Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   1/19/2022

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call to order this meeting of the January 9, 2022 Albemarle County Board of Supervisors to order.

This meeting is being held for 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 Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Jim Andrews of the Samuel Miller District, Supervisor Diantha McKeel of the Jack Jouett District, Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley of the Rivanna District, Supervisor Ned Gallaway of the Rio District, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville Magisterial District.

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

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

I would like to mention that our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Greg Campner, our Clerk, Ms.

At this time, we will stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

If you will now join in a moment of silence.

Lord, it is time for the adoption of our final agenda.

I understand that we have a couple of additions to make.

Supervisor Andrews, I believe that you have requested to add a resolution.

Yes, thank you.

This is a resolution in support of a letter being sent out by Community Climate Collaborative to the Virginia General Assembly relating to environmental matters.

It's consistent with our climate action plan and our stances we've taken in the past on legislation relating to climate.

Thank you, Supervisor Andrews.

And so that is under item number 22 from the board.

Madam Chair, did you direct that question to me?

I apologize.

I did, Mr. Richardson.

A resolution

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you very much.

And I'll be very brief.

last Saturday and I was in constant communication with the board Friday and the staff into Saturday but we made a decision on Saturday to go ahead and issue a local declaration of emergency that was based on information that we were receiving through not just the regional but also our local emergency management function.

and a determination that was made that it would position Almar County as it relates to resource deployment and turnaround time and being able to move quickly through the community if conditions worsened.

And at that time, we did think that conditions were going to get extremely bad over the course of the next three days.

So what would be happening today?

Chair Price, we would be asking the board to come back and to pass a resolution going back to Saturday to affirm this local declaration of emergency.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Appreciate that.

Well, a question.

So the declaration is in effect and can it stay in effect for a while?

All right.

Thank you, Supervisor Mallek.

The board can issue a new declaration or the county executive can do it if the circumstances warrant.

Declaration that was issued last Saturday was tied to a specific storm.

So we would need to update it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Malek.

Madam Chair, if I could interrupt, that resolution actually shows up on the posted consent agenda as item 8.4.

All right, what we have then is a proposal to amend the final agenda to include item number 22 from the board, a resolution enforcing the Community Climate Collaborative Letter to the Virginia General Assembly.

and then separately we have under the consent agenda item 8.4, so we will address that when we get to the consent agenda.

Do I have a motion, is there a need for any further discussion on the agenda?

Supervisor?

Alright, so I have it moved by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

I have it moved by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All right, thank you.

I don't believe we need for further discussion, so if we could call the roll.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Yes.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Oh, that's right.

And I will say, Donna, we are still having a little bit of a hard time understanding you.

I think staff is working on that glitch, so bear with us because occasionally you kind of bleep out a little bit.

And I kind of noticed that Travis sounds a little bit off too, so maybe something that staff can work on.

on the county side.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out, I saved an article from the Washington Post that was back on January the 1st, but since we've had this discussion among ourselves on our board level that Fairfax, Arlington counties, and the city of Alexandria have now joined the other counties

that have already implemented a surcharge on plastic shopping bags.

So there are a good number of us in the state of Virginia counties that are doing this.

Just don't want to lose that thought because we have talked about that in the past.

Something to come back to later.

The other thing I wanted to just share with you all is an update that I requested.

And while this is not really an announcement, it seems like the best place, best time to share it with you.

I asked Anthony Harrow of the

of the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless to give us an update on what's happening at Premier Circle.

And the reason I asked for that was because we're seeing some of the homeless folks standing out in the snow.

on the ice, right, on the median strips asking for money and we received at least one email concerned about their safety.

And so what I just briefly, Anthony responded back and I'm happy to share the email with you but it just came in.

Premier Circle is currently operating with 70 units and they're working with Martin Horn currently to bring on an additional 20 within a month.

and a half.

So that's six weeks.

The program is currently full and there is a waiting list for a room in the program of about 20 people.

So additional rooms will be a big help.

And just I thought maybe you all would be as interested as I was because I've been wondering where in the world what's happening at Premier Circle.

As you know, our involvement up to this point was really just a zoning

adjustment.

But I know all of us are interested in it.

This is an interesting community that's multiple nonprofits, PHA, TJ, ACH, CACF.

Lots of nonprofits have gone together to sponsor this and make this program a reality, this area a reality.

So that's all I had.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I have asked if staff could send someone back up to check the connection for my laptop.

Yes, thank you, Chair Price.

Diantha, is that, I presume that's all the temporary housing, but there's a wait list.

You know, and I'm just looking, he did not, Ned, mention anything else because I think I specifically asked him about Premier, so he answered Premier.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board.

We do have a formal and comprehensive update about this project coming to the board.

It's been scheduled for an information item for an upcoming board agenda, I believe, in February.

So the timing is really good, Supervisor McKeel and others.

Not specifically that I'm aware of, the update is specific to the project out of the previous circle and what has been approved and where the project stands with respect to its implementation.

I would imagine though that there could be individuals available to speak to questions that the board might have about that project, including the individuals that you're seeing out panhandling.

What we do know from

Our work with the county attorney in the past, our ability to regulate individuals being in the median is very limited to, there's not much that we can do.

Other communities have done that.

I'm going to defer quickly to the county attorney.

This is a potential project that's been identified previously by members of this board.

I see Supervisor McKeel nodding her head.

The status of that project is, I don't know at this point, but there are certainly efforts that have been made in other communities around this issue that has been explored.

So yes, the signs could be erected.

Henrico and some other Virginia localities have provided examples that have different types of approaches.

We'd need permission from VDOT if it's a, signs are going to be put into VDOT right away.

And yet, Doug is correct.

There was a pilot program that was going to be started.

I don't know the status of it.

Well, the individual who was working on that project is no longer with the organization.

Thank you all.

Thank you very much.

I do hope we can reinvigorate that pilot because it is a great concern for people coming and going through here.

I wanted to just reiterate that even though we may have dodged a bullet for the last storm, I am so grateful for all the work and establishing all these processes that county staff has done under a tremendous deadline, but now it's done and it's ready to go.

We have an identified hotline that's going to stay the same and we have all these processes ready.

I got wide circulation on the flyer that Emily Kilroy and her folks put together in newsletters and forwarding to several thousand people and people were very grateful to have it all in one place.

So I hope we will get lots of traffic with that flyer and keep sharing it far and wide.

Just from the last storm, the really bad one, new processes are already underway to get better communication with senior housing providers and emergency folks in the county so that there is at least awareness if someone cannot provide services for their tenants, they need to let somebody know.

They can't just not do anything.

And that's a really important step forward and I look forward to the increased safety for our residents.

At the end of the meeting, I would love to have an update about where we are on the timetable for adopting something in order to require sidewalks to be shoveled.

because just yesterday I received a phone call from a high school student who was going by on hydraulic road and saw that there are hundreds of people walking in the street and people pushing baby carriages in the street because the sidewalks are now a foot deep in frozen solid ice from certainly the part that they were talking about was from high school down to the rock store, the stone store and so it reminded me that I needed to check in and of course Greg has said

that we have not adopted it yet because that was my text question to him earlier today.

So I would just love to know at the end of the meeting if someone could give us an update on where that is and what's required and how we can not lose another winter with tremendous possibilities for disaster.

I just want to thank staff for the great job they've done on the second storm and I will say the first storm I thought they did a good job too in spite of the fact that they didn't have all the information coming from the Dominion and

power companies.

However, I thought everyone really pitched in there to do what we can.

People need to also realize sometimes mother nature you cannot control.

Things happen, weather people don't always call it right, and so we all do the best we can.

But the main thing is for us to look out for each other, make sure we're prepared when things like this do happen and we check on each other because

We can't be the end all for everybody's concerns and problems, although we will continue to do what is best for the community.

But it's important for us to make sure that we check in with our neighbors and make sure people are okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I want to throw a thank out at the last, or thank you out to VDOT and Carrie Shepherd at her last meeting.

Even in the midst of two different storms now they've contended with, which I share the comments that they were well-prepared.

I was out and traveling this weekend, so I was able to see all the staging, all the work they did.

So that was tremendous.

But in the midst of all that, they removed the two trees out of the storm drains that were ever in Rhino 29 that I had brought up last week.

So to me, in the big scheme of dealing with storms, that was a smaller issue, but they were able to get out there and get those removed, so I'm grateful for that.

I also, when I think of requiring sidewalks to be cleared, we can have this conversation at a different time, I also just want to make sure we're noted that who lives somewhere may not be able to clear their own sidewalk, and it can be dangerous shoveling for them as well.

So it seems like that piece of it when the ordinance got put place in the city, there was no backup plan or thinking through on those things.

But we don't want people who are incapable of doing that to be out putting themselves in danger by doing physical activity that could be problematic for themselves.

So we just want to think about that as part of the conversation.

And then I had some emails come through.

Obviously, folks get upset when they dig their driveways out.

There is a way, and I forget who sent this out years ago where I saw a diagram of how you shovel at the end of your driveway so that when the plow does come by, you shovel in a way that it keeps the snow from blocking your driveway again.

So if that's a VDOT recommendation or a county thing, that might be a useful AML thing of general tips of how to prep.

I hope that people have had a chance to learn about the Albemarle High School Rowing Team who is actually going around shoveling people's driveways.

I think there are lots of community members who would be thrilled to help their elder neighbors to take care of this.

But for the large commercial properties who have hundreds of yards of sidewalk, if they tend to it with a small machine quickly, then it won't get to be a really big disaster with 10 inches of frozen blockage.

So I certainly understand that we have to be careful with individuals.

But for these commercial properties and the people who have the means to do this, I hope that we will figure out a way to carry it forward.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

It's my opportunity to add another quick thank you to staff for all the communication and all the work done by a lot of people in connection with these storms and everything that's happened so far this year.

I'm new and I am blown away by how many behind the scenes communications from residents in the county come in about roads, power, telephone and internet and these all get

handled as well as possible.

Some are still in the works, but I'm impressed by the amount of effort that goes into that.

On a completely separate note, just as a quick item, I think people know that reassessment mailings have started to go out and I got ours, at least one of them.

And I guess I just want to point out that the numbers on the reassessments about taxation

are not determined.

They're simply instructive as to what the reassessment is as a value of the property, not how much your tax bill will be.

This is all future discussions, budgets coming up much later.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Price.

In taking notes from board member announcements and comments, I think I heard at least three and maybe more board members who seemed very interested in staff coming back, hopefully sooner rather than later, on revisiting the issues of the public right-of-way areas and the panhandling that goes on in Albemarle County.

in the research that had been done previously, working with the attorney's office to make sure that we don't run awry of state law, but looking at, for example, signage and appropriate signage and whatever the laws would allow us to do.

Staff would be prepared to go back and take a look at that and look at where we are with that and then come back in the budget process, which is we're on the eve of, so that's not just a little bit of time from now.

and explore with the board and Mr. Campers got his hand up so he'll help me to make sure that I don't over promise or say something inappropriate but explore what are things that we can do and Greg I know whatever you're getting ready to say will be helpful but I do want to make sure if we can do that that I have the board support to do it and then again we can look if there are budget implications certainly right away

permission from DOT or whatever we need to do there.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Campner?

Related to what Mr. Richardson just said, we will be coming to the board on its consent agenda to ask the board to schedule for public hearing an ordinance to repeal the current

Panhandling Ordinance.

So the public hearing for that should be on the agenda in March, either on March 2 or March 16.

The current ordinance mirrored the Henrico County's former Panhandling Ordinance, which was struck down by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit a few years ago.

So the ordinance that's coming forward is just to clean that up.

The courts have gone in a different direction since our ordinance was originally adopted and it's out of date.

Thank you, Mr. Campner, and I trust our community understands that if we have an ordinance on the books that has been ruled unconstitutional, that we really have an obligation to remove that in order to avoid and to do our best to that are constitutional.

Briefly, I would add with the other supervisors, thank you and through you, our entire county staff for the work that they have done over these last few storms.

The entire community has been challenged already in 2022 with the Omicron variant, these storms, the amount of personnel and number of hours that county staff has put into the first storm and preparing for the second one.

The community may not have seen the results of the preparation for the second storm because the weather did give us a little bit of a break there, but the work, the time, the effort that was put in by county staff

recognition and I believe that's what we as a board want to share with our county staff.

I ask our community to remember that when we do have ice and snow on your vehicle to please do your best to clear the vehicle.

Just yesterday I was driving up 29 north and the outbound vehicle passed in the opposite direction where only a small window in the driver's windshield had been cleared.

the passenger side of the windshield, the roof, and the trunk, all covered with snow.

The reality is that the wind that comes over the car can fly that off to the vehicles behind and cause accidents, injury, even death.

As well, that vehicle puts brakes on that can slide down.

