Board of Supervisors Regular Second Meeting   1/18/2023

of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors.

We have present this afternoon all of our supervisors, Supervisor Ann Mallek of the White Hall District, Supervisor Ned Galloway of the Rio 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, and myself, Supervisor Donna Price of the Scottsville Magisterial District.

We are also joined at the dais by our County Executive, Mr. Jeff Richardson, our County Attorney, Mr. Steve Rosenberg,

our senior deputy clerk, Mr. Travis Morris.

I would also like to welcome and thank the presidents here this afternoon of Sergeant Angela Jamerson and Officer Andrew Muncy of the Albemarle County Police Department.

Thank you for what you do every day to keep all of us safe.

We know that you put your lives at risk 24-7-365 and we all appreciate what you do for our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

At this time board, we can move for the adoption of the final agenda.

Are there any motions to amend the final agenda?

So moved.

Right.

We have a motion by Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley and a second by Supervisor McKeel.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

LaPisto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Mr. McKeel?

Yes.

Aye.

Thank you, Board.

Before moving to the next item, I'm going to mention several times today, and it has already been publicized by the county, but just to ensure the widest dissemination.

For the February 1, 2023 Board of Supervisors meeting, which is our next scheduled meeting,

There will be a temporary change to the Zoom meeting link for virtual participation.

And for the February 15th meeting, a permanent change to the Zoom meeting link will occur.

After the change for the meeting,

For the February 15th meeting, the link is not expected to change.

Community members are advised to go to the participation guide for public meetings on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors webpage to access the correct Zoom link for each meeting.

Board will move to item number five, brief announcements by board members.

We will go through our order this afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No announcements, though I am very curious how the archaeological work at Court Square Living Opera House went this morning.

I guess that started.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The board over the last year has

sent letters of support our individuals have to the federal delegation in support of increases in pay for our military service members and the Defense Appropriations Act did include a 4.6% pay increase

The Veterans Affairs Department and the Military Committee on which I listen for NACo has also reported very robust funding, mandatory funding for the Cost of War Toxics Exposure Act, which several of us wrote letters about as well, the PACT Act.

for service members who need medical care due to exposures to burn pits.

There's also homelessness and mental health funding to try to help the impacted service members who have had very high levels of suicide and are really in need of services, many connections here.

We are lucky in our area to have a strong coalition of

individual nonprofits who are working with different segments of our veteran population and we hope that they will continue to have great success.

But we have good funding from the federal government for the next year and I'm appreciative of that.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, Chair Price.

Two items.

The first one short, I would like to congratulate and wish the best of luck to the Rio District School Board member who was named the chair of the school board this year.

So I wish her the best of luck working with her board and our board and you, Chair Price, as we work through budget and other matters this year.

The second item, if the board will indulge me for a few minutes, this past Monday was Martin Luther King Day.

And I often find this time of year that I reflect on his work, where do we go from here, chaos or community, which ultimately was his book about hope and what his vision or what he saw would hope to occur in our country.

And this year, in that reflection, I remembered a passage

Re-read and would like to share today from Barack Obama's most recent book and there's a chapter in there on race.

I'd just like to read that quick passage.

To think clearly about race then requires us to see the world on a split screen.

To maintain in our sights the kind of America that we want while looking squarely at America as it is.

To acknowledge the sins of our past and the challenges of the present without becoming trapped in cynicism or despair.

I have witnessed a profound shift in race relations in my lifetime.

I have felt it as surely as one feels a change in the temperature.

But as much as I insist that things have gotten better, I am mindful this truth as well.

Better isn't good enough.

And I bring this up and reflect on it because, you know, Dr. King's idea of community

and what he was shooting for, there's a trap that we can fall into, I think, politically.

You know, we have a board that's like-minded politically up here and a lot of times we think that the fight over getting better is between us and those who are on the political right.

And if we fall for that trap, then we forget that within our own camp, there's something that I remember being called the well-intentioned liberal.

and we need to make sure that our own work inside our own political camp and the dialogues that we have and what we expect of people that will be running for office especially this year don't fall for that trap and know that the well-intentioned liberal may be thinking that their actions could help things get better but not help to achieve what Dr. King envisioned as community and I hope that all of their work and all of their talk that they will be doing this year and our work for those of us that aren't running for reelection or election

Thank you, Chair Price.

I really appreciate your comments once again, Supervisor Galloway, and thinking back upon that and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his speech, I tend to refer to them as sermons, Where Do We Go From Here, is probably my favorite.

Most people know I Have a Dream and I've Been to the Mountaintop, but I would encourage everyone to go online and pull up Where Do We Go From Here by Dr. Martin Luther King.

And I also really appreciate, and there's

a specific connection to your referencing community.

Last week I had the opportunity to go out to Southwood for another visit to see what has happened in just the last few weeks

and it seems like just yesterday I was out there and there were two units that had been built and now I was out there last week and oh my god it was construction left and right you can actually feel I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about you can feel

this development coming to life and within just a matter of a few weeks the first residents will move into the first units that have been completed out there.

There are so many people, so many groups that deserve thanks for this, our community development

Department.

I see Jody Filardo here, as she is every meeting in the audience, and Mr. Walker, who that's his area of responsibility.

The people at Habitat, this board, our predecessors here, who all voted to support this incredible project, the legacy that it will leave.

Now, having said that, we still have a lot of work to go ahead of us.

The job is not yet done.

But when I was out there last week, and Supervisor Galloway, this ties back with your comments specifically about community, you know, we're taking a situation where there are about 350 housing units, trailers, and when Southwood is finished in 10 or 15 years, there will be over 1,000 households there.

And what they're focused on is ensuring that the new residents who come in are part of a community with the existing residents who have been there.

So it's not just an improvement in terms of the physical structure, but it is a continuation of the community that exists there.

and so you really have laid out several things that are significant.

I also have had the recent pleasure of being elected to the Executive Committee of the Albemarle, Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP and on Saturday we spent the day in training.

And it was a bittersweet emotion filled as we started the day with the video that showed so much from our past that we want to forget but must never forget the racism, the violence, the discrimination that was largely inflicted upon

our black neighbors, but we now know today and see can be inflicted upon any marginalized group.

And so there was a sadness to realize in my lifetime the things that I have observed and experienced at the same time to see the promise and hope for the future as we work towards the building of community

that you so eloquently just referenced.

The other thing that came to mind, and Mr. Richardson, you and I have had this conversation on a number of occasions, as members of the board have.

Just recently, Mr. Richardson, our human resource department did their first orientations of new students.

I see you there, Mia Coltrane, for the work that you've done, to have our own human resources, our own community that we're building here,

And that's part of what we need to do with the board.

You've talked about, you know, how the Center for Nonprofit Excellence here in Albemarle County has provided training to your leadership team and how we need to also provide that orientation to members of our boards and commissions and committees.

Because if you don't understand the organization and its culture and its mission,

then you cannot expect people to be able to actually contribute towards that.

And then finally, a piece of really good news.

This morning, and first off, let me thank Senator Cree Deeds for the work he has done and continues to do in support of our community.

He is carrying a bill, Senate Bill 1287, which would allow

Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville to have a local option to increase our sales tax by 1%, with all of those funds going directly and specifically to new school construction.

I had the opportunity this morning, as did Mayor Snook of the City of Charlottesville, to testify on behalf of that bill.

It did pass out of committee, and immediately following was a bill by Senator Jennifer McClellan

which would provide that same authorization to communities throughout

Emily Kilroy, and Cape because they gave me the tools that I needed to be able to provide the specifics as to how that legislation will help us.

So thank you, Board, for giving me the flexibility of that additional time, and that was really good news.

All right.

Thank you.

With that, we can move on to item number eight, the consent agenda.

I am not aware at this time of any motions by supervisors to amend the consent agenda.

So moved.

All right.

We have a motion from Supervisor Malek and a second from Supervisor McKeel.

Mr. Andrews.

Yes.

Mr. Gallaway?

Yes.

Ms.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Thank you, Board.

At this time, we'll move to item number nine, an action item, SC 2022-00062, Edgefield LLC Homestay.

Ms.

Brumfield, good afternoon.

So Ms.

Brumfield, give us just a moment.

All right.

So I'll ask Vice Chair Andrews if he will read the rules for in person.

The timekeeping is conducted through a timer and light system at the podium.

The green light goes on when you begin speaking, which begins your allotted time.

The yellow light indicates you have one minute to finish.

The red light indicates your time has expired and you'll be asked to end your comments.

And we ask that you address the board, state your name.

If you live in Albemarle County, your Magisterial District, please address comments to the board as a whole.

Any written statements or supporting materials may be given to the clerk.

If representing a group organization, you may ask others to raise their hands in recognition.

You may not share your time with, other than as necessary, with any other speaker.

Back and forth debate is not permitted.

Please speak from the podium.

Thank you.

But we appreciate both of you being here.

So my questions, I wrote them down because funnily enough I can't remember a lot of things

Anywho, so my question was, I know that the hearing today is about, or the matter at hand is to build home stays on a property for, yes this is mama.

for an autism sanctuary.

And I just had some questions about the homestay situation that they were looking to build.

We won't answer the questions, but we do have someone from staff who I'm sure will be listening and perhaps may be able to address that in the presentation.

But we don't engage in dialogue during this session.

Sorry, I wasn't familiar.

No worries.

I guess my first few comments were about the infrastructure of the road in which the LLC is on.

It presently, it's a gravel road.

It's a one lane and it can barely hold up to the traffic of the people who live there.

And I'm just curious what it will look like when potentially 35 new individuals will be coming down it.

Frances who lives on the LLC and who runs it.

I'm her neighbor and she came and explained that there would be potentially 35 individuals staying on the property at any one time and I was just curious as to what the infrastructure would be able to do and hold up to and will they be able to provide better infrastructure moving forward?

My other question is, what assurances are there that the LLC won't change its mind on its setup?

So for example, right now it's a license for an autism sanctuary.

How do I know this won't suddenly become a hotel?

And for any or all.

Additionally, the capacity, I know

Francis said 35.

I was curious if that capacity is set or if that is something that can be discussed and also who inherits the land or the LLC?

Who inherits the land?

So when Francis passes on, who will take it on and decide then I guess what comes of

the house sharing, house stay situation.

And lastly, I'm just curious about the safety of it seeing as they still have, well I've seen at least two illegal hunting activities on that property just in the past two weeks.

Because of course I share the, I'm her neighbor and they like to go through our property with their hunting dogs.

So I'm just nervous about having 35

Individuals or neurodivergent individuals on the property and what they're gonna do about that.

All right, thank you.

And let me also say thank you for taking the time to come down here with your child, because all of us who are parents know the additional challenges that that poses, and we appreciate your being here today, both of you.

Yes, Hannah Huggins.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, ma'am.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

Unfortunately, I'm not as adorable as our previous speaker.

But my name is Leah Brumfield, Senior Planner II in Zoning.

And we are bringing two special exceptions for a homestay at 2860 P Ridge Road.

The first is for a resident manager, as the property is owned by Edgefield LLC.

and occupied by Ms.

Frances Lee Vandell, who holds the LLC.

And the property contains a farmhouse from the 1800s, shown here, multiple farm structures and outbuildings.

