Albemarle Conservation Easement Authority (ACEA) Meeting   9/11/2025

and Connor.

Do we have a motion to approve?

So moved.

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

A minute's parked.

Yeah, thank you.

The main topics of discussion tonight are three draft policies that have arisen from discussions, either at recent meetings or long-running discussions, things that

We think it might be helpful to formalize and standardize and you'll have seen we've provided rough drafts of policies that we think could be adopted.

There's no obligation to adopt any policy, certainly no obligation to adopt the policy as it's presented.

We can tonight either

You can give feedback.

We can have it up on the screen and kind of fine tune it if we feel like it's close to something after a bit of discussion.

If it needs more discussion, then you're welcome to give us more feedback.

We'll write it down and come back to you next time with a sense of drive.

So the first one we have is a building envelopes policy.

Now this is something that has arisen recently because the IRS is now requiring that all conservation easement donations should include a building envelope if the landowner wants to use the donation to apply for tax credits.

And it has never been the policy of this body to require building envelopes.

And I understand that we've taken the attitude that you'd rather see protection areas, avoidance areas, and anywhere else is fair game for structures.

But now that

Every landowner that I've dealt with since I've been here has requested that they're going to put building envelopes in.

We know that this body would prefer to see the building envelopes when they review the donation.

That was the one thing that came then.

I remember one of the few letters, I think, of disqualification that

that I read.

It's one of the few Virginia projects.

They spoke of dwellings or built, I forget what the order was, but they spoke of buildings in the first paragraph, and then they spoke of dwellings in the second paragraph or vice versa.

They used them interchangeably, which of course they are not.

So they managed to muddy up the thing pretty significantly, but what they're trolling for, I believe, is

dwellings.

I think it's a good idea, perhaps, particularly with big ag buildings, chicken houses, indoor art, et cetera.

It doesn't hurt us to gather those up as well.

I mean, I will say that building envelopes are a pain, but the conservation value of building envelopes can be quite clear.

They actually put building in places that is least

likely to seek damage, the ag value, the historic value, the scenic value.

And that's a good thing.

But yeah, they are obnoxiously unclear on this.

There's no policy particularly.

And in terms of building envelopes, how, I know we've dealt with most of these, but how big a building envelope is okay?

Like if you had just pretend you had a hundred acre parcel and it's five acres, okay?

Or is it?

I've seen some big ones.

The one element I saw was they didn't want, I know they didn't want the floating building envelopes because they didn't want it to be able to impair those elements that have conservation value.

If you have language in there where the building envelope can be modified or changed in any way,

You just said something that maybe you meant to say.

So when we look at those parcels, we look at what we're trying to protect.

And then we seem to gravitate towards finding this little, I don't know, one acre, two acre, three acre, something.

It's a nebulous spot.

There it is.

Declare.

But isn't it more of an exclusionary sort of thing?

I mean, you would mark all the area you don't dare build in and you have freedom to build anywhere else.

I mean, is it?

Or do we double down?

Take an area, a big area.

Let's say there's 30 acres of that hundred that you could build on without infringing on what we're trying to protect.

I've seen some donations, some easements from other holders where the building envelope

It wasn't the whole non-excluded area, but it was a big area.

Whatever we do with building envelopes, we'll still have the exclusion areas.

Those certainly aren't going away.

I don't know that we can just say the inverse of the exclusion is the building envelope.

I mean, if you have building envelope, if you have inclusion areas,

I'm sort of thinking unless you have a special case where you're trying to eliminate something that's between 200 and 500 feet, let's say.

You might for non-building impacts.

Right.

Driveways, clearing, stuff like that.

But also, the question earlier was, what does IRS want the envelopes to apply to?

And we don't know.

But in the past, most of our deeds that have envelopes have only applied those to dwellings, not to farm buildings,

I mean, it seems to me we, so are, again, I've been on this, it's been a while now.

So you can see every easement we've, pretty much every easement we've taken has a building envelope.

And if the IRS is saying we need a building envelope, you're not going to rely on people's good taste because it fails exercise.

It's a weak thing to do.

You know, I think we absolutely go with the building envelope.

And then we can, you know, in specific instances, we can talk about the size of the building envelope, what it is we're trying to protect.

And, you know, don't put it on top of the hill where there are no trees.

So let's take that process where the applicant comes in and says, this is where I'd like to build.

Is that okay with you?

That's nice.

But what about the case where

or they don't, aren't specific.

We're saying we're gonna pick what, one acre, two acre?