Fairview, again, resulting in injuries, accidents, and deaths.

So please clear your vehicle the entire way.

And finally, a minor note that could also fall under committee reports, but I think more people may hear it now.

When recycling, it is important to only put in the bins the items intended for that particular

type of item.

And by that what I mean is it's fine to carry your cans or bottles in a plastic bag, but please empty that bag into the bin and not leave the plastic bag in there.

When those bins are emptied and they go through the machines, those plastic bags get caught on the equipment requiring the handlers to stop multiple times during the day to clear the plastic bags off the equipment so they can continue

to process the recycled goods.

Similarly, if you bring your mixed paper in a cardboard box, please empty the box of mixed paper into that bin and throw the cardboard into the cardboard bin.

Recycling only works when we do it right.

Thank you, board.

I appreciate all of your comments and direction to county staff.

At this time, we would go to our next item, number six on the agenda, proclamations and recognitions.

So we would move to matters from the public.

Do we have anyone signed up to speak?

I see that we do.

Thank you very much, Chair Price.

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

Individuals are allowed three minutes to speak.

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

Timekeeping is conducted through a timer.

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

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

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

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

Address comments directly to the board as a whole.

If you have written statements and other supporting material, you may email them.

to the clerk to be included in the record.

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

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

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

Speakers are permitted one opportunity to comment during each of the public comments periods per meeting.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

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

If participating my phone, please press star 9 to let us know you want to speak.

Then star 6 if

from a landline to unmute.

Thank you, Vice Chair LaPisto-Kirtley.

I'm sorry, clerk, I was not able to make out the name that you mentioned.

Hello, good afternoon.

My name is Susan Cruz and I am the Executive Director of the Community Climate Collaborative, or C3.

As this is the first time that I'm speaking to you this year, I want to say Happy New Year and welcome to our new Board of Supervisors members.

The 2022 Virginia General Assembly is now in session with new leadership in the House of Delegates and the Governor's Office.

For the past two years, Albemarle County has joined in partnership with other localities across the Commonwealth to advance state legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from our electrical and transportation systems, improve energy efficiency, and advance wind and solar energy.

This year the gains we have made could be at risk.

Last week, Governor Youngkin signed an executive order to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

While such a unilateral move is impossible, it does signal what can be expected from legislation that is to come before the General Assembly.

C3 is asking you to join other municipalities once more to protect the gains we have made.

The resolution on your agenda today is a letter calling for the protection of key initiatives that make Albemarle's climate action goals more achievable.

Thank you to Supervisor Andrews for bringing this forward.

We must protect our participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Our participation encourages cleaner fuel sourcing for electrical grid and the revenues generated by the program fund low-income energy efficiency and critical infrastructure projects to support climate resiliency.

We must also protect the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which puts Virginia on the path to a zero emissions electrical grid, critical for reaching the county's climate goals.

And the Clean Cars Act, which sets higher standards for fuel efficiency for automobiles sold in Virginia.

And we know that transportation emissions are the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions in Albemarle County.

Finally, the letter calls for the protection of the most recent capital assistance rule of the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

That includes funding for battery electric buses and the installation of their electric charging structures.

This levels the playing field by eliminating the perverse incentives for fossil fuel powered vehicles and enables localities to develop modern clean transit system.

Thank you for prioritizing climate action.

I look forward to working with each of you this year to advance these and other initiatives.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you board.

At this time, we will move to the consent agenda.

As mentioned earlier, we do have an addition item 8.4, which is a confirmation by the Board of the County Executive's declaration of a local emergency, as well as declaring the local emergency to have ended.

We already had some discussion on this previously.

So at this time, I would ask if there is a motion to approve the consent agenda as amended.

All right, the motion has been made, seconded.

No further discussion appears necessary.

If you would please call the roll.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Pathea can take this issue from here.

Thank you.

Good afternoon Chair Price and members of the board.

I am Stacey Pathea, the Housing Policy Manager for Albemarle County.

And the purpose of this agenda item today is to request that the board authorize the Department of Social Services to hire a two-year temporary housing projects manager to coordinate the activities associated with the Southwood Redevelopment Project and to approve the use of $170,000 from the county's housing fund to cover the costs associated with that position.

As you may know, in October 2016, the board adopted a resolution supporting a collaborative redevelopment process with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville for the redevelopment of the Southwood Mobile Home Village and included phase one of that project as part of the strategic plan.

Subsequently, the Board approved several additional actions in support of the project, including the January 2018 approval of an action plan and allocation of $675,000 from the General Fund to support Habitat's development of a rezoning package,

approved the submission of a two and a quarter million dollar Vibrant Communities Initiative grant application in September 2018 to support phase one of the project and the approval of a 3.2 million dollar performance agreement in June 2019 to support the development of up to 155 affordable dwelling units in phase one.

In addition to the six

.125 million dollar contribution to the Southwood project described above.

The county also committed approximately $100,000 in staff time to assist Habitat and Southwood residents during the master planning process.

During the January 2018 request to the board, the Project Management Office identified the need for part-time project management and part-time neighborhood planner resources to act as dedicated points of contact and key facilitators for the many departments, outside agencies, and habitat process owners to ensure successful collaboration, planning, scheduling, and coordinating of all work related to the Southwood redevelopment.

During fiscal year 2019, these activities were jointly coordinated by the director of project management and the principal planner assigned to the Southwood project with management of the Vibrant Communities Initiative grant process coordinated by the county's chief of housing.

Since fiscal year 2020, management of the Southwood project has been shared by planning staff and the county's housing policy manager with part-time support from the project management office and the county's grants unit.

Staff from other departments with specialized knowledge needed to support various components of the project are also called upon as needed.

While achieving great progress as partners, having multiple staff involved in the project has made it difficult to achieve a cohesive understanding of the project as a whole and has led to, in several instances, multiple staff working individually to address the same project issue.

The addition of one temporary housing projects manager dedicated to the Southwood project would provide the county and Habitat with a dedicated point of contact and key facilitator for all aspects of the project.

The project-related activities the housing project manager would undertake would include, among other things, attendance at all project-related meetings, acting as primary county contact for Habitat and other project partners, working with Habitat to address unanticipated issues, including the identification of potential funding sources to help mitigate the problem, and tracking Habitat's progress toward meeting project milestones associated with the performance agreement as well as

the Community Development Block Grant.

And that would be the most important aspect of their job would be managing that CDBG grant.

Activities with the CDBG project management include ensuring grant objectives are met on time and within budget, coordinating weekly inspections by a housing construction specialist, providing weekly updates to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development or DHCD.

Facilitating monthly project management team meetings, submitting remittance requests to the grant funder, tracking the project budget through the grant process, ensure all grant required forms and reports are completed and submitted on time and filed appropriately,

providing technical assistance to Habitat during the relocation of Southwood residents to accommodate phase one construction activities, facilitating the planning design of the Monacan Indian Nation Park included within the project, and coordinate with DHCD to schedule all grant required site visits.

With the above objectives in mind, staff is requesting the board authorize the Department of Social Services to hire a temporary housing projects manager and allocate $170,000 from the county's housing fund to cover the physician's salary for a minimum of two years.

If approved, staff will immediately begin working with the Department of Human Resources to advertise this position and begin the search process.

Thank you.

And I will now take any questions.

And I can really appreciate knowing how complicated this project has been over the years and the number of staff that had been involved.

I'm really pleased to see the suggestion coming forward.

Just tell me, Stacey, I really just have one clarification.

So this position would be housed in social services?

Correct.

It would report to me.

Oh, it would report to you?

Oh, you're right.

And that's a glitch in my brain.

You're now under social services as well.

That makes perfect sense.

Okay.

You know, that's a kind of a new switch in the realm of the world.

And so I've momentarily forgotten that.

That makes perfect sense.

And with that, I don't have any further questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I was glad to hear your description.

That job description is miles long, however, so I'm worried about the ability for one person who we don't even have now to be able to do all of that.

But I think jumping through all the hoops for the state funding is so important and so much rely, our future success relies upon us doing things on time and right every day.

So I am grateful that you're putting more focus on that and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I'm trying to unmute.

OK.

Thank you very much.

No, I think I agree with Supervisor Mallek that I think that person is going to be very busy.

I did have a question regarding the salary.

Is that $170 for a year or for two years?

That's for two years.

$170 for two years.

OK.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dr. Pepia.

I guess that Diantha asked, Supervisor McKeel asked the question, I was wondering the reporting structure, the broad range that Supervisor Malek hit to, I mean, are our prospects good to find somebody?

I mean, this is a

We had three or four people working on it.

Yes.

Anyone who has extensive CDBG grant management experience would be appropriate for this job.

They will also receive support from me.

I will not pull out of the project completely.

You don't have a ton of free time, I guess.

That's a joke, I'm sorry.

This is more for probably budget time, but anytime money comes out of the housing fund,

and we know that we're going to get years down the road.

I know the recommendation of how we'll start getting some annual contributions into the housing fund, but anytime something comes out of it in the next couple of years, the game plan to replenish the fund is probably a question worth asking and then having some conversation about that.

I don't anticipate or expect or think that's a conversation for today, but

maybe through this budget cycle we talk about, well, if a project pops up and we move money out of this fund, how are we going to replenish it before we have centennial contributions perhaps going into it?

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews.

Yes, thank you.

I can certainly understand the need for getting it right when it comes to compliance.

But I do have some questions.

First, I guess, is this person then doing things that

County staff have already been doing but divided among a number of different people.

So it's being consolidated into one position.

I do think it's a big challenge as Supervisor Malek suggested that they will come on board and understand all the different jobs that are being done by a lot of different people if that's the case.

So it's a challenge.

Was this

requested by Habitat, or is this a county led initiative?

And I guess how much of this was contemplated at the time of performance agreement as these applications went in?

Just a little clarification of help.

Certainly.

So this is a staff driven request.

Habitat was not involved in this.

The staff roles in different departments such as community development will remain the same.

So the planners will continue to do what they will continue working with Habitat to get their site plans approved and all those types of things.

What this housing project manager will do will really take over the role of grant management and overall coordination of project activities.

Right now, what happens is that while the planner and I work together closely, there are still meetings that she will have that I'm unable to attend and vice versa to scheduling difficulties.

So this particular staff person will be able to attend all of those meetings, coordinate all of the information, and share information across departments.

There have been several instances where

Correct.

So the community development block grants, the county must be applied for those on behalf of a project partner such as Habitat.

Thank you.

I'm concerned because from what you said, I mean, it sounded like there wasn't coordination.

You're the lead person.

There wasn't coordination between you and other members of the staff.

So what you're asking for is another staff person to coordinate everything that should have already been coordinated.

So there are, Habitat will reach out to different staff people.

about the same issue and we do not realize that Habitat is communicating that way.

So there's a lot of communication that goes on that we do not always realize is being shared among the different departments in Habitat.

Chair Price, if I could clarify perhaps it will help the board to know that the contract for this CDBG grant between the county and the Department of Housing and Community Development was just executed last month.

and so much of the work and the challenges associated with the project are longstanding.

The actual, the meat of the grant administration is ahead of us.

Thank you.

All right, thank you both.

I would say I definitely see the value, the benefit of having a central point of contact, sort of a funnel between Habitat or any of the other entities engaged in Southwood and county staff, much like we as supervisors go through our county executive office in order to coordinate our communications with county staff that help us facilitate

a more uniform approach.

I have a question.

In our executive summary, under the subject proposal request, it says request approval to fund a two-year temporary housing projects manager.

Dr. Pythia, in your remarks, however, you said a minimum two-year.

So that takes it, in my mind, from a defined two-year period to an open-ended funding.

Absolutely.

The CVBG grant is all project activities must be completed within a 24-month period.

So this person will cover that 24-month period.

In case there is some emergency that stalls certain aspects of the project and must push that a little beyond that deadline, they would potentially be able to stay on.

Yeah, well I mean I think that's important that the board understand whether we are approving a defined two-year period to your minimum that is open-ended.

At this point, I'm willing to provide the support for a defined two-year period

and we want to make sure we have consensus from the board as to where the board is on this.

Second, and I don't expect answers to this today, and this really is more directed to the board, I would like to see if there is consensus on the board's part to have county staff provide to the board

sort of a report status update on what the county agreed to approve when Southwood was first approved, what our expectation of expenses were and where we are today, understanding that simply by looking at the items that are listed in our executive summary,

There's about six and a half million dollars of funding assistance that has been provided from both the county and other sources.

On top of that, we know that we have recently had to deal with the additional expenses that are coming up from the septic field clearing of literally thousands of cubic meters of contaminated soil.

And then after that, leaking fuel tanks in Southwood.

So I think it was important that the board have a sense of what the board initially agreed to approve and where we are today on expenditures and not just simply adding a little bit here and a little bit there.

