Board of Supervisors Regular First Meeting   12/1/2021

Good afternoon, everyone.

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

meeting.

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

The supervisors who are electronically present at this meeting are

supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville district, supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna district, supervisor Liz Palmer of the Samuel Miller district, supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett district, supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall district, and myself, supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio district.

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.

We also have with us today our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson.

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

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

And with that, if everyone would please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

And that will bring us to number four, adoption of the final agenda.

And we do need to announce that there is a revision to agenda item number 22, which is ZTA 2021-2 special exception procedures attachment D, which was the November 16th, 2021 draft ordinance.

The corrected copy of the ordinance was replaced in the online version on November 29th.

and the new ordinances dated November 24th, 2021.

It looks like the page 18 correction or the revision was the reference to director of planning change to board of supervisors.

And on page 20, 1820B.3, the second reference to director in this section has been changed to board of supervisors.

So with that revision, is there any items from consent that must be pulled today or other changes or additions to the agenda?

All right, hearing none, if there is a motion to adopt as revised?

So moved.

Okay, we can call the vote.

Mr. LaPisto-Kirtley?

I said aye.

Ms.

Malle?

Yes.

Ms.

Palmer?

And that will take us to number five, brief announcements by board members, and we'll go through our speaking order today.

Supervisor Price, you're up first.

Yeah, thank you, Chair Galloway.

First off, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and that it was also very safe for you and all the members of your family.

We have a lot to be thankful for here.

Many families were able to gather together in ways they haven't for the last 18 months, but we've also seen that the new variant, the Omicron variant, is out there and we must remain vigilant.

There's another thing I want to talk about, and that kind of goes to community, and that is that we have seen nationwide, regionally, and unfortunately, even locally, the loss of decorum in some communications and interactions with people.

And it's very important that we maintain civility and respect in our communications and when we gather together.

The issues that we deal with on the Board of Supervisors that affect people locally, we understand that and we understand that emotions can often run high.

But it is important that we remember both the Virginia way and what I would call the Albemarle County way.

and that we do so with respect and civility to each other.

On a lighter note, part of my Thanksgiving trip allowed me to go to Columbia, South Carolina to visit family and I had the opportunity to go along their absolutely beautiful river walk and I just recently sent pictures

Director of our Parks Department, our Assistant County Executive, and also each of the members of the Board of Supervisors.

We have so much that we could do similar here in Albemarle County with our Rivanna River and the loop around Charlottesville.

So they really had some great ideas that I saw, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to build that into our plan here.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

No, I just, what you said regarding Thanksgiving and everyone being safe and getting the vaccine, which is the safest thing, the best thing we can do to help and no other comments.

I have no comments.

Thank you.

I have bragging rights here this morning or this afternoon.

I want to brag a little bit on the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail.

And what I want to talk, just tell you about is something that I think is just amazing.

The ACRJ partnered with the University of Virginia

to offer our individuals, our inmates, the opportunity to participate in a credited Russian literature class.

The class was facilitated by Professor Andrew Kaufman, thank you, Andrew Kaufman, and 10 of his students at UVA.

The students met once a week in group sessions at the jail.

Now, due to COVID, they met by Zoom.

The classes were virtual.

And I just want to let you know that 16 of our inmates completed the class and have officially earned one college credit from the University of Virginia.

Professor Kaufman, his students, our staff, and we just all agreed that it was a resounding success.

And this was a pilot.

It was the first time the University of Virginia has ever partnered with an adult correctional facility.

And we're just really tickled.

I think that's just great news.

And I wanted to share it with everybody.

So thank you very much.

And happy, I hope everybody did have a nice Thanksgiving.

Thank you everyone and as I always feel a great sense of relief in a way as we enter the late fall and winter because things on the farm do quiet down quite a bit and there are fewer trips to the barn and things like that but it's also been a delightful fall.

It is really dry.

and people please even though there is not a red flag warning out there from the Forestry Department it is desperately dry so we need to be extra careful with these high winds and people wanting to burn leaves and throw their cigarettes out that we could be in a heap of trouble here if we're not very very cautious about this.

Really exciting about the classes at the jail because what a life-changing opportunity for someone who perhaps

didn't have a good third grade.

And that really helps them to realize they have more skill than they thought.

So reaching people wherever they are is such an important thing.

We're going to be talking about stream health later on today.

And I think reaching people regarding our environment wherever they are and bringing them to the environment as I did for 20 years with my summer camp is really, really important.

So hopefully with that education component that we're talking about later for adults, as well as to continue to push and support

The fourth grade trips to the river that were going on for about 25 years that I know Ms.

McKeel is familiar with will continue.

Just make sure my mic is working.

Can you hear me OK?

All right.

I do not have any announcements today.

So we'll go to number seven.

From the public, matters not listed for public hearing on the agenda or on matters previously considered by the board or matters that are pending before the board.

Do we have some folks signed up for public comment today?

We do.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

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

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

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

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

Address your comments directly to the board as a whole.

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

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

And again, if you exceed your allotted time, you will be asked to end your comments as the microphone will then be muted.

If the speaker does not use all allocated time, the unused time may not be shared with another speaker, and speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during the public comment periods.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

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

Please remain muted until you are called to speak.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Good afternoon.

Thank you so much to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors for allowing me to speak.

Today I'd like to talk about the importance of the Darden Tow turf and lights project.

The board had previously budgeted and approved the spend required to leverage existing field space at Darden Tow to create turf fields with lighting

however the project seems to have been sidelined despite the community demand and potential economic as well as what I call psychosocial benefits especially during this COVID period of having such facilities in our county so I'm here to ask the board to please move this project forward and would like to share a few thoughts on the merits of having lighted turf fields in our community

We have a very, very strong and growing soccer community here in Albemarle County.

But unlike many of our neighboring counties, we lack sufficient fields, especially those that are impervious to weather cancellations or lack of light.

and Turf Fields with Blights would serve as a significant infrastructure improvement for this community.

Thousands and thousands of our local athletes both at the youth levels and adults who play could use these facilities locally

and these facilities could also serve as events that organizations could hold to bring what many call sports tourism to the area to generate revenues both in terms of tax revenues for the county as well as revenues for local businesses, the hotels, the restaurants that have suffered so much

So it's something that I'm passionate about, I know several others are passionate about, and I thank you for your time and for letting me speak on this matter.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

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

The next item on your agenda is a work session on stream health initiatives phase two.

While significant time has gone into this project and its laudable goals, it is incumbent on you as supervisors to measure those forward thinking initiatives alongside your other comprehensive plan objectives.

Most specifically, how will each of these well-meaning environmental regulations impact the cost of housing in our community?

Under the next steps in the Formational Document, staff identifies the need to evaluate these proposals regarding many metrics, including equity impacts.

As you know, less than 5% of Albemarle's land mass is designated for development.

If the cost of developing housing in the county-designated development areas continues to rise, how many families will be priced out of Albemarle?

How does that sit with your oft-mentioned equity lens?

While we applaud many of the goals of the Stream Health Initiative, we are most concerned with the economic impacts of the Stream Buffer Overlay District, strengthening restoration and mitigation requirements, and development phase carryover items.

Staff has done an admirable job highlighting hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and hours of staff time associated with implementing these proposals.

Considering the import this board has placed on affordable housing and equity, the Free Enterprise Forum asks the board to determine the cost implications of each of the proposals on a potential new homeowner.

In addition, considering the current backlog in community development permitting, how much longer will it take to get projects permitted with these new proposals?

We also hope each project will have success metrics established and reported regularly.

We recognize that we are not yet to the public hearing portion of the approvals and that the devil is in the details.

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors can choose to prioritize these proposals so those that provide the most impact with the least negative externalities can be completed first.

To do so would be to recognize the multifaceted and occasionally contradictory comprehensive plan goals.

All right, thank you.

And I believe that there are only two speakers confirming.

Do we have any other speakers today?

And that will take us to our consent agenda number eight.

So moved.

Yes.

Very good.

All right.

We will move to number nine.

This is our work session on the stream health initiative phase two.

And where do we go?

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Galloway, members of the board.

Is everyone seeing my screen?

Yes.

Okay.

So I'm Kim Biastioli.

Hello everybody, my name is Laurel Williamson.

Apologize, my mic was muted.

All right.

Go ahead, Tim.

OK.

Unless we have more.

I don't see Greg, but he may be joining us in a moment.

So we're here today to talk about phase two of the Stream Health Initiative, which is focused on improving stream health in the rural area.

And while you'll hear from likely the three of us, maybe four of us today, I want to just quickly acknowledge that we've had so many other partners and stakeholders and community members who have been involved in this project and contributing over the course of the year, really with a diversity of expertise, as well as all these staff members who have contributed their knowledge of water resources and

planning and engineering and public engagement.

So this has really been a cooperative effort.

So you'll recall that this stream health initiative was divided into two phases.

Phase one being focused on development and that work has carried forward in parallel to the phase two work focused on the rural area.

And that of course has been the core of our work this year and the majority of what we're going to talk about today.

We do have one proposal as part of this project today that is related to moving forward some of those phase one items that were put on hold due to resource need.

And then as we move forward with this project, we're planning to move away from talking about these different phases, which can be confusing.

And we're going to go back to merging everything together into one big project that we'll refer to as the Stream Health Initiative.

But for today we're focused on phase two, and that's the rural area primarily.

And so you'll recall that we laid out this timeline for the year and broke our work for the year into these four quarterly stages.

And here you can see where we are in that timeline.

So the last time you heard from us was at our July work session where we brought forward 16 strategies for improving stream health in the rural area that were developed by our stream health work group and our team.

And we were directed by this board to develop some more well-developed proposals related to those strategies.

So I'll note here that the proposals you hear today and the strategies we talked about in July are not one-to-one.

So some of the proposals actually touch on multiple strategies, and some of the strategies show up in multiple proposals.

But those strategies did provide the basis for development of the proposals, as well as many, many discussions with our partners and our stakeholders and internally with our team.

And so all of that work has brought us to where we are here today in this decision stage.

So our goals for today's work session are to review the 14 proposals, to discuss and answer any questions that you may have, and then to receive direction on the staff recommendation to begin working on selected proposals and to phase implementation of others.

So in all the information that was provided as attachment B, you should have this overview of the 14 proposals.

And I want to highlight a couple of things here.

The first is that this chart doesn't show equity impacts, but we do want to note that that's been a consideration as we've had these discussions, and I think you'll see that reflected in some of our proposals.

We also want to mention that we've been working with the Office of Equity and Inclusion on equity impact assessments, and those would be completed for any project or program prior to implementation.

So the numbers that you see here on the left-hand side are not indicating any prioritization.

They're really just for your reference only.

And the colors associated with those numbers indicate, as you'll see at the bottom, whether that is a project that would be led by community development staff or by facilities and environmental services staff.

And then moving left to right across this graphic, you can see an estimate of our existing staff time for development of the project or program, an estimate of additional staff that we feel would be required for implementation, an estimate of the timeframe for development,

and an estimate of non-staff related costs and whether or not those might be recurring.

And then in the last column there, you'll see this bar chart, which is indicating the degree of alignment that this particular stream health proposal has with other goals and strategies and recommendations in the comprehensive plan, the climate action plan and the biodiversity action plan.

So related to that measure alignment with other plans is this concept of multiple benefit conservation, where of course the focus of our work here today is on water quality and stream health.

But in protecting stream health and water quality, we're likely to be providing so many other benefits for climate, for scenic value and wildlife, for public health, and so on.

So before we get into the 14 proposals, I just want to touch on one more strategy that we've discussed with this board, and that is full adoption of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

And this is a strategy that was not recommended by staff in the July work session, but this board directed us to explore it further.

And so we've dug into it over the past few months and we wanted to share a few things that we've learned.

So the first thing is that the county has already adopted approximately 60% of the provisions in the act.

and adopting the rest would certainly provide some stream health benefits and co-benefits that we've identified, but we didn't find that it would be this one comprehensive tool or solution that would replace the need or the value of all these other options that you'll hear about today.