Are we gonna exercise judgment here?

And then we set precedent.

My thought process was in terms of- What's the guidelines on just to me, there ought to be something there that says like we do with house size, square footage.

No, it's kind of arbitrary.

So are you going to do the same with the building?

Or are you going to say you can build anywhere here?

Well, now you're getting to fairly floating.

And what are the, how did we come up with that?

Well, we're trying to protect the stream, we're trying to protect the view shed, we're trying to protect whatever.

And then what's left over could be 30 acres out of 100 acres.

You say anywhere in there, except the house has to be this size.

I don't know.

Or are we also playing the game of access, easement, roads, paving, that kind of thing?

What are we doing with this?

The only thing this says is that if the landowner wants a building envelope,

I would like the donor to rely on the donor's attorney for that.

I would like to see us identify the areas that are to be protected and to be excluded and then direct them and say that.

You identify a building envelope, but before we bring it to this body, you'll have the building envelope.

In favor of what's up there.

Because our templates declare that we're not providing any tax advice.

We're distancing ourselves from tax advice, and we don't want to be there.

Well, they certainly have been unfavorable to those projects that don't.

A lot of people, surely there are strings attached to this, someone might say, but there's no one at the end of the string.

Sometimes you get by, I mean, a landowner once said to me, I'm going to do X and all I can say to him is the chamber's not always loaded.

So sometimes you get away with something that if you got caught would not be what you got away with.

Yeah, I like this and I also think this conversation itself is a worthwhile one to have because it's going to be the donor's attorneys that are going to come up and present us with something that now we've had a discussion.

Yeah, I mean, I think to your point, there's an art here, not a science.

I don't think we're going to be able to create a template that's going to work in every single case.

Right.

And, you know, they just live on a farm.

I mean, the only thing I'll say about farm structures is things change, right?

You know, you need a running shed because you got something going on or pasture or whatever.

And so,

I don't know that we're going to know the answer where the IRS comes down on this.

And again, I think we just have to look at the individual easements.

If you have a property that is deep in the woods somewhere, the requirements or what

The property suggests to you that you might do in terms of terms is going to be quite different than as if you're at Castle Hill.

So each property is going to suggest different parameters for building envelopes.

I do think looking at the memo that at least in the way that we building envelopes develop them at VOF, we don't review and approve what a landowner brings to us.

We develop in concert with the land of the building envelope because it's a continuum.

I mean, you get somebody advised by, you know, rest his soul, Steve McClain, and they will say, well, let's have that building envelope on the top of that hill overlooking the state scenic river.

Yes, but if we're going to craft language for the memo, I would like to say something more like developed in concert with the landowner and the staff rather than say, you bring us something because they'll have no clue what to bring in.

And then we'll bless it from their position of dead zero knowledge.

They're going to ask Steve McLean or somebody if they

Thake, to proceed from zero.

And then you have a... We're having that fact compiled right now with the landowner.

So if we could just tweak the sort of the verbs that you're using there, I think it would feel more like what

On the second line, do you, I'm looking at it and say those are envelopes reviewed and approved.

And ultimate, and then also- Developed by the authority.

You're good to say staff if we mean staff.

Don't stop.

You're not the authority.

Let's play out this scenario.

So we have the dark forest, 100 acres of just forest.

And someone wants to put one dwelling on it.

So what does a building site mean?

Does it mean the yard?

The volleyball court?

The tennis court?

So someone says, well, I want to cut down five acres of trees because I want a big yard.

OK, so you say, all right, five acres.

The next guy that comes in, you feel that that's too much or something.

Yes.

So the next one only gets two acres.

And that is how the proposals are created.

We had an example just like that that was approved by this body last meeting or the meeting before.

where the main conservation value was that it was all the property was all forest and there were no structures on it but the donor wanted to be able to build one dwelling and associated buildings and we worked with him he told us where he wanted the dwelling and we worked with him to create language such that in this case the building envelope which was about

Two and a half, three acres would cover all the places where he wanted to build and the driveway and we said nothing outside of the building.

But if he had come in and said

I want the building envelope to be 10 acres of this parcel.

We would have said, well, that's kind of cutting into the conservation values there.

And we wouldn't be sure about that.

And we'd have probably said we don't recommend that, but we can take it to the authority and see what they say.

So there is that back and forth, but we never say for sure.

They're not going to approve this or they will approve this and we can, even in the most obvious cases, we would say

We don't recommend you do this, but we will do if you insist.

So the language that Richie introduced still gives you the flexibility about develop because each and every one is I mean, they come in different shapes and sizes.