In the great scheme of things, again I will support this request, it's $170,000 which is not insignificant, but in the great scheme of things for a major redevelopment unlike anything that's ever been conducted

and our community before.

It clearly is, I believe, an efficiency, but I do want to know where we stand in terms of the overall expenditures to the county so that we can evaluate because we are still at phase one of Southwood with several other phases to go.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add two things.

You really teed it up beautifully with what you just said.

Phase one is where we have been, and it's taken years to do this, but this is a new experience for Albemarle that is well undertaken in other more urban places where they have been ahead of us in dealing with issues like this.

So I would fully expect

that there will be other projects with tremendous outside funding returns which we will need to manage equally expeditiously and carefully going forward.

So I really personally see this as a pilot to make sure that we learn how to do these things and get the right person on board and really running at full speed.

What

really brought me to support this project originally and has been the sort of load star for the throughout for me has been more than 400 affordable houses for longtime county residents.

makes a huge impact on our community.

And so, yes, we knew there were lots of things we didn't know when we first approved it, and I couldn't begin to even list all of them.

But we do, I think, taking it step by step and learning as we go and trying to do the very best job we can is the only way.

All right, thank you.

Mr. Richardson, Mr. Walker, it appears that you have consensus of the board

to support the 170,000.

Mr. Campner, do we need to make a formal motion on that?

I recommend that the board do so.

Very well.

Thank you, Mr. Campner.

I'm happy to make a motion.

I recommend that we allocate 170,000 from the housing fund to cover the salary of hiring a temporary housing project manager

Thank you.

All right.

Is there any further discussion?

I have a follow-up question then, Dr. Patio.

So the motion is for a minimum of two years.

We funded 170,000 and so am I correct?

I don't want to put words in your mouth that 170,000 will be the maximum that's being requested even if it goes beyond two years?

Correct.

Any further questions or comments by the board?

Seeing none, if the clerk will call the roll.

Mr. Andrews?

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Price?

Aye.

And then board, I did raise a question and would just ask if there is a desire or consensus the board for there to be some sort of a report from county staff on

you know, what the board approved and agreed to and Southwood was approved and where we are today with what the total expenditures have been.

We've received reports on Southwood in the past.

This is something that comes back to us.

Doug, I mean, even if we didn't make this request, we would be getting an update at some point.

We'd be glad to provide an update.

We can do that fairly quickly.

It may prompt other questions from the board that we would then follow up on as needed.

But we can certainly follow up on this request to provide an update as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

Yes, just sort of clarifying on that same point is I would like to see this, and I know it's coming, but I'd like to make sure that it includes a sense of the portion of dedicated staff time, including this position that has gone into Southwoods and is going to go into Southwoods so that we understand the full commitment.

All right, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Walker, I believe that's relatively clear.

Is there any request for further clarification?

Apparently not.

All right, Board, thank you.

All right, Board, at this time, we'll go to item number 10, a work session on our comprehensive plan working group.

And Mr. Walker, will you be teeing this up or do we go straight to Ms.

Again, I don't have any introductory comments, Chair Price, so Rachel can take it from there.

All right.

Good afternoon, Ms.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

I'm Rachel Falkenstein.

I'm planning manager in the Community Development Department.

And I am joined today by my colleagues, Mikayla Hardy, who is a senior planner, too, in community development.

and Irtyfa Binte Farid, who is the Coordinator of Equity and Accountability in the Office of Equity and Inclusion.

Michaela and I will be doing the presenting today and Irtyfa is here to help with questions and answers if any apply to her office.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

This afternoon we'll share a presentation that includes a review of the comp plan update project and the engagement goals, an overview of the working group approach, a draft application, and a recommendation for compensation.

This presentation will be followed by time for questions and board discussion.

And I'll begin our presentation with a brief overview of the comprehensive plan and rationale for an update for members of the public who are listening or watching today.

The comprehensive plan is often called the comp plan and is a guiding document for growth, development and investment in Albemarle County.

It's used to guide decisions on public infrastructure and funding plans and programs and review of some development applications.

Comprehensive plans typically outline a vision for a 20-year planning horizon with periodic updates required by the Virginia state code.

So why is an update to the comp plan appropriate now?

Since the latest comprehensive plan update in 2015, Albemarle County has continued to grow and change.

For example, approximately 4,000 new dwelling units have been built since 2015, and our community's median household income and median home values continue to rise.

However, with new data from the Albemarle County equity profile, we can see that this growth has not been experienced evenly across the county, with quality of life outcomes that differ depending on where you live.

In response to Albemarle County's changing context and in support of our mission, a variety of new policies and plans have been updated by the county, including plans for affordable housing, local economic development, and climate action, as well as the creation of an Office of Equity and Inclusion.

These priorities have not been fully integrated throughout the county's comprehensive plan, and this is an opportunity to incorporate our community's recent work, better understand the diverse lived

experiences of Admiral County community members and plan for an equitable and resilient future.

On November 3rd of 2021, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution of intent to begin work on updating the comprehensive plan.

As a refresher, I want to share the overall comprehensive plan update goals that were shared with the board at October and November work sessions.

First is to update plan content to reflect recent county-wide strategic initiatives.

Second is to ensure that equity is integrated into both the engagement process and the updated plan content.

And third is to improve plan usability by articulating clear, prioritized goals

also having metrics for tracking progress and applying a more streamlined document design.

Next slide, please.

We also shared a phasing plan with the board that talks about how we will do the work of the comp plan update.

It breaks the work into four phases, starting with our overarching growth management policy in phase one.

Phases two and three will get into specific policies and strategies, and then we'll wrap everything together into phase four into a final document design.

The phasing plan was also endorsed by the board at your November work session.

So we're currently beginning the work of phase one, which is evaluating our growth management policy from the existing comprehensive plan through the lens of equity, climate action planning, and county growth projections.

We also plan to incorporate the county's updated values into the plan vision and values.

And then lastly, we plan to identify the appropriate level of detail in the plan that should be in the plan and develop a framework that will guide future phases within phase one.

Next slide, please.

So also as discussed at your November work session, staff plans to develop our engagement plans for each phase of the project at the beginning of the phase or the end of the pre-phase.

This we hope will allow us to be more responsive to community feedback about methodologies that have been effective and will make adjustments, will also allow us to be mindful of the content we'll be focusing on with each phase as we design engagement for the upcoming phase.

So our phase one engagement plan is provided in attachment A of the board materials, and it was endorsed by the board at a November 3rd work session.

And including the materials are three goals for the overall project engagement.

to conduct outreach and collaborate with community members whose perspectives have not historically been well represented, to develop and implement a transparent community engagement and decision making process, and to provide consistent but varied opportunities for community input throughout.

Next slide.

So the phase one engagement approach incorporates four groups of expertise or input.

One group is internal staff.

This is not just planning staff, but also staff from other departments across the organization.

Second is a working group made up of members of the community, which we'll talk about in more detail.

Third is broad public engagement, and that will be an open invitation to all members of the community to participate in various formats such as workshops, online forums, or pop-ups.

And then the next is legislative review and that would include our planning commission who makes the recommendation to the board of supervisors with the board being the final decision makers.

We call the process among these four groups as an iterative process, but another way of saying that would be to create a feedback loop that we've tried to illustrate in this graphic, where staff will draft plan recommendations, and then we'll bring those recommendations out to the different groups to gather feedback.

Then we'll revise the content based on feedback from each group and then gather additional feedback until a final decision can be made by the Board of Supervisors.

Engagement of each of these groups will also be supported with online and in-person outreach and clear communications and summaries of our engagement.

Next slide, please.

So at a work session with the board in November, we presented the recommendation to establish a working group for the comprehensive plan update.

And the board was supportive of the concept, but you also asked for more information about the group makeup, its role in the selection and application process.

So we're going to share that information in a little more detail now.

Next slide, please.

So the working group members role will be to advise county staff on draft materials related to the comprehensive plan update.

And that could include materials such as outreach, community engagement formats and materials and draft plan recommendations.

The working group input will be used to inform framing of project content for public engagement.

So essentially using this group as a sounding board to ensure that our materials are accessible and understandable.

before we share out to the general public.

We'll also look to the working group to provide input on plan recommendations that would be brought forward to the planning commission and board.

The second thing we'll ask of the working group will be to support community outreach efforts by sharing information within their networks, neighborhoods, or communities.

Next slide, please.

The working group's role is also summarized in attachment B of the materials, but we've provided a summary of their tasks here as well that they'll be asked to regularly complete.

That would be including attending a regular monthly meeting and reviewing advanced materials before the meeting as needed.

Also learning about planning and development concepts through staff-led trainings.

They'd be asked to also review and provide feedback on draft materials, as I mentioned.

and actively encouraging participation, building relationships and engaging community members outside of the regular meetings.

We'll also have the opportunity to participate in and observe the general public outreach meetings that we'll have and the engagement opportunities and review written summaries of input, policy and planning options and share input on staff recommendations.

As I mentioned, staff will be developing engagement summaries that will summarize

both the broad community feedback and working group feedback that we'll share with decision makers on the planning commission and the board.

Next slide, please.

So with the tasks listed on the previous slides, we anticipate a commitment of about 10 hours per month for our working group members.

We are not looking for prior volunteer education or work experience related to planning or community development.

and as such, we'll plan to include staff-led trainings on fundamentals of these concepts at the monthly meetings.

We'll also include topics relevant to the comp plan updates such as growth management to ensure that members have a shared level of understanding about these concepts.

Also, as we'll talk more about in our upcoming slides, we intend to encourage applicants from communities in Albemarle that have traditionally been underrepresented in our planning processes, including those under the age of 35, people of color,

or members of low to moderate income households.

And there's a more complete list and attachment fee.

Next slide, please.

So there'll be an open application for the working group or any interested members of the community who wish to apply.

And we'll plan to do both broad and targeted outreach to try and spread the word to encourage community members to participate and apply.

So broad outreach would include a project website, media coverage, social media, and county email lists.

And then more targeted outreach would include invitations and emails to community groups, neighborhoods, and groups of individuals or individuals that work with or are made up of populations typically underrepresented.

So based on your request for additional information, we've provided a draft application and attachment B that shows the type of information that we would seek from applicants on the working group application.

So we'll be looking for contract information, some basic demographic information, and then a few written responses about why they're interested in participation and issues they're seeing in their communities, and then some logistics about meeting preferences.

We'll also have the final application translated to Spanish and other languages if requested and we'll offer assistance in filling out the applications as well.

Next slide, please.

The selection process will involve a selection panel comprised of staff across various departments and divisions within the organization and the staff team would plan to use a scoring framework shown in attachment B to review applicants.

The goal would be to create a working group comprised of community members with a diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in Albemarle County.

And we'll also use the Albemarle County equity profile findings as a guide for this work.

The summary of representation goals is also included in the attachment and the groups who have historically been represented in our processes.

Next slide, please.

Now I'm turning it over to Mikayla.

This next portion of our presentation is focused on the growing practice of compensating community members for their time and expertise shared through planning and community development initiatives.

I'll share staff's rationale for the recommendation, including best practices and a few local examples, followed by an alternative option if compensation for the working group is not preferred by the board.

There are four key aspects that underpin staff's recommendation to compensate members of the working group for the comp plan update.

I'll discuss each one in more detail on the following slides, but as an overview, compensating working group members is an innovative community engagement approach that's used to integrate equity and inclusion into planning processes.

It's aligned with best practices both locally and across the country.

It's commensurate with the expected labor and time commitment needed for the role.

And finally, it provides an opportunity for the county to pilot a new approach towards outreach and engagement to see if it will successfully bring new perspectives to our work.

The primary purpose of compensating working group members is to integrate equity and inclusion into our planning process, which has been a goal of this project from its initial discussions with the board.

An equitable and inclusive community engagement approach is in direct service of the county's mission and is well aligned with the organization's value of community.

While the equity profile begins to describe the varying experiences in Admiral County through data, we need to center those who are experiencing disparate quality of life outcomes to better understand and address them in the future.

Community members, such as those from those groups that Rachel listed earlier, like those under the age of 35 who are members of low-income households, people of color, renters, or speak multiple languages to name a few, have been underrepresented in our past and even more recent planning processes, which may be due to several barriers they face, including the additional cost of childcare, time away from work, and transportation access.

With compensation, our goal is to address these obstacles as well as value lived experiences in Albemarle County alongside data and community development expertise.

This is an opportunity for the county to apply our new value by piloting a new approach and evaluating if compensation enables underrepresented community members to participate in our processes.

And secondly, compensation for working group members is to measure it with our anticipated role and expectations that Rachel discussed.

We expect this role will be a commitment of approximately 10 hours per month, and as such is similar in nature to some of our other paid boards and commissions, such as the Architectural Review Board, Board of Zoning Appeals, and Planning Commission.