And lastly, we found that full adoption is an extremely resource and time-intensive option relative to the anticipated benefits that we feel might be received.

But you'll recall that we did have a strategy in July related to reviewing our existing policies and regulations to identify opportunities to better align with the Bay Act.

And now that we've done a lot of this analysis over the past few months, you'll see that we have found some opportunities and elements of the Bay Act are reflected in several of the proposals that you'll hear about today.

and we've also identified some other opportunities that we could continue to pursue as we move forward with this work in the future.

So at this point, Royal Williamson and I will go ahead and talk about each of these proposals and we're going to go through them fairly quickly and at a high level so that we can leave plenty of time for questions and discussion at the end.

So the first proposal is for a stream buffer overlay district.

And the goal of this proposal is to reintroduce the requirement that stream buffers be retained.

And I say reintroduced because this language, which was originally modeled after the language in the Bay Act, was in our water protection ordinance prior to 2014.

But currently, retention of stream buffers is only required during a land disturbing activity.

So this would require the retention irrespective of a land disturbing activity and also in perpetuity following a land disturbing activity.

what's being proposed here would continue to follow our water protection ordinance with respect to the exemptions that we have for stream buffers for agriculture, forestry, public utilities and other small disturbances.

And the extent of the requirement would be dependent on

The geographic location, whether it's located in the rural area or the development area or a water supply protection area.

And then also whether the stream is perennial or intermittent or whether it's along a reservoir.

And so that would also follow our current water protection ordinance.

So for implementation of this proposal, we are actually not proposing to go back to what we had prior to 2014, which was simply a provision in the water protection ordinance that, to our knowledge, might have been somewhat ambiguous and not broadly enforced.

So instead, we're recommending creating an overlay district

and updating the zoning ordinance, which would outline permitted uses within that district and also enable enforcement.

Kim, if I can pause here because we did have a comment from Supervisor Mallek about hitting each one of these if there's questions or comments.

With 14, it does seem like a lot to go through all 14 and then have to go back through.

We have an hour allotted for this board, so questions or comments I would just ask be very efficient.

Let's not turn, if we turn each one of these into a long discussion, we're not going to get through all 14, so we can do quick hits.

Any disagreement or objection to that approach?

All right, I'll go through our order quickly to see if there's any clarifying questions or quick comments.

Supervisor Price, anything here?

Not at this point.

At the very end, I will have some comments.

Thank you.

Okay, so the

The benefit is to help walking trails and everything like that, water filtration.

But how does this affect residents, maybe in the rural areas, because we're talking about the rural areas, residents in the rural areas that already have a buffer?

So what's being proposed here is for retention of buffers from the day of adoption of the ordinance forward.

And so we recognize that there will be some nonconforming uses in that district.

Okay, thank you.

No, I think this is one of the ones that we have the most questions about, at least I do, and my list is pretty long.

But I'm not going to go through them all right now, just in the interest of time.

But I do have some clarifying questions, part of which you've just answered, I guess.

So if you have a residential property in a neighborhood in the rural areas,

and your house is there and you're on a river that is in the watershed for our drinking water supply and you decide you want to mow down to the river and set up a picnic area and whatever play area to do.

It's a great question.

And so we haven't fully developed the ordinance, and so there's still some details to be worked out.

But I think one of the things you mentioned, having a play area,

the permitted uses would be outlined in the zoning ordinance and so I would imagine that you know small scale uses like having a walking trail that leads down to the river or something would continue to be permitted.

What we're trying to get at with this district is removal of large areas of natural vegetation and converting that to lawn.

So

Yes, that would apply throughout the county, whether your house has been there or not.

So if you have a larger piece of property with a very long, and I'm thinking of one of my neighbors right now, with a long frontage on the Meacham River, and they decide to do a whole camping area with removal of all the vegetation, that might be something that somebody would have to complain about, or is there going to be some surveillance, that kind of thing.

And I'm asking these questions.

Let me be really precise.

It said in the materials that one of the problems before was a lack of guidance with respect to the water protection ordinance.

And that's why in 2014, it was limited to pertain to just active construction.

And I think it's incredibly important to find out what

Good Guidance is and how we get that and how we get that in minutes and a clear understanding of what that guidance is.

And I think what I'm hearing is that you're trying to develop guidance to suggest to the board of supervisors.

I think that is the case.

So I can't speak to every specific scenario that might come up because we haven't developed the ordinance yet.

So this is more of a general sense of the goal being to prevent removal of large areas of natural vegetation.

and not to micromanage, you know, where there might be a fire pit or something like that.

And so the guidance that I think would help with this and what's different from what we had before.

So before we just had language in the water protection ordinance and that left things open to interpretation and perhaps some ambiguity.

But having a zoning overlay district, we would be clearly defining the purpose and intent of that district, what uses are permitted and what uses are prohibited, and any other standards related to that.

So that would be outlined similar to the other districts that we have in our zoning ordinance, like the flood hazard overlay district, for example.

That's wonderful.

I did send this other question to Greg beforehand and I think this is an important time to ask him to clarify because this has always been

Confusion for me, and I assume for other board members, some other board members, is in the rural areas, 95% of the county is zoned rural.

And we have come into problems with that in the past with respect to a variety of things.

And so when do you call something a farm, and when do you call it a residential property?

and of course, we assume that a farm would not be impacted by this just from our previous conversations.

So would somebody like to take that?

Yes, when would it come under this water protection ordinance if we are excluding agriculture, which seems to be what I've been hearing, and agriculture is, you know, we have a lot of great big houses on large properties where people are haying in order to get the tax.

Ferment, and sometimes they are just still called a farm and even though they're not in any kind of land use tax deferral program.

I think one of the great things of the overlay district is it will allow the board to tailor the overlay district and

to the properties to which it will apply as precisely as can be done.

So it may be that it defines farm in such a way that it's speaking to something akin to active agriculture or something like that.

And rather as opposed to the property you described, the 10 acre mowed hayfield,

Well, we have a definition of a farm that in the zoning ordinance already that is fairly broad and it's modeled after state law.

That particular definition probably would not be appropriate for

what is being considered for the overlay district.

Right.

That's wonderful news.

And just one more, because it has to do with Kim's discussion of the Chesapeake Bay ordinance.

And I sent this question to her also earlier.

We had the question of why not call this a resource protection area rather than the water protection ordinance to be considered with the state.

and other localities.

Can you just speak to that and after that I'll give up the mic.

Yes.

So that is an option.

I think the only place that I'm aware of where we refer to water protection ordinance buffers is in the public facing online GIS system.

And in that public facing tool, I actually think that this calling it a stream buffer overlay district is a bit more clear for the public in terms of what it is and what it's meant to regulate.

Yeah, just to support what Tim just said, as I read Chesapeake Bay Act,

resource protection area would apply to our perennial streams.

But I think that our intermittent streams, which we do regulate right now, would be under a resource management area.

All right, Supervisor McKeel, you're up next.

Sorry, I couldn't get myself unmuted.

I appreciate Liz's questions.

In general, my response to this is yes.

I'm in favor of this, right?

I think we definitely need a definition for agriculture and what is agriculture.

And I think, Liz, that's what you were getting at.

So at some point, I hope we'll get that.

I would just in general say that I think incentives are wonderful.

We need incentives, but they best work when you have regulations that go along with them and you have a way to punish the bad actors.

And that's where I really want to make sure that we, through all of this discussion, that we have that ability, that we're looking at incentives and voluntary measures, but that we're also looking at regulatory

actions that allow us to get at clean water and what we need to do in the rural area in these areas.

I certainly think that to go to this, this is going to allow us, Kim, to get at perpetual retention of buffers, at least as we describe them in the ordinance, right?

because I'm very interested in that.

And I guess I've always been, I wasn't around in 2008, but I'm not sure I understand why we left that language.

I think you sort of went after an explanation.

And if it strengthens our abilities, that's fine.

I don't want to do anything.

Supervisor McHale froze there.

Is she there?

All done?

I must have had a glitch, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I just want to move on if you had another point.

Oops.

Yes.

Thank you.

I just lost my list.

Here we go.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

And this is a good start, good one to start with because getting clearer rules all the way along, all the getting back, all the things we've given up and making them better and being able to enforce them is going to create cleaner drinking water for everybody.

And that is a highly equitable

approach, if clean water is available for everybody to play in in their backyard as opposed to only some people, that would be a big, big improvement.

I am still very concerned about access to exemptions and that we need to do a lot more work about standards involved in that.

In the presentation so far, I'm really seeing a lot of work being described, creating an ordinance, creating an overlay district.

And so I'm concerned that we're going to be setting ourselves up to spend a lot of tax resources when other communities have already done the work.

The Bay Act has provided the wording and we have not yet learned about

what the positives are for those communities who have already enacted this.

I mean, there are dozens of them and they're functioning just fine.

And so I would like to know, and that's a long time question that has been before staff over four or five years.

So when this comes back again or sooner, I hope, I think that's really important information for us to have because this is the first time that we are learning about

what the staff resources are predicted to be.

And so in order to validate whether those are reasonable, we have to know what the option is.

And so the other thing I wrote down in the presentation was full adoption of the resource is resource and time intensive, but there are no details provided about what that means.

So I personally need details about what the A versus the B is all about in order to make sure that we're going forward

correctly on that.

I would definitely support higher standards and reclamation of loss buffers, especially ones that have been lost since 2014, because we can make rules to protect our water, drinking water, and all these in the western, certainly the western half of the county, absolutely.

And the eastern half of the county is somebody else's drinking water.

So we should be also thinking about protecting those resources as well with long grass,

and fence outs for animals should be our minimums.

But I will stop there.

I appreciate others questions because you've answered a lot of mine as well.

And we will continue on for the next round.

All right, Kim, I think we're going to go to number two.

Just we'll be mindful that I suspect this will pick up as we continue through these, get some of these bigger questions out of the way.

But we will not be able to do 10, 12 minutes per question, so everybody's aware.

OK.

So the second proposal is to strengthen and clarify restoration and mitigation standards for impacts to stream buffers.

So there are different instances where these standards currently apply.

For example, when agricultural or forest land is converted to development, when a mitigation plan is required because of anticipated impacts from development or redevelopment, and to address violations of the water protection ordinance.

And those requirements vary depending on the size and the circumstances

So implementation here would involve creating a comprehensive manual that outlines the best practices for restoration and also what's required in these different situations.

And then updating the water protection ordinance to refer to that manual and those requirements.

I was just going to ask, are you all finished there?

Sometimes we stop.

Just let's raise the hand here.

Any clarifying questions here?

Yes, thank you, Kim.

Do we have two questions?

Do we have local stats regarding water quality instead of, because I think you gave us information regarding state stats.

So do we have local stats?

Do we have local statistics regarding the water quality, all of our river streams and everything, local water quality?

Right.

Well, we have information from the monitoring programs through Department of Environmental Quality and our local Rivanna Conservation Alliance.

And so we don't have monitoring data or information for every stream throughout the county.

But of the streams that they've tested, about 60% are impaired in some way.

I am going to defer to Frank Pohl here.

Sure.

Frank Pohl, County Engineer.

How many parcels, how many, you know, what area, I mean, do we have a lot of farms, I guess ag and forestry is out of it, but others that have large parcels of land and that have, you know, farms and such that are in violation because we're talking about mitigation plan

and to addressing the violations of the WPO.

Well, we have a violation.

We communicate with the owner and to work to remedy the violation.

I don't know off the top of my head.

I have to look in and get back with you and the board on your question about

Violations are typically, for us to know about them, then we consider it a violation.

I don't know of ones, for instance farms aren't considered violations, right?

So if we're talking about buffers, we do have some data about how many streams, what the percentage of streams have buffers, we could share that also.

Okay, stream buffers would be great.

I just wanted to make sure we have a mechanism because if we're implementing rules and we want to address violations, we need to know who's violating, right?

Correct.

We do typically when there's development, there's plans that are submitted so there is no violation, right?

So they would present and submit a mitigation plan with their plan for disturbance.