And so the second special exception would be permit Ms.

Lee Vandell to construct up to three accessory structures in the parcel to be used for homestays

These structures would be required to follow all building codes, fire marshal safety requirements for sleeping spaces, and would be required to be located either 125 feet away from all property boundaries or meet primary structure setbacks if screening is in place, usually in the form of thick vegetation.

I'll address the current vegetation shortly in this presentation.

So the ordinance does require at least one individual owner of the parcel reside on the parcel itself.

An LLC must have a resident manager approved by the board in order to meet that requirement.

In this case, Ms.

Lee-Vandel would serve as the resident manager for her property held under the LLC.

If a special exception is approved, the owners of the property must then apply for a homestay zoning clearance.

During that process, the structure is inspected for building and fire safety

meets all building code requirements for sleeping spaces and the owners at that time sent a notice to their neighbors providing them the contact information for their responsible agent who could be contacted in case of any disturbances or emergencies related to the homestay.

The maximum number of guest rooms provided by Wright is five guest bedrooms.

Currently, the property owner may rent up to five guest bedrooms in her primary dwelling for use of the home stay without a special exception.

The permission to build accessory structures does not increase the number of guest bedrooms permitted, only allows a different configuration of where the guest bedrooms may be located.

to address some of the questions that we have had raised today.

I'm not sure where the 35 number came from.

That was never mentioned to me.

The building official has noted that any home stay can only have up to 10 guests at any one time.

Otherwise, it is classified as a hotel.

So I think that may have been a misunderstanding on the property owners on the part of the property owner.

So as that is something that is regulated by the building code, we do not regulate the number of guests under the homestay regulations or within the zoning code at all.

We only regulate the number of guest bedrooms that can be rented out and what their arrangement is.

So taking into consideration the specifics that we're looking at for these homestay special exceptions are whether there are adverse impacts to the surrounding neighborhood by the special exceptions that are permitted.

Whether the special exceptions that are under consideration have adverse impact to health, public safety, or welfare consistent with the comprehensive plan applicable small and small area or master plans and whether it is consistent in size and scale with the surrounding neighborhood.

So the proposed home today would be located on a 43.72 acre parcel held under Edgefield LLC occupied by Ms.

Frances Lee-Vandel.

The property is largely surrounded by dense vegetation to the north west and large parts of the south of the parcel.

This vegetation is at minimum 20 feet thick at the southwestern border and over a hundred feet thick at the northern border.

The property immediately to the south, a 42-acre parcel held by Ms.

Lee Van Dell herself, is unoccupied and largely forested.

It is not proposed for use as part of the homestay and the homestay activities may not occur on that parcel since there is no primary residence on that parcel.

No accessory structures would be requested to be built on that parcel.

As you can see here, the parcel to the north, 41-22H, is the one with the primary home of Ms.

Lee-Vandel.

It is the proposed homestay location.

The one to the south would be unoccupied and remain unoccupied, except for any agricultural or forest uses that are permitted there as standard buy-write uses in the rural area.

I will note we did receive a letter expressing concern from a neighboring parcel following the completion of the staff report, which is why it was not initially submitted to the board.

Copies are available to the public near the sign-up sheets as well.

as well as staff's response to that inquiry.

The neighbors at TMP 4122I, which is here shown in blue, expressed concern that the home stay would be built in the field behind their house and disrupt the peaceful enjoyment of their home.

Ms.

Lee-Vandel does not know exactly where the structures are going to be built yet as the siting would depend on septic fields constructed for them.

So they have not completed the work to judge the numbers and layouts of the structures.

They said between two and three structures.

Not sure how many.

However, as shown here, due to the setback requirements for homestays, there's very little space for any structure abutting Parcel 4122i.

The narrow yellow triangle would be the potential possible site for any homestay due to the setback requirements.

This would lead only a very, very small space and that would need to contain both the homestay and the septic fields for that site.

Additionally, the applicant did indicate that parking and the generalized location for the homestays would be near the center of the parcel, located in proximity to the primary dwelling, not located in proximity to any of the neighbors' parcels.

The abutting owners also expressed concern over fire safety for the new structures and increased traffic, but the structures used for a homestay will, as previously mentioned, have to go through all up-to-date current building code approvals, including connected smoke alarms, clear structure addressing, access through fire rescue, easily accessible fire extinguishers,

and access to electrical panels.

with the current regulations that are in place for homestays and the permissions that are allowed, staff does not believe that a homestay under these regulations would have a negative impact on abutting properties.

This does conclude staff's presentation.

All right.

Thank you, Ms.

Brumfield.

We will go through our order.

Yes.

Thank you for the presentation.

I think there's some confusion about what's happening with this request.

Could you help just clarify for the previous speaker, the neighbor, and go back over again what the confusion may be for everybody?

Sure.

So the special exceptions before the board today are only for a homestay use for two special exceptions for the resident manager, so Edgeville LLC versus Ms.

Lee-Vandel herself owning the property, and permitting a homestay within new accessory structures.

We do look at this separately from any other uses that may be on the parcel.

So the non-profits which may be located on the parcel have nothing to do with this permission.

This is an accessory use to a primary dwelling.

If the property was vacated, if it was no longer a primary dwelling for anyone, the homestay use would cease.

It would not be permitted anymore.

Additionally, one of the things to keep in mind with the homestay is that every time a homestay opens up, it does have to go through the homestay zoning clearance process in which we verify that someone lives on the property, that it is their full-time residence with various documentation proving that and also visiting the site as well.

and we require that the guest bedrooms be limited to five per homestay use on the property.

So in this case I'm not sure what the property owner

Thank you, that's helpful.

And just one more

The speaker this afternoon, the neighbor, was concerned about issues such as what they were calling illegal hunting through their property and other issues like that.

That would be addressed through the complaint process.

If there is trespassing, I believe that is a police matter.

Okay, thank you very much.

Alright, thank you.

Yes, I have a couple questions.

The house itself I believe has four, but it's one of the old

So she could only rent out three there?

Yes.

And then she's talking about and the proposed cabins.

She has the word and in there, so it concerns me that she's building two new cabins, or at least two, maybe three, and then maybe using the house.

Yes, I did go over this briefly with the applicant and her representative and there was some initial confusion about how many bedrooms were permitted but we did clear that up eventually that it was a total of five regardless of the distribution.

Okay, and she does have two parcels but

The accessories are only going to be on the primary parcel and really the secondary parcel that she owns, she can't or is not doing anything with it.

She can continue to use it for agricultural purposes.

She can do forestry on it.

She could build a house for a family member.

But not a homestay?

That was my question.

No, that's an unlikely location for the homestay.

Actually, this is probably a better view.

Sorry, I should have had more of a close-up.

There we go.

The homestays would likely be located around the cleared area around the primary house.

Not at the front of the parcel, near the entrance.

Yes.

The nearest abutting

Okay, and the last question.

If the property owner no longer lives on the property, then that cannot be a homestay.

It has to have a primary use, which is residential, in order for it to have an accessory use of the homestay.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This is very helpful.

I apologize for asking this, but I think it's the appropriate moment to just sort of revisit it.

August 7, 2019, the date by which accessory structures had to have been constructed.

I'll just refresh my memory and my knowledge here as to what the magic was there.

I assume that's when this was adopted and therefore it wanted to grandfather what was there but not look at what's possibly being built.

And that's exactly what's happening here.

Yes, on August 7, 2019, we did adopt the current homestay regulations in their initial form.

We did an adjustment earlier in 2022 to make some changes to the ordinance.

But that was when the homestay ordinance itself was adopted.

One of the regulations that we did put into place then was that homestays could not be in accessory structures unless they were already existing in the rural area.

And that was to prevent

is separate from what could be done if they built a second dwelling?

There is a second dwelling permitted on the parcel.

We did not do a formal determination, which is a sewing administrator

But that would use up a development?

That would use up a development, right, yes.

But if the owner wanted to build a second dwelling and also have these accessory units used for homestay, they wouldn't be able to combine these.

So each dwelling on the property permits five guest bedrooms.

That's, sorry, up to two if there are development rights.

So if she was living in one and then she had a second dwelling, there are spaces that have up to

For example, some of the Trump Winery has 10 bedrooms in its inn because it has multiple dwellings on its property, even though that is under the bed and breakfast regulations, which were similar to what the homestay regulations were based on.

So if they had that, she could have up to 10 total guest bedrooms.

No, because the homestay is an accessory use, we've taken our direction from the Virginia Department of Transportation and determined that an accessory use should not eclipse a primary use

and any use that is deemed acceptable for a primary use will also be acceptable for the accessory use.

That was very helpful.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, and thank you to everyone who's asked many of my questions already.

I appreciate that.

I want to dial back a little bit to make sure I understand.

In this case, the resident manager does not specifically say that it must be the owner of the LLC.

If the owner of Edgefield LLC decided to move somewhere else and have someone else move as a resident manager onto the property, they would be able to do that.

And then rolling back to the 2019 adoption of the ordinance.

The other existing outbuildings on the property could have been used.

And that is what I understand is the reason why a new one would be allowed.

So that is certainly a factor to consider.

But that is not necessarily linked in the ordinance itself.

Thank you, and I will say that this road is challenging for everyone who lives there.

The potholes are the size of a books wagon frequently because there's a lot of underwater drainage across there and VDOT spends a lot of time already, mostly further in on the road than the first half mile, but it is definitely challenging and the neighbors do have a lot of dust to contend with, so that's just a fact, unfortunately.

And I know that this has been asked and you've answered it, but I don't know what's going on in my brain that it's not clicking for me.

The action as written would not limit the number of structures, but the restriction on numbering for requiring a private street would limit it to three.

Actually, I think it would limit it to two.

The applicant has said that they are only intending to do up to three.

So this action currently written does not have a limitation on it.

If we wanted to, we could make it up to three.

I think that would not be any kind of problem with the county attorney on that.

The number of guests, the action itself does not limit the number of guests.

The building code limits that up to 10.

and I'm sorry, I'm afflicted by the same thing that you are.

Well, I'm trying to determine what the max, like there seems to be misunderstanding about somebody who stayed at 35 with the neighbor and what we were understanding is and what they're allowed to do as a homestead.

So I'm just trying to go, all right, we do this.

How many people can be out there staying at any given time at the max?

So I understand that different things restrict.

So what I've got right now is two additional units.

in effect because of some other things, not necessarily this action.

Ten per, what's the phrase that Mr. Dellinger used?

Don't tell me what they can't.

Just tell me how many people in terms of bedrooms.

So regardless of the number of units and number of bedrooms,

the guests are basically going to be restricted to ten.

That's important for me to know.

I have no questions at this time.

I remember when you began the presentation, you were talking about bedrooms.

What actually constitutes a bedroom?

So I'm just curious.

No, that's a good question.

We do not follow the real estate regulations of a bedroom.

The actual ordinance says a room used for sleeping.

So any room that has someone sleeping in it is a guest bedroom.

So if you have a loft that doesn't meet the legal requirements for a bedroom, doesn't have a closet, doesn't have a door, but there's a bed in there,

Thank you.

That's helpful.

No, no, no.

I appreciate it.

Um, it, it, it, in the number is important to me.

Like, I mean, I get it that neighbors would be concerned about how many people out there are.