These boards and commissions are expected to prepare in advance for meetings, attend other community meetings, and provide staff advisory recommendations to staff.

Yet despite its similarities, the primary goal for compensation is to remove barriers and encourage applicants from communities in Amaral County that have been underrepresented in our planning processes.

Thirdly, compensation is a growing practice in the fields of community development as well as community engagement.

For example, in 2019, the American Planning Association published a policy guide titled Planning for Equity.

which highlights community engagement as a cross-cutting issue across all types of planning and development topics.

More and more localities are realizing that their engagement and decision-making processes lack diversity of opinions voiced to city councils and planning departments, and this has lasting implications on critical investment and development decisions.

We'd like to highlight a few local and regional examples of compensating community members as part of planning for policy practice.

The first example

University of Virginia, which has a practice of flat rate stipends for different projects through the funds for individual projects or research initiatives.

And an example is the President's Council, which focuses on strengthening the relationship between the VA and the surrounding localities.

The Blue Ridge Health District is another local entity that has compensated community members for their time and expertise, both in the form of hourly pay for part-time workers for the Community Health Assessment, which is also called Map to Health, as well as meals and gift cards for one-off data collection and engagement opportunities.

This approach is intended to recognize that participants who volunteer their time may have taken time away from work or incurred childcare or transportation costs to depend.

It works to avoid causing a disproportionate economic disadvantage to participants from modest household incomes.

The third example is the City of Richmond, who has compensated members of key groups in two recent planning processes, including RVA Green 2050 and Richmond 300, a guide for growth.

RVA Green 2050 is the City of Richmond's climate action and resilience planning initiative that provided optional grants to Roundtable members at a variety of levels.

The grant amounts were determined based on the level of commitment and whether the individual was working independently of a paid position or they were participating as a representative of an organization.

This scaled grant approach is designed to reflect the varying levels of commitment and offer the highest amounts to those who need it most.

Richmond 300 is the city's master plan that aims to prioritize equitable and sustainable growth over the next 20 years.

and their planning process included an advisory council that was created with the goal of reaching people beyond those who typically showed up to their planning commission meetings.

I'm going to spend a little more time on this example because it provides a helpful lesson for our own planning process.

City staff held an initial call for volunteers in 2017 that did not initially include compensation, which resulted in few applications and from folks that had previously participated in planning processes.

The deputy director for the City of Richmond has described publicly the initial approach as a silly mistake because traditionally underrepresented people who want to volunteer don't necessarily have the ability to put in substantial time without being compensated.

City staff adjusted and redesigned their approach to have an advisory team that would work five to 15 hours per week depending on the phase in the process.

This pivot in their engagement approach was also paired with an updated application that identified specific communities that had been underrepresented in their planning processes, as well as a call for people who could demonstrate community engagement experience and the ability to reach specific populations.

Over 170 people expressed interest in applying for the advisory council after the mayor's press conference on the topic, and the final advisory committee had 21 people who varied in age, planning knowledge, and length of city residency,

and this set the stage for an inclusive and transparent process and the Richmond 300 plan ultimately won a national planning award from the American Planning Foundation.

The last example is Arlington County, Virginia, who very recently allocated a portion of its American Rescue Plan Act funds for a pilot program called Equitable Engagement, which had the goal of improving engagement with and representation in civic structures of historically underserved communities.

The pilot program will explore different ways to make it easier for community members to participate in compensation.

They're exploring gift cards, childcare, wave transportation costs, and more.

Through all these examples, we're seeing different organizations and localities explore ways to redesign and re-envision their processes to be more inclusive and address the disproportionate economic burden faced by renters, members of low-income households, parents, and others.

To wrap us up, the recommendation that we are bringing forward is to compensate members of the working group for their time and expertise at a rate equivalent to our minimum wage, which is $15 per hour.

And so for phase one, this is estimated to be around $1,000 per person, and depending on the size of the group, would be about $82,000, which is currently available in the comp plan budget that we brought to the board in winter of 2021.

So if the board is supportive of this approach, the long-range planning team will collaborate with human resources staff and finance and budget staff to structure the compensation appropriately.

Next slide, please.

If compensation is not preferred by the board, an alternative could be to redesign our engagement process with additional resources allocated

to focus on more dispersed outreach to try and reach underrepresented communities.

We think this will require additional staff time and resources and potentially a longer project timeline so that we could provide recurring opportunities and engage with a variety of underrepresented communities for each engagement topic.

And since this approach, this alternative approach would be different than the one we've scoped, it would require us to come back with an updated phase one engagement plan and timeline for the board's consideration.

Next slide, please.

So our next steps will be to incorporate the board's feedback today and begin working on workgroup outreach and make an application live or to return to the board with a revised phase one engagement plan if your direction is not to move forward with the working group.

Also, we'll have a forthcoming project website at the end of this month with information on upcoming public engagement opportunities that will include the working group application if the board provides that direction today.

Next slide.

And that concludes our remarks for today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you ladies for the really good presentation.

And this whole agenda item has given us food for thought.

We've been talking for years about how to communicate better with certain portions and segments of our community.

And I really appreciate having this option to talk about.

It's not anything we've ever done in the past.

Certainly would be a change for Albemarle County.

In a way, though, I do think we keep doing the same thing over and over again and except expecting a different result.

It's kind of whackadoodle.

So I'm ready to break out of that model we've been using and try something different.

And I see this as a different approach.

I really appreciate it, especially the Richmond option, because it looked like to me the Richmond model showed outcomes.

They weren't just starting that process, unlike maybe, was it Arlington?

Didn't look like they'd gone through the whole process.

But Richmond has and had good outcomes.

So I am certainly very supportive of trying that.

This, in my mind, is the continuous model of improvement.

And I would look at this as

While we might not call it a pilot, we're changing our process, looking at a different model, and we'll see how well this works.

And then we can come back later and be able to improve it, tweak it, do whatever we need to do.

But we've got to figure out a way to get to other segments of our population.

So I'm supportive of this.

I do have one question.

And it goes back to some of the questions that we've been talking about.

with our own boards and committees and our meetings.

How do you all visualize, Rachel and Michaela, how do you visualize this?

Zooming in person, a combination of both.

Well, currently, we're envisioning virtual because of the world that we're in.

But we also want to remain flexible to the responses of the group.

We do have logistics questions about time of day and structure.

And so we can cater that to the members of the group.

In person can be really helpful for some learning and shared discussion and

activities training.

Okay, that's it from us.

Rachel looks like she's happy with your response.

going forward in one way that then leaves many of the same people out again because they can't have Zoom access or any of those things.

So I hope that you will think about that.

Some concerns I have, I mean, actually I'll start with positive.

This appreciative inquiry that we learned a lot about 10 years ago about ways to get people involved in, whether it's neighborhood rehabilitation like in Southwood,

compared to the failures of the past where planners with great ideas went into neighborhoods and said, here's what we're going to do for you, and never bothered to ask the people what they really wanted.

I really hope we will be going toward the inquiry side as opposed to the lecture side.

Here's my concern.

When we are bringing, hopefully, with great success, we will have many participants who have never been in this before.

and yet their only basis for knowledge is what the staff is going to tell them in these lecture things, these learning things to help them get up to speed.

So that's a great burden for staff not to be filtering information and giving the information because it's what's going to give you the answer when you're done.

I know that's not what you're intending, but we have to be very, very aggressively careful about that.

I hope that

and I think that the way it was described about the feedback loop took away some of my concerns.

One of my biggest concerns is that what we saw happen during the route 20 shared use path issue and some things during the Crozy Master Plan is that changes were made to documents based upon a few people's ideas given in 12 responses online.

without the public group larger community having a chance to weigh in and then it was much harder or impossible actually to get those changes.

reverted.

So as long as the information that's gathered is then presented as a whole, in summary, before changes are made to documents and those summary things are discussed in the wider community and the legislative process, then I think this will be a great success.

If it happens first and we have this accelerated process to zoom through with the new ideas that have not had wide discussion, there is great potential for

obstacles at the end from community groups who felt they were never even invited to the table.

So I understand we're trying very hard to reach new, but we also have to figure out a way to keep all of the ongoing public discussion happening so those who are interested, no matter where they are, have a chance to learn what the current state of discussion is.

I've had wonderful experiences in the past with long-range transportation planning, five different iterations in 30 years, where we actually went to schools and churches and took the plans and had wonderful face-to-face discussions with people over an afternoon or an evening, who people then did feel that they had been properly recognized and asked and their ideas written down, recognized, and incorporated

At least as far as, even if they couldn't be solved, they were incorporated as the challenges that went forward.

I was on the, what's now called C-TAC, was called chart in the old days.

And one of my colleagues for eight years was Mr. Burton, who was a drove a cab, and he had a completely different perspective than the transportation planners on road changes that needed to be made.

And I found that so helpful and fascinating.

And so I think that's the positive we're going to get if we're successful and careful in how this is carried out.

So I think a combination, strengthening option B at the same time that you're offering this, I don't think we can do without option B, even if it's at the second stage, because that seems to be the only way that's fair.

Comp plans are our local government approach.

and I'm very territorial about comp plans.

So I, just like in many committees, I think it's very important that we have county residents who are the ones who are participating.

I think that's the case in this as well.

and there certainly are many, many very elderly, very rural people on fixed incomes who are still not, unless we take something to them at their neighborhood Grange Hall or something like that, they will still not be included in this as well.

So overall, very positive and I've outlined my concerns so that you can think about ways to make it even better.

Thank you.

Yes, I'm in favor of getting many different diverse responses from the community.

I think it's also very important to make sure that each district is represented.

regarding the number of people on the committee.

So many people per district on the committee.

The question regarding virtual was answered.

I know you haven't answered when the meetings will be, if it will be in the evenings, if it will be weekly, monthly.

I think it was weekly, right?

It will be a monthly meeting but the time and location is not established yet.

We're not sure yet.

And I do agree with Supervisor Mallek.

I think we need to go out into our own districts, into our own communities, and solicit input.

But I also believe that's the role of the supervisor.

I don't think we should expect staff to do that.

That should be the supervisor if they want to go out to the various

organizations, churches, whatever that the supervisors should be doing that and gathering that information.

And I would encourage the supervisors to do that.

I've already made a list of people that I want.

and then I'm going to ask as we've been having this discussion, but I have to tell you I'm in favor of what we're doing or how we're doing it and getting a broad approach.

A lot of it will be

If the meetings are convenient, if it's monthly, that's going to be a lot better.

So that will work.

Maybe even, I'm not sure if you're considering weekends.

You're probably not.

Is that right, Michaela?

Ms.

I'm going to look back at our application because I need to check.

We had a question on logistics and we just had weekdays.

But we can always add weekends.

Right, right.

I'm just thinking of people that work and such.

But no, that's fine.

I'm sure it'll all be worked out once you have the members there.

So really, those are all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm perfectly supportive of the

compensation plan and your approach here.

Be curious to see how the results go.

So whatever needs to be done to help encourage this participation from those who've been left out in the past is certainly going to get my support and just going to try things and then see what works and doesn't work and evaluate it for the next time.

We did receive an email from a Rio district resident and I think it's a well, her concerns are, you know, I think

in some ways gets at what maybe Supervisor Mallek was speaking to.

The last comment that is made is please examine carefully what the working group members need to know and how they should learn it.

and just in the email was about perhaps there could be folks that participate.

In her email, she suggests maybe like grad students, it could be interns, I don't know.

But basically the idea is that these are folks that are on hand to the working group members who are a glossary, if you would.

Somebody there to just answer the technical question, explain what this means, what that means, et cetera, frees staff up.

I think that the intent here by the resident is not that they're worried about staff insinuating or putting anything in, but at least protects you from getting that criticism after the fact.

If you have an objective resource there available to answer technical terms, to explain planning items, et cetera, that doesn't have any skin in the game, then you're protecting yourself from that influence, and the person's getting an objective answer.

How you go about finding those people, I think, is a whole other can of worms.

but it is at least I think an idea worthy of consideration.

It was just sent to the BOS email but I'll make sure I forward that over to you guys so that you can review it because I do think that there's if it may be not the exact plan that she's suggesting the overarching idea is certainly one that I'm hearing here and think is a good one to consider and maybe we can figure out how to solve that because I think that is a good idea but otherwise very supportive of this and

Supervisor Andrews.

I think probably just seconding a lot of the comments that are made.

Supervisor Galloway's comment about the the area of sort of how people will learn what they need to know to be able to do this is really important.

I'm a little bit concerned when I look at the graphics and hear the description and I think Supervisor Mallek hit on this point that we see a picture of the urban ring and there are a lot of planning development type of discussions into this but certainly I think there are a lot of things in the comprehensive plan that hit the rural areas and

and require representation in those areas as well.