We wouldn't consider that a violation necessarily.

So the violations are disturbances to buffers that exceed 10,000 square feet by the current ordinance that do not have those permits and are not exempt.

Thank you.

And I can provide a list of those if you would like.

Those are based on the complaints that we've received or us discovering it.

We still entered it in as a complaint so we can track it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Since Frank is here, I'll start with him.

What information is required from an applicant when they want to qualify for an Ag exemption for a disturbance?

To prove what they're doing is bonafide.

No, a management plan is not required.

It's a pretty broad

affidavit that basically allows the landowner or the farmer to claim exemption for their activity.

So we've worked on this quite a bit to try and define what is and what isn't agriculture, especially related to potential field operations.

So

Okay, and so if someone has no farm yet, they can just say we're going to be a farm and so therefore we don't have to follow any rules at all.

And you're really stuck because you don't have the authority to say any more is required.

The proposal is to complete a zoning text amendment to clarify that environmental restoration projects and specifically stream mitigation and nutrient banks are permitted by right throughout the county.

So implementation of this proposal would involve adopting the amendment to our zoning ordinance and then developing consistent regulations for review and approval of these types of projects.

The proposal number four is for sustainable onsite sewage treatment systems and the goal of this one is to increase maintenance and sustainability of onsite septic systems throughout the county which we know can have serious impacts on water quality and also be costly to landowners when they fail.

and so implementation of this is two-parted.

The first part is to establish an assistance program that would help low-income residents with the costs of septic pump outs, inspections and repairs.

And the second part is to phase in adoption of the regulations from the Bay Act, which require pump outs or documentation of an inspection every five years.

Number five is the proposal I referred to earlier, which is to reconsider these three phase one items that were essentially placed on hold due to resource needs.

So the first one of those is to address incremental development.

And that's essentially, you'll recall, when we have multiple land disturbing activities on a parcel that cumulatively start to exceed that 10,000 square foot threshold.

So this would require permitting on previously developed parcels regardless of the size of that land disturbing activity.

The second one is to require two layer erosion and sediment control measures when there's a land disturbing activity occurring within 200 feet of a stream or wetland.

And the third is to require a 25% improvement factor for erosion and sediment control measures when they're located within a watershed with an approved TMDL, sediment TMDL.

All right, questions here, raise of hand.

And I'll go through the order if there is more than one.

This is three, four, or five.

Let's see, Supervisor Palmer, then we'll go to McKeel, then Mallek.

Yeah, the big thing that this would affect would be a size of a sediment basin, for instance, or a sediment trap.

and increase or decrease the allowable area draining to one of those traps to make it more efficient.

So you wouldn't have as much water necessarily going through it.

So you'd have smaller, you'd have probably the same size facilities serving a smaller area.

So you might have a few more of these.

So once the construction is over, do those sediment control traps need to be, can be removed?

Or is it once there's vegetation in the area or whatever?

Or is that something?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

They are typically either removed, and a lot of times the designers design these to be converted to the permanent stormwater facility so that they only dig a whole one time.

That's my question for this.

Thank you.

Yeah, I have a question on four.

Go back to four, since we're, yeah.

We had a suggestion from someone in the community, and I was just trying to double check on this, that we require of a pump out within five years when a property is sold or when improvements are made to a building permit, you know, that required a building permit.

That seemed like, to me,

a good addition because I don't see, I was just trying to follow this.

I think that's a good suggestion if we didn't want to implement this in full.

And as you can see from the bottom, this would require a lot of resources.

And so this is somewhat addressing part of your question, Supervisor Mallek, because this would be part of full adoption of the Bay Act.

This is just one piece of that.

Bigger Full Adoption.

But without full adoption, we have the flexibility to pick and choose how to implement these things.

And I agree that that was a good suggestion.

I'm just getting in a way to try and make sure we have a way of tracking, that's all.

That's what I was looking at with this suggestion.

If you feel like this is much more, that this provides greater maintenance and sustainability, for lack of a couple of words, then that's fine.

I'm just trying to figure out how we're going to make sure it happens, that's all.

Do we have the legal ability to do that, Craig?

We'll need to look at that.

If it's done under the guise of the Chesapeake Bay Act, to do those additional steps.

I'm actually looking right now.

I'm interested, obviously, in requiring the pump outs, just trying to get at how we make sure.

Yeah, some ideas come to mind under our, we have enabling authority.

It's just the general police power, but it does specify adopting regulations to protect

All of the section here.

It allows us to adopt regulations to prevent pollution of water, which is dangerous to the health or lives of persons residing in the county.

So there's enabling authority there.

That's very broad enabling authority.

So with a scientific connection between the problems with failing or

flowing septic systems to public health.

There's a basis there.

And what I'm getting at is I have heard some horror stories from some of my realtor friends about discovery of some of these septic systems, you know, that have never been anyway.

And I'm just trying to get at

making sure that it happens.

I saw Supervisor Mallek and Bryson, hands up.

Is that still true?

I'll go in that order.

There we go.

Thank you very much.

This is a great way to do it.

Maybe zoom back to number three.

OK, there we go.

Yes.

All in for mitigation banks.

Number four.

I definitely support the

requirement that proof of a pump out and I would propose a much shorter time frame in five years before a sale is happening and if we have the authority under some other way to do it then that's great.

I know we've had trouble with those chemical systems and getting them put on the form of sale but I think if the county makes the decision that they're going to require it then the real estate people will figure out a way to make it happen.

The last thing anybody wants is for the new owner to get stuck with a problem that they were not told about.

There are not terrific regulations about disclosure in Virginia, so I think anything we can do like this that is reasonable and not going to require five more people to be hired, then that is a great way to get our way into this.

The other way is if

There is an assistance program.

That's great.

But if people of limited means have their pump out done, it seems like it would be reasonable for us to do a credit on their next tax bill or something like that to help bring compliance and bring this work to be done.

Because often when people have a pump out, they discover that they have

a breakdown in the system that they didn't know about otherwise.

And so you can get a lot of repairs done small that end up being much bigger repairs if they're ignored.

So I think that there'll be ways to do this.

The prevent pollution of water issue that Greg mentioned, I'd like to learn more about whether we can use this to require buffers for certain agricultural activities that we're not doing now because it would definitely prevent pollution of drinking water.

All right, we'll move forward to number six, which is called Land Conservation for Water Quality.

So the purpose of this proposal is to permanently protect streams and buffers in the county, and specifically those that have high conservation value, and to do that with conservation easements.

We are proposing that we could acquire new buffer easements and also strengthen existing easements with additional water quality protections.

So implementation of this would involve first a GIS analysis to identify those highest priority areas for conservation, but also those that might be most vulnerable or lacking protection.

And then also some deed research to identify opportunities within our existing county easements to strengthen those.

And of course, that's all voluntary and

and on the part of the landowner, excuse me.

And the third part is outreach to landowners and of course negotiating the terms and executing documents completing the project.

Proposal number seven is for our riparian conservation assistance program.

And this is to essentially develop an assistance program to help support the land conservation projects that I just described in proposal six.

So we're incentivizing permanent conservation of the highest value riparian areas.

So that again would include partial purchase of new riparian easements.

, strengthening existing easements through amendments, and also potentially supporting landowners with transactional costs.

And that includes things like legal fees and appraisals and surveys, which we know that those transactional costs can be a barrier for a lot of landowners to engage in these conservation programs.

So implementation of this proposal would involve, again, prioritizing those geographic areas that might maximize the conservation benefits received relative to the investment made by the county, and then scaling the support that's provided to the landowner according to their financial need.

Sure.

Raise a hand, any questions here?

Thank you.

So for six and seven, do you see that as being folded into somehow into our ACE program now?

That's a great question, and it's one that we've considered.

We're proposing it to be a separate program, and there's a few reasons why.

The primary purpose of the ACE program is for preserving agricultural and forest to land, and protecting natural resources is secondary to that.

And the programs we're proposing here are primarily focused on protecting natural resources and water quality.

and so it is a bit more challenging to try to adjust the guidelines and the ordinance for this existing program to try to fit this new purpose that we have.

Is that because it's part of the state, the ACE program is a state program?

Or what is the, because I see a lot of overlap here, so I'm trying to understand what the impediments are.

And I think we need to strengthen our ACE program.

Yes, I agree.

And number seven is an assistance program.

So ACE is the funding mechanism for the acquisition of conservation easements.

So that's a funding mechanism for the county to acquire easements.

So it is somewhat similar in that what we're proposing here is to have a funding mechanism to incentivize conservation easements.

and so it is a possibility.

So we talked about this is my next question then.

You had additional staff time and I think on six you had one person.

One of the things that we talked about in the ACE program is that and which we see is happening at the state level for the Virginia Outdoors Foundation Conservation easements is that as these properties change hands because the original owners have died or gone or whatever and they've sold the property that the new owners don't always understand the easements

and their purposes as well or as committed to the easements as the original property owner.

And so I'm suggesting that, and I've suggested this before, is that the county really needs to hire or have staff to

you know, to track these things.

And so you're talking about adding to this conservation program.

And I would just emphasize that that's going to be an additional burden for tracking.

And I don't know if your one staff person was going to be involved in the training.

the one staff person.

Yeah, is that your question?

Yes.

Yes.

So we did include that one staff person for both of these proposals, six and seven.

So six is the program and seven, again, is the funding mechanism.

And that one person would also support monitoring and stewardship in our existing land conservation program, all the easement authority programs.

Thank you.

I'm going to jump back one second to Frank on number five because I think it's a really important question.

The incremental disturbance, or maybe Kim, you can do this.

Incremental disturbance on a parcel.

We've had really bad experience with that over the years in White Hall districts under the poster child.

What about an adjacent parcel, same owner, being used for the same use?

I hope that we'll be able to consider expanding in that way because otherwise we're falling in the same trap and we're leaving ourselves open for that.

So that's the only thing I have on number five.

To zoom down to number six.

I'm sort of surprised and sort of sad that to hear the description of the ACE program is not being supportive of protection of natural resources because for 21 years I've been working very hard to achieve that.

So if nothing else comes in this discussion, it's to refocus on that.

We do have full buffer on the fence out requirements now.

It took 18 years to get them adopted, which is too bad, but at least we're getting there on that one.

That's excellent.

On number seven, making sure that we're using the state programs.

There are transactional cost reimbursements now available already from the state.

So if we're going to be facilitating those kinds of things, the conservation partner agencies are very familiar with linking landowners with those dollars.

And so I'm not sure we have to replicate that particular issue, but just throw it all into the pot.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you very much.

Regarding slide number six.

Yes, regarding the buffer easements and the strengthening existing easements, are we talking about having

a certain buffer, how many feet and everything.

Is there anything specific in here yet?

But we're just, we're looking at it.

I'm currently there isn't any specific and the benefit of easements is that they're very flexible and depend on the characteristics of the property.

So certainly protecting perennial streams, I think often the standard is 35 feet.

but a lot of conservation organizations in Virginia actually use 50 feet and also protect intermittent streams, which is not currently in a lot of our county easements.

So those are some things and also requiring livestock exclusion is another possibility.

So there's not a set width but that is open to negotiate between the landowner and the county.

And again, this is all voluntary.

So all of these things are things that the landowner agrees to

No, that's that's out.

I like that.

That sounds very good because it sounds like there's flexibility depending upon the situation.

So OK, it's not a one size fits all type rule.

OK, thank you very much.

Sorry, just a quick comment.

Am I still muted?

Oh, OK.

Just a quick comment, and I'm sorry.

To piggyback on what Ann said, I really think that we need to view the ACE program in light of our climate action plan and how we protect.

And I really am a little skeptical of separating them out and creating

a whole other level.

I just think when we're looking at ACE, which I support, I think we need to look at it in the total through the lens of our climate action plan as well, because it hasn't been updated for a good while.

And I just think we need to look at it through that lens and see how we can strengthen the ACE program is what I'm trying to say based on our climate action work and not look at it through two different lenses.

And I'll just let it go with that.

Yes.

