, basically the way it works is

have 59 sales and you compare the sale price to the assessment or vice versa, the assessment to the sale price.

And you take a ratio for each one of those and you group those all together and you take the median and that is the goal is to get 100% on that median.

You also don't want the range of those to be very, very high and we'll talk about that a little bit in a minute.

I only wanted to put the median ratio on here just to show that within each of these price ranges we are getting acceptable results based on the sales and the sales support the changes that are made in each of those price ranges.

I provide a little bit more

Down at the bottom of the slide, we always like to provide the median home value.

Last year, it was $355,900, is the value I reported as the median.

We're up to $386,900.

And just to explain, kind of, or show what would happen monetarily, the cost to the taxpayer

A property that has a value now of $386,900 with that 8.68% increase, we paid $263.89 more in their taxes next year.

I also wanted to add if someone is in that lower value range, and as an example $150,000 property with the average 8.5% increase, they would pay an extra $100.77 in taxes next year.

And this is just your overall ratio.

We're at 100% for the entire population of sales that took place in the county.

We are at record numbers of sales.

This is kind of a banner year for sales happening on real estate.

And this is one of the examples.

We are still working on sales as they're coming in.

We have at least 100 more already.

After I ran these numbers, I would not be surprised if we reached 2500 valid sales this year.

to include in our final analysis.

The median eraser, as I said, is 100%, which is where we want to be.

The variance this year is a little high, and I have some theories as to why that has happened.

One of those is you probably have all heard in the news about how people are bidding up properties

At least it happened a lot during the summer.

I'm not sure it's still going on.

But sellers would get five or six offers, and the buyer would be paying way over asking.

It happens in some cases, it doesn't happen in others, and it causes kind of a lot of variance in what you're going to get for your house.

So it would cause a lot of variance in our ratios as they happen.

The other factor contributing to a higher variance is that in previous years there's kind of a rule in our office that if a property wasn't listed for sale, it was not validated.

However, I encourage that we include more non-listed sales because they can be market sales.

We just need to make sure that they are market sales.

They don't have any undue influence that would make it a non-market.

Those types of sales tend to be higher and lower in ratios and would increase that variance.

So while we were doing a great job of decreasing that variance over time by cleaning up our data, I think the reason why we jumped up is mainly due to those two reasons.

The next slide, as I mentioned earlier, very few properties would be going up 8.32%, if any, exactly that amount.

The way they actually fall is the majority are increasing between 5 and 15%.

There's a good chunk of properties going up

So that just kind of shows the range of properties as they're changing.

Okay, now I wanted to change gears into land use.

And this slide, let me catch up to my notes here.

So the land use program, and I just want to remind you, the land use program is not an exemption.

It is a deferral of taxes for the period.

Now, once they're in it for more than six years, the older years are basically turning into an exemption because there's no recovery.

But I just wanted to make that clear that even if you would do everything you're supposed to do in the program for a number of years, when you stop or you change that use to a non-qualified use,

We are required to roll back the current and five previous years of taxes.

So it's called a rollback tax.

So I just wanted to kind of cover that a little bit.

that were qualified before that actually should not have been because of that.

We've been cleaning all of that up.

So you can see under the number of parcels that those have been going down.

The deferred value is pretty much staying steady as the number of parcels drop because the values actually are rising during that period.

2016, our tax deferral was $1.9 billion.

And as you go back in years before that, it went up as high as $2 trillion.

So these numbers are quite a bit lower than what we had in deferred taxes before.

also relating to land use I wanted to just point out it's not on a slide but we currently have out of that 4,052 parcels there's about 210,000 acres included in those parcels of which about just over

about 9,000 acres within those parcels are either home sites or other non-qualified and those are the things that we're making sure that we have assessed properly.

I think it's really important for the public is for that 90% or more people who are not

in the program to understand that this program is run properly and that only the part of the parcels that qualify are getting the reduced taxes.

That the home site is assessed just like any other home site in the county that is similar and so is any other portion of the property that's not currently in a qualified use.

I wanted to add one other thing to that.

In addition to these 4,052 parcels, there are 1,310 properties under conservation easement.

So those parcels include an additional over 104,500 acres that are under reduced taxation.

It's not part of the land use program.

They are actually assessed at market value.

at the lower tax rate, but not with a land use value that could be rolled back.

But I just wanted to point out that we have over 305,000 acres that are qualified conservation, open space, agriculture, forestry.

And just so that was understood.

Landry's Relaudation, I mentioned this earlier.

We came to you several months ago because of the mail issue and so I wanted to show you some numbers.

So we received up to September 1st which was the initial due date 2949 applications.

During the period

After November 1st, we have received another 253 applications in which the late fee is either paid or due.