I wouldn't mind hearing a little bit of a sense of which parts of the plan you are most in need of this input because I think there are a lot of them but not necessarily ranked the same way.

A real quick clarification point, the statement made was that the pay was at a rate equivalent to the county's minimum wage.

Is it contemplated that it is an hourly

Hey, or a stipend that's estimated based on a $15 per hour because they do think it's a sort of different attitude when somebody comes into this.

And then like Supervisor Mallek said, I do think that you really can't escape plan B, which is that you need further outreach afterwards and to try to reach out to broad segments of the public with the working groups, you know, leading the way.

And then lastly, I just want to emphasize that I think this is kind of a pilot idea.

It's really important.

And I do hope you think hard about how you want to evaluate it.

before you go in.

I think we're going to need to hear something about how well this works.

All right, thank you.

I concur with the other supervisors.

I fully support this compensation package.

Obviously, some of the details, whether it be an hourly or a stipend sort of a calculation, need to be worked out.

Virginia has been fairly notorious and undercompensating and underappreciating our citizen servants at all levels.

from employees to elected to volunteers.

So I do support this.

It is simply the cost of doing business and this comprehensive plan is so critical to our county that it should be clearly among the first, if not the first, that we consider.

Ms.

Falkenstein, Ms.

Party, I thank you for your presentations today.

And Dr. Bente-Friede, I really look forward to your contribution towards this as the planning group is selected.

I do have a few comments I'll just mention quickly.

When I looked through the draft application questions, asked that consideration being given to number nine, including UBA, both undergraduate and graduate students, particularly those who may be involved in the planning area.

I tend to look at many things in life as sort of a bell curve.

So when I look at a number of the questions, for example, number 10,

I would individually think that those in sort of the 30 to 50s age group may be where we would want to focus our largest number of participants as those at the younger

Age scale may not have enough life experiences to be able to fully contribute, and those at the upper age scale, which anecdotally I will say I am not yet there, may be a little more narrowly focused as senior citizens.

I do appreciate the effort to include

a broader demographic coverage of our community, different languages, ethnicities, backgrounds.

I would ask consistent with Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley in section 22 to include the town of Scottsville as a specific geographic area as well as simply a listing

of each of the magisterial districts for residents who may not live in one of the articulated specific areas.

And with regard to the town of Scottsville, I recognize that they are a separate political entity, yet those residents also are members of the broader community of the county.

And I think it would be helpful for them to be seen as being identified as some of the other areas.

And then finally, I did notice that there was some in the additional information and application assistance

that translation services will be provided and staff will be available to assist with the application.

And I simply wonder whether that's sufficient to fully encourage the participation of those who do not have English as their primary language to actually be able to participate in the group, not just be able to apply to the group.

But I very much support option A and as with other supervisors encourage a continuation of option B for other involvement.

Yes, thank you, Donna.

And maybe because I went first, but it did occur to me.

I had just a thought after I heard folks talking about the really important idea of the community being educated or instructed on what they need to know.

And I will say that Habitat did a wonderful job.

with the residents at Southwood on their work around instructing them and showing them and helping them understand land use and the importance.

Just to say that because I was involved, as many of us were, in that work with those residents, and it was truly impressive.

So just to throw that out there, and I know Rachel and Michaela, you know that, but it was really a wonderful model.

The only other thing since I thought we were getting ready to leave, I wanted to come back to on page, well I don't know what page it is, there's no page number, but on the survey that the community will

I was curious, it looks like halfway down the list it says Albemarle High School.

And I wasn't sure, we don't have Western Albemarle and Monticello High School.

I was trying to figure out exactly what you all were getting at when you listed Albemarle High School.

Is it that area around Albemarle High School?

I'll jump in on this one.

So question 22, all of those areas are census tracts, and those are the names that were used in the equity profile.

So we will be able to compare our applications and make sure we were getting representation from the county according to those names.

But based on this feedback, I'm hearing it would be, it might be helpful for us to put in parentheses like different

areas that are within those census tracts so we can continue to use the data in the equity profile but also give a better understanding so people know which location to check.

We could also have something that is more open-ended if someone wanted to indicate that they were from the town of Scottsville or another location.

That's just a helpful metric for us to compare to.

And in earlier iterations, we did have a question on magisterial district, but we got great feedback that not everyone knows what magisterial district they're in.

So when they provide their address at the beginning, we'll do the work on the back end to see what magisterial district they're in.

So we'll still use that metric.

Well, and I just thought while I mentioned it, I thought Albemarle High School, I fear that if you're talking about the area around Albemarle, that's cool.

But that's going to confuse people because they're going to say I'm not associated with Albemarle High School, right?

I mean, I'm just saying.

Yes, that's a great point.

Thank you.

Okay, so thank you very much.

I think that was it.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say that, agree with Ms.

McKeel, that appreciative inquiry term that I mentioned was, I learned that at the beginning of the habitat process.

And so I think that the stories told of the sort of mistakes that were made at Habitat of, oh, we're going to build you a soccer field here, only to find out for the residents that they don't want a soccer field there.

They want to build it over here and they'll do it themselves this weekend.

That's the kind of thing that we need to be thinking very carefully about how we have these conversations and I love that model and hopefully we can get maybe make use of some of the trainers that they have already have your skill to help lead some of these.

because then we have an even greater chance of success.

It's new to us, but it's not new to them and it's not new to the folks in Texas and all around this world who are using this very careful approach.

Thank you.

Oh, and one other thing.

On 10A, page four, it talks about votes we took in July 2021.

I assume that's supposed to be 2022 because I don't remember having any of those votes.

So I'll just leave that and somebody can fix it later.

Thank you.

I just want to, I think it's important to say to staff that look, no matter what you do, you're going to miss the people.

And they're going to tell us at the last minute, I didn't know what was going on.

When the hell did this come up?

We're going to get that lobbed at us all the time.

I am totally baffled sometimes where things that we've been talking about for two or three years, there have been local news stories out there.

We've done all the push out and they still

are not aware of certain things.

So that's inevitable.

That's going to happen.

And I don't think any of us are putting that on you, knowing that the reality of the situation, no matter what we try, some of that's going to occur.

I think it is important to learn from past areas when we've got some feedback.

So the Rio Road corridor study is one that I would look to real fast.

There were people reaching out wanting to be involved and a criticism was made that there was no looping back to them to get them involved.

So I would say learn that lesson for this one as people reach out and say, hey, we're interested, we're interested.

or for volunteer, whatever, even if they're going to be selected, not selected, then some sort of timely communication go back to them.

And then as others, I think Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley mentioned, as supervisors go out into the community, you know, it's generally speaking to people to go, hey, pay attention.

I mean, if you're not reading the local news, you're not on NBC 29 News, if you're not watching email, how would you know what the heck we're doing?

So we have to encourage people generally to make sure that they're keeping their eyes on us so that we're not just running them up with things.

Yes, I just want to piggybacking on what everyone else is mentioning.

If someone doesn't know what magisterial district they live in, because I know I tried to put in an address the other day for somebody to find out which magisterial district they live in, do we have a site

If we do, we probably do, and I'm not aware of it, but do we have a site where you can go put in your address and it tells you what Magisterial District you live in?

Because if we don't have it, we should have it, then as people fill out actually any kind of application,

for us.

We should direct them to that website, say put in your address, and it will tell you which magisterial district you live in.

That will start the processes of everybody starting to use that, sharing it with others, so that we're educating people as we go along.

But I don't know if that's available.

I mean it's on the GIS, you enter your address in, it gives you all the feedback of your, now I'm not, I say that kind of in a flip mention, like maybe nobody knows to go to the GIS, but it's there.

If there was, if there was a- Well, it sounds like the question we were asking if it exists.

So the answer is yes.

And then if you go to any of your VPATs or your places that go, where do I vote?

And you put it in the well, who do I vote?

That that identifies your magisterial district as well.

So, I mean, yes, those places exist out there.

And if we have to push out how to do it, then that's what we push out.

That's my point the simple site exists.

They just have to know to go there.

We create some other place, then we have to tell them how to get there.

So we've already got it there.

Perhaps a simple link at the Board of Supervisors homepage that answers the question, what's my magisterial district?

Who's my supervisor?

Yes.

Well, I guess I just wanted

Remind staff, remind us that you obviously have a very small number of people who will serve on this working group compared to the number of different representations that you're looking for.

And so I guess I just want to acknowledge that challenge that when we look at, you know,

The item, I can't remember which number it was, 22 or something, that it was choose all of those that apply and there may be that you've got to look for people who can broadly represent a large number of different constituents.

I was only going to say, if we can use a phone number somewhere, whether it's a call to the county executive's office or a county call to the voter registration, people, lots and lots of people have no online.

We just need to remember that.

So telephone, when it's working, is a really great way to get that registered district question.

And I agree with Jim that

This very small number of people will be very, very helpful but cannot be considered to be representative of the county as a whole.

We're going to have to make extra effort to go that extra mile.

Thank you.

I have one last comment.

Looking at item number 27 on the questionnaire, the dates and times for the meetings, I do think we all need to be sensitive to the time that our county staff puts in during Monday through Friday.

and to ask them to then add their weekends to doing this in non-emergency situations.

I really would encourage that we try to have these take place during the regular Monday through Friday workday.

Simply supervise the comment.

I look at what our staff has gone through over the last few weeks in particular in the last two years in general.

Long days, long hours.

and for planning purposes to avoid overtime as much as possible and things like that, trying to see within the regular work week be advisable.

I'm sorry, Chair Price.

This did get a lot of attention and discussion with the board.

And I did hear Board Member Mallek say that a lot of our citizens and community members do not have access to internet.

But in our website for Albemarle County Government Board of Supervisors, there is a section called Who Is My Supervisor?

and it's a map that shows the boundaries of the Albemarle County Magisterial Districts, contact information for the Board of Supervisors, Planning Commission members and so that may be what Ms.

Thank you, Mr. Richardson.

Yes, I actually spent about 10 minutes on that site yesterday trying to find out, put in an address to find out who is my supervisor.

Most people, yes, a lot of people have computers, laptops, most people are now doing everything on their cell phone and that site, that particular site when you click on it,

half of it shows up, a supervisor, half of it shows up in Magisterial District.

They're trying to navigate that on your phone using your two fingers to spread it out to find your exact straight location.

It's not that easy to do.

I did it, but it's not that easy to do.

My point being is on that site, if someone could just type in their address and it would tell them who their supervisor is,

Thank you for that feedback.

We'll certainly take a look at that as a follow-up to today's discussion.

Thank you.

Mr. Richardson, Mr. Walker, do you have everything you need from the board on this item?

Have you gotten the consensus where you needed?

I believe we're good.

If COD staff is fine,

Board, we are scheduled for a three o'clock recess and unusual are a little ahead of time now.

So we have other people who are already scheduled to come in at 3.15.

I would propose that we come back no earlier than 3.10.

Is there a sense, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Walker, would that work?

for our item number 11, or do you want us to just come back at 3.15?

What you've suggested is fine.

All right, board, we'll come back then at 10 minutes after three.

And Mr. Morris, let us know when we have gone on to recess the internet.

in your life.

All right, thank you.

And at this time, we'll move to item number 11, discussion on the transit governance study funding.

And Ms.

Yes, I will.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, supervisors, and thank you, Chair Price.

That's perfect.

Great.

So thank you.

I am joined today by Sandy Shackelford, Director of Planning and Transportation at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, who's here to help answer any questions following today's presentation.

So right now we'll be discussing the TJPDC's Transit Governance Study.

They're in the midst of applying for a grant from the Department of Rail and Public Transit to partially fund this study.

A reminder that a resolution of support from Albemarle County is not needed for their grant application.

Rather, they're here today for your feedback on the proposed study and potentially requesting general support for their grant application, which would include a match from Albemarle County.

So the idea to conduct a transit governance study really springs from the regional transit vision planning process.

So this slide gives some basic background on the vision plan, the county's role in it, and explains why the proposed transit governance study is needed.

So the Regional Transit Vision Plan is an effort of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and the Regional Transit Partnership.

It was financially supported in part by Albemarle County, as well as City of Charlottesville and the Department of Rail and Public Transit.

The purpose of the Regional Transit Vision Plan is to develop a community-driven vision for the future of transit in our region.

The Regional Transit Vision Plan is ongoing.

It's set to wrap up at the end of this fiscal year, so end of June.

But it's already identified a need for additional funding and collaboration to meet the community's expectations for the future of transit.

In order to determine the best way to meet that need for additional funding and collaboration, the TJPDC is proposing a transit governance study.

So at the heart of the transit governance study is this question.

What is the appropriate governance structure to move regional transit priorities forward?