All right, any other questions of staff?

If not board, we will go around our order for any comments that supervisors have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

No, no comments.

Well, no I do, doggone it.

They also mentioned a site for autism students.

I do know that the property owner does run a non-profit focusing on bringing autism children, children with autism to the rural area to experience nature and to experience farm life and I think that that's what they're intending to market this as.

Yeah, I appreciate that we want to look at this in a way that's pretty universal and not just try to pick at the specifics for this particular applicant and what their purpose, however laudable.

I'm going to just focus for a second on the two questions, I think, that are coming before us.

It's the approval of a resident manager beneficiary of the LLC in this particular case, which is something that I

as a reason for allowing LLCs to do this.

Then the second is adding a new accessory structure not built before August of 2019.

There is an accessory structure on the property that could be converted, but just one.

We don't know how many accessory structures the applicant

may be building.

So for me the slippery slope here is we've sort of set a precedent that if somebody has an accessory structure that they could convert.

It's not really a precedent, I know that.

But at least we've considered situations where there is an accessory structure that could be converted and compared that to building a new one.

But here we have no real clarity as to how many new ones except the other limitations.

It's not part of the

the Homestay special exception.

So those are my concerns.

Okay, this is fascinating because the more that I think I know that I understand everything, it sends you backwards.

So in the

person's narrative.

I thought the focus was on having these cabins for places where families with autistic children might be able to come and stay as a unit.

And then the assumption, which is one should never make assumptions ever, was that if you had smaller units separated from each other, it would be more peaceful.

But that's basically the limit to my assumptions.

but I do understand completely that this has to be done according to the

without benefit or prejudice for the subject or the users or whatever.

But I think in previous, the reason I asked the question about the other buildings is that the only other time that this has come up with a new structure, it was because, and part of the recommendation or analysis from staff was that there was a barn.

It wasn't as ideal a place, but that would be where one could do that, but this would be better.

And that was allowed in the past, which I guess

allowed me to think that this one was the same pattern.

Yes, thank you.

Yeah, I mean the user is in, I can't, that shouldn't matter because it's just looking at what the impacts are going to be and then what's allowed and under our special exception piece.

So I have no problem with the resident manager

element here, whether it's the primary owner, because the primary residence is the protection against our concerns.

But I think it is worthwhile noting, and maybe stealing Chair Price's thunder, is that this is something that was in our legislative packet that I know a lot of you, you being other supervisors, were very, it was very important to you, that have our legislators look at a way to give us the authority to allow this to be per applicant, not with the land.

And that, frankly,

For residents, what happens is we don't have a groundswell like some other big issues happens.

These pop up and there's four or five neighbors that are impacted.

And then this happens sporadically.

So there's no groundswell that says, go to your state legislator and say it's important to us to have this run with the applicant, not with the land.

And until that happens, frankly, there won't be pressure on them to give us that authority.

So I call that out just to say that for those as these come up, that

There's an outlet to be able to address these concerns directly to the state legislature as well because many of your supervisors feel the same way So I'm I think the other items like the illegal hunting or the trespass and then I also in one of the in reading the email the noise we always have to remember that whether there's home stays there or not and

That behavior often gets highlighted when we have these before us, but it's not connected to the homestay per se.

You have county codes that are there to protect whether there's homestays there or not against trespass and noise issues.

And those have to be reported and follow the proper channels to restrict them, whether this owner did that on their own or whether the homestay use created those issues.

So I always like to just remind everybody of that.

To read from the application, because this is important in a way, but then I'll explain it.

The applicant says, I'm submitting this request in hopes that by occasionally renting out a portion of the house and the proposed cabins to short-term rentals, I will be able to create jobs for the disabled community and income

to support Autism Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization that operates from the property under a long-term lease.

So it's not necessarily the cabins for use by Autism Sanctuary as it is to generate income.

Now, I will also add, I know the applicant.

She is a wonderful person.

She's compassionate.

I think the statement there supports that.

It's totally irrelevant to our decision because it does not run with the applicant, it does not run with the purpose, it runs with the land itself.

A bedroom is not a cabin and a cabin is not a bedroom.

And I appreciate your explanation of what qualifies as a bedroom as Brumfield for our considerations.

A cabin is substantially more than a bedroom.

And when we talked about a number of bedrooms, that's different than a number of cabins.

And the application says up to three cabins.

And three cabins is different than three bedrooms.

There is nothing in here that limits

the resident manager to being the beneficiary owner of the LLC.

So while we have in the past approved those, that was I believe part of a condition that we were considering.

It may not have been, but there's no clarity here with that.

And I know our county attorney has informed us that we have limitations on how we can consider the ownership of the property.

But again, the application goes with the land, not with the applicant.

So no matter what this particular applicant has said in terms of some sort of a charitable use, if it's approved, it goes with the land to a use, that same use by whoever may own it.

I have concerns and am not able to support this because there are too many unanswered questions in my mind.

And one of the biggest ones is that we do not have enough specificity.

And again, I do not believe that a cabin is the equivalent of a bedroom.

I believe it's substantially more.

And without that specificity, I'm not willing to approve it because this starts with

I'm not as concerned about the date at which the structure may be built because we have already, if you will, built into our review of this considerations of new structures that may be developed.

But to me, a primary residence and an accessory structure is consistent with what this board has previously

approved, not a primary dwelling and multiple accessory structures, cabins, which to me are more than a bedroom.

Can we have staff or maybe even Steve respond to some of your concerns?

All right.

So Ms.

Sure.

I think that what Supervisor McKeel may be getting at is that the restrictions on the cabin is that it not be a full dwelling, which as we have

written the homestay ordinance to require a special exception for an accessory structure but not a dwelling.

The dwelling can't have a full kitchen in it.

So that's kind of the differentiation between the accessory structure.

Sorry, that's a simplification.

The accessory structure can't have all of the components of a dwelling in it.

which are sleeping in living areas, full sanitation, and full cooking facilities.

The way that most people approach that is by leaving out the kitchen because everyone wants a bedroom and a bathroom in order to have that rented out.

that may address some of your concerns.

I don't know if that addresses it fully.

There can only be the bedrooms and then rooms that are clearly not used for sleeping in in the quote cabin that would be proposed because it has to be an accessory structure and not a dwelling.

So it does have an intended lower impact because of that.

Thank you and I appreciate that and I understood that but that still does not to me equate a cabin with the bedroom.

This could be a substantially larger type of a structure than I would envision a bedroom to be.

Yes, so I need a clarification please regarding if there's a homestay, if someone has a large house and then let's say she already had two or three

buildings, accessories right there, let's say two of them.

As long as she did not have, the owner did not have more than ten people total.

Let's say, because maybe with the accessory structures and what she has in the primary residence, maybe that equals five bedrooms, maybe it equals eleven or twelve bedrooms, but as long as she only rented out five at a time for ten people,

Are we impinging upon that?

We don't require people to demolish anything that exists.

They can only rent out up to five.

So we do have situations where people have larger houses, up to eight bedrooms in them, and they live in one or two of the bedrooms themselves and rent out five.

Okay, so if they have let's say a house with what you used eight bedrooms and what if they rented the whole house except for maybe they're only using three bedrooms and this particular lady here had two other buildings and

I guess I'm looking at the total number of people that you could rent it to, and I don't know if that impinges upon your question, Chair Price.

I'd like to hear what she has in response to it, but I still have my concerns.

Right, right.

Well, but if you do have multiples, but you only rent out

Five.

If you remember, we had one instance where someone had more than five bedrooms, and that was denied because they, well, anyway, that was just denied.

But if you, I guess my point is, if you're only renting out a total of five, what if you have ten bedrooms, twenty bedrooms, but you're only renting out five?

That is what the regulation is.

Okay, that's what I was going to ask.

They have to make sure that they don't advertise.

They can't do that.

I still would say, though, I think there's a difference between multiple bedrooms and a single building.

Again, though, that does not address the other part that I raised, which is to my understanding what we've approved

is home stays where there's a single home, primary residence, and a single accessory structure, not multiple accessory structures.

You're talking about building accessory structures that aren't there.

But if you do have an existing, let's say a large estate or farm,

Andy, do you want to say anything to this?

I'm sorry, I'm jumping in again because this is really interesting, trying to figure this out.

Good afternoon, Andy Herrick with the County Attorney's Office.

In response to some of the questions that have come up, as Ms.

Brumfield has indicated, the items, specific items before the Board are special exceptions to allow

a resident manager who's not the owner of the property.

And then secondly, to allow homestay uses within accessory structures.

Now as Ms.

Brumfield indicated, the homestay ordinance relies on this hard limit of five guest rooms per homestay use.

And that was what staff was relying on in not putting in additional conditions on the proposed special exception to allow the homestay use to be in new accessory structures.

If the board was uneasy about allowing these five guest rooms to be spread potentially across up to five accessory dwellings, the board could conceivably impose a condition on approval that would limit the number of structures.

So it could say that it was granting a special exception to allow these five guest rooms to occur in new accessory structures, but limit the number of those accessory structures to a number that the board felt comfortable with.

I would say that's helpful information and do we want to consider that?

It's up to the board to impose reasonable conditions.

The applicant's approval isn't needed, although it would be helpful to know whether that would be within what the applicant had in mind.

So just so I understand, so if we did as a board want to limit the number of structures, you guys just need a little while to change the ordinance.

All right.

Further question.

Thank you.

So briefly, Ms.

Brofield mentioned about the

excuse me, private street rules that require a certain level of roadway construction meeting state standards if it's more than two, I understood, but those would be full homes and how does this, even if it's one accessory structure, or I guess one accessory structure would be two or fewer, the main house and the new one, but more than that, it would sound like

that would require the private street unless those accessory structures are not considered to be dwellings and therefore don't require the rules.

Right.

I would have to defer to Ms.

We saw you stand several times in anticipation of coming.

Well, thank you for allowing me to speak.

Bart Sabota, Zoning Administrator.

So the private street standard is a little bit different when we're dealing with kind of accessory sleeping units, we'll call them, just to be clear that they're not dwellings.

If I was to have a four bedroom house as an example and add two bedrooms as an addition or have a four bedroom house and add two accessory sleeping units, the impact there is the same on that particular road is how we would view that under our VDOT guidance and our ordinance guidance.

So I hope that helps kind of simplify that if we have a dwelling then that's a different

Thank you.

Supervisor Andrews?

And so we currently use our third party vendor to review

anything that's out there that either doesn't have a permit or that's compliant.

We're also working with finance and they receive now from the Airbnbs and VRBOs of the world a report on who's submitting taxes.

So we're now starting to compare what finance has who folks who are paying TOT and on what number of rooms versus what we have on the registry and what we have licensed.

And just today, actually, we had a short-term registry group meeting with our folks.

And they identify individuals who need to be notified of the regulations and guided into compliance one way or the other.

So we're checking those things regularly.

That's how we kind of figured out.

We will get complaints from the neighbors if there's something going on that they don't think is appropriate.

We do have regular checks on folks in the annual.

If you're on the registry, we go back and look at your postings, and we see what's happening.

So when you re-up, you're either coming off the registry because you're closed, or you're updating or renewing the information that you have.

If ownership is changed, it's a new home state clearance.