At this point, we still have 248 properties that have not revalidated.

This is concerning and is much higher than any revalidation we've had since we started in 2009 that I'm aware of.

You know, we are going to notify when these properties owners receive their notice, the notice will say removed from land use.

They will

also show at the bottom of the notice under the values that the property is not in land use so it's going to be clear on the notice that the property has been removed and those property owners will have an opportunity until the application deadline to reapply for the land use program and put the property

It would require the same $125 application fee that matches the $125 late fee for revalidation.

And now this is the rollbacks.

This is something that we've really been working on, and this is kind of the fruit of, or some of the fruit of the efforts that we've made to clean up the program.

We have

in ensuring that we have rolled back the home site on properties that new homes are being built on, on properties in which they have changed or discontinued their use.

And you can see based on this, I do need to explain, if you look down at the bottom 2016 and 17, there were some

Large subdivisions that came out of land use at that time when they were developed.

And they created some very large rollbacks for about five or six parcels.

But as you see, the number of rollbacks were still very low in those years.

The 2020 and 2021 is really the levels where we should be at.

Some of this is kind of clean up, so once we get past that, the numbers might drop slightly, but there really should be more of the rollbacks being charged and collected on more parcels, and we've been doing that over the last few years.

I expect this to continue.

The number might not go higher, but I don't expect it to drop down to the 2018 or 2019 levels either.

And then just a quick note on SLEAC rates.

So SLEAC sets the land use rates for us.

And it was very unusual this year, or actually the last two years.

So last year,

and this year they have gone up even further than they were two years ago.

So I just kind of put the box in here to show that there really isn't much of a change from 2020 to 2022, but there's a 27% increase from 21 to 22 for agriculture and there's an 8% increase for forestry.

So why they went down, I've never gotten an answer, why they went down so much and then have now gone up.

I think they might have changed their criteria.

But I just wanted to make that clear.

It would cause larger changes on properties that are just qualified for land use.

I wanted to make you aware of the level of exemptions and just so you know how many properties qualify for a veteran's exemption at this point.

It's a cumulative number that runs from 2011, which was the first year of this program when the state law was passed that allowed it or actually required it.

And then each year, this is not how many were added each year.

It's the total that we had in each year.

So at this point, we have 161 properties that are exempt that are exempting a total of over

And then just some general information, at this point we are around 400 new parcels created.

That's new homes, miscellaneous improvements.

It could be a swimming pool.

It could be a wide variety of improvements added.

We still have 13

So 465 are the new buildings, mostly single family homes that are being built.

Some of that will be worked by the end of the year.

That will actually be complete.

on our operations is the land book will be created in May.

This happens after you set the tax rate in your meetings.

And I believe June 25 is the due date for the taxpayers to pay their tax bills.

And then I have one last slide.

It's really important, I believe,

for the taxpayers who want to know, you know, they get their notice and they say, oh my God, what happened to my value?

The first thing we suggest they do is to contact our office.

Now we are still, my staff is not in the office every day of the week, so we highly recommend that if you want to talk to the appraiser that handles the property that you, your property, that you call our office in order to talk to them.

People that just show up, which they're welcome to do because the door is open, they won't necessarily be able to speak

I recommend you call, make an appointment, and then we will work through and what we will do is explain the valuation process.

A lot of people don't necessarily understand it.

Confirm the property description with the owner, you know, and we will make changes if necessary, and we will set up an inspection of the property if we need to.

This might lead to a review request or the owner might just want to request a review.

And you do that by filling out our 2022 real estate.

That form must be submitted by county code by February 28th.

We want you to provide a reason and support why you believe this assessment is incorrect.

allow an inspection of the property by staff, and then we will get a response to you as soon as we can, in writing.

Now the next level is the Board of Equalization.

That board, you have to file an appeal to that board by March 30th, and the exception of that is 30 days after we respond to a review.

The BOE appeal form is controlled so we know who we've given it to.

And so you can contact our office to get it and then you can return it to us, filled out.

And the BOE appeal requires a property inspection by staff also.

We definitely want to be able to confirm the information that is being appealed.

And then I believe that is it.

Thank you very much, Mr. Lynch, but I'm still processing a lot of this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Peter.

This is amazingly thorough, as it always is.

When you send us your PowerPoint, would you also include the numbers about the acreage in land use?

And also, I was a little unclear about how you were explaining the conservation easements related to that.

Were you just giving us the numbers on the conservation easement, or were you

connecting those properties somehow.

I just wanted to point out that the land use program is not the only conservation program in the county.

That there are also if you just look at those

Wonderful, thank you for clarifying.

So if you could include those numbers when you send out your PowerPoint.

Thank you.

Always, Peter, thank you very much for an excellent report.