The main goals of the study are to identify a recommended governance structure to facilitate regional transit coordination and generate additional funding.

It should be noted that a regional transit authority will be among the governance and funding structures evaluated by this study, but it won't be the only governance structure considered.

The study will also identify recommended revenue sources for transit.

It will create consensus among jurisdictions and stakeholders around the study's recommendations and ultimately improve transportation services for our community.

This slide shows the scope of work for the proposed study.

You also received a more detailed narrative form of the scope of work among your meeting materials.

So I won't go into a lot of detail here, but if you have specific questions about the project scope, Sandy can help answer any of those questions at the end of the presentation.

So in order to create the scope of work, TJPDC staff met with stakeholders from Albemarle County, City of Charlottesville, Jaunt, and DRPT.

They also reviewed the governance study completed by the Central Virginia Transportation Authority and met with their staff for guidance.

TJPDC intends for consultants to do much of the work on this study, so they've already shared the scope of work in your materials with potential consultants in their recently released RFP.

So moving into the study schedule.

So as we just discussed, the scope of work was developed with the help of stakeholders, including Albemarle County.

That scope was sent to potential consultants as part of an RFP in late December.

Proposals were due yesterday.

The selection committee, which includes Mr. Trevor Henry representing Albemarle County and Supervisor McKeel representing the Regional Transit Partnership, will meet in late February.

Skipping ahead, if the TGPDC's grant application is successful, funding for the study would be available beginning July 1st of this year.

They intend to start the study in August of this year, continue for just shy of 18 months, and wrap up in January of 2024.

The total cost of the study would be $180,000.

The grant that I said the TJPDC is applying for is a technical assistance grant from DRPT.

These grants require a 50% match.

Abemarle County and City of Charlottesville as members of the Regional Transit Partnership would split that 50% match along with the MPO or the TJPDC.

As such, if the grant is awarded, the county would be responsible for $30,000 in match.

And I'll note that that is an estimate down from what you originally saw in your meeting materials.

We got new information that the MPO and the PDC would be contributing towards that match as well.

So that concludes the presentation.

Again, just a reminder, you don't have to vote on anything.

You're not being asked for a resolution, just looking for feedback on the proposed study and if you're so inclined, general support for their grant application.

Thank you, Ms.

Hirsch-Ballerin.

Yes, I could probably talk about this for a long time, but I'm not going to.

I'm just going to say that

As one supervisor, I think this is desperately needed.

We have a regional transit partnership, and this is the next step.

We could go on forever with a regional transit partnership and keep doing what we're doing, but if we really want to move transit forward in our community, this is the next step.

And this is one of the steps that we knew when we created the partnership.

that we would sometimes be entertaining.

So I don't think I need to go into a whole lot more other than to say I am very much in favor of this.

I'm thrilled that we are down from $45,000 to $30,000.

That's always good.

And that amount of money, I think we will really get a big bang for our buck.

So with that, thank you very much.

Oh, and Kevin's here too.

All right, thanks.

Thank you.

Supervisor Mallek?

Well, I guess I'm going to sound like an old crone just come out from under a rock here.

But in 2004, there was a transportation working group.

Sandy, I hope you will dig up that report.

I know it's on your shelves.

But there was a very thorough, there was 18 months or so, 15 or so people around here, investigated five different methods of funding.

went to get General Assembly support for some of them and failed.

But I really am concerned, as you all have heard me say over and over, that we not pay people to copy paste old stuff and reinvent the wheel.

So I guess my specific question is, how is this consultant supposed to develop consensus when we haven't been able to do it ourselves in 20 years?

So that may not have an answer today, but I hope that there will be one.

I mean, so I guess please look over all those old things.

The transit study that we had that opened in 2009 that just the first words out of the consultant's mouth was we need $100 million to do light rail between Barracks Road and the airport.

And that was the end of it.

We could have gone home right then.

And we sat there for three more hours, but everybody completely shut down.

It was awful.

So please be careful and make sure that we have this structured so well that we're actually getting new information that's pertinent to us, not something from Minnesota or somewhere.

I'm generally very skeptical of these and I do hope it works and if it's technical assistance we absolutely have to have to get a grant from DRPT and I get that but I hope that they have very specific scoping out directions that they can provide so that we don't just spin our wheels here.

Thank you.

Yes, well, I wasn't around 18 years ago, but I am supportive of going forward on this, and I think all the players have changed, so I'm expecting this to have a positive outcome.

Supervisor Galloway?

Yeah, I'll start with, because I don't want this to sound like counterpoint to Supervisor Mallek.

I certainly think you need to heed

lessons learned and things like that from the past.

But I for one hope you do go outside of this area and bring new ideas in.

Because the transit in my urban ring in my district isn't working.

So this study I'm hopeful is going to lead to finding out the solutions to how to make it work.

I mean, I get it 20 years ago.

Light Rail.

I mean, come on.

Microtransit wasn't conceived, though.

All of the ways we're getting around, the technology exists to make all that happen.

None of that was around.

So we have to go out and figure that out.

It's not in this community now, so we're only going to find it outside of here.

So while we can heed and learn and make sure we don't repeat any mistakes from the past and not duplicate any information that already exists Absolutely, I agree with that so that we can use that time effectively to go find the new ideas I guess the other area that I'm thinking of like it's hard for me to conceive of what other governance structures exist besides a regional transit partnership or authority

One of the things we could talk about is looking at the actual structure of the transit agencies themselves and looking at how we could improve collaboration among the transit providers directly.

So that's something that could be considered.

Most likely, I think, a transit authority is probably going to be spending the most time being invested.

I think that's probably where we're going to spend the most time, but until we go through this process of the study, we don't know what's going to make the most sense.

I don't want to presume that we know what's going to make the most sense moving forward until we let the consultants do that analysis.

and Supervisor Mallek.

Sandy, thank you for the answer.

I mean, I guess in my mind, I always maybe perhaps

conceived that the regional transit partnership turns into a regional transit authority.

I guess process-wise, how does, I'm seeing like report back to the localities, check-ins with the regional transit partnership, I guess process-wise from what I read, I'm not real clear how it's going to work.

I don't necessarily need it explained to me right now, other than to say I would be comfortable with the RTP handling the bulk of the work.

and then when they get to a recommendation, bring that back to the locality for consideration.

I think that's what is happening.

So if my understanding is correct, if you could just confirm that and then that's all the questions I have.

That is correct.

We'll make sure to keep you all updated.

Lucinda also included several references to check-ins and meetings with the localities as part of this scope of services.

OK, so that's the piece that I've built my understanding around.

So it sounds like it's in there.

Very good.

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews.

I don't have a lot to add.

I tried to look into the history of this and saw some of the issues that Supervisor Mallek has identified.

I recognize that the players have changed.

One of the things that I'm a little worried about timing wise, but starting August 22 is helpful is that our partner has had some differences in personnel and want to make sure that they're ready for this as well.

All right, thank you.

Ms.

Hirsch-Bellary, thank you for your presentation.

Ms.

Shackelford, thank you for your input.

Mr. McDermott, thank you as always for being ever ready and present for questions that may come up.

I also support this as I look at situations where you have cross jurisdictional services, I believe a regional government model makes sense.

I often look at, for example, like the New York model, not that we're necessarily at a borough level, but

Having lived about 18 years in Hampton Roads, where you have what we affectionately refer to as the Seven Sisters, the different jurisdictions, all with their own rice bowls, not working collaboratively together to improve services to the community, we have seven different transportation systems identified

in our attachment A scope of work and anything that we can do to help them to get together better through a governance program to provide better services for our community I think is advisable.

And the cost for this is very, very small in relation to the potential productivity that could come out of it.

So I fully support it as well.

I don't see any other hands raised from board members, but I would just ask

our county executive staff.

Are you satisfied with the discussion from the board?

Is there anything else that you believe you need at this time?

Mr. Richardson, I saw you shaking your head.

So I believe we have satisfied your need.

Thank you board.

And thank you for your presentations and availability today for all of those who are online with us right now.

All right, Board, at this point, we can move on to item number 12, our transit expansion funding.

And Ms.

That's right, and thank you for letting me continue speaking.

Our collaborators are going to work on getting the presentation up while I give us some opening remarks.

So today we're going to be discussing the outcomes of the Admiral County Transit Expansion Study,

and next steps regarding implementation of some of their recommendations.

As you recall from our quarterly presentation last week, the Albemarle County Transit Expansion Study investigated potential immediate service changes to improve transit in three high priority areas of Albemarle County.

The study was funded in part by a grant from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transit with Albemarle County providing the local share of the study's cost.

The grant and study were administered by the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

So I'm joined today by Boris Palchick from Foursquare Integrated Transit Planning and Nick Britton from Michael Baker, the leads from the consulting team that did the technical work on this study.

In their presentation, Mr. Palchick and Mr. Britton will give you a little background on the study.

They'll describe the potential transit service scenarios they developed for each study area and the feedback they received from stakeholders and the public through numerous meetings and an online survey.

Finally, they will describe cost estimates and an implementation plan for a pilot microtransit service in two of the three study areas.

Charlottesville area transit would provide the microtransit service either directly or by contracting the service to a third party.

And they'll be applying for the demonstration grant from the Department of Rail and Public Transit for operating costs.

We recommend that the board adopt a resolution of support for the demonstration grant and commit the 20% local share needed.

If the demonstration grant is successful and the program continues, it's likely that the county would be primarily funding the service in subsequent years.

I'm also joined by Garland Williams, Director of Charlottesville Area Transit and Lucinda Shannon from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission to answer any questions the board may have following the presentation.

Can everybody hear me?

Yes.

OK, excellent.

All right, thanks, Jessica.

So as Jessica was saying, the goal of our study was to identify short-range opportunities to expand transit service to key population employment centers in Albemarle County.

Jessica mentioned the three areas we looked at.

29 North corridor, the Pentops area to the east, and then Monticello to the south.

So what we did, what our team did, is we developed two service scenarios for each of the three study areas, two scenarios to improve service.

And those scenarios included a mix of fixed route and microtransit service.

So just a quick reminder, microtransit is an app-based demand response service, similar to Uber and Lyft, but using

Vans, or transit specific vehicles to provide shared rides.

We presented these scenarios in a series of public and stakeholder meetings in October.

The meetings were attended by almost 40 people.

And then we also had a survey that launched in parallel.

And we received almost 160 survey responses back regarding the scenarios we presented.

The kind of common theme among what we heard from the meeting participants and the survey participants was there was a strong interest in and preference for microtransit service.

Just a couple of examples of some of the comments we heard.

Somebody said, I think microtransit would be more helpful for those with mobility concerns who find it difficult to get to a bus stop and who want reliable service for appointments.

Somebody else said microtransit

makes sense for shopping centers where rider demand probably varies considerably by time of day.

We also asked, there was a survey that Monticello did internally.

They surveyed both their visitors and their staff.

Among their staff, there was an 89% positive response rate to the question of if people are comfortable using an app for a reserving transit service.

Among visitors, it was very similar.

85% said yes, they were comfortable with that model.

So really, any way that we presented the question about microtransit, whether we, in this case, we said, would people prefer a smaller microtransit service zone or a larger microtransit service zone?

People preferred more microtransit.

Sort of across the board, there was a lot of support for microtransit.

When we asked in the Pentops area if people would prefer a fixed route approach to expand service in the Pentops area or a microtransit approach to complement the route 10, CAT route 10,

Again, 63% said they preferred the second scenario, which was focused on microtransit.

And then same thing goes for Monticello, where we had a couple of options for fixed route connections between the Monticello area and the rest of the CAD network or a microtransit approach.

And again, 67% preferred the microtransit approach.

So given that, the recommendations that we developed, I'll kind of cover them here area by area starting with the 29 North area.

So the microtransit pilot project we're recommending for the 29 North area is an area that stretches from approximately Rio Road to the south up to Dickerson Road, which is near the North Fork area along 29 North corridor.

Some of the key activity centers this would include are North Fork, the airport, Hollymi town center,

the Walmart on 29 and then the center at Belvedere, which is down here.

We also have an out of destination location.

What that means is it's not quite in the zone itself, but in order to facilitate connections to other services, we've include Fashion Square Mall as a permitted destination for microtransit service.

That's kind of the short term.

In the long term, we understand the shops at Stonefield may become more of a key hub for CAT.

And so the Fashion Square Mall may be

supplemented or maybe replaced by Stonefield, Shop Stonefield in the future for that regional transit connection.

So this area, the zone that we're looking at is 14 square miles.

It's entirely within the urbanized area, the region's urbanized area.

It's an area with approximately 15,000 people and more than 6,000 jobs currently and growing.

The estimated ridership that we see for microtransit in this area is approximately 75 passenger trips per day just on microtransit.