So do we need to do anything formal to them?

It sounds like we're close to approving this.

So I'd like to try to get the language in such a way.

And some envelopes.

I think it's perfect because the IRS is not clear.

I don't think we have to be draconian.

We do, don't we?

I don't think so.

I don't remember particularly the ACE program where people were short on money.

They would be transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars with no advice at all.

Yeah, I don't recall closing up one of the donations for this body without an attorney.

I mean, what I'm saying is related to this.

I mean, some landowners are more risk tolerant.

Some lawyers are going to present the situation to his clients so that his client feels comfortable being risk tolerant and having only dwellings or only farm buildings over 10,000 square feet or 5,000 square feet.

And I think we need to, there needs to be room for us to move within that.

I mean, even during the- Well, I mean, what's in terms of- Even during the draft, I think the proposal- Yeah, I think the draft should come to us unless the guy is represented personally.

So they shouldn't be, we're not talking about the deed, which obviously requires legal representation.

You're saying anybody who even has a proposal summary

I think it's sort of a good basic idea.

Strongly encourage is good enough.

And again, I mean, in the case of Calvin Park, the owners

super sophisticated real estate attorney.

I mean, we have a form that says, among other things, who's your lawyer and what's his name and email address.

And then there's a box that says, even though we have told you it's a good idea, I declined to have the legal counsel.

Even the legal system allows you to represent yourself.

Yeah, let them know it's a good idea.

Yeah.

So do you need a motion?

Yes, we can.

I move that we approve the languages.

That's revised.

All in favor?

Thank you.

Okay.

Moving on.

So the second one on the agenda

is something that has been discussed by this party a couple of times this year and that is a question of whether to require easement donors to combine a multi-parcel property into one at roughly at the same time as the easement is donated

We can get into discussions of whether it's before or after or simultaneously.

But as part of the donation process, those parcels should be legally combined as then the landowner should submit an application for a boundary line investment to legally eradicate the internal boundary lines and to make it legally one parcel.

And here is a

What does that second paragraph mean?

Yeah, so we often encountered donations.

For example, if it were a donation of a property that's, say, 200 acres, then it would be fairly standard for the authority to accept it and to allow it to be split into two and sold separately.

But that property may already be multiple parcels, say five or so.

And in that case, it wouldn't necessarily make sense to require them to turn the five into one.

because within the easement, it's allowed to be split into two.

So in this instance that you just said, if the easement says that there's one division, right, the owner heard this language would have the ability to have two parcels with two different owners.

And that just doesn't preclude later boundary line adjustments.

Okay, so they could present it as two equal, and later move the separation line.

It's the deed of that.

That's for external boundary line adjustments, yeah.

Sorry, I just want to clarify something that's really basic that I thought I understood a long time ago, but somebody told me maybe I don't understand it anymore.

If you have one course, and it has, let's say, four division rights,

assigned to it.

You could build four houses on that one parcel without having to divide in this county.

You can for the small lot rights, although I believe if you do three or more, you have to do something to ensure that the division

But this is something I'm not totally sure about, but what I believe I heard is that it's no longer possible to build multiple houses on a single parcel based on 21-acre rights.

So if you've got a parcel that, say, has no development rights, but is 105 acres, so it could be five 21s, you can't build five houses on it without dividing it.

You can if the multiple houses are based on small lot, the two acre development right lot, but you can't if they're based on the potential for 21 acre lots, is the way I understand that.

And what I'm thinking is this county at least used to be one of the most sensible counties in terms of, and I mean, that's a couple of broader things.

One of the most sensible counties in terms of the fact that if you've got a 300 acre single parcel of record that you can build

X, you know, if you have four division rights or four development rights, whatever you call them, that you can have actually four houses in something like Spotsylvania.

You absolutely cannot do that.

You have to divide it into four tracks because there's an absolute rule, one house per parcel.

And so as you think about consolidation of parcels, the point of which is to keep, is to make easements more durable.

to absolutely forestall and ward off the concept that somebody might sue the authority and say, well, I've got 18 division rights.

So I should be able to divide that are 18 parcels of record.

But if the easement says otherwise, that's a contract in perpetuity, right?

voluntarily agreed to.

Well, I mean, I think you can find, if you go before a judge who has a property rights orientation, for example, you may find, you may not agree with it, but you may find an interpretation that the property shall not be divided means the property shall not be further divided.

And that's when you're going to go to crowd.