So it's a kind of repetitive process that we have.

I was just going to say that is really good information to have.

I am thrilled to hear that as it ties into this.

Thank you, because I was wondering about what the compliance would be or how we'd figure that out.

The other thing, and Mr. Svoboda, I think you can either confirm or correct me on this, there is no limitation that all of the guests must be part of a single party for a homestay.

Correct.

Similarly to in the house.

I can rent one bedroom and you could rent a different bedroom.

As a condition.

Supervisor LaPisto-Kirtley.

So I'm trying to wrap my head around it because I see two issues.

One, if they have a home with

five bedrooms I believe and five or six bedrooms and they're now building accessory structures to and they could have a single room cabin which to me is a bedroom so a cabin can be a bedroom because if it's just a bed in a small cabin structure fine.

but they're building additional structures for the homestay.

And I thought our whole purpose was, a homestay is to help someone earn additional monies to keep their farms, their area, their land, they have a lot of land to earn some additional money.

But if now you're building additional structures, and how many bedrooms did they have again, I'm sorry, in their main house?

Leah?

So if if they had the main structure it has four bedrooms I can see them

perhaps building a small maybe two bedroom cabin that way they would have a total of five.

But to me that's different than building multiple structures that they don't have.

It almost sounds like they're going into a business whereas I know of places that have a large house and they also have outbuildings, small cabins that date back 100 years.

So I want to make sure we don't get the two

That's what I'm struggling with.

I concur with that and also think it's more likely that you would have multiple groups coming when you have multiple buildings than you would having more than one bedroom in a single structure.

And that again to me goes to

Okay, I just want to say that if I had a home, one home with maybe one bedroom or two bedrooms, and then I start building accessory structures to build up to that five,

I think that's different from what we intend on a homestay.

I'd be glad to make a modified motion when we get to that point.

To my mind, I would prefer a single structure with a kitchen since there is a development right that could be used with different wings or something if there were a small group versus another group, but I appreciate completely the uncertainty of how many buildings and also the cost burden of multiple septic fields and that kind of thing.

reasonable financially to think about doing it in one location because then you can have all those services available there.

I would rather not have to have five cabins out there and I don't know how they're going to eat.

That's the thing.

And the only thing I would add without having seen it is I'm more comfortable not

Moving forward with substantial modifications on the language today and instead let county staff have time to process it, it come back to us where we have time to process rather than saying well let's just make a decision today and perhaps regret what some of that language may be.

How would that be, defer the vote?

I would think that would be reasonable to defer it.

But rather than pushing it to the next meeting, I would ask that we consider pushing it back possibly two weeks, two meetings, in order not to put either county staff or the applicant in too short of a window to try and address this.

Well, I agree with the concern about rushing it through.

That's always a concern.

I think that's perfectly acceptable.

15.

Second.

All right.

So I heard the motion from Supervisor Mallek and BioWhisker Supervisor Andrews.

I think they beat Supervisor McKeel.

Second.

Mr. Andrews?

Yes.

Mr. Galloway?

Yes.

Ms.

Episto-Kirtley?

Aye.

Ms.

Mallek?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeel?

Yes.

Ms.

Aye.

Thank you board and thank you all for the time on this so we can work

after the meeting if there's any clarification on some of the concerns that the board has to allow staff and the applicant to be able to see if there's an accommodation that's acceptable.

And of course, then it will come back for the board for a vote.

So thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

Brumfield.

All right, board, we'll move to item number 10, a work session, Charlottesville area transit microtransit feasibility analysis.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive.

Just give me a second as we assemble the team.

Okay, if the board is ready, I think we are as well.

Good afternoon.

It's an honor to be here today.

Again, Trevor Henry, Deputy County Executive.

Along with me is Jessica Hirsch-Ballering, Principal Planner, Transportation, and she's covering for Kevin.

who is off for a fun week and well-deserved.

Almost a year ago to the day, I think it was January 19th a year ago, staff presented the results of a study that was partnered through TJPDC along with Charlottesville Area Transit to look at microtransit options for the county.

The study occurred over several months, had significant outreach

into the community as part of that process.

Three areas were looked at specifically, 29 North, Pantops, and Monticello.

The outcome of that study and the recommendation that went before the board a year ago was to proceed forward on a grant from the Department of Rail and Transportation, DRPT, for two of those areas.

The board accepted that recommendation and supported it.

We funded our portion of the grant and the Charlottesville area transit made application

for this pilot program, and it was awarded last summer.

So today we're here to talk about progress on the implementation of that grant.

A lot of work has occurred throughout the fall.

Kat is the grant awardee and recipient and is responsible for the execution and management of this service and program.

With us today to present is Garland Williams.

Garland Williams, he's the director of transit

for Charlottesville Area Transit.

He will be part of the presentation and certainly here for answering questions.

One of the things that Garland staff did was, as we moved into the fall after the project was awarded, did an RFP and solicited services from Kimley-Horn associations to support the program management, the implementation of the program.

With us today from Kimley-Horn is Jessica Choi.

She's a project manager, transit planner,

And then I believe we have a colleague of Jessica's online, Lucas Mueller, who's a senior advisor principal in charge.

Kimberly Horn was brought in to augment CAT staff to evaluate the program, best practices, options as far as implementation with a focus on execution and customer experience in these two areas.

And so that work has proceeded over the past several months.

Staff is here to make a recommendation, which they believe is to move forward with an RFP to formally solicit support, resource support in those two areas, again to optimize the service delivery.

I should note that CAT formed a stakeholder committee in the fall that includes myself, Jacob Sumner, Kevin McDermott, Abby Stumpf from the county,

Christine Jacobs from TJPDC who I saw in the audience.

They're all here to support this.

And so over the next just handful of slides Jessica and Garland will walk us through where you know where we were where we are and and moving forward and then staff will be here throughout to answer questions that you may have.

So with that I'm turning over to Jessica.

Good afternoon, board.

Thank you so much for making time for us today.

So I'm going to go to the next slide here.

Trevor gave

Much of the introduction behind the two zones, but I'll cover just a little bit again.

The county went through a study and identified two microtransit zones.

Like what was mentioned, US 29 North and Pantops were identified as the pilot zones.

CAT received a grant from DRPT for a total of $1.94 million to demonstrate and execute this program.

There was a local match involved as a part of that.

That was $388,000.

Now, one thing that we did want to make clear to you all and about this service is that this microtransit service and the operator will be operating under the cat umbrella of services and not be its own standalone entity.

And we'll talk a little bit more about what that means.

Based on the original study and some discussion with the stakeholder committee, we wanted to discuss with you the two pilot zones and some details about them.

So the US 29 operating baseline is from the original study, again, three vehicles.

in terms of service span and operations, 6.30 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

Monday through Saturday.

The original study also had some key performance indicators that were shared, and so we have those up here on the slide.

The projected riders per weekday is 75, with the potential to grow to 360 daily riders, and an average wait time for riders of less than 15 minutes.

And then for Pantops, estimated one vehicle needed to cover that zone.

Again, 6.30 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

Monday through Saturday.

And then the projected key indicators here again from the original study, 25 riders per weekday with the potential to grow to 240 daily riders.

And again, average wait times of less than 15 minutes.

Before we share with you a little bit more about the method of implementation that we talk through with the stakeholder committee, we wanted to do a quick highlight of what microtransit is and what the expectations for that service is.

And so microtransit is a real, it's a on-demand transportation solution really being implemented across the nation and here in Virginia.

It's a technology-enabled solution and what we mean by that is folks can make real-time trip requests

and those trips are dynamically routed and kind of programmed through the application and the vehicles dynamically routed to serve those trips.

Now, often with microtransit, we see smaller vehicles being utilized versus your typical fixed route buses that you see out today.

And really, there's two purposes for that.

The first is in lower density areas, they just better serve the community by right sizing the transit service to the demand that's out there.

And the second thing that we think about is first and last mile connectivity, where maybe sidewalks are not as prevalent, and we're able to serve those riders and get them kind of closer to where they want to begin their journeys.

So we think a little bit about that when we think of microtransit.

Now, there are several methods of implementation for microtransit that are available.

The four are up here today.

I'll kind of run through them quickly with y'all.

We tried to kind of summarize quickly what those methods of implementation are.

So on the left here, it starts with what we call TNC.

Those are transportation network companies.

They're akin to Uber and Lyft that's out there.

So the fleet that's already out there, Uber and Lyft, helps to fulfill the rides that are being demanded.

This is a model that does not include a dedicated fleet.

There's turnkey and partial turnkey models, and really those vary based on, again, turnkey.

What the name implies is the vendor provides everything.

A partial turnkey is where the agency and the vendor split responsibilities really based on

the level of control that the agency would like to have or some of the strengths that the agency has that they would like to provide and then we have a method of implementation called in-house where the transit agency provides everything.

I like to think of this one most akin to like a dial-a-ride or like a demand response type of service.

Based on the discussion of methods of implementation as well as talking to the stakeholder committee, we mentioned earlier that we did some case studies and talked to some partners to see what lessons we could learn.

There were three agencies in particular that we were interested in talking to.

The first is Hampton Roads Transit and their on-demand program, the Bay Transit Express, and then the Gwinnett County Microtransit Pilot that was done in Georgia.

We met with the stakeholder committee to discuss those findings, to discuss the methods of implementation, and ultimately the stakeholder committee selected two operating models to move forward in this process, turnkey and partial turnkey, and again the decision making process really being driven by those case studies, the lessons learned, and then the priorities that Garland's going to talk about in just a bit.

There are two kind of, based on the turnkey and partial turnkey models, there's a couple of real benefits that we wanted to highlight with you all today.

The first is that you get to leverage the experience of companies that really have a proven track record of successful service delivery.

This is really important considering the grant program and what we have in front of us in terms of funding.

This is again, has been shown here in the state of Virginia as well as kind of nationwide.

The great thing about this is that you can have folks who are helping you meet your timeline expectations as well as quality of service expectations.

Again, really kind of honing in on that successful service delivery looking for operators who have done that.

You can also maintain agency control without having to do everything.

In the contractual process, you're able to set your program parameters that you would like.

And there's also a potential to use any infrastructure that CAT may have available.

Here we've highlighted potentially CAT has some vehicles that might be available to help with this service.

The last two here are things that we're seeing really nationally.

The first is that you're gaining access to technology and data capabilities through a privately developed platform, again, that's being used already, as well as communications and marketing plans that have been developed for other transit agencies that are out there, both in the form of collateral as well as lessons learned in terms of how to prepare the community for a service like this.

And again, the microtransit service here is intended to operate under the CAT umbrella of services.

Thank you, Jessica.

Well, we're deciding about the two particular groups that we looked at, the full turnkey or the partial turnkey.

One thing that we were keenly aware of is that we want to be very successful coming out of the shoe.

So we wanted to make sure that the priorities are given to the four pillars that we have in front of you, but also want to make sure that we have a provider that is knowledgeable and can perform the services for us.

So as we looked at the four,

One of them being costs, keeping costs within the grant.

The 1.9 is what we have and we want to make sure we stay within that range.

That's very important because we don't want to come back to the board for additional money and we don't want Cat to have to potentially afford any additional money for this service.

Level of control.