The parameters that we used for cost estimates and the like, we assumed that this would be a weekday only service operating from about 6 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

And three vehicles would need to be applied, three microtransit vehicles would need to be in use in order to ensure 15 minute or better median wait times.

Given those parameters, the approximate cost for this service is 1.32 million annually, and that includes both the operating cost

and the software fees associated with microtransit service.

Given that this area is entirely within the urbanized area, we are recommending that this should be a CAT branded service, either directly operated by CAT or contracted by CAT to another operator.

And similarly, we are recommending the CAT be the grant applicant for really any grants associated with this service.

So moving on to the Pantops area, this is an area that is, as I said, it's a smaller area than the 29 North area.

It's about two square miles.

We're looking at the entire, what was defined as the Pantops study area, which means the area both north and south of Richmond Road.

The fixed route service route, Cat Route 10, primarily serves the area south of 250.

That's where you have the hospital.

That's where you have a couple of shopping centers.

But the north part of the study area is a growing residential area with several multifamily housing developments as well as single-family homes.

And so this approach, the microtransit zone, would cover the entire Pantops area.

So some of the key activity centers include the Pantops Shopping Center, the State Farm Building, the Martha Jefferson Hospital, the VA Clinic, and the Social Security Administration Office.

It's an area with approximately 4,500 residents currently and more than 7,000 jobs.

So the estimated ridership that we see for this area is approximately 25 riders per weekday within this two square mile zone.

Same service parameters, so weekdays only from six to nine.

One thing of note here is that because it's a fairly small area, it can generally do with just a single microtransit vehicle, but

Best practice for micro transit service is that you should never have just one vehicle on a service because

you can take advantage of the algorithms that the microtransit platform allows, which is dispatching the best vehicle for each given trip request.

So this dotted line here shows the edge of the US 29 North microtransit zone that we just talked about.

Because they're fairly close, we're recommending that there could be a shared vehicle.

Generally, this would operate with one vehicle.

But if needed, one of the 29 North vehicles could come and provide

So that gets us to a total of four vehicles between the two zones, just something to remember for later.

The estimated operating costs for this microtransit service is approximately $432,500 annually.

Again, that includes both the vehicle operating costs and the software fees.

And again, we're recommending that this be a CAT-branded service because it is entirely within the urbanized area.

The last microtransit zone I want to talk about is the Monticello area.

So this one we're recommending as a long-term recommendation.

It's not something that we would recommend implementing right away for several reasons.

Number one, as we were developing our recommendations for this area, which initially was focused just on Monticello, we realized that there's really a very limited utility to focus just on Monticello, especially with microtransit service.

A better approach would be to tie

the Monicello area into a larger microtransit zone that includes residential neighborhoods south of I-64, it includes PVCC, and it even includes James Madison's Highland property, which is south of Monicello.

These are all areas that are fairly difficult to serve with traditional fixed route service, even though there is some CAD service there, and microtransit would be a more effective model.

However, it would require two vehicles to serve this area, and there aren't currently two vehicles

that are available or programmed for microtransit service.

This would need to be a longer-term recommendation.

All right, thank you, Boris.

So here we have outlined the cost for both the Pantops and the 29 North service.

We've broken it up into two different types, two different areas.

And as you can see, both of those areas have been broken down, as Boris mentioned, by the operation cost of running the vehicles and then the software fee for each area.

So a lot of these numbers are estimates and they're rounded up, but keep in mind that the initiation fee, for example, could vary based on what provider and what software CAT ends up choosing.

$50,000 tended to be a pretty good average for those.

So we use that number as sort of kind of like in the middle of high range for starting up a new service that would include both of these zones.

So there isn't separate costs for both.

It's just one cost for the new service.

So as you can see, and as Boris mentioned, the cost of operating pan tops in total would be $432,500 estimated cost.

and then the cost for 29 North would be just under 1.3 million dollars per year.

So in talking to CAT and based on sort of their estimates for advertising and you know getting a service like this it's a brand new type of service for the Albemarle County and Charlottesville area and so there's a lot of education for the public that's going to be needed and kind of just getting the name out there and the brand out there.

So there is a fair amount of advertising built into the first year to get that brand out into the media, whether it's social media or TV or radio.

And then it is assumed that in further later years, excuse me, that advertising for the service would then just be rolled into CAT's standard advertising budget.

So as you can see, the primary difference in the cost between the full

Operation of year one and then anything beyond year one is that advertising and certification fee.

Now there are opportunities or there are, I guess, chances that there might be some cost escalation.

So the software fees might go up, but at this time we're using the numbers that are available up today.

So those are the two estimates that we have.

Next slide.

So the recommended method of funding the first year is a transit demonstration project grant through the Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

It is a pretty common type of state grant that's available to transit agencies throughout the state.

What it does is basically cover some type of new service, whether that's a new technology

or service in a new area.

In this case, the recommended services are sort of both.

So it does qualify for both elements of the demonstration project grant.

What typically happens is that there is assumed to be some kind of ramp up for this to get started.

So we're recommending that it would be an 18-month grant that would cover six months

of advertising, vehicle acquisition, and training, things like that.

And then you could have 12 months of service.

So as Bea has propensaled this out, the way we look is that the grant would be applied for February 1st, which is the deadline for DRPT.

If CAT were successful in this grant request, the money would be awarded July 1st.

and then it would be available to spend for the next 18 months.

So as we determined based on kind of what I had mentioned in the timeline, those first six months would be basically advertising and things like that.

CAD is scheduled to get the vehicles needed for the service sometime in the latter quarter, the last quarter of 2022, which would kind of tee this up pretty nicely for a start of January 2023.

So that would be the first year of service.

Now, we'll determine metrics.

CAT's going to have metrics of their own for ridership, for efficiency, things like that, to determine what constitutes a successful service.

So in doing that, a lot would hinge on continuation of this program into the next year.

But if there were to be a second year of service or any years beyond that,

You can see the cost goes down from the pilot program's grant request, but it is about $1.75 million.

So for the grant, it's a 20% match required from the locality.

So if the estimated grant for that first year of service is $1.9 million, the 20% for Albemarle County would be approximately $381,000.

And that, again, depends

Then beyond the pilot program, continuing the service would cost approximately 1.75 million and the maximum obviously the Albemarle County would be supporting would be that value.

However, there are a number of opportunities for

sources to kind of offset some of that, such as advertising, farebox revenue from the service and things like that.

So there are ways that that number would come down, but without a sort of solid kind of plan in place for continuation of the service, we want to make sure that we're giving you the max number that might be, that would be likely for continuing the operation of the service.

Thanks.

I just am jumping in to let you guys know that we do have a slide here with suggested motions for this agenda item.

All right.

Thank you.

Supervisor Malle.

Yes, and do you want to take that down so we can see everybody?

Sorry.

Yeah, that's okay.

That's good.

Thank you.

Again, this must have been my day for agenda items with all the transit items on the agenda.

And I know we were seeing lots of big numbers that in a way can be kind of scary.

I do have to say this, though, because there is no place in the United States

where transit pays for itself.

We all know that.

I mean, we have to go into this recognizing it.

And having said that, we have been talking now about microtransit in this community for a good while.

and to simplify in my mind, and I want Boris and those folks on the screen from the consultants to tell me if I'm wrong, but in my head, the way I look at this is, this is a demonstration grant from DRPT that for $380,000, we can try a pilot for on-demand service to see how it works.

We, in my mind, we're not committed beyond that 380,000 with this resolution.

We get to see how it works, and then it will come back to us at a later date for more support.

Now, obviously, we don't want to waste 380,000 if you don't think we're going to want it microtransit in the future, right?

But I'm just saying that the details of this, we get to try the pilot, see how it works in our community.

And this is Albemarle County specific, by the way, which is kind of nice.

We were looking at, oh I'm sorry, see if I can turn that off.

My hard line is springing.

We can see in Albemarle County how this on-demand works.

and I'm distracted now, I apologize.

But we'll have an opportunity after this demonstration grant and pilot to come back to the table and see how exactly we want to structure it, if we need some changes.

I guess that's how I think it through.

Am I correct on that?

Oh, I see Garland's popped up.

That's effectively the idea.

The idea really is that this service would continue.

So DMP is really looking at a service that's not just going to last one year.

Yeah.

So, so they are looking for that sort of what opportunities there are for continuing the service, but,

In general, yes.

That first year is a pilot program that Albemarle County is only responsible for.

The local match, I should say, is 20% of the estimated cost that we've seen.

And our community is really excited and eager for the on-demand model, I think.

We've been talking about this now for a long time.

So this gets us started.

We can see how to structure it, what we might do to change it.

I will say, and I think, because I

I know all of you probably have lots of questions, but I do want to just see if I can get someone to help with.

We just talked about the vision plan for the region, and I think it's important for folks, the players at the table here, to think about how does that play into what we're talking about right now, which is Albemarle County in more of a short-term

I think it's important to understand how these two working processes marry together.

Does somebody want to address that for the board?

Because it seems like we're in silos.

And I think it's good to be able to pull those silos together.

Yeah.

Just really briefly, I think you've already touched on it, Supervisor McKeel.

The Albemarle County Transit Expansion was really focused on what can we do right now?

What can we do with the information we have about what people need in the next year?

Whereas the Regional Transit Vision Plan, which I want to mention, is also using a different consulting team.

That plan is really looking at the long-term future

Yeah, thank you.

You said it better than I would have.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is such an intriguing thing and I know that the folks in the Western, the White Hall district who were able to live close enough and benefit from our autonomous vehicle pilot out in Crozet loved it, used it, it generated tremendous data and so this is a giant size in comparison to that but still

Wonderful.

I must have missed, and I'm sorry to ask stupid questions, but what size vehicles are we talking about?

Because I would assume the cat vehicles are not appropriate at all for this kind of use.

And so the second part of that question is,

Is it a territory issue is why CAT would be running this program?

Is it something they have particular skills for or is it really outside of their normal operation?

In which case, how was that decision made to have them run the show?

I could take a first stab and I think maybe Garland you may want to weigh in as well but as far as the vehicles go typically microtransit uses smaller vehicles it doesn't use 40-foot buses which are what you typically see like on cat service or other urban services

It uses vehicles that are either minivans or larger vans or even cutaway buses.

Cutaway buses are the type of vehicles that are used for paratransit.

So that's the type of vehicle that is typically used for microtransit service.

Garland can probably give a little bit of detail on the vehicles that he's in the process of procuring.

to give you more specifics.

And then on the question of why CAT, as I mentioned in the presentation, all three of these zones are within the urbanized area of the region.

So given that, it seemed most appropriate for CAT to be the operator and the grant applicant, given that it's within the urbanized area, which is traditionally CAT's service area.

Thank you for that.

The buses that we're procuring are cutaways.

They're body-on-chassis.

Mr. Williams here.

Mr. Williams here.

I apologize for interrupting your call.

It appears to be pretty low, and I noticed a number of supervisors trying to listen in a little bit.

Um, and I'll wait.

Yes, that is better.

Sure, thank you.

So we have purchased, or we're in the process of purchasing, five non-cash vehicles, which are separate to the Westbound vehicle.

Mr. Williams, I apologize.

Oh, thank you.

This is something we're taking on as contract for Albemarle County.

But this is also consistent to changing its model and expanding its portfolio

and being able to provide more mobility options for the region.

Supervisor Malek, are you finished with your questions?

Yes, thank you.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley?

Thank you very much.

I am so excited about this.

We have been wanting this for a while.

I've had residents, especially in the Pan Tops area, saying, can't we have smaller buses with a loop system where we can get from one side of Pan Tops north of 250 to the south side, to the shopping centers, to the businesses.

They can't get across 250.

I'm sorry what?

Route 10, okay, so you have one route going up to Martha Jefferson Hospital.

I know that jaunt services is really, really beneficial, especially for the older adults, our elderly population, and also our disabled population.

This is something that would enhance that.

This is a service that will

really provide a lot of opportunity for everybody because from what I understand is it takes you, let's say from Pantops if you want to go to UVA, then it would take you from Pantops, your home in Pantops, to a location where there is a CAT route that then goes to UVA, is that correct?

That's the plan.

I guess the way to look at it is that microtransit service has sort of two functions.

One is local circulation.

So that's getting folks, like you mentioned, from the residential areas north of 250 to the retail destination south.

So that's one.

But number two, it serves as a feeder service.

So where there is existing service, like Mr. Williams mentioned, the Route 10, you could make a connection, let's say, at the Pantops Shopping Center using microtransit

to that, Route 10, it'll then get you into the rest of the CAT network.

So it has those two functions.

Okay, and that would also hold true for 29 North, correct?

Correct.

Okay, so I listened in on all those and paid attention, but I am so excited about this.

I think this is going to be our future.

Supervisor Mallek mentioned light rail from 18 years ago.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Not sure that's going to happen in our lifetime.