When we all think that we've brought belt and suspenders of the language to try to forestall, that's interpretation of the language.

But the ultimate way that you can be sure is to consolidate parcels.

And that's why VOF is now going to every county in the union, as it were, and talking to every planning department

to figure out what their specs are and how we can organize so that we don't prevent what the date allows, like three houses in spots, you don't want to know division.

But we don't, I mean, there is an easement in this county that is 18 acres total.

And it has 18 subdivision parcels of record.

It was done by someone who was very high up in the Internal Revenue Service a few years ago.

He gave the easement because he looked at it and said, self, why would I not?

But you know, that's an extreme example.

If that interpretation were to hold with that particular tract, you would have no easement.

Now I'm not saying it should, I'm not saying that it would be right for somebody to contest it.

But as we think about making easements durable onto the seventh generation, this is one of the ways that has been recommended to us by our AG legal counsel that we should think about making the easement more durable.

So the real life situation, so the mountain land at Castle Hill, which was given to the Nature Conservancy, I think it was, originally it was 340 acres.

And I think there were 50 or 60 parcels, just crazy, crazy numbers.

And so the easement said,

There are 50 or 60 parcels, but they shall be treated as one.

And, you know, my only reticence is if you've talked to anybody who's tried to consolidate parcels in the county now, it's a long, expensive process, surveyors and so forth.

I think back to the Castle Hill situation, to basically take 60 parcels or whatever it was and make them one on Mount William,

would have been a really, really expensive task.

And I'm not sure we want to get into that.

And maybe there's some risk that some land rights judge makes a determination in the future.

There's always some risk in anything you do.

This is pretty draconian, I will say, this version.

I think it's important that we try to encourage it and do it when we can.

I'm not sure that we want to require this and we're trying to figure out in the next year or so, and it would be great to have, you know, Albemarle County's input in this, how we can probably go

through Vaco and maybe get a statewide change so that it's not so hard.

Because we are running into this, that it's time and money.

It seems like a simple approach would be because it's not the internal lines.

The perimeter is what's important.

The internals run into the vacation to parcels ordinances that tee it up as if it's for different circumstances, and then it ends up applying to something like this.

So you end up having to, I mean, I think this county is one of the most difficult in terms of

what they require.

That's not what the state law requires.

That is the that goes to the edge of what the state law says you can require.

Well yeah we should try to figure out easier ways but

And I also think in this county, you don't have to do everything that's here.

Whereas if you have, you know, something that says maybe one division and four houses on 250 acres, you may have all, if it's just one parcel of record, you may be able to do everything that you want to do within that one parcel of record if you have two plus division lines.

I think it's a mistake to mandate that.

Mary, I really appreciate your point of view, but again, you know, walk across the street, there's some risk you could get hit by a bus.

Let's just accept that risk.

I think as a policy doing something that when I started talking to planning directors about this, about the second guy said, don't ever use the word shall.

If you're going to do anything that would pertain to the various counties, you must use the word they.

If you encourage and you need to make a decision every time,

On top of everything else, you're deciding about whether the terms are okay, the building envelopes are in the right place.

The authority has to decide, do we require this particular landowner to do this combination or not as well?

I don't know what the criteria for that decision are.

I just think easing us in the direction of thinking that it's a good idea to think about this.

Like I have to fill out a form for every easement we do.

And it says consolidation of parcels, question mark.

And there's a box that says basically not applicable.

And that's when you've got one house, no division, 120 acres, which I have one of those in September.

There's nothing to do.

It's one parcel record.

So you just check that.

Or if their division rights adequate to do everything that's in the easement on one parcel, then perhaps we're good.

But you know, sometimes that one that we saw, what was it a month or two months ago where- There's three that were together?

It really looked like we had three parcels.

They didn't have much in the way of individual rights.

They weren't very big.

I mean, I would propose an encouraging and nudging resolution rather than a requirement one.

In your opinion, would you like the authority to adopt something if the thing being adopted is just a statement encouraged?

The discussion is good.

Just the fact that we're getting it on our radar as something to keep in mind.

In a year, the IRS might start treating this topic like it is building on the lens and say the IRS requires that parcel lines be.

And but then it kind of takes me to a point that it seems like a mechanism of change could possibly come from the

the planning side of it, the county ordinance aspect of it.

You know, like we talked about easy, like we talked about potentially, you know, it's an overlay that they're dotted lines.

Just like the situation that Sherry just mentioned that I think we've had two recently, and didn't both of them agree to

combined them.

But Wayne, I don't remember the other one.

The other one, sorry.