Cat wants to make sure that we are involved in every aspect.

and maintain a high level of agency control in whatever method we find, whether it's partial or it's a full turnkey.

To the public, it should look just like CAT and they won't see any other partner if we bring on a third party.

Timeline.

That's one of the most important pieces.

As we get forward and move forward in implementation, going from concept to implementation full, we want to make sure that we're successful in the quickest way we possibly can.

We want to come out of this shoe making sure we have somebody that can do this from day one.

We don't want to be experimenting

We want to make sure that we have a partner that's going to help us be successful from day one.

And then the public awareness.

Public needs to be involved in every aspect of this.

We want to make sure we advertise and that's key to any new service.

Making sure people are aware of the new service and what it entails and what we can potentially provide for everyone.

So we're looking at doing an RFP and a tentative timeline for RFP is we kind of bringing back home that the feasibility study was done and we're at the point now where we're trying to get through the procurement section.

We're creating an RFP and then the RFP will come back as a part of

our finals and come back to the board hopefully in April or May timeframe to kind of give you a detailed analysis of where we are once we put the RFP on the street.

But there are three components that we can't nail down exactly all of the timeframes because that will be dictated as a part of the RFP process.

So the software implementation, that can take anywhere from four to six months for implementation.

So when the software, whoever we procure as a funding, as a operational partner, the implementation from installation, testing, and training

can take the four to six months to make sure we work out all of the bugs because there's an app that's also involved.

We want to make sure that we test that before we launch the new service.

We have to make a decision about fare.

Right now CAD is operating through a grant for DRPT.

We're running fare-free.

We're making the assumption right now that we're going to continue to run fare-free.

as a part of this model.

But if we don't, or if we look at a part of long-term, whether it's one or two years, and we're talking about potentially charging, what does that fair structure look like?

There was no real conversation about that.

We have some particular ideas.

But in long term, there's a lot of setting the fare structure, how to accept it on the app, making sure that the dispatch can handle.

All of the calls and making sure the dispatch can handle the accepting of the payments.

All those things need to be worked out as a part of this implementation.

And then the marketing and advertising, that's key.

One of the things that I like to say is you can have the best service in the world if nobody knows about it, then it's not going to be successful.

So in our application to the state, when we put this in, there was $135,000 earmarked specifically for advertising.

Once we have identified a turnkey or partial provider, that money will be deployed in trying to make sure we get the word out about our services and when it will launch.

And then the implementation schedule will launch as soon as we know when we can get all of those things in place.

So every one of them has a key timeline on their own, meaning the software

the Fair Decisions, and then the Marketing.

And then once we're ready to launch, we want to hit the ground running and make sure that it's very successful out the chute.

Thank you, Ms.

Troy.

Williams for your presentations.

At this time, board, we will go through our order.

Just a clarification first, and then I'll have some questions.

What we're receiving today is information.

You all are not asking for any ... You want to hear our feedback, but you're not asking for any vote or specific support today.

That's correct.

You'll be coming back to us later.

That's correct.

Just for clarification.

Supervisor McKeel, I would just clarify that is a work session feedback on the approach with the RFP for these two models.

We would appreciate that input from the board.

So it's not a decision on who the vendor would be or anything like that, but it's specific to the approach, which is an RFP.

So maybe that's why I was confused and why I asked for that clarification.

So you're asking for our support.

.

Yes, ma'am.

.

Partial.

Yes, ma'am.

All right, so I'd like you to go back to that slide.

Thank you.

This pilot and whether or not our community chooses to use this pilot.

will determine the interest in ridership, transit ridership in our community.

It's critical.

I'm just saying that we've got to get it right because I remember years ago we rolled out a new model for transit

and the timing was wrong, the implementation was wrong, not involved with anybody in this room, right?

But it didn't show any ridership, so it failed, right?

I mean, it didn't work.

It was certain routes.

So it is critical, I guess, in my mind that we get this right.

And maybe this is down in the weeds a little bit, but following that vein, I'm a little concerned when I see Monday through Saturday, 6.30 to 9.

if I was still working at the hospital that wouldn't work for me at all.

What was presented today was based off of what was

evaluated and recommended through the study a year ago.

So that currently is what the grant is based upon and is the baseline operating assumptions going into this.

I will say given what we presented a year ago were the same components as far as days and times of use.

That's how we derived that recommendation.

So no change has occurred in that.

I would look to Garland to say as we experience the project, we certainly could look to expand it if it is successful.

Okay, so help me with it.

And I'm sorry to take up all this time.

So it goes back to what I think Garland said.

The original set of consultants that were procured through TJPDC suggested that the hours would be the 6.30 to 9.

Now, I'm curious as to whether we potentially, based on the changing of the dynamics now, whether we could go back as a part of our RFP and ask for additional hours.

Using the 6.30 to 9 is kind of our

Foundation, and then what the add-on would be for additional hours if you wanted it.

The reason I bring it up is, in my world, and I'm looking at the areas, Pan Tops, which has a big hospital, and we have staff that are on shifts, and other examples as well.

I'm concerned because if this pilot doesn't show, again, ridership, then this is going to fail, and that's a problem, so we have to make sure

that our pilot is meeting the needs of the folks in the community that are willing and want to ride transit.

So may I say it this way, that I believe the pilot needs to be successful using this 630 to 9 frame frame.

We believe that that is the

the major area by which we have seen through ridership that people will use it.

Now, are there additional hours?

Yes.

Meaning from that 9 to midnight, potentially, or 1130, where the shift changes at the hospital, where there will potentially be some other riders.

We don't know whether the amount of riders for that additional hours

will make a difference.

And remember, this is a pilot.

So it's easier to add, I believe, as opposed to subtract.

If we go out with a model where we're going from 6.30 to midnight and we subtract, it looks like it's perception.

It looks like we've failed and we are pulling back because the model's not working.

That's how my mind works.

So it would be easier to have a conversation and come back to you with a glowing story that

We've been really successful.

And we've had folks inquire about additional hours after 9 PM.

And I understand that.

That makes sense.

Thank you for sort of responding to that, to my question about that.

So CAT will be controlling the microtransit.

will be under your banner.

Garland, talk to me a little bit about how this microtransit will connect.

Garland So, the concept is that when the public uses this microtransit,

Wherever it's branded, there will be an opportunity for it to connect up on 29 or on Pan Tops to the existing fixed route CAT service.

From the public's vantage point, they won't see anything different.

It will look like CAT.

We just have a different brand and name.

We may call it something like, I think one of my staff this morning called it Micro CAT.

So it's just clearly they understand this is micro transit.

operated by CAT.

So the public will have a phone number that rings in.

It'll go through CAT.

Dispatches.

Dispatches through CAT.

OK, so I agree definitely.

Thank you.

I really think that the marketing is going to be really important.

trying to figure out how to exactly say this.

Based on what has happened with the pandemic and the decrease in ridership and the struggle around bus drivers in our community, many folks have an impression

that they've struggled with CAT.

Let's talk about it, let's face it.

I have a lot of folks that say CAT's not reliable in my urban ring.

How are you going to address that if the microtransit service is labeled CAT?

It's through the marketing.

The third party provider, if we select one, and it's a full turnkey, we'll be responsible for getting the number of operators, the number of vehicles, I mean they could.

So the RFP will be set up so they'll be able to give us, they'll be able to select kind of what they have expertise in and say this is what the cost is based on providing a full turnkey model or we can do a partial model

We need to provide software and we're going to partner with somebody else to get drivers and vehicles so there will be an opportunity for them to kind of put their best foot forward.

From the community standpoint when they call that number that will be a dedicated group of drivers that are dedicated strictly to micro transit and it won't be pulling from the existing numbers of drivers that's

Okay, so I think you've just gotten at a little bit my next question and then I'll stop guys and let you all have a shot at this, but concern about finding drivers.

Part of the beauty of a microtransit project is they don't have to have a CDL.

Yeah, just so everybody knows.

That's what's the driver.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

To answer the questions you want answered, I'm in favor of the turnkey and the parcel.

Which one?

I'm not sure.

I think that's going to be a cost consideration.

I do agree with Supervisor McKeel that I think

The marketing is going to be critical for expansion, absolutely.

I do have a question regarding perhaps in the beginning are you going to do, you don't know yet, I don't think, but a no fee and then gradually go into a fee depending on would that help the ridership, how that increases.

In other words, give everyone something for free, it works, they get used to it.

Right and I think you know because CAT is fare-free today it makes sense for the microtransit to start off that way.

One other thing that I want to make sure that it's clear.

Part of the decision to keep it fair or go fair free now is that we would have potentially trigger a Title VI issue.

because the rest of the system that CAD is operating is operating fare-free.

That does make sense.

So I would like, regarding implementation, can you give me, and I'm just asking for an estimate off the record so I hope it's not being recorded, your best

So I believe we have an estimate of late summer, early fall as our implementation and the draft RFP.

So that's where we're targeting for implementation.

Now a lot of this will, part of how we're setting up the RFP

is we'll be awarding points based on one, whether they've done this before, and two, how quickly they can get to implementation.

Meeting our timeline and the timeline that's been expressed as by the Board of Supervisors to try to get it up and running as soon as possible.

So late summer, early fall is where we're potentially targeting to get that done.

Okay, because I've been giving, I'm excited about this program and I've been telling my constituents that I keep moving the date.

So that's why I ask for the best and worst.

So we're looking at summer fall of 23, hopefully.

Yes.

Got it.

And the pilot actually gives you a chance to see where people live and

how we

who's going to take it, who's not going to take it.

Okay.

And those are all my questions.

I do have a suggestion for a name though, if you want to hear it.

Absolutely.

We do, we do.

You're all waiting.

I'm thinking of neighborhood micro.

Oh, I'll offer some when it's my turn.

Okay.

I was just gonna say maybe this is a situation where it would be fun for the name for the community to name it.

I don't know.

I'm just saying.

Thank you very much.

No offense.

Supervisor Andrews.

You've got me all thinking about names now.

I'm very enthusiastic about the idea that we would provide this kind of a service to be able to increase mobility and make public transit more accessible to people.

I still have to ask some questions based on the numbers that you've given.

If you could go back one slide just to make sure I have these right, too.

If I recall, maybe one more.

Maybe it wasn't on the slides.

It's just a—okay.

25, 240 daily riders growing, too.

Then the previous one was 75 riders per weekday.

going to 360.

It's an interesting one, in case it's a very different ratio than the other.

.

I know this doesn't require CDL, so it's a smaller vehicle.

I don't know what the limits on that are.

This refers to riders.

Quick calculation on the basis of 75 plus 25 is 100 riders per day.

and if that's six days a week over 50, 52 weeks, that's about 30,000 trips a year.

It comes out to about, when you consider the amount of money being put into it, about $75 per trip if it's not scalable, if it's not scaled up.

I'm concerned that we've got to adopt a model that makes sense.

comparing turnkey to, if you jump to the options there, to Uber lift, I guess, which was the first option, which I'm not in favor of ceding that control, but I just want to be very conscious of where are we going to make this work in terms of the cost so we know that we

are providing a service at kind of an expected cost that is competitive with what we would see in the private market, even though it's subsidized.

That's one of my concerns.

Otherwise, turnkey, partial turnkey,

don't bother me as long as that's being looked at as how does this work.