Just to throw in one person's point of view, and that is that if we're going to be providing any assistance funding, we should have a mandatory fence out for livestock written in at the beginning.

This will save 18 more years before we get back to that point.

Again, full federal funding is available.

So I think that we really, whereas flexibility on the distance for a stream can depend upon

All right, so board, we've passed 60 minutes on this.

and we will end at 2.40 and move to the next item.

Yes, so I will pass it over to Laurel and she'll take us through the next three and then she and I will switch back and forth.

I would do this next three and then we'll see where we're at.

All right.

Thank you so much.

So the next three incentive-based proposals, all billed from the county's existing relationship with the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District.

And as you all know, much of the district's work involves administering cost-share dollars available from the state.

to support agricultural best management practices that reduce pollution flowing into our waterways.

Unfortunately, districts across the state seem to chronically struggle to have enough resources to support their staff.

And of course, cost-share dollars are difficult to use when there aren't enough staff in place to work with farmers and to do the paperwork.

Our district is no exception, so this proposal seeks to help increase their staffing resources.

You might remember that two years ago the county did provide such funding as a one-time contribution.

So this proposal, however, would allow us to do so on an annual basis to provide more stability for that agricultural cost share program that is really in such high demand in Albemarle County.

So number nine, while the last proposal focused on staffing resources, proposal number nine seeks to provide direct financial assistance to landowners to incentivize best management practices on farms in the county.

Such funds from the county would supplement or perhaps fill in gaps in the state's existing cost share programs.

The funding could be used, for example, to make projects larger, more impactful than they might be otherwise, or to provide higher cost share levels to farmers that have a demonstrated need.

County funding could potentially, for example, help establish wider stream buffers, pay for tree planting projects, support maintenance of fencing and watering systems that keep livestock out of streams, and perhaps more.

Implementing this proposal would require county staff to help develop criteria for the most effective use of this funding mechanism, which may need to be adjusted occasionally, depending on the status of the state's cross-share programs in any given year.

Number 10, another program that's administered by the district is the existing Albemarle Conservation Assistance Program, or ACAP.

This cost share program is currently in its third year and is funded by the county.

It helps with the establishment of stormwater and erosion reduction practices on residential and other non-agricultural properties.

Practices that are most commonly supported by ACAP are rain gardens, native plant meadows, permeable pavement.

Similar to what has been described in the previous proposal, this program leverages state funding as well as really significant contributions from the landowners themselves.

ACAP has been very popular, and the district staff report that there's enough demand, certainly enough demand, to warrant increasing funding for the program.

Very good.

Looks like no questions.

Oh, there goes one.

Only just to add, please, that the Farm Service Agency, FSA, is an equal partner with Soil and Water Conservation District in providing these cost shares and project design, implementation for all those different categories of activities that you mentioned.

And we don't want to leave them out and lose access to all those dollars too.

All right, very good.

I don't see any other hands up.

I will do 11.

We can go through to the end and then go for questions from there, I think.

So 11 is a proposal to do a study of different options that the county might employ to increase the use of low impact development practices.

And without getting into too much detail, that LID is essentially for better management of stormwater on site.

And so those options could be regulatory in nature or they could be incentive based.

and implementation here is proposed to start with a code and ordinance review that would help identify any language that we might have in our current ordinances that might be inadvertently discouraging or inhibiting the use of LID.

And then exploring the pros and cons and applicability of LID in the context of the county's code and design standards as well as the statewide regs.

And then once those first steps are completed, we've also identified some future next steps in terms of working with the community, engaging stakeholders, to help us work through any barriers and also to identify any opportunities we might have to develop incentives, for example.

Right.

Number 12 is stream quality assessment program proposal.

While we are lucky in Albemarle County to have water quality data for many of our streams and rivers, most of them do remain unassessed.

And there are, we are finding also landowners and residents who ask, how is my stream doing?

And that question is the foundation of this proposal.

It presents a potential opportunity to gather more stream quality data, especially in parts of our county where very little data is available now and an opportunity to give residents insights on the condition of streams right there on their property.

The Rivanna Conservation Alliance has many years of experience assessing stream quality in our area and they have agreed to help develop and lead this stream quality assessment program for county residents if this proposal goes forward.

All right, number 13 is to expand and formalize a new landowner education project that has recently been piloted.

And the goal of this project is to actively inform new landowners about the different conservation cost share and stewardship opportunities that are available to them in the county.

And so implementation would involve, again, using GIS to identify parcels that both have new ownership and are also located in those high priority geographic areas for conservation.

and Water Quality Protection.

And then updating our digital resources, including the environmental stewardship hub and the new resident guide on our website.

And lastly, creating some direct educational outreach through mailings to these new landowners.

Alright, this last proposal caps things off by looking towards the future and to our kids.

The goal of this proposal is to provide meaningful watershed education for every sixth grader in each of the county's five public middle schools.

As many of you know, in fourth grade our students all take part in a field trip to the Mormons River and are introduced to some basic

concepts of streams.

And then in sixth grade, the current standards of learning cover the topic of watershed science, which I think is typically taught with classroom instruction.

So this proposal would enhance that learning with a field trip to a local stream and hands on action project that would allow students to apply those watershed concepts that they've been taught in the classroom.

County funds would help support this effort and the Rivanna Conservation Alliance who has piloted a similar program would actually implement it.

This is a comment with respect to the education program.

I think it might be helpful to, and I don't know if this is part of it or not, when our assessor who goes out to look at

validation for the tax deferral program for land use, it might be a really good idea to have that person equipped with literature because we often, if something is mailed, we don't see it these days with all the junk mail coming in.

And one other comment I think just from listening to other

supervisors, it might be helpful to take two minutes or less to explain what the riparian buffer requirements are now in the county.

There's a good description online, but you might want to just take a moment to talk about the 50 and 100 foot buffer and do it around the reservoir.

Frank, do you want to take that one or do you want me to?

Sure.

I don't know specifically what's on the website, but in general there is a 200-foot buffer within around every reservoir in the county.

Chris Green Lake was removed from being one of those drinking water reservoirs recently, but all of the other ones, all of the drinking water reservoirs do have a 200-foot buffer.

And those are all of the buffers

Let me go through the different ones first.

There is a forestry buffer to remain exempt.

Forestry, the 50 foot, 50% of basal area.

Maximum basal area removal is a buffer that is required for that activity to remain exempt.

And there's also, and this is on a perennial stream.

So we've adopted what the state requirement is for that.

And then there are rural area development where perennial and intermittent streams have a 100 foot buffer if your land disturbance exceeds 10,000 square feet.

And so you'd have to meet the definition of land disturbance.

And then in development areas, we have 100 foot buffers on, excuse me, on perennial streams only, not on intermittent streams for land disturbing activities also.

There's a little nuances to this in everything we do.

And of course, for this one, if you're within a water supply protection area or other rural land, then the buffer would be on both intermittent and perennial.

This would include development areas.

So we've had a few out near Crozet Park where there was a buffer because they're in a

Development Area, but they still have a buffer because they're within a water supply protection area.

Yes, thank you.

Wait a minute, where did I go?

Oh yes, number 12, also DEQ, Nisha McCray is the staff person who has been running research projects in some of our stream basins and so we want to make sure that we're linking

I know RCA has been part of those as well.

Next year, apparently, the race for Chris Green area is finally getting on her list.

I've been asking for five years, so I'm really glad that they're going to take that on.

This is a really good idea, and I think that in places, especially feeding into our public lakes, which are supported by our tax dollars, we need to make sure we know

where pollution is coming from and do something to stop it because otherwise one person's bad behavior is causing cost and also lack of swimming time to lots of other people during the summertime and it's just not fair.

I love the partnerships with Soamwater Conservation District to increase the face-to-face contact with new owners but also when we're visiting new owners let's be sure that we're educating them about their obligations

living in the country and taking care of those streets.

Not just hear of all the glitzy carrots that we can give you, but you have to do this.

And if you're not willing to do this, don't live there.

It's really important that we take a really strong stand about protecting our waterways, especially because all the people in the urban area are drinking water that is coming through 75% of the county rural area.

And the rural area folks should not be abusing that privilege.

All right, Kim, I am going to give each supervisor a chance to do a set of remarks, comments, et cetera on the whole overarching piece.

Well, I have one more slide, which I'll go through now, and then I think we can do that, wrap up.

And so, see, I can advance.

So next steps, and here, if you have that overview of all 14 proposals, that might be handy to pull out so you can refer to which number is which as I go through these next steps.

and so because this is a work session at this point staff is seeking feedback or input from the board before we proceed and unless there's board interest otherwise staff is prepared to take these next steps.

First to begin work on proposals 3 and 11 which are immediately actionable with existing staff.

and to submit for consideration a budget request for FY23 for the resources needed to work on proposals 1, 2, 5, 6, and 13, and 8 and 10, which would be carried forward by community development staff and facilities and environmental services staff respectively.

And then third, to return to the board for consideration proposals 4, 7, 9, 12, and 14 in fiscal year 24 through 26.

So I can either leave this up or stop sharing, whichever you prefer.

Yep, that would be helpful.

And then each supervisor, I'll come through general comments, obviously feedback on the timeline, et cetera.

Thank you, Chair Galloway, Ms.

Biasioli, thank you, and also everyone else.

In the interests of brevity, I won't mention all the names, but thank you each who have appeared before us today, as well as those listed.

on the previous slide on all the people who've worked on it.

I also want to express appreciation for working so closely with members and organizations in our community on this.

We've received a lot of feedback from them, and I'll make sure that any of the emails I've received I forward to y'all for your review.

The one real area, and also thank you to my fellow colleagues, my supervisors for the breadth and depth of questions and comments that you've raised.

The only area right now that I'm really going to ask about is it's a little confusing to me our executive summary on pages two and three talk about the proposals in one area they list what the costs are in other areas they don't list what the costs may be and for example stream buffer overlay district number one

In the executive summary shows $113,000 is needed, but on your slide number six, there's no cost associated with implementing that.

So it gets a little confusing trying to figure out what are these things going to cost us.

Number four, sustainable onsite sewage treatment systems is another one that

The cost is shown on slide six to be substantial.

So it's very difficult to make final decisions on some of these things without knowing what those costs would be.

Item number 11, the strain quality assessment program is proposed for immediate implementation, but we don't have anything that tells us what the costs on that are going to be.

So while I am general and very supportive of the plan and proposals, there are some specific

Regard costs and time that would be important for us to know in making final decisions.

Yes, quickly, I concur with Supervisor Price.

I have some of the same concerns also.

And I would like to see, regarding the stream buffer overlay district, I would like to see what that looks like, where that applies, and who that affects, because I've been receiving correspondence regarding, they're going to have to do something that doesn't need to be done, enforcement, things like that.

But otherwise, generally speaking, I'm in favor of what you're doing.

I think I did email you some comments earlier, and then I'll just ask for you to go ahead and respond to me at a later time, if you wouldn't mind.

I'd appreciate that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate everything done.

Number one, I think is the most important that we need to get going.

There's so many unknowns in that and I have so many questions about

It's going to turn out, but there's a lot of work to be done clearly.

And I do think, and I do hope that it is as broad as we possibly can make it.

I think we need to start really considering our rivers narrow bands of intense biologic importance.

We really need to start taking care of them for so many different reasons.

And we all know those reasons, I think at this point.

I am fine with with your lists and when you're getting them done and whatnot.

I would say that the education for new landowners in the absence of the larger project that it might be good to start doing that in some smaller fashion with

are taxed mailings or with our, as I mentioned before, with our assessors going out, whatever, to evaluate properties.

I think that would be very helpful because most people don't have any idea.

They're just trying to make things look right.

Neaton trim and like a golf course.

So anyway, I will stop there in the interest of time.

Yes, I agree with my fellow board members about the staff.

This has been really good work session.

represents a lot of work and I appreciate that and a lot of work on behalf of our community.

I will say that I just for those folks that sent in comments, I know

I went through and read every single one of them.

I appreciated them being in our packet, and I'm sure other board members did as well.