And I really just want to comment as a supervisor who remembers, I can always almost describe it as before Peter and after Peter.

We are so very lucky to have you and I really appreciate your good work.

I imagine Ann would nod her head on that one as well.

The difference you have made in this department is incredible.

Having said all that, I really appreciate your work and your staff's as well because I know you have a really hard staff working with you.

I don't think I have any questions.

I'm like everybody else.

This is a lot of material and I need to take a look at it.

I will say that the Jack Jouett district suffered mightily because of the bypass.

and so when I look at the Jack Jouett District and its numbers right now, we are really just coming out at the hip that we took many of the properties in the Jouett District because of the bypass.

Just saying, it's anecdotal, but it is really, I watched it happen and lived through it.

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you for mentioning that.

Yeah, because that is really helpful for us to see what our neighborhoods have done.

And so I appreciate that by Magisterial District.

And with that, I just thank you and everybody in your staff so much for this report.

That's true.

But I just remember because even last year, my assessment for my home was not back completely to where it was pre-bypass threat.

It took a huge hit in the Jewett district.

And it went into the Rio too, you're right.

But the brunt of it was in the Jewett district.

Well, I echo everyone who has said what a new world we are in and how wonderful it is.

And I have to apologize all the time to Pete because even though I feel like I understand things, I still send everybody to him for the right answer because I'm so afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Very, very helpful.

And I just, I'm going to zoom down my list here to look for a couple of things.

So you were talking about the anomalies, those things that were not arms length examples.

And so I would love, it doesn't have to be now, but I would love to learn a little bit more about the criteria because

I always have the property in my mind, the property on Browns Gap Turnpike where a certain person who moved to town wanted to buy that property and pester the neighbors and pester the neighbors and eventually they said $8 million and he wrote them a check.

and the neighbors around there are completely freaked out because they thought it was going to impact them, too.

And it was not considered like everything else because of the weirdness of it.

So are those kinds of things still excluded from your process or are you trying to find a way to also, what did you call it, validate them in some way?

Appraisal practice really requires the appraiser to check out

So were the parties in some way attached to each other?

Were they family?

Was somebody buying their property just right next to them, the absolute property?

There are lots of different situations where it would not be a normal market determination that caused the sale price to happen.

The example you gave though

Somebody came in, they really wanted that property.

There was no relationship between the buyer and the seller.

That's officially a transaction and it should be valid, but it will cause more in the sales that we have.

We would certainly not just take that one sale and say, hey, everybody's worth 10 times more because of that.

and let me run down here.

Okay, and that's it.

Okay, very good.

and I appreciate so much you talking about how it's only the dirt that really is the land use part of it because houses and barns and everything are all assessed to market value and that is something that people do understand when you explain it to them that just like a residential backyard is not a potential commercial, a piece of dirt that has a hayfield on it or a pasture on it is not always a potential

I feel bad because I'd love to

Find out what's going on for them.

And you mentioned there's an application deadline for people who have missed.

Yes, ma'am.

The initial deadline is 30 days after we mailed the notices.

So it'll be February 14th this year.

And that's worth $125 application fee.

be able to apply with a late fee.

2014.

OK.

Thank you very much.

I think that is all the questions I had.

Oh, one last one.

During all the crush of new building, the standard gamble for builders whose houses had not sold was not to call up and ask for that CO because then you were not notified that this house is completely finished but hadn't been sold yet.

We are definitely trying to and one of the things you know certainly this time of year since we have to go look at every property, every permit that's taking place right now and pick it up based on whatever it's at.

Great, well I appreciate all the extra work that the staff and you have done throughout this last several years to really help us get our programs going.

All right, thank you.

Ms.

Taylor, thank you for the work that you do, which is part of the foundation to the report that Mr. Lynch provided to us.

And Mr. Lynch, while Ms.

Burch did not give us a spoiler alert as far as what your report was going to say, she did tee us up with bated breath to receive this, which is very positive from the sense of the total land value assessments of the county.

I only have a couple of comments on slide 11, and you don't need to go back to it.

basically addresses the consequences of a property coming out of land use.

And you mentioned several things that would be in that report or that notice, but I think it would also include both or at least the explanation if not include also the actual calculation of the current year plus the five previous year back taxes to the individuals will have a very clear understanding of what the consequence financially for them will be coming out of land use.

I'm not even going to make a joke of your 0.9993% ratio rate.

I mean, that is as close to batting a thousand as you can get.

That is absolutely incredible, and I concur with the comments of all the other supervisors as far as the work, the quality of the work that you're doing.

And that clearly goes to what we addressed earlier with Amelia McColley with her retirement, is that the number of appeals dropped dramatically as the ratio has narrowed to almost no difference at all.