I share concerns about how does this work from the driver's perspective as well.

You gave basically a 14 and a half hour day.

If we have 25 riders per day over 14 and a half hours, that's basically less than two riders per hour.

Again,

How does this work as an employment opportunity for a driver?

How are we going to find people that are going to be fitting into this?

Obviously, once it starts scaling up and those vehicles become more full, busy all the time, then it's going to be a completely different problem in terms of how can we maintain the service so we can keep it under 15 minutes and make it so it really works for people who need to be somewhere and rely on it.

There's a lot here that needs to be cracked.

No, I would just say that all of your concerns are valid and we've talked about most of them.

Deliberations, and I think part of what I would like to convey to you is the original consultants that pulled this together used a very conservative ridership number.

I wholeheartedly believe there's picked up demands.

especially along the 29 or the Pantops areas.

So I do believe we'll eclipse those conservative ridership numbers.

It will take us a little time, but I'm pretty sure we'll have days that

will significantly eclipse the numbers that were provided in the study.

But those were designed for kind of a floor for the state to feel comfort level in funding us this project, giving us funding for this project.

So I would.

I think those numbers are kind of the floor, but I don't think those are the ceiling.

Thank you.

It brings it back to the marketing and meeting that demand because I do think that the floor is a little low.

We need to shoot higher.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm probably going to be asking questions that are the wrong level for questions, so those you can just file away for next time.

I've never been keen on being the beta tester and having some beginner learn their chops on us, or me personally.

I would never buy a computer or a car the first year it's out because I don't want to find all those mistakes.

Can I be confident that in your RFP you're going to be looking for people, especially, I mean, even local people who already have software, already have fare collection, already have dispatch experience.

Very good.

been through some

I'm very concerned about the no Sunday hours, and I understand your explanation.

Hopefully that gap between starting small and going bigger is much shorter than waiting a whole year or something like that.

It is a real burden for people who get off shift at 11 and it's dark and it's raining and they're walking down 250 to get home and that's really hard on a Sunday and we've certainly heard about that circumstance both to the hotels and hospitality locations as well both 250 toward west and also on 29 so I hope you will be very attentive to that

Are there Sunday buses now on to the hospital?

Currently, we're not operating any Sunday service because during the pandemic, that was one of the sacrifices we had to make to make sure we lost 16 drivers due to the pandemic.

All right.

I think that's probably all my questions right now.

I'm okay with the turnkey impartial as well.

Thank you.

My first question is who approved Kevin McDermott to have a fun week away?

I need you to get track that down.

So I get that this is a pilot.

I share Supervisor McKeel and some of the comments about it, but I get it that it's a pilot.

I've explained that to my residents and that they got to get out there.

I also share the concerns about CAT, but also the perception.

But I should apologize that I've beat up CAT publicly myself many times.

But really in my district, it's more the fixed route, not CAT.

The fixed route just isn't going to work in my district.

When the mall was a vibrant location,

and you could get people from downtown to the mall and vice versa.

That was an effective fixed route.

I just don't see a fixed route.

And we don't have the infrastructure to make a fixed route work either.

So it's not just uncapped.

I appreciate that.

But I do think that on demand, even in the limited amount of services, will blow up.

I agree with you on that.

And turnkey, partial turnkey, I'm following your lead on that.

I just want this to get up and running.

Let's learn from it to figure out how to get there.

I would imagine, under the fare free, that while you do it, some of these companies, if it's a pilot program, you probably ask people, what would you be willing to pay for this?

You know, you're getting it free today.

If you had to pay for this, what would you think would be reasonable?

I would imagine there's some survey of the users that's part of this pilot study that's going to happen.

If we're doing a pilot study and we're not getting input from those who are practicing using it, I'm just presuming that's in there somewhere.

but I would think that that could help us maybe understand what fares could be or maybe down the road from a user's standpoint.

I mean if you, I'd got a Uber car because I had no other situation and I didn't think to call Bea to get a ride but I was at Putt Putt Place dropping off a rental and needed to get back to my home which is what, two miles, three miles away.

It's a total drive time of about three times and it cost me about 18 bucks to do it.

be it Uber because I was on a game day on a Saturday when football was running and that makes rates go up and I had to wait 10 minutes to do it I had no other option it was 95 I wasn't going to walk I could have but you know

The $18 was a value to me to not sweat to death that day.

So it's all relative to what we're doing.

When we think of costs for this, I expect it will be successful and this will scale up.

And what we as supervisors will have to think about are that the costs, what are the impacts beyond just looking at the dollar amount.

One, we could get savings because we might eliminate some fixed routes because this service is working, reroute those dollars over.

But this speaks to our climate action policy.

This speaks to helping eliminate traffic congestion, right?

This helps with economic development because more people could be out moving around in the local economy, spending their dollars where they're going.

And I always use the example of my residents, the residents that live in Woodbrook.

It's so easy right now to be able to just jump in their car, drive over to Kroger.

But it's a pain in the butt to do that because of the traffic you encounter.

So I can't imagine, a fixed route would never allow us to help Woodbrooke get to Kroger, which is right across 29.

But this on-demand I'm convinced will do it and will help move it around.

And I think people will take advantage of that big time.

And that helps us to decline the policy about getting people out of their cars and reducing the emissions, right?

So I'm very excited about the potential of it.

Now for the software, the four to six months, is this just full, we wait until everything's up, running, tested, and then we launch pilot?

Is there like a soft opening before it's completely up and running?

What's that skinny?

Yeah, I've seen transit agencies do a soft opening.

In one case in Georgia, what they did was they did a soft opening for the county employees to try out to get to and from places for their destinations to try to make sure that we work out all the kinks.

So I would utilize the CACs

because they can help us

I think that's all my comments and or questions at this point.

I'm excited.

All right.

Thank you.

Before I proceed, I did get notification that Mr. Mueller has his hand raised and would like to contribute.

I apologize for not knowing how long you've had your hand up.

That's OK.

No worries.

Can you all hear me OK?

Yes.

OK, yeah, I appreciate the great questions and insight and discussion.

I was just wanting to highlight and emphasize one of the elements that I think Garland and Jessica hit on that pertains to some of the questions just about both the hours of service as well as just the idea of trying to make things as efficient as possible.

One of the benefits of an RFP like this is that we can,

essentially make that an opportunity for competition.

So one of the elements that we can evaluate the proposals on is are there opportunities to either expand beyond the base services, not go down from the limit or from the baseline, but expand beyond that and or to maybe then add more service within those times.

So kind of working in the constraints of the overall budget, but kind of playing off the various parts

participants and potential applicants to make it as competitive as possible.

All right, thank you.

First, I need to respond Supervisor Galloway's question to Mr. Richardson about approving leave for Mr. McDermott.

Mr. Richardson, your deputy, Mr. Walker, quickly stood up and threw your director of community development, Jody Florida, under the bus and made clear that she had approved that leave request.

The hits just keep coming, don't they Jody?

I am not in favor of the first or the last of the options here.

I am not a fan of Uber or Lyft because of a variety of reports of unreliability and safety issues, whereas I'm much more comfortable with more organized

Corporations or county government as the case may be in handling it.

I'm also not fully in favor of in-house because this is a transitional type of a transportation system and I have personally through previous professional experience or observationally anecdotally seen

Enterprises, try to take on something that is not really in their wheelhouse and not be able to be as successful.

In particular, some of the technology aspects of this could be very expensive and difficult for us internally, or CAT, to be able to stay up to date on that, so either the turnkey or partial turnkey

I will defer principally to where the experts believe it should go.

Having said that, I'm a little more comfortable with the partial in the sense that it does allow us to maintain a degree of control that the full turnkey may not.

But again, I expect that there would be a way to somewhat supervise or monitor that.

So again, I defer ultimately to you all.

Mr. Williams, Ms.

Choi, I appreciate your input.

Following up with the name suggestions, Minicat is fine.

Kitten would be another one.

But definitely not catnip.

So thank you for your presentations.

Just a comment because I did not address actually his question.

I thought we were just doing comments and everybody started making.

So I definitely agree with the two, the turnkey or the partial turnkey.

And to just follow up a little bit on what Donna just said, in my head, whatever gives you the most flexibility

to be able to make changes as you see them happening on the ground would be my preference, just to say, right?

And I am so excited about this and I think our community is just going to really warm up to it.

Thank you.

And one other comment I would make.

As I was listening to the presentation, I was kind of envisioning this as somewhat comparable to the mainline airlines versus the regional carriers.

If I go and make my reservations, for example, through Delta, and I actually end up getting on a flight operated by a regional carrier, it's basically transparent to me.

And as I understand it, that would be the same thing here.

It would be transparent to the rider.

that it is a term key partial term key provider because it's still under the name brand, excuse me, of CAT.

And I think that's really important for people to be able to associate the two together for that continuity.

And I too am very excited about this and I agree with what Supervisor Galloway said.

You know, we just don't have the volume or the population, the density necessary to have a fully successful fixed route system and this may be the only way that we actually are able to sustain this type of a public transportation.

Chair Price, Members of the Board, great discussion.

I believe staff has what we need to proceed forward with RFP.

We'll be back hopefully late April, early May with results and then with a detailed execution plan.

Really good input, especially with

that kind of soft opening testing period and soliciting help from the CACs to help populate that.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So if we could go ahead and let's take a recess and return at 3.15.

We're up to item number 11, a work session, Drainage Infrastructure Management Program.

Hello, everybody.

I think it's become increasingly apparent that drainage infrastructure in the county is aging, it's neglected, and because of those things we are

seeing failures more and more often.

It's being neglected because a lot of times there's confusion about who is actually responsible for maintaining drainage infrastructure.

So today I'm going to spend about 30 minutes, I hope, talking about some of the things that the county has been doing to

to investigate the scale of this problem and to describe some of the things that a program basically that can address the challenge.

So again for about 30 minutes I hope I'm going to be talking about some of the history of why I'm even here in front of you.

Some of you have been around long enough to have touched on this history and some of you haven't so we're going to be bringing everybody up to speed basically.

We're also going to be describing some of the work that we've been doing, as I've said, to really get a better sense of the scale and some remedies for this challenge.

I'm going to briefly touch on some past board discussions, because this is the sixth time I've been in front of the board on this topic, sometimes not just this topic.

Sometimes it was part of a broader conversation.

And then finally, we're going to be talking about some of the upcoming work we're going to be doing to implement the program.

First of all I just want to make it perfectly clear what we're talking about.

We're talking about a program to maintain drainage infrastructure, which I'll define in a minute, throughout the county urban areas.

We're not really imagining working in the rural areas of the county.

And this infrastructure is on private property The infrastructure on public property is infrastructure we already maintain or VDOT does because it's under there right away And this infrastructure does not lie within existing drainage easements or easements that have been dedicated to public use and

and I'll talk about that again in a second.

So if you're not already aware, what I'm talking about as far as drainage infrastructure goes is inlets and manholes and all the other aspects of that

pipes and culverts and I differentiate pipes as being part of like a network and manhole to manhole kind of thing and culverts usually are the things I imagine are just like under a road and they have open ends and then channels as well because channels you know connect pipes with pipes basically and are really part of the system and can't be ignored

You probably know this already but most infrastructure has been built over decades by developers as part of the land development process Wasn't built by the county of course Most again lies on private property and outside easements dedicated to public use and

We should note that although we do a pretty good job today, over the decades the county has not been consistent in obtaining public easements as infrastructure is built.