And I found the comments really worthwhile.

I mean, it was really good to read them.

I did want to mention one thing about one of the comments was about using pervious and impervious paving.

options during our land use proposals.

And I would really appreciate in the future a work session or discussion about pervious versus impervious paving because, you know, we had a talk about this, I don't know what, six, eight years ago that with our red clay

It is very difficult to use certain types or require certain types of painting.

I'd love to have a discussion further about that.

And it jumped out at me because it was one of the comments.

And I think some of the planning commissioners have mentioned this to me as well, that they would really like to have discussions on what really does work with our red clay soil.

Having said that though, I agree with Liz.

Number one for me is the most important.

I would add number two to that as well for me if I was ranking.

And I'm wondering, number four is listed as next steps for you're going to be looking at number four, which is the

What did you all call it?

I'm trying to think here.

Sustainable on-site sewage treatment systems.

I'm wondering if there was a way that we could get at this at least a little bit quicker if we implemented something that was very simple right away

and then came back to it in the future for a fuller discussion and implementation because I really think there's a couple of things we could do pretty simply to get at this now and not have to wait until 26.

Anyway, just a thought.

Thank you.

I'm confused because I thought the septic tank thing was right now.

So I'll have to go back into my notes again.

I certainly agree that number one is important.

and also that if we're actually requiring restoration of buffers that's even more an important value that will get us back to not just where we were in 2008 but an improvement over what that situation is.

I'm looking through my notes as well and we

I still am hung up on the fact that I encourage all the staff who are looking at this to make sure they're not spending a lot of time writing something that's already been written and that we do our very best to take benefit from what other counties have done and are doing.

A citizen recently today sent me a link to Fairfax that has all sorts of public-facing documents, very easy to read, that I think we could easily play

I will ask again, I would like to know who the stakeholder group is and to voice again my concern that when a stakeholder group is effectively removing options for the board to consider, that is a concern.

So I think that it may make the staff's job easier, but I think it helps get us back into the mire more directly later on.

So I would like to get some more detail on what that's all about.

We don't want to cut ourselves off from future success because we took a shortcut at the beginning.

But we really need to keep track of the fact that climate change is incredibly important and for our grandchildren to have any success at all.

And our stream health goals will save us money and also allow us to make some real progress, which I think today up to date has been very lacking.

We've been talking about it, but we haven't really been doing much.

We've certainly helped in weatherization for many people, and that's helped them.

But we need to help our environment as well.

But thank you for all your work.

I look forward to the next batch of information that comes out.

And please send the information sooner as you can so that we can digest it in smaller chunks.

All right.

Nice job, staff.

I mean, this is a huge topic to try to get through.

The fact that we were doing this and with the time that we did is somewhat amazing to me.

So I appreciate marching through this and indulging the questions for me.

I certainly endorse your next steps.

We cannot do all of these at one time.

There's a lot of FTEs and a lot of dollar signs on here.

I think some of that will be answered, especially as you propose implementing it into the budget request, because then we'll be able to stack it up against other priorities.

that monies will be programmed to and then we will see how this stacks up.

And I do think it is important in the comment in the public comment about the indirect or consequential costs outside of just the resources that it takes.

That has to be an important part of the conversation.

I'm not saying that sometimes that can be viewed as a counterpoint.

It's not a counterpoint, it's just what could be passed along

and what's the value proposition?

If it does increase the cost, it may very well be that that increased cost is worth it, but we should at least ignore it.

We do have to acknowledge it and consider it.

I wish the four, seven, the nine, some of those programs that are helping folks get involved and come back.

We're pulling ahead forward, but I don't see how you can do it.

So I think the plan that you've placed here is one that I'm supportive of.

So again, Kim, Laurel, Frank, thank you very much for fielding all the questions and going through a lot of content this afternoon.

Thank you.

And I always ask, did we give you what you need?

Yes, I think so.

And there were other details and questions that were being asked.

So if we could make sure that gets followed up and sent out to the board as well, that would be appreciated.

So thank you.

All right, board, we're going to move to our next item from water to blight.

Number 10, work session to discuss blighted properties and property maintenance.

And we have Amelia McCauley and others joining us as I see a bunch of squares popping up.

Thank you.

Oh, Jody, good afternoon.

There we go.

Good afternoon, Chair Galloway and members of the board.

Can you see my screen?

Shaking heads.

I'm joined today by Amelia McCully, deputy director of community development to discuss blighted properties and property maintenance.

We're here today to seek board input on whether to take measures to establish a new program under the Virginia maintenance code to continue with focused tools and measures using spot blight abatement.

During our presentation, we will cover background for the issue and why it's important, new information and initiatives, costs and options for the Virginia maintenance code, including potential unintended impacts, and increased focus on quality of life enforcement, including spotlight and staff recommendations.

In a December 16th, 2020 board work session, staff provided strengths and weaknesses of three tools.

spot blight abatement, a tax abatement to demolish or renovate derelict buildings, and the Virginia Maintenance Code.

We also discussed the several currently adopted and enforced regulations that relate to quality of life issues, including uncontrolled vegetation, stagnant water, the keeping of junk, trash, and refuse, and inoperative vehicles.

As a result of the work session, the board asked staff to research costs and options for adoption of all or part of the Virginia Maintenance Code, including possible phased options.

During the discussion, several board members also expressed concerns about abandoned properties, particularly within neighborhoods that become blighted and impact other properties.

We're going to use the term blighted property, so we will provide a definition from the Virginia Code for a common understanding.

Blighted property is defined as a structure or improvement that is dilapidated or deteriorated because it violates minimum health and safety standards based on Virginia Code section 36-3.

While blight is more often considered in the context of development areas, it also exists in the rural areas.

As the county continues to urbanize, staff expects increasing concerns relating to blight and building maintenance, which in turn relate to residents' quality of life.

We're considering the need to address blight for a myriad of reasons, such as those noted in the Housing and Urban Development article on mitigating neighborhood blight as noted on this slide.

We'd like to go over several new relevant developments since the prior work session.

These developments include successes using spotlight abatement authority.

Since the prior work session, we've received six property maintenance complaints.

Five of these properties were in the rural area and one was in the development area.

Following the action taken as a result of the complaints,

Five of the six have approved maintenance plans and secure first floor access.

One entire structure in the development area is planned to be demolished, and that building permit is currently under review.

If any of the properties with approved maintenance plans do not make satisfactory progress towards compliance, they will be brought before you with the spotlight ordinance.

Moving on, organizational advances in the fight against blight.

Following the successful model of other localities who are prioritizing quality of life enforcement efforts, we have recently established a team that crosses multiple agencies to coordinate efforts.

This team acknowledges that clients working with one county department or an agency operating in the county may well benefit from support from additional county departments in a coordinated fashion.

The Albemarle County Coordinated Action Response Team, or CART, includes representatives from Community Development, Building, Zoning, and Engineering divisions, Social Services, Police, and Fire Rescue.

It also includes representatives from the Virginia Department of Health.

This team approach allows a collaboration toward problem resolution, including strategic code enforcement and targeted investments of resources to obtain compliance.

It's also worth noting a previous limitation to the Virginia maintenance code has been addressed.

Previously, structures built prior to 1973, which was when the building code was adopted,

were completely exempt from the Virginia Maintenance Code.

A recent amendment allows the non-construction regulations such as peeling paint and sagging gutters or siding to apply to these structures built before our construction code.

To be strategic in how the county deploys resources and approaches property maintenance and blight complaints, staff has drafted a rank prioritization, which is attachment B in your packet.

We've bundled possible conditions into four categories, structurally unsound, structure in pieces or unsound, which could lead to stream impacts, aesthetics visible from a public road and aesthetics visible from a neighbor's property.

Public health and safety is the highest priority reflected in the first three priorities.

Discharge to or other impacts to nearby streams, which may potentially impact

stream quality and or quality of area wells is the fourth.

This actually may be a fire rescue lead or a state agency lead depending on the situation.

This list also considers damage to others property, environmental hazards and aesthetic conditions.

County staff would apply this prioritization when considering proceedings that could result in repair or demolition or removal of all or part of a structure.

Thanks, Jody.

I'm the deputy director through the end of this month, that is.

I'm going to delve into costs and options for adoption of the Virginia Maintenance Code.

You also hear us interchangeably call it VMC, talk a little bit about potential consequences of adopting it,

how to increase focus on the important issue of blighted properties and then share staff's recommendation.

Staff estimates that over the past two years, less than 2% of our building and zoning complaints relate to blightened property maintenance.

These have been addressed with our spotlight tools, which are based on public health and safety.

Because we haven't experienced property maintenance cases in high volume or in a concentration such as several within the same neighborhood,

Staff recommends continuing to use a spotlight abatement tool.

The Virginia Maintenance Code goes beyond public health and safety concerns.

As we've talked about, it addresses some aesthetics, such as peeling paint, sagging gutters, and so forth.

As requested by the board at this point in our presentation, we're going to discuss costs and options for adoption of the maintenance code.

And there are a variety of choices to be made, all of which directly affect the cost for the program.

Options for adoption of the code vary from adopting a portion of the code to adopting the full code.

Some localities such as Spotsylvania first adopted the entire code, full adoption, and then retracted to a partial adoption that focused on community issues such as hoarding and overcrowding.

In addition to that decision,

There's another major choice for undertaking a new program and that relates to the enforcement approach.

This decision significantly impacts staff resource needs.

Options for enforcement approach range from fully proactive throughout the county to proactive only in certain neighborhoods or proactive only in the designated development areas.

As with our own current complaint-driven code compliance approach, some localities, instead of being proactive, are responsive to complaints.

Of the 12 localities that we researched, about half are responsive to complaints and half are proactive.

With regards to the other question, the other decision to be made, most of the localities have adopted the full maintenance code.

only Spotsylvania and Culpeper of those surveyed by us adopted only a portion of the maintenance code.

So the board asked us to come back, provide information on a phased approach for adoption.

And we suggest that a partial and or phased approach could be structured as follows.

The program be responsive to complaints throughout the county.

An option for the board is to

not go entirely responsive but to prioritize our aging urban neighborhoods by being proactive in one to two new neighborhoods each year.

Of course, we have to have discussion about what criteria are relevant to the board to identify those neighborhoods.

Second point would be that we recommend a focused enforcement that prioritizes public health and safety and that we adopt

A portion of the maintenance code, and that would be chapter three, that focuses on the exterior of the structures.

Now, there are two additional initiatives that we believe are critical to the success of a new maintenance code program in Albemarle.

First, that we establish partnerships of all types, public, private, and nonprofit.

And these are individuals and agencies who can assist housing burden residents to address violations that they may have.

This could even include a situation, for example, of earmarking funding for housing non-profits who work in rehabilitation of structures for low-income people.

And secondly, we think an additional initiative that's critical is to provide continued funding for cleanup actions that the county would have to undertake, to implement a phased and partial

VMC adoption approach, a combination of staffing and expense funding is anticipated, and we estimate that an initial first-year cost would be $500,000 with an ongoing cost of about $390,000.

There's a full breakout in attachment E. Please understand with the cost estimates that it's been our experience with adopting regulations, and it's also been that of our other localities.

that adopting a new code, creating a new program generates additional concerns and complaints filed with the locality.

So our estimate of what we need is not based on a continuation of the three to six complaints that we're receiving per year.

Now we expect that number to significantly increase with the new program.

Next slide.

The other end of the spectrum from a

A partial adoption of the code and a responsive program is a fully proactive enforcement throughout the county and adoption of the full Virginia Maintenance Code.

With only a few exceptions, such as illegal signs in the right-of-way and home stays, the county is a responsive program for land use enforcement.

A new proactive program based on the full Virginia Maintenance Code is a substantial undertaking.

If the board is inclined to adopt the Virginia Maintenance Code, staff would recommend that the first option of phasing in the program would be the way to go.

Adoption of the full maintenance code with proactive enforcement countywide is estimated to have a first year cost of 888,000 and an ongoing cost of 679,000.