So to me, this is something that is really going to provide service to so many of our residents in a populated urban area and kind of close that gap.

So this is something I'm completely supportive of and wholeheartedly support this.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

Yes, thank you.

And I'll start my first question and maybe ask Mr. Williams if he could theorize for us.

And I probably should clarify, Mr. Williams, that you often hear me saying transit doesn't work as it exists in my district.

And that's not a reflection on CAT not working or CAT.

It's just simply fixed routes are not the answer for the urban ring in my area.

So that local circulation that we were just talking about is what's going to allow people from Woodbrooke to get to Kroger.

to the Northside Library so that they have that going on.

The theorizing I'm going to ask is that it seems to me, and I'm by no means an expert like you are on this, but microtransit could

in form where I would imagine first off it could eliminate some current fixed routes.

So from a cost standpoint, it may allow us to redirect places that we're spending money to help offset the cost of the micro transit.

I would also expect that just for the reasons we talked about that either new fixed routes or current fixed routes will increase in ridership or effectiveness because the local circulation is getting people there.

Do you have any comments on that?

I applaud the idea of getting microtransit in because it will get the circulation up in the designated areas.

But I would consider microtransit as a one-two combination.

It complements and enhances the fixed route system.

If we have a fixed route system that is working adequately, it will actually encourage more people

to use both products for their whole transportation needs.

So I wouldn't think about it as a way of scaling back your fixed route system.

That's fair.

I think of folks that maybe go to the center to grab the microtransit and move around the area, and then they're not trying to catch the fixed route that's running along Rile Road.

And the ridership may be nonexistent by that point if people are doing the microtransit to catch a more substantial fixed route, maybe to another location.

So I guess it could be down the road that it could help with some cost offsetting.

So a couple of comments.

I don't know if this is best for Boris or who this goes to, but when I think of the Rio 29 small area plan and local circulation, and I don't mean to jump on the problems that Fashion Square Mall are having, but we got to stop thinking of Fashion Square Mall as a vibrant center.

The other three corners of the small area plan are certainly more destination points than the Fashion Square Mall is at this point.

And that's something that this microtransit piece needs to go.

We've got the Northside Library.

We've got two grocery stores now in the other corners of the small area plan.

We've got the Ride Hill Shopping Center, which is where everybody goes.

Lowe's is there.

Kroger's is there.

Chick-fil-A is there.

We don't have, because we're not allowed to put the buses through there now, I guess, which was a pain in the butt.

So I just want to make sure that when we're thinking of landmarks, Fashion Square Mall is still thought of as a landmark, but is it really a destination in that particular area?

And I hope it will become so down the road.

In fact, if we can get local circulation happening through the places that are vibrant right now, I'm hoping that starts spurning the activity we want to see happen in the redevelopment happen in the area.

So just keep that in mind, please.

The small area plan theorized a loop, its own transit loop throughout the small area plan.

So this microtransit idea is a way to get that loop happening before the development happens.

And a lot of times if you put the service in first, or so folks talked about during the small area plan development, that could help get the rest of the activity happening.

I would think down in the other portion, the Monticello portion that had Fifth Street Station or where Wegmans is at included in the mix, because that's one of your more successful fixed routes is my understanding is the route that runs from the city out to the shopping center out there.

But if you had some micro transit and the local circulation getting people over to there, and they know it, then they can get into the city on a fixed route, but that could help success with that program as well.

So I just throw that out there as,

as food for thought or hope that that gets mixed in.

And I like the concept of the shared vehicle from the from the Rio North jumping over to pan tops as needed.

It certainly has worked for our fire department over the years as we've had to share services.

So it should, in theory, work for the transit piece as well.

But needless to say, I think this is something I'm excited to see happen.

It's been a long time coming.

I think it's going to be a

And I would agree that I would hope that while Supervisor McKeel mentioned we're seeing some big numbers there, but we have to remember that this is a service that a lot of folks could benefit from and it touches a lot of areas of our strategic plan, economic development, affordable housing, and people having access to move around the area.

It hits our climate action plan because it could help people getting from having to get into a car to cross 29 just to get to the grocery store.

So all of those things add up to why it makes a lot of sense for Albemarle to go down this road.

So I'm hopeful that this pilot study proves to be effective and that we'll be able to see it continue and be a new service that we can provide for our citizens.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

I'm going to be the new guy here because I'm really still trying to understand this and I apologize.

You mentioned for the 29 North, 75 trips per day, Pantops, 25 trips per day, for a total of 100 trips per day.

And that is an initial estimate.

It's a conservative estimate.

would likely grow over time, but that's our initial estimate.

So yes, with four vehicles, the way the microtransit works, if you have a corridor with a high density of development and high density of residential, the most efficient and effective way to serve that corridor

is with fixed route service.

And fixed route service can pick up many more passengers per hour and many more passengers per day.

The problem is that once you get into areas that are less dense and more sort of the ridership base is more diffuse, it's difficult to pick those folks up with fixed route service.

And that's where microtransit comes into play.

But you're correct that the inherently microtransit

So, and that's my question.

Is the 400, is the 100 trips per day, is that the carrying capacity or is that just initial estimate as to how many riders you would expect to get initially?

And I guess what I'm driving at night, and I just want to make sure everybody's sort of, let me geek out for a minute.

A hundred trips per day, five days a week is

500 trips over 50 weeks is 25,000 trips a year.

And if you take 1.55 million and divide it by 25,000, it comes out to 60 some dollars for every trip.

And as an ongoing matter, I wanted to understand whether we're at capacity for these cars or whether this is just looking at the pilot where everything is a lot more reasonable and then saying, but yes, as we go forward, there'll be a lot more people in these cars.

We'll do a lot more trips per day per car.

Yeah, there is room for additional ridership, certainly.

The vehicles, especially the types of vehicles that are on order by CAT, they have a carrying capacity, Garland, correct me if I'm wrong, is it about 15 passengers or so?

With wheelchairs?

OK.

Yeah, so the carrying capacity is far larger than our initial estimates.

We wanted to be conservative in initial estimates, but there is certainly room for growth.

I'm still trying to wrap myself, my head around the difference between this and an Uber or a Lyft in terms of, you know, whether it would be possible to subsidize the latter at a lower cost than trying to do this if we don't get the ridership up.

If we get the ridership up, then this might make more sense.

And the only way to find that out is to do the pilot.

So I'm not against it.

I just am worried about,

I would just throw something else, and that is, was Rivanna Station included in your possible stop?

I could not go beyond the guardhouse, but it might be helpful for some of the workers there who might.

So I just didn't know if anyone was planning to reach out to them eventually, or through Trevor or somebody later on.

OK, thank you.

I can jump in.

Rivanna Station was included as a stakeholder on the stakeholder committee for this study.

And they were mentioned a lot and discussed a lot.

Just saying.

I must have missed it in the package.

Sorry.

All right, thank you.

I would add, I support this transit is infrastructure.

And it not only is something that we should not expect to pay for itself, but it does tie in as other supervisors have mentioned with our climate action plan, which is our environmental considerations as well as support to our population.

I think the population generally around the country is moving towards microtransit on demand and away from fixed route.

And I concur with the assessments that have been provided to us by our presenters today as to where and under what circumstances microtransit is preferable to fixed route and vice versa.

In the tiara of attraction gyms that our county

members, Monticello is our crown jewel.

And as the supervisor who represents the Scottsville Magisterial District, I would really like to see the expansion of this into the Monticello area as soon as possible, tied in with the work that I know the county is doing trying to get that multi-use path down Virginia 20 to connect places north of 64 down with Monticello and the Saunders

Monticello Trail.

A legitimate question has been asked with regard to commercial ride sharing services.

However, I totally support public provided transit because of the lack of regulation over the ride sharing businesses.

The monitoring that does not generally take place at the same level that does

through something divided through a governance entity and the accountability that goes along with that.

So while there may be a place for ride sharing, I believe that we as a local government have an obligation to provide reasonable, affordable, reliable, and regular opportunity for public transit.

And so I fully support this pilot program and believe that if it is successful, it will feed upon itself and become even more successful.

Thank you, Donna, for your advocacy for Monticello.

And I just wanted maybe Boris or Nick, someone to speak to some of our discussions with Monticello itself, because, of course, they were at the table.

And the autonomous vehicle piece that we talked about that Monticello was pretty excited about.

Sure.

So one of the scenarios that we looked at for Monticello is to replace their internal loop, which they currently operate with vans, I believe.

They operate a shuttle system that takes people from the visitor center up to Thomas Jefferson's home.

And they do that with five to 10-minute frequencies throughout the day.

An issue they've been having recently is staffing.

Like everybody else, they haven't

have been able to attract and maintain enough staff to operate that shuttle with the frequency that they would like to operate it with.

And so one of the ideas that we tested was an autonomous version of that shuttle.

There is a company that's actually local to the region called Perron Robotics that specializes in autonomous vehicles.

And so we had them visit Monticello,

have been in

As I mentioned, the visitor center to the Thomas Jefferson home area.

That's still a technology that is kind of in its infancy, the autonomous vehicles.

And in fact, one of the models that the Monticello folks were most interested in just got discontinued.

The company that manufactures them

is shutting down, unfortunately.

But there are other models and there are other vehicles, but it's something that will require a bit more study and something that I think is more appropriate for a longer term rather than applying, rather than having Monticello apply for this upcoming grant cycle.

Thank you, Supervisor McKeel.

I did see the aspect in the report about the autonomous vehicles at Monticello, and I do recognize when you look at the totality of ridership, that of the three areas that you mentioned that Monticello would likely be the lowest of the three, but I do not want to see it left out.

If you look at any of the surveys of people, why they come to our area, you know, the downtown mall, University of Virginia,

our wineries, but Monticello was always number one or number two in their listing.

So the more we can do to encourage that totality of experience by people who come to our area, as well as our local residents, of course, then I think the better that all of this can be.

Yes, thank you.

I just wanted to remind people that their own software will go in any vehicle.

It can even be retrofitted into Monticello's existing vehicle so they don't have to worry about their model being out of production.

And I love the idea of varying routes, having used the shuttle many times over the years to get to Monticello for events from PDCC or somewhere down at the bottom of the hill.

Hopefully there's a way that organized you all who plan these things can have

something on the hour goes one place and quarter of the hour goes somewhere else and then people in our tourism community can certainly figure this out.

If people can figure out how to ride the buses in San Francisco they can certainly figure out how to ride a transit system here.

All right, I don't see any other hands or comments.

I want to thank everyone.

There were so many I did not list you all by name but thank you each for being here.

and at that board I think we are ready to move on to agenda item number 13, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority quarterly report.

So I recommend that the board endorses the microtransit demonstration grant application by adopting the attached Albemarle County microtransit demonstration grant resolution attachment B.

Thank you, and thank you all for reminding me.

I see no further need for discussion, so if the clerk will call the roll.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Please.

Ms.

McKeel?

I'm happy to say yes, but I wonder if Trevor has a question about the motion I just made.

Ms.

Price?

All right, thank you.

And again, thank you all for reminding me that action was required.

Thank you, Chair Price.

And just to wrap up this action item, thanks for the board for this great discussion and support of this initiative.

I wanted to thank the consultants for the work that they've done early over the past year, along with TJPDC and their leadership in getting us to today.

And then Kevin and Jessica, especially Jessica, she's on point for

staff on this process and has really been working hard over the past few weeks to try to bring it to a point today there was a timeliness to this with the application

And then last but not least, Director of CAT, Garland Williams.

I want to call him out specifically, thank him for willingness to be the applicant as our urban provider of services.

But more than that, Garland has been in the area for, I believe, going on three years now.

He provided kind of a State of the Union to the city council last night, which I would recommend the board take a look at.

It was a really good presentation.

and then just I want to publicly thank you for

the open book relationship you've developed with the county, with county executive.

What Garland knows, he tends to let me know within a few seconds when it's something that I need to know.

And I just, I really appreciate that's not how it has always been in the past.

And so I wanted to take this moment with Garland on the call and in front of the board to acknowledge him, thank him.

And I just look forward to our continued relationship as we build transit services in our region.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you, Mr. Henry.

Thank you.

That was very timely.

And Mr. Williams, I believe we all concur in those words of appreciation for what you have done to help facilitate better communication between the county and CAP.

Board, at this time then, I believe we are ready to go to item number 13, Rivanna Water and sewer authority quarterly report.

Thank you, Ms.

Price, members of the board.

I wanted to take just a minute to update you on what's going on at the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority as well as the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority.

And I'll share my screen.

I hope you all can see that.

Yes.

So, okay.

Well, just as a quick overview, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority was created in 1972 by the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and City Council.

And our mission is to manage the major water treatment and wastewater treatment infrastructure that serves both the county