So we, especially older infrastructure, typically does not lie in public easements.

So there's just like no good correlation between whether something is in a public easement and the nature of the infrastructure, whether it's

really serves private runoff or public runoff, if I could use those terms in a non-legal way.

And so historically, the county has addressed easements only when they are within public easements.

And so the public easements gives the county the right, although it does not actually assign a responsibility to us.

It gives us the right to enter onto properties to maintain infrastructure if we so choose.

But without a public easement, we don't even have the right to go into a property and certainly not the responsibility to maintain infrastructure.

So this is some new territory.

You're probably aware that drainage infrastructure has been incorporated into the board's strategic plans since as early as fiscal year 17.

So going back to that first fiscal year 17 to 19 strategic plan,

the directive was to determine the county's role in maintaining infrastructure so big question mark at the very beginning of our thinking about this the next strategic plan was a little bit more specific determine program scope and resource requirements in implementing a program basically and even your future strategic plan touches on drainage infrastructure although not explicitly

by saying invest in infrastructure and determine level and extent of services in developing a public works department.

So the assumption there is that this drainage improvement program would be a part of a public works department.

The board has, in addition to incorporating into the strategic plans, taken additional actions in the past that I would just like to raise here.

Way back in 2006, the board authorized staff to obtain public easements and we've used that authority to receive easements during the development review process.

So for the last 15 years or so, we've done a pretty good job as a local government in getting the infrastructure that serves broadly community runoff into easements.

But before that, I'm not sure exactly what happened.

Also, the board has authorized, as you're aware, staff to repair these exceptional infrastructure failures on private properties that have come up.

This photo here, if you have a recollection of this, was the single on Carsbrook Drive which opened up suddenly way back in 2014.

This incident really was a driving moment and it really was kind of like the early cause of the awareness that there's a problem brewing out there.

So you might think of this as a kind of brand new, unconnected program that we're implementing, but it actually touches on a lot of the other things that the county does, and I've included a few examples in the slide here.

For example, if we want to be prepared for emergencies, especially flood emergencies, it certainly helps us to do that, to know where the infrastructure is, how it's interconnected,

at a most basic level, but also like where the weaknesses are, where flooding is most likely to occur.

We're actually engaged in a couple of projects that are funded by grants that are going to help us to better realize where the highest flood risk is throughout the county as part of our flood resilience planning effort.

So it does touch on a lot of things that we're doing.

So this next section is under the header of program development.

After I talk through this section, I would like to pause for a moment to see if there are any clarifying questions, that sort of thing.

If I don't stop, please stop me.

If anybody can, just yell at me or something like that, because I might just start to go to the next slide.

So I would like to describe again kind of like our work that we've done to really characterize the scope of this problem and part of that is just like doing kind of like mental exercises of conceptually defining you know a couple of things, extent of service and level of service.

I don't know if these concepts are familiar with you

they've been discussed in the past but it's been a while so by extensive service we mean like what portions of the network of drainage infrastructure out there does it make sense for the county to operate and maintain certainly not all infrastructure everywhere and then the level of service of course is what we're gonna do with that infrastructure we think that we're going to be responsible for maintaining so those are two concepts I'll get into in a little bit more detail in a minute

And so in addition to sort of like putting some guardrails around what this program could look like, we've done quite a bit of work to really quantify the scale and to develop some cost estimates by doing some mapping, some video assessments, and more recently assessing the channels that I mentioned that connect all the pipes

and looking into our community reported drainage issues.

We've been tracking drainage issues for quite a long time and that's just another input source for us to consider as we look at this program and what it means.

So very quickly, we've been mapping infrastructure for quite a few years now.

The little squares are basically signifying either an inlet or a manhole.

And typically, we know what type of inlet it is and whether it's an open end of a pipe and so forth.

So we have pretty good data.

Sometimes we even know the material, such as corrugated metal or reinforced concrete, that the pipe is made out of.

the size in some instances.

So this has actually been very useful to us over the years.

For instance, when we get a notification that there's a bunch of soap suds accumulating at the outfall,

into the Rivanna River, in the past we would be in the dark as far as like where this could possibly be coming from.

But with a map like this, all we have to do is look upstream and it really helps us to zero in on where the car washing could be occurring in the watershed.

So that's just one example of how this information we've been collecting over the years has proven to be useful outside of a drainage infrastructure management program.

So you can see that most of the infrastructure we've mapped is pipe.

We've also mapped about 55 miles of drainage channels.

And these are just in the urban areas.

Before you go on, Supervisor Galloway has a question.

Is that the open?

The blue line are basically USGS-mapped streams.

So those are more like natural streams.

So they're like open or underground or piped?

It's not at all underground pipes.

Yeah, I guess it does.

So the USGS lines are probably like 25 years old.

I don't know that we've updated them.

We're not responsible for doing so.

So they don't always reflect kind of like reality of today.

So you might see the blue line going under 29

Okay is the one the blue line behind Hillsdale to the right of Hillsdale on this map.

That's a that is an active channel, right?

and the orange.

The orange is basically, you guys are really inquiring minds, I love this.

The orange depicts a flow path through a stormwater management facility.

I think the one you see there is either the pond

or it's a biofilter, something like that.

Could be a grassy swale, could be a much larger, you know, rip-wrapped channel ditch or something like that, but it doesn't mean like a... It's not underground.

Right, and it's not a connection.

Okay.

The blue dots are actually a stormwater management facility.

Just the the point location We have to have mapped the sort of like the footprint of facilities as well So we have we have lots of data that well describes kind of what's out there in the field and the grid lines the grids is depicts where we have easements dedicated to public use and and that that's a little weird because I don't know if that's the how it currently exists or if it existed before the rerouting of Hillsdale

Okay, thank you.

Great questions.

I was going to wait until later, but we're all asking questions.

You mentioned your use of video assessments, which I think is extremely beneficial.

I was also wondering whether or not you are going to, or have thought about using, or can we use drones, because we have a lot of private property

where there are ponds, where there are reservoirs with houses all around it and if the neighbors aren't putting in money to upkeep that pond or reservoir, there's a risk of the dam breaching and all the water going out.

We do perform inspections of stormwater management facilities, not state regulated dams, but during these inspections, well I guess a lot of dams do

Hold back a stormwater facility.

So if it's a regulated stormwater facility, and there are 1,200 of them around the county, we go out there on foot.

We have the ability, the right to enter property to inspect facilities.

You can access the areas you go there.

Do you inspect those?

And when you're talking about state regulated, are there any that are just, if they're privately owned by all the residents who live around that reservoir,

Well, if it's a big enough impoundment, it's regulated by the state and they have the authority to inspect them.

We don't get into dams, but a lot of stormwater facilities are big lakes and there might be some crossover or overlap.

I'll go into a little bit more detail about those inspection programs.

Shifting back now to this concept of extent of service, really the question we're asking is what portions of drainage infrastructure is it reasonable for the county to maintain?

and so what we did was we decided to come up with some categories to say well does this category make more sense than this one and we really needed to to get a grip on kind of like what the different categories might look like and how much infrastructure was in each one and and so forth so we compare and make some decisions so the little image on the the right of the micro community

is basically kind of like a tool I'm going to use to just kind of describe kind of like these different categories.

So we have a government building up there, a couple of commercial properties and a small residential community.

And so the first category we came up with is infrastructure that lies on county properties and public easements.

That basically represents what we do currently.

So we certainly maintain infrastructure on our own properties and those properties that we have access to through public easements.

The next category we came up with was, well, if runoff from a county property is flowing through a pipe downstream, maybe that pipe should be our responsibility to maintain as well.

So we basically said, okay, anything downstream of a public property or in something in a public easement, we're going to include in this next category.

And by the way, these categories are cumulative, so they're building on each other.

The next one was, well, what about channels and pipes downstream of VDOT roadways, public roadways?

We know VDOT doesn't go all the way downstream until they hit a big river or something like that when they maintain their infrastructure.

So maybe that could be incorporated into our program.

And the last category is, OK, let's just go to the extreme and say any pipe or channel that receives runoff from more than two private properties is now not private, but more community.

So let's capture all the infrastructure that carries runoff from more than two properties.

And you might think, well that's, okay, question?

Well, before you go to the next slide.

Okay.

Earlier you said all of this would apply only in the development area, but we know that many county buildings, county properties are not in the development area.

Okay.

So, it would appear to me that, excuse me, categories one, two, and three

If they start at category one, could all still fall under an extended service that the county may be looking at because it does start with the county property even though it may not be in a development area?

That's a good question.

And would you like to sit on our advisory panel, by the way?

Because that's a really good one.

We did not include in the rural areas conveyances downstream of, say, a public school or something like that.

It's a question maybe we should ponder.

But for the data that I'm going to be delivering to you, that was not part of it.

We said, OK, rural areas, we're not really talking about those.

So we're not going to look even.

I think that the county properties category, that doesn't even include rural areas.

But for today, I understand that.

But I would ask that you consider the inclusion of categories one, two, and three if they're outside of the development area because each of those appear to be a causation or consequence of

a county property or VDOT or something like that.

Category 4 may be different so I'm not prepared to address that one right now.

I was going to say, so you would think that category 4 would just be this avalanche of additional infrastructure, but in case, or in fact, looking just at the data that we have for urban areas, it really only adds another 6% or so of infrastructure in addition to those previous categories

So because all of these other categories have captured most of the infrastructure that is in all of the categories Category four just adds a little bit more just for your interest.

Thank you And another point to make is that all combined

All of these extent of service categories combined is only about 40 miles of infrastructure in total.

That's really only about 25% of all the infrastructure that is out there in the urban areas according to the data that we have, which we feel like is pretty good.

So most infrastructure is really just serving a single private property.

You think of Lowe's or something like that where there's quite a bit of infrastructure, but it's just we're not going to go into

Right.

I'm going to add back to the comment I made just a moment ago.

Downstream of VDOT roadways could be a substantial expansion because VDOT roadways are throughout the entire county.

I would say yes and no because

I've had a number of community members reach out to me after a roadway has been paved where that has channeled water through the impervious surface to a more centralized location for dispersal that has caused downstream damage to their property.

So this is really getting complex when we start talking VDOT.

Thank you for your comments.

So that was basically trying to quantify the amount of infrastructure out there in these different categories.

So to qualify the infrastructure, we have done some work over the years.

Really 2018 and 2019 primarily is when we did a couple of assessments of the underground infrastructure, the pipes for the most part.

So the first bundle we did was about 10% of the area.

The second bundle was twice as big, but still only about 30% of all infrastructure we know of in the urban areas.

That would even qualify in those four categories of extensive service.

We didn't go on to

private properties that we knew were not going to be ever part of a program to do assessments.

But still, 30% is a really good sample size, and from that information we gathered, we now understand, according to this sample, that about 10% of the pipes out there have some sort of issue that puts them at risk for failure.

You can see the image on the left is a crushed corrugated metal pipe.

Obviously that can't convey flows properly, would not have the capacity of an uncrushed pipe, and who knows what's going on at the surface.