If the board does have interest in further exploration of adoption of the Virginia Maintenance Code,

We can come back and we can lay out pros and cons of partial versus full adoption.

It's probable that violations, if we did a partial adoption, that some violations that we would experience would touch multiple chapters of the code.

However, it's essential really to determine what's most important to this community and to begin somewhere.

Start somewhere knowing that you can always build on to that.

Next slide, please.

The next two slides consist of a few photos for illustration.

It's important to clarify the results for adoption of the Virginia Maintenance Code because it may not be what you would want or expect.

The first slide shows a building that complies with the Virginia Maintenance Code even though it's not aesthetically pleasing.

Sometimes the required action under the VMC is to barricade first floor access and board off windows.

Next slide, please.

Now this photo is taken from a Chesterfield County blight presentation.

It shows a house that hasn't been maintained and would be considered unsightly by many.

Yet this house is not blighted and does not violate the property maintenance code.

I'll give you a local example.

Many of us are familiar with an Albemarle case in which there was a hole in the roof of a home in which wild animals were roosting.

This was a home within an established urban neighborhood.

Staff used spot blight abatement in the undertook measures to seal the hole in the roof.

Now, this is an example where establishment of a Virginia maintenance code program would actually not allow us to go further or faster with compliance than the spot blight ordinance.

Spot blight abatement was successful in that case, and now with experience, we believe that we can achieve results within a shorter timeframe.

There is, of course, a statutory process that we need to follow for spot blight

Abatement, and our goal is voluntary compliance.

Next slide, please.

We met with staff from the Offices of Equity and Inclusion and Communications and Public Engagement to view this issue and potential solutions through an equity lens.

We don't yet have enough data for clear conclusions at this time as our sample sizes are too small, but we are concerned if blighted properties are owned by constrained income households.

We're also concerned if blighted properties exist within communities of color.

If the VMC is adopted in whole or in part, regardless of whether the enforcement approach is responsive or proactive, staff recommends that additional funding and partnerships are important to address the needs of low-income community members and that this program be best developed with our housing partners in considering best practices in other localities.

Next slide.

Light enforcement is currently competing with other demands, new construction, because those are the same staff responsible for both.

We're under a mandated timeline for response to inspection requests for the building code, and new construction is fundamental to the health of the local economy.

Facilitation for the Albemarle team, the CART team that Jody spoke of, is challenged by resource demands who are also juggling many other responsibilities.

With the budget for next fiscal year, our department is requesting a dedicated staff person to not only allow us to provide responses to blighten building complaints within reasonable timelines, but also allow sort of a broader and forward-looking evaluation of trends, causes, and effects.

This work will better inform when we may need to use additional tools such as the VMC or even a vacant property registry.

Even with the use of current resources, staff recommends continuing the use of spotlight abatement.

It addresses health or safety.

It's not going to address aesthetic concerns, but it addresses health or safety, and it's administered by the county without having to go through the courts, and it has clear consequences for property owners.

Next slide, please.

There's no alternative regulation or program that addresses all concerns relating to all properties.

Given the minimal numbers and concentration of property maintenance cases, staff recommends continued use of spotlight abatement.

We believe we currently have the right regulatory tools and that we need dedicated resources to more effectively focus on abating blighted properties.

The VMC, as we mentioned, goes into aesthetics and adoption of the VMC would begin a substantial new county regulation and enforcement program.

This work can

would not be able to be absorbed by existing staff and costs are substantial.

We would like to note that some of the solutions through the Virginia Maintenance Code may not be satisfactory because they may not fully address what people see as the issue.

For example, the slides that we shared.

Many of the localities that have adopted the VMC are seeing high numbers of blighted properties or they're seeing blight that impacts large portions of neighborhoods.

Thankfully, neither of these are our experience in Albemarle.

In conclusion, staff does not recommend adoption of a VMC at this time.

We recognize that continued focus on spotlight abatement is warranted, and that includes dedicated resources for blight, kart, and other quality of life concerns.

In the future, a more comprehensive blight remediation strategy may be relevant that is not only preventative, such as through code enforcement,

but it also incorporates opportunities such as renovation and redevelopment.

Next slide, please.

I'm going to end the presentation with two questions for your discussion.

Should staff continue with focus tools such as spotlight abatement, the prioritization tool and CART, or should we take next steps and come back to you to talk about establishing a new Virginia maintenance code program?

Thank you, Jody.

And let's see, we'll leave those up.

And then if we need to refer to any of your slides, supervisors can direct us to them.

So I'll go through our order.

Obviously, this is open for any questions to clarify what the presentation, comments, and then obviously we want to make sure we address these two questions specifically.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Ms.

Villardo and Ms.

McCauley for your presentation.

I recall, I guess it was about a year ago when we last covered this ground, there were three properties that I had brought up in the Scottsville District and subsequent to that have also been involved in the reporting of several others.

And it's clear that what we currently have been doing has not been able to fully address

um the blighted um unsafe property situation.

I think of the three that I first brought up pretty much the only thing that was achieved of significance would be that an abandoned minivan was removed from the property and some openings were boarded up but other than that the the properties are still out there and just as blighted as they otherwise appeared.

To address this, I would say I'm not in favor of adopting the full Virginia Maintenance Code, even though that's not one of your three options here.

I would say I'm not in favor of adopting that because, and I appreciate especially Ms.

McCauley, the way you addressed

that there are some unintended consequences and costs that come out to play.

To me, one of the things that has to be taken into account and this ties in with the OE&I, the Office of Equity and Inclusion participation in this process is the distinction between those who cannot correct their property, primarily because of financial resources,

versus those who simply will not or refuse to do so.

And one of the things that I am not interested in is providing a financial benefit to those who simply refuse to take care of their property.

Whereas I am concerned about the need in many situations to be able to provide financial support for those who cannot correct the deficiencies in their property.

Affordable housing is not just getting someone into a unit,

It's helping people remain in their units.

So at this time, while I would like to be able to see more, I'm more inclined to go with number one, which is continue to use the focus tools, spotlight, prioritization tool and CART.

Although I would like to continue to see the availability of a partial adoption, but I don't know that I feel comfortable enough at this point to recommend number two over number one.

Thank you very much, Ms.

Colardo and Ms.

McCauley.

I appreciate your very thorough presentations.

I'm in favor of number one, to go with spot-wide abatement, and I think let's maybe look at it again in another year to see if that's been effective, if it works.

if it doesn't then I would be in favor of going with the VMC with partial adoption phasing that in but for right now I think the spot-wide abatement would be the best path to go down especially if you all feel that we have the resources and ability to have some of these homes come into compliance

That would be very important for me.

Or do you not have that ability?

So if we have the ability to be able to do that, let's do that.

I also concur that some of the homes, the income, lower income people may not be able to address some of their concerns and I would certainly be in favor of

partnering with other private entities or public entities and ourselves to be able to add assistance so that they can remain in their homes.

I would assume we would go with one.

You've kind of explained that the VNC does not get us where I think we want to go, which is

getting some of these properties really cleaned up.

So tell me one more time, if we went with one, what's the tweaking that could be done to make this situation a little bit better to get rid of some of these unsafe properties?

I know you talked about focusing on one,

Okay, I'm gonna first speak, but then I'm gonna ask Andy to explain the process.

What we are suggesting is that we should continue with number one, and that we will

do a better job with that with a dedicated resource.

Right now it's vying for the competition of time with the same people who are trying to inspect new construction.

So we think we can get more done sooner if we can have dedicated staff for that work.

I think what my question is, is let's just take the place with the vultures and the roof.

When it was all cleaned up, the roof was patched and I guess the doors were secured and that was it.

The place still looked like a total mess.

There's nothing we can really do to compel that person to take down the house or sell it or anything like that.

That is my understanding even under the maintenance code and Andy is nodding his head.

So if that's the case, then I think number one is where I, just make it simple, number one is where I would fall.

All right.

Not seeing any expansion happening here.

All right, very good.

Yes, thank you.

And I really do appreciate staff's time on this because I know you all spent an awful lot of time working on this over the last period of time.

I would definitely support number one.

I think the Virginia Maintenance Code sounds like it's not going to get us to where we really need to be.

And it's prohibitively expensive, it would appear.

Having said that, with number one, I'm assuming that that would include a dedicated staff person, which is what I really do think we need.

Is that correct?

That would be part of our budget process?

Right.

Because I think you're not going to get anywhere if you don't have a dedicated staff person, right?

I mean, that's just what it is.

So number one, with a dedicated staff person, I would agree with.

Couple of the, I have a question about clarity, because some of the concerning areas or homes that I have sent,

complaints in the urban area, in the urban rank, are 1973.

You know, they predate the 1973, and I think there was some good news about that.

Can you give me a little bit of more information on what that was about?

Because that was sort of new today.

I'm happy to do it, Jody.

We have a lot of houses, you know, in my urban ring right here, I mean, we have a lot of houses that kind of are blighted, that, you know, were built long before 1973.

So previously, before the recent amendment, if they were built before 1973, there was an outright exemption

from the Virginia Maintenance Code, from both the construction requirements and some of the things that I'll call aesthetics, like peeling paint, sagging gutters, sagging siding.

The amendment says, OK, you predate the construction code, so the construction requirements you're exempt from, but all of the others, such as the exterior things that I just mentioned, you are not exempt from.

Okay, that helps a lot.

Well, that is good news.

I really appreciate that.

Just a couple of thoughts.

I have, and maybe I can best describe my concerns, and I'm not really worried so much about this.

This is not about peeling paint, right?

But this is about vultures living in an attic in a house, right?

In a neighborhood.

I have two, I receive basically complaints that I would put into two buckets.

One, rental properties in the urban ring that folks have purchased as investments and they rent them and they don't put any money back into those rental units.

and so the folks that live in those rental units are in deteriorating properties, right?

And that's not to say that everybody that has a rental unit or everybody that invests in rental property, but that is a common complaint.

And sometimes it's just that they don't require the people that rent from them to mow the grass.

They don't provide them with a lawnmower.

Nor do they have the lawn mowed down as part of their obligation to being in a very compact neighborhood in the urban rain.

So that gets to the equity issues.

If you're ridding from a landowner who's not taking care of the property, maybe you would mow the grass if the landowner provided you with a lawn mower.

I'm just saying.

It's about rental units that need to be maintained by the property owners for the property owners that are not investing and maintaining their investment in that property, if that's making sense.

And it's creating unsanitary properties that people are living in

that don't have a quality of life.

Now, having said that, right, I want to make sure that we keep our neighborhoods affordable because the neighborhoods I'm talking about are some of the few affordable neighborhoods in the urban range.

And I do not want to gentrify them, but I want folks to have a quality of life that are living in those neighborhoods.

And I understand that's really tricky.

I will say that it seems like to me one of the best ways to get it back to some degree are sidewalks.

Because what I see is that when we build a sidewalk in these neighborhoods, it's amazing the difference that it makes without gentrifying the neighborhood.

Just a comment.

So that's one bucket is those rental properties.

The other bucket that I have are, it gets back to what Donna said, we've talked about the cannots, but we also have a group of people that are the will nots.

People that have abandoned their houses for better properties, more expensive properties, and just I guess they don't need the money, they don't need to sell the house, but we have some abandoned houses that have been empty for 15, 20 years.

No one living in them, no electricity, no running water, I assume, I don't know.

If I'd abandoned a property for 15 or 20 years, I certainly wouldn't be paying an electric bill or paying for a water bill.

Is there a way that we can look at properties that have been abandoned for a specific number of years?

Because they are not putting any money back into their homes.

They have much nicer homes other places and they own these properties.

They don't want to sell them.

I don't know if they're land hoarders or what.

But it's not fair to those urban ring neighborhoods to have those abandoned properties that are privately owned, and I assume the taxes are being paid.

But when you start talking about a house that's been abandoned for 12, 15, 20 years,

Now we're talking about a house that, while it's more than just aesthetics, right?

And it's also in affordable neighborhoods that we could be using that for affordable housing for someone else, and it's just sitting there abandoned.

Any thoughts on that, Amelia?

Yeah, it's interesting you mention that, and we actually picked up on that from the last work session, and it prompted me to ask Andy if we're currently enabled as a county to adopt an abandoned or vacated building registry, and we are not.

That is an authority that we could seek.

But then the next question is, what do you do about it?

So you require people to register their abandoned homes, and there are different criteria that you use to determine

What is the tipping point of when it would need to be registered?

And I would be, and I don't know about the other supervisors, but I would hope they would support, that would be an initial step.

If we could go to the General Assembly, I guess you're saying that's a General Assembly request.

Yes.

If we could get from the General Assembly the ability to at least require, because if you're not

Registering these houses and you don't know they're there, right?

And staff is continuing to get complaints about them, right?

And they're all, you're just dealing with the same issues over and over again.

Seems like to me, we can't figure out how to solve the problem until we know what the extent of the problem is.

yeah but they're abandoned and the property taxes are paid right I guess in some cases maybe maybe not I don't know well as you know there's there's a certain percentage of people that will for some reason let the property go into a dilapidated state but I would think that others if they're being contacted in a proactive way by us you know because you're on the registry

would be working towards keeping the property from slipping into a blighted condition.

Right.

It might be the impetus to start to move some behavior if people had to register, is what you're saying.

I think that's a great idea.

And I would ask my board members to think about if that could go on our legislative packet, I guess it would be for next year.

But at least to create a registry, that's not going to cost us a whole lot of money, Amelia, right?

of a couple of these abandoned houses, this would be a way for the assessor to also follow it, right?

And to know the condition of the house.

And I know Pete's office does the best they can do, but it would also, I think it would work with our assessment because you don't want these house, you want something on the,

somehow or another for folks to be able to know that that house has been abandoned for 12 or 15 years before they buy it, right?

Or at least a heads up.

I mean, am I making sense?

Is that?

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, all right, so I would be very interested in, certainly in number one, I don't know if there's a way that we can pick out partial adoptions at some point, I would be interested in that.

If we could come back in a year, right, and have another discussion about this, but so my concerns are rental, that is affecting the quality of life of the people that are having to rent these homes, right?

And then the abandoned properties,

that it appears to me people are just moving on up and leaving their properties abandoned.

And I can't, have I answered your question, Amelia, your questions?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Thank you everyone for the presentations.

So I guess I understand that starting with number one is sensible.

and certainly I'm grateful in the presentation to hear that this would be focused across the whole county because there are considerable numbers of very fallen down houses throughout the rural area.

Some of them don't even have running water.

Many of them are owned by the people who live there, but many of them are also rented to very, very impoverished people

who were really victimized by their landlords because these folks have nowhere else to go and we are not, we seem not to be able to have the authority to require them to be upgraded.

So that's something that I'm uncertain about.

In the several occasions over the years that staff has weighed in and been helpful,

Every time, we've fallen up across the obstacle of we can't do anything.

Now, out of Hickory Ridge, I just checked with the people out there and the Homeowners Association had to spend three years and a whole lot of money to force a sale of a house which had been abandoned for eight years.

They've been paying the taxes on it.

But everything else was completely a wreck.

And staff was very helpful as far as being kind and coming to the meeting and explaining to this large group of people who all lived around there what the limitations were.

So are there changes in what you're proposing with the cart, et cetera, in number one that go beyond what we've been able to do before?

We are very freshly into the beginning of work with CART, and we are in a forming mode.

We are hopeful, and based on the model that we see from other localities, they make great strides in all respects, because there are many common customers.

Okay, so progress is possible with this and that's excellent.

Let me zoom down to my next question here.

You mentioned how few complaints there are.

I think people have given up asking because they have come up against the fact that we don't have the authority and so they just try not to think about it and just keep on with their lives.

But I'm very, very interested in the absentee landlords or the people who can be held accountable in some way.

The people who have income constrained households need help getting repairs done, not punishment in any way, or having the risk of being evicted because they complain.

I mean, I think sometimes people are afraid to complain because they don't want to lose the one roof they have, even if it leaks.

So you all may have already considered, but what came into my mind was are there, I understand their dedicated staff person would be the preference, but in the meantime, I mean, are there already trained, you know, zoning people who could be hired on contract to be able to help with the inspection issues of these and have the expenses put onto liens on the property or something like that.

And that may be just too complicated.

to deal with, but it's one other option to get people's attention.

And very much in favor of looking for help on the registry authority.

And there may be another county who is proposing that, and we can ask our liaison to check around and see if there's a bill already prefiled that we can pile onto because then we wouldn't necessarily have to wait another year.

And that's, I guess, all that I have.

Before I go through some of my questions, Supervisor Albisto-Kirtley, did you have a follow-up?

Yes, I did.

I actually asked Ms.

Florida, but also Ms.

McCauley can answer.

I wanted to know whether or not we have the authority that if a house is abandoned or in a tear, really a tear down condition, that do we have the authority to put a lien on that house so that if the person is leaving it in that condition when they do want to sell, then at least we have the ability to

We have a lien on their house and maybe we can fix it up before it's abandoned or maybe we can fix it up beforehand.

I'm happy to take that question.

That is one possible outcome of a spotlight abatement.

The spotlight abatement, as you may recall, is sort of an individualized, customized approach to blight on a case-specific basis.

And one of the plans that is a possibility under a spotlight abatement is for the locality to go in and either repair the property or demolish it.

and part of the spotlight abatement would be for the county to recover any cost of repair demolition.

Thank you.

That's very important to know and I think it's very important to follow us.

Thank you.

It's just a quick follow up to that.

And this may be a whack-a-doodle idea.

This probably makes more sense.

But is there a way that we could look at

the possibility of fix up as a reverse mortgage so that when the house is sold and I know that what we're trying to do is keep affordability down and this kind of plays into it but if you have people that own these properties that are not putting money into them and you

I don't know.

I'm just trying to figure out a solution.

That's all.

As opposed to a lien, is there some idea of a reverse mortgage so that when the house is sold, that amount is added on?

And I know people are going to say you're just making the affordable housing problem worse, but just trying to figure out a solution here.

So for that scenario to play out, if the county were to follow that scenario that we just talked about where the county went in, did the repairs, and then placed a lien on the property, as a practical matter, the county could choose not to immediately move for sale of the property, but could wait until the next sale of the property would recover the costs at that time.

So that would be equivalent to a reverse mortgage in a way.

Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, just the one thing with either demolition or the repair work is that the county department that is doing that is going to have to have the funds to initiate the process and then replenish that as properties sell.

In the past, the one example where we did that years ago,

So before being abandoned on blast, I was actually inclined to go with a part phasing and partial adoption.

I certainly understand why number one would make sense, but I have a few questions around it just so I understand the logic here.

So what you're saying is if we do number one, we're doing something in addition to what we're doing now.

So question one, is it more proactive than what we're doing now?

Number one involves the additional tools of the prioritization and the use of the CART team.

We're also suggesting that with the dedicated staff resource, we think we can make great strides in both much more expedient, you know, having any violation dealt with quickly and also looking more broadly and seeing where we are in terms of trends and trying to kind of keep the pulse and figure out when it

We would still be responsive.

Using spot blight abatement, we would be responsive.

I haven't figured out number of staff if we were being proactive.

So that might help me with my second question.

So on your attachment E with the VMC program costs,

I'll use the first year for the example, the $500,000.

If we do number one and add in resources that we don't currently have, how does that stack up against that $500,000?

If you don't know that today, then that can be a get back to us, get back to me question.

I mean, there's a cost for what we do now.

If we add to it, it's going to add some amount.

So to me, I've looked at just from a cost analysis.

Well, if doing what we're doing now plus a few of these things is 300,000, 400,000, then I might get more bang for my buck to do number one, the first year phase in partial adoption.

So that's what I'm getting at by asking that question.

I think that's a great question.

It's probably going to be better thought through with a follow-up.

The estimate for number in that attachment is based on adopting the Virginia maintenance code and being, number one, as being responsive, except for prioritizing some neighborhoods, responsive throughout the county.

So that isn't an exact comparison of what it would be to be proactive countywide with spotlight.

But if it had a number, then I can compare it to number two, the full adopted and proactive.

So that's where I'm going with that kind of analysis.

Great question.

Yes, I might be able to help a little bit.

No, it's a fully burdened number.

So it's the salary plus a computer, a car, a vehicle, a desk phone, a cell phone.

It also includes various ongoing costs such as education and software licenses and fuel for the vehicle and all kinds of things.

What I don't have for you today is what it would cost using spotlight abatement to be proactive throughout the county.

Got you.

Thank you for that.

Sure.

So just so I understand what

you had said if we did want to proceed to the VMC you would the phase in would be the adoption but that you're saying on that Detachment E you'd recommend number one versus number two the phase in is not doing well let's do number two but it really looks like number one does that make sense you're really saying we just do number one if we went that way

Big what-if question.

I think I may have helped answer my own.

Yeah, I mean, I was looking at it going, well, if I wanted to do number two, the full adoption proactive, and phase that in, but that's not really how that's broken out.

All right, I figured that out.

So when it's, you've answered.

Really, this resource would be working on mandated work more so than discretionary work that the work program takes into consideration.

We don't have to think about it in terms of competing with other things.

This is solely focused on that.

I guess I'll make a couple comments and I think all my questions are answered.

So I would say that those, it was talking about if you had either the partial or the full VMC, that one of the downsides or consequences is it would identify places where property owners are having trouble dealing with the issue, dealing with the property.

We were talking about low income, etc.

The reverse of that I suppose would be that if it's a proactive approach and help, you know, either we have to be doing something proactive no matter what phase we do to help people that are burdened to be able to get their houses back into a health and safe environment for themselves.

So maybe that's the tact I take here.

A proactive approach would identify that more quickly in my opinion.

Now, the demographics of how that plays out, I understand why we would be, why that's important to know, but then we would have to have programs in place or help with the assistance is where I'm going with this to help get that back into a safe environment.

So if we're just being responsive, we could have homeowners who are living in a blighted condition that might not be visible to others, but then are not able to or not

perhaps embarrassed or whatever the word is, scared to come and request the help.

So a responsive program in some ways could be, it's at least, it's not just a one or an opposite I guess is what I'm saying.

If you're just being responsive, things could go unnoted and that's a problem for people that are living in those conditions.

Can I comment on that quickly, Chair Galloway?

Thank you, Doug Walker, Deputy County Executive.

I think that the structure of the CART program and bringing other

Department resources to the table.

There's several then additional inputs into the understanding of where the need is, social services, police department, fire rescue, health department.

So I think that the intention is that it's not just

Andy,

No, that would not be something that the county would do.

The county doesn't and can't enforce private covenants like that.

Again, the standard that the county would look at is, is that the property blighted?

Well, I guess here's my question.

We've got a blighted house that would fall under that.

If it's not an HOA, we would do something about that.

If it's under an HOA, we would just do it anyway.

So the fact that a property is in an HOA, the county can act independent of that.

Right.

Thank you for that.

My last comment I can't resist because under your page that says

Attachment B, the structurally unsound, and then it goes down to the lowest priority, which is just the aesthetics visible for neighbor's property.

But number five is visible from public road entrance corridor and visible from public road.

This is just me taking my advantageous swing at the unsightliness that exists in our medians that are in public places that fall under number five, especially in our entrance corridors.

So I hope that while we're talking about blighted properties in this way, we think of the blighted medians when we talk this year in the budget.

I'm hoping everyone is going to get sick of hearing about this at some point.

So that's just me taking my swing on that one.

Thank you.

Two quick things.

Jody mentioned the FTE salary fully burdened.

Does that include the 30% of the benefits?

Doug is nodding.

That's great.

And for the education program, I think

All of us can work to develop neighborhood community structures and bring churches to bear so that there are other people besides our staff who can help to bring information to residents in these homes and also information to staff that says please intercede here because these people need help.

Just a quick clarification, please.

When we're talking about number one, and I'm sorry, but I may have lost it in the presentation, you talked about taking a couple of neighborhoods and using them as pilots.