And then another 22%, so that's about 10% of the pipes.

22% of the pipes have moderate defects, which should probably be addressed one day, but are not imminently going to fail.

Some solutions in those cases could be that you align the pipe with a cast-in-place type of process.

It doesn't require you to even dig up the pipe to repair it.

And then there's quite a few that have minor defects and another third or so was in good condition.

So anyway, that gives us a sense of the quality of the infrastructure out there as well.

Now to completely shift to this concept of level of service, we needed to, in order to come up with some program cost estimates, describe what does a high level of service look like versus a low level of service.

And so these basically, the descriptions you see are what we came up with to differentiate different levels of service that could be considered.

So the highest one, let's look at the medium one.

So in the medium case, we would do these video assessments of underground infrastructure and visual assessments of channels every 20 years, which

Doesn't sound very frequent, but pipes don't age overnight, so it's probably perfectly reasonable.

And then those priority one issues from the previous slide, the risk of failure issues would be addressed within 10 years.

and then the priority two issues that had moderate defects would be addressed within 20 years and so through some spreadsheet modeling we were basically able to come up with some cost estimates per linear or per mile in this case of, excuse me, annual costs per mile of infrastructure for each of these levels of service.

and by multiplying these cost per mile with the number of miles that we calculated under those extent of service categories we presented way back in 2019 this chart here which I have not changed to update costs or anything like that although we all know costs have like dramatically increased but these were costs that we calculated for different combinations of level of service and extent of service

And I'll note that based on the board meeting from 2019, most of the board's comments at that time preferred or reflected a preference, I should say, for a medium level of service and this fourth extensive service category, the highest one that we considered.

Okay now I want to describe a couple more ways that we have been using to kind of inform like the condition or state of infrastructure in the urban areas.

Pretty recently we decided to lay eyes on enough channels in the urban areas to get a really a good sense of the quality of our channels as well.

So our environmental services tech guy made us this spiffy little application that we could use on our phones or a tablet to go in the field and enable us to, within probably about a week's worth of two people's time,

to assess 526 different points representing 12 miles of channels.

And that 12 miles is about 20% of all the channels in the urban areas.

So we, again, got a pretty good sample size of what's happening out there channel-wise.

And so with this app, we can kind of take a photo, input the dimensions, embed material of the channel,

and then note any problems like erosion, sedimentation, or lateral movement of the channels which sometimes happen.

And based on this data, we determined that 89% of the channels are actually in pretty good condition and only 11% are in a degraded condition.

This photo you see is, really it's a blue line so it's kind of a stream but it's such an urban channel that really, to me it seems more like a drainage channel than a stream.

But you can see some erosion that's happening very slowly but it's encroached enough to basically have this fence hovering in space, you know, across

the erosion area.

So we discovered about 60 spot issues as well, which means that an entire length of channel is not impaired, but there's like a spot maybe where a pipe's coming in and causing some problem at that location.

So anyway, just another way that we're trying to get a good sense of what's out there.

And then the last thing we did was to look at our database of drainage complaints, which we've been tracking since 2006.

So of about 430 total complaints or inquiries we've gotten over the years, 309 of those were related to drainage

or drainage issues.

And you can see the categories up there on the screen of what the different types of issues might be.

And those points over there reflect the locations in which we've received the inquiry.

And you can see that they're scattered all across the county, but they are concentrated in urban areas as you would expect.

and from the graph that over time you can kind of see that we're getting more inquiries and complaints over time.

I'm not sure if that's because there are more problems or if there's just more awareness that county staff are out there taking calls and coming out and providing help.

And what we found from this, and I really was just looking at a four-year period between 2019 and 2022 inclusive, where there were 145 complaints and about 25% of these cases fall within this

Extent of Service Category 4.

So it really falls within this realm of the county stepping up and taking some action to address a problem that's occurring.

And the problem that I've shown as an example on the screen is from a Lake Bernovia neighborhood downstream of Mountain View Elementary where there's a lot of runoff from Avon Street Extended that is basically traveling through neighborhoods

and in some cases causing some problems and we've gotten inquiries as to like who's going to fix this, you know, that sort of thing.

Alright, thank you.

Let's go through our order.

This is really excellent work, Greg, and great information.

Thank you so much for you and your team's work.

I guess one of my questions when I'm looking at the urban area and those spots that are highlighted, I guess this is kind of a big picture and maybe is out of our purview.

but many of these areas are also where there are connections to the city.

Well, you're bringing up the point of ensuring that we have a good relationship with our partners, you know, our partner agencies, and that includes VDOT as much as the city.

I think in this case of the city, it might even be clearer because you're

in the county or you're in the city and there's not a kind of a back and forth kind of thing where you do have that with VDOT.

VDOT roads are in the county and there's this small portion of maybe a big network that lies in the right-of-way.

but the point is we will have to coordinate with the city, VDOT, other partners like even the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority and the Albemarle County Service Authority sometimes has utilities that conflict or there might be drainage problems that are threatening a utility or something like that so coordination is going to be important, it's going to be important for us to know who's responsibility, who should step up, who's the lead for instance

I don't know if that answered your question.

But yeah, the boundary between the Sinning County obviously doesn't follow watershed boundaries.

And if these are broad points, or you want to start a discussion, we'll save that to the end, of course.

No, I think for right now, I'm not going to ask any more questions.

I think I could come up with a lot.

But I feel like this is just so much information right now, but it's really excellent.

I would love to have this presentation, if you don't mind.

because I don't think we had the entire presentation.

It changed a little bit.

That's fine.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Harper.

You had mentioned there's 10 percent of the

I guess the drainage and such were in poor condition.

It was a number of slides ago.

Yes, okay, risk of failure.

We're not dealing with all of them now.

We're poised to deal with them.

We're dealing with a couple of extreme cases right now where there was a sinkhole, for instance, in somebody's yard.

But we've identified something like what you see on your screen, but we're not out there quite yet repairing the problem.

But we are kind of getting ramped up to do so.

I'll get into that.

That's one of our last slides.

Okay, because that concerns me.

and I like to be proactive, so that's what I was wondering about.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This is great.

Very important information and I'm pretty sure I understand the EOS-LOS distinction.

I'm just wondering if there's anything that captures this sort of, instead of risk of failure, risk of damage.

In other words, there are some failures that are

more serious than others, more impactful than others.

When we got into a prioritization exercise, we considered not only kind of what was happening with the infrastructure, but its proximity to roadways or buildings, whether it could possibly threaten land, private property, something like that.

So I don't know if this is what you're getting at, but we certainly, as we specify which of these we're going to address first, we're going to take that into account.

See you on this.

Thank you.

No questions right now.

Thank you, Supervisor Galloway.

I don't have a question.

I have a comment.

When I was running for office in 2019, I was present and observed that July presentation, so I do recall a good bit of that.

As I was reading the materials and as Supervisor McKeel mentioned, there were some additional charts in here.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here.

As I'm trying to review it, it reminded me of being in the express line at the commissary where it says no more than about 12 items and the person ahead of me has got dozens of items.

And I want to ask the question, are you a math major who can't read or an English major who can't count?

Because as I was reading this, before your presentation, I felt like I was the English major who could not count.

And you have now made it understandable for me.

And so I want to thank you for helping me to better understand some of the complexities and the cost aspects

of this way beyond my trying to read it on my own.

So I want to thank you for that.

I have no further questions right now.

So where was I?

So we don't have very many more slides.

This one I don't want to spend a lot of time on, but I did want to reiterate the fact that over the years we've had three discussions at the top that were actually part of the consideration of a dedicated funding mechanism or stormwater utility.

So they were just really just touched on and kind of brought up as an element of the

the broader water resources programs that would need funding.

But then after that conversation ended in 2018, we did continue the conversations with the board about a program both in 2018 and 2019.

And it was the 2019 board meeting where we for once I guess got a little bit more feedback from the board instead of just like providing information and that's when we heard that

There seemed to be a preference at the time for this highest extent of service category.

that was a very short section and now we're just really going to talk about the work as we see it playing out and so again to kind of like just define what we're thinking about program scope we want to limit this to the comp plan development areas and certainly I heard your comment and we will we will think deeply about what what that means for county properties certainly county properties and maybe even rights of way in the in the rural areas of the county as well

We're talking about both pipes and channel systems, whereas the conversations in the past I think were really focused on channels.

And we're going to spend a little bit more time really kind of refining this concept of extent of service.

There are nuances to that and Chair Price, you certainly raised something for us to think about.

We'd like to put together kind of like a two-year roughly capital improvement plan to address these most critical needs that have come to our awareness through these assessments and these are really not all the problems out there it's the ones that we've come across through our

various assessments.

So obviously we'd want to do more assessments too and there's a bullet for that.

But for just sort of finalizing this CIP plan and in implementing that plan through hiring contractors and maybe sometimes engineers as an example of what that would look like with this you know one million dollar budget for instance

and that was sort of arbitrarily selected.

And based on 2019 costs, a million dollars would allow us to do 47 of the highest ranking prioritized projects.

18 of those would be a cast in place pipe project.

and that's what the picture up there reflects is that you line it with a fiberglass sock and you blow it up and it hardens and then you've got a pipe in a pipe.

So great way to fix a lot of problems because you don't have to dig up the pipe and disturb the land around it and so forth.

certainly want to explore that.

And then there are five which were identified as probably more reasonable to actually dig up the pipe and replace it because it's shallow or it's just a short segment or something like that.

And then other minor projects, lots of other minor projects and a lot of the projects that were identified and it doesn't seem like really a project but it's sort of like well we couldn't

I couldn't get to this part of the pipe during our last assessment because it was blocked with debris and so we really need to go back and do a better job and figure out a way to clean the boulders that might be in this big pipe in order to get in there to even assess it fully.

So a lot of little projects like that.

And then, of course, as I mentioned, we will continue the assessments throughout the urban areas so that over time, probably five years or more, we'll have maybe covered the entire urban areas, maybe as many as ten years, but we will keep chipping away at that as well.

And so there are also a number of processes and protocols that we would need to really firm up.

For instance, we're not, I know our facilities and facility FP&C division has a good way of tracking project management and so forth, but we really need to just make sure that whatever system they're using is a system that would work for us and if not make our own system to kind of like track not only the condition of all of our

you know existing infrastructure or the infrastructure that's out there but to sort of like track the improvements we make how often we go back there to do assessments that's going to take you know a data management system that we probably don't even have right now.

There are certainly complications with working on private properties where there are no easements.

For any work we do or improvements we make, we would obviously need to get public easements for drainage.

Maybe for some work we can get rights of entry, for instance.

Certainly to enter and do assessments, that would work.

but we need to work out those protocols and then as we discussed before there would be a need for us to you know enhance our understandings with different local partner agencies to say okay where are you guys stepping in and where will you not and where would we need to step up.

And certainly VDOT is one of those partner agencies.

So budget implications, and I'm going to cover this slide, but then I'm going to have Ryan Davidson from OMB step up and talk a little bit about this water resource fund that exists right now.

But just to make it clear that a program like this would require sustained funding,

However, it is scalable, meaning that we could implement it at the level of service that is afforded by the funding that is provided to the program.

It could be an iterative process over the years where we learn more about the needs.