It's an option.

It's something that we discussed with adoption of the Virginia maintenance code.

It's an option with the proper staffing to be proactive with spot blight.

Okay, I just think pilots are always a great idea.

because it stretches you.

You can try something new.

If it doesn't work, you move on.

If it does, you have a winner, right?

And I think something like that could be very beneficial.

You know, one in the urban area, one in the rural area.

I don't know, you know.

But anyway, I would be very much in favor of brainstorming a little bit to see how you could use a pilot model to figure this out.

Oh, and I wanted to just kind of get back to this.

Did I see nodding of at least four heads or Greg to mark down for our next legislative packet to look at a registry possibly?

Could we at least have that on the list to talk about for our next year?

Yep.

And I see Ann nodding.

I'll do a quick round just for final comments or remarks here.

And then Amelia, make sure you let us, and Jody, that we've answered your question to your satisfaction.

Supervisor Price?

Good.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Supervisor Palmer?

I'm good also, thanks.

I'm good and I just want to thank staff because they have spent hours with me over the last six or eight years talking about some of these issues and I really appreciate it.

I have no more questions.

Thank you and I look forward to sending the Curt team out to some of our waiting places.

So by count, there was no objection to number one.

There was certainly not approaching anything for number two, just to make sure we answered the question.

So like others, thank you, Jody.

Thank you, Amelia and everyone for this conversation and presentation.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Have a good afternoon.

You too.

Board, that brings us to a recess.

So I will see everyone back in 10 minutes, which will be about 4.03, 4.04.

And Travis will give us the all-clear when we're off.

We're coming back from our recess, and we will move to our next item, number 11.

This is our Board to Board monthly report from the Albemarle County School Board to the Board of Supervisors, and we have with us the Chair of the Albemarle County School Board, Mr. Graham Page.

Good afternoon, Chair Galloway and Supervisors.

I have two main updates for you today in our board to board report.

The first is the Broadus Wood Elementary School name review updates.

On January 10th, the Broadus Wood Elementary School name review advisory committee will send out a survey with a list of five possible names for the school as it continues the school name review process.

As you are probably aware, this review has been conducted in order to ensure that all of our school names reflect the division's values of equity, excellence,

Family and Community and Wellness.

This will be the final in a series of three surveys related to this named review.

The first had 397 respondents, over 55% of whom said they are familiar with the life and career of Brodess Ira Wood, the early 20th century farmer and businessman for whom the school was named.

The second received 171 responses from community stakeholders with future name possibilities for the school.

The top name suggestions were Broaddus Wood, Earlesville, Buck Mountain, Rivanna or Rivanna River, Rainbow, and Bobcat Elementary School.

The survey also requested other feedback that might inform the committee as it moves forward in researching these possibilities, along with others to formulate its narrow list of five possibilities.

Students participate in this process and are learning about their school's history as the name review proceeds.

They are also invited to respond to the surveys.

The school board's naming for youth policy requires the advisory committee to seek to notify any family members of school's namesake as part of its process.

And in alliance with this, at one recent public meeting of the committee, Mr. Wood's grandson and great-granddaughter shared their memories of the man for whom the school is named, describing him as having been dedicated to the Charlottesville community.

and notions of equity for his fellow community members.

Both family members said that Mr. Woods spent his life serving his community as a businessman, farmer and member of the local school board.

If the name Broadus Wood is among the five possibilities going forward in the process, the committee will conduct research on Broadus Ira Wood.

The committee welcomes any information from the public regarding the Wood family history or descendants.

The division's name review website details how to do this.

Now the second update is one on our Crose Elementary redistricting process.

At its meeting on November the 15th, the Crozet-Brownsville Redistricting Advisory Committee decided to recommend moving 219 students from the Gray Rock, Waylands-Bargaman, and Western Ridge Foothill Crossing, Wickhamton neighborhoods from Brownsville to Crozet Elementary.

This committee was formed to help Albemarle County Public Schools draw new school boundaries that would ease concern around growth at Brownsville.

and also make use of an addition currently under construction at Crozet Elementary that will add capacity for about 340 more students at the school.

The committee based this recommendation on research that it conducted about the Crozet area, public feedback that it received at two community meetings held on November 4th and 9th, and a public survey sent to the Brownsville Crozet community on October 28th.

That survey showed one scenario known as scenario number two to be the overwhelming preference with 70% of respondents saying that it would be the best possible solution.

This option leaves students from the Route 240 to Oak Drive neighborhood who would have been moved to Crozet in the Brownsville district and keep ride times for students reasonable while decreasing local traffic and keeping students at the school that is closest to them.

This recommendation went to Dr. Matthew Haas, our superintendent, yesterday.

Dr. Haas will present his recommendation to the Albemarle County School Board at our meeting on tomorrow.

The board will hold a public hearing on January 13th and vote on the superintendent's recommendation at the January 27th meeting.

The new boundaries will go into effect for the 2022-23 school year, and the new attendance areas will serve the district for at least three to five years, with a goal of five to seven.

The principles that guided the committee throughout this process have been the objectives of creating mostly contiguous attendance areas.

considering walking areas and length of transportation routes, assigning neighborhoods to the same school whenever possible, and maximizing demographic balance where feasible.

The committee did an excellent job of honoring these principals.

More information on that process can be found on the division's Crozet-Brownsville redistricting web page.

And then finally, I have one bit of sort of new information on the Golden Apple nominations.

This program, which began in 2001, honors outstanding teachers in public and private schools in Albemarle County and Charlottesville City.

Sponsored by Better Living Building Supply and Cabot Dictry, the awards recognize educators from preschool through the 12th grade for their influence on the success of their students.

Honorees are selected for a Golden Apple based upon their demonstrated excellence in the classroom, their innovative instructional strategies and techniques, and their partnership with parents and other community members.

Nominations can be made by students, parents, other educators, and members of the community.

The Golden Apple nomination form is available on our public website.

One teacher will be selected from each of the 42 public and private schools in the city and county in teaching programs.

The deadline for nominations is January 24, 2022.

The online ceremony honoring the 2022 recipients is scheduled for 4.30 p.m.

on Thursday, May 19, 2022.

That ends my report board to board for you this afternoon.

Thank you, Chair Page.

Thank you, Chair Galloway.

Thank you, Chair Page, for your informative presentation.

And while the school board is an independent elected body, I do want to commend the school board, yourself, Dr. Haas, and the school administration for the great work you all have been doing over the past several years, particularly through the pandemic.

One of the topics that I frequently see raised among our community is the school naming review, and I want to expand it beyond school naming review to other things, naming of many things.

Names reveal value and meaning, and the names that a community uses reflects the values of that community.

Names evoke emotions far more complex than our words can do justice or describe.

And I really want to commend what y'all are doing.

in reviewing the names of the school.

And I hope that Albemarle County on local government side will utilize the resources of our Office of Equity and Inclusion to similarly review names under the county offices.

Thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Thank you very much, Chair Page.

Really, I always enjoy your updates and I think you all are doing a fantastic job.

We're very supportive and I like the boundary change and everything.

I think you're being proactive until we can build additional schools.

But thank you very much and hope you had a great Thanksgiving.

Thank you.

I do have a comment, Chair Page, that I'd like to share with you and everyone.

And it's not, this isn't the venue to get into a big discussion about it, I understand, but I wanted very much to share the information.

Week before last at our 5th and Avon Committee, our CAC Committee, we had an update on Southwood Phase 2.

from the Habitat Director.

and their staff.

And they explained to us that they were looking at a maximum of 1,000 units in phase two.

There was no information provided at that time for the impact for schools.

We're very lucky on that 5th and Avon Committee to have a member of the Long Range Planning Committee sitting on that committee.

He asked some very thoughtful questions

of the impact to schools during that period.

I think that, and it was, and this of course, as you know very well, Chair Page, that this, the overcrowding at Mountain View, it's a topic of conversation in the area for sure.

And I know the schools are doing all that they can right now to address that capacity issue.

However, I

came away with the concern that a new elementary school was going to be needed for the southern feeder pattern.

And I haven't, I very well may have missed it.

I assume that the school board is discussing this, and staff has explained to me after asking them if it was

what time we come forward, that a developer comes forward with impacts to schools.

We're told at the time of rezoning and that there was no requirement for that to be done at the community meeting, which also surprised me.

Yeah, thanks for that question, Supervisor Palmer.

At tomorrow night's meeting, we will be receiving an update on the renovations and additions that are due for Mountain View.

Right now, as you might know, we have eight mobile classrooms there.

So we're going to be adding some new classrooms to the building, or at least this is in the plans, to add new classrooms, to add some more to the cafeteria, and to also update some other portions of the building.

So that's the first thing.

And then also with the Long Range Planning Committee's report last summer, they also recommended a new school in the Mountain View area.

So that's also going to be a part of our work that we are working on within the next month or two to look at building a new school in that area that would be able to take care of the overpopulation at Mountain View.

Thank you, Graham.

We appreciate the report.

As someone who doesn't have access so much anymore to the school board news,

I was just wondering, how would I find out or get the, what link do I go to in May?

I put the Golden Apple Awards, which I unfortunately have missed the last couple of years because it just happened and I didn't even realize it was happening, Graham.

I put the date on my calendar.

Do I go to the school board website to find the Zoom information?

I'm just, in May, how would I, just trying to find out ahead of time.

Okay, there's going to be a link on the website called Golden Apple Awards.

It's going to be under, well that's to nominate somebody, the Golden Apple nomination form, get in time to that.

But there should also be details about the meeting also prior to May 19th.

Okay, that's great.

But right now it is scheduled to probably be a virtual award ceremony.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, if it was live, it'd be easy because I had nowhere to go, right?

But anyway.

rather than meeting the Zoom link.

Just one quick thought.

I've heard a little bit of discussion about, as Liz was talking about, obviously overcrowding.

We've all heard about the overcrowding at KL.

Just wondering, is there

Any property at Southwood for a school, do you all know or have you checked into that?

Because that would be a really logical place to put another elementary school if there was property there.

It's just a thought.

Right.

I don't have it either right now, but we can have staff.

Look, we do have the site that's across from Monticello High near the fire station that we own.

So that's in that area.

But as to whether or not we have any property in South Hill, in Southwood area, I really don't know.

I can quickly comment because that question was asked at the CAC and Dan Rosensweig said no, there was no available land.

He said that he actually offered something to the schools and the schools rejected that.

Our CAC members corrected him and said that was eight years ago before Southwood was

developed as the plan that it is now.

But Dan was very clear that there was no property available at Southwood.

And I would say it would be unfortunate to have to bus all those kids over to 5th and Avon and Monticello.

But if that's what there is, that's what there is.

And I'm sorry, I disappeared again.

Somehow or another, my action today is not very secure.

But I think the answer, I heard the answer when I got back on.

Liz was going on.

It was just a, it just kind of is a logical makes sense if Southwood had the property, right, that we could put a school there because, anyway, whatever.

But thank you, Graham.

I really appreciate the presentation.

It's great to see you.

Okay, good seeing you, Diantha.

Thank you.

Both the items that you reported on in the White Hall district are of great interest.

And just within the last two weeks, I have learned a lot about the African-American Free neighborhood at the Shiflet's Mill and Buck Mountain Road area.

And many of the children, several of the children in three generations were named brothers.

in the early 20th century.

And I don't know if it was named for him.

It's a very unusual name.

So I just don't know anything about that.

Regarding the redistricting, I'm really thrilled of the proposal that's being put forth.

We'll see how you all deal with it tomorrow, but it makes great sense to keep the people who are on the north side of town staying at the school on the north side of town instead of traipsing them all through downtown in the very worst traffic there is where that bridge is closed right now.

I mean, things are completely at gridlock in Crozet right now because of the VDOT project on 240.

Good luck with all of that, but your process seems to have brought people together really effectively.

Thank you.

Chair Page, thank you very much for joining us today.

All right, our next item, number 12, fiscal year 2022 mid-year revenue update and recommended allocation.

Yes, sir, Mr. Chair.