And I remember the one Sherry mentioned.

And I don't think that one would relate to paragraph two.

But that one, because they were small parcels, you know, three were kind of together, one was kind of in the front or however it was laid out.

One option here is we could add it as a small section in the proposal summary template.

So we just know what the deal is.

But you know, actually, Sherry, so you just hit on a poor point.

That's a point.

You do, you never combine, or whatever you call it, combine, do for them, parcels before you record the easement.

Frank Thomas came up with what I think is a beautifully elegant solution, which is that you do it by operation of the deed, you do it within the deed.

Because in fact, the combination of the parcels is almost as strong a conservation action and is a supportive conservation action to the actual conservation easement.

So by showing the one, you're actually strengthening and dovetailing with the other.

I think it's a it's a lovely solution because yes, you can do it afterwards.

So in the case, Sharon, we were talking about Mr. Sufizobrist.

He was going to record it afterwards, but then he changed his mind and said the

And I'm not suggesting that applies in every case.

That's just in his case.

We let this get in him.

Yeah.

That's why you can really.

What's that?

So I just said fine.

The thing about this deal is that if Peter found some advice that this is good advice,

then they must think that recording immediately before is contemporaneous and therefore just as good.

But if we're going to make a policy about how we would do this, I think we wouldn't as an institution want to favor doing it that way.

Or are y'all going to work on it?

We know to add it to the proposals.

Yeah, that's fine.

I'd like to have a resolution passed, one that has the word encourage and nudge.

This county is such that its situation is a little different than- Well, if you want to do it now.

Plenty of times when we don't- I struck a lot of stuff.

Situation is adequate to the task.

So something general, short,

We have another template.

We have a lot of parentheticals that get deleted.

Yeah.

Clean it up.

We're close to getting it if you want to.

Mostly striking.

Chris Wade.

This is a step, it does have a little more edge to it.

This is the beginning of the conversation.

We can still come back to you.

It's up to your strong thoughts.

I'm all right with it.

You got it, right?

Well, you're good.

Any more discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

The last thing, this is another thing that has come up recently.

It is common practice for land trust easement holders to authorize staff to make certain actions and decisions on their behalf, specifically in the cases where approval request is required or needed in the deed and the

Materials being approved that the proposed activity is quite straightforward and is quite obviously not impacting the conservation values on the property.

Currently, the authority hasn't delegated any decision making power to staff.

And so we never do.

But we've had a few instances come up, particularly last meeting and the meeting before where

We were bringing matters to this body that perhaps didn't need to come before you all.

So we've proposed certain specific types of approval that we think staff could act on on the authorities behalf.

Anything not mentioned we would bring to the authority as normal.

And there's also a clause in here that says if staff is unsure, even if it's within the category where staff has the authority to approve, we can still bring it to your office.

We think we have an issue, especially because we would take the pressure off you.

Yes, we would definitely err on you.

So you've got in here, if it

It's a yes or no, does it impact protected areas?

So those are protected areas that are mentioned in the easement, be it a buffer or wetlands or something like that.

Interesting, okay.

So let me chime in here.

This is something near and dear to my heart.

So my personal view is that utility easements are one of the greatest threats to conservation that we've seen in our generation.

And so what's happened with utility easements is, in many cases, they start out as something really simple.

We're going to allow electricity to cross this property and hang poles, hang wires on poles and so forth without any specified right away.

And what happens is the courts increasingly will allow other things to occur.

in Almar County, electric transmission lines were only allowed to carry electricity.

And then they strung up a communication cable.

It was a class action lawsuit, and the plaintiffs won.

But subsequently, a judge said, well, actually, that was wrong.

You should be allowed to have communication cables on an electric power line.

So in the most recent case, a judge ruled that Firefly weren't any

Any broadband carrier could access the utility right of way for their services, any.

So what's happened is these interpretations have expanded.

And in my particular case, there is a 1929 easement that allowed for electric lines across the property.

And the museum issued a possible 760

And I'd like to just cite the Firefly right-of-way requests that they currently have which essentially gives them access to the

They deem necessary and fit as well as controlling all vegetation and so forth.

So in my particular case, the easement they wanted was along the driveway.

So that would give them the right to cut down all the trees on the driveway.

And I pushed back on the Firefly guy.

He said, we're not going to change it.

We've signed 2,900 of these in the area.

So people are signing these easements.

And he said, we would never cut a tree down.

like the Beasman gives to the right of country.

Yeah.

So it's both overhead and underground, right?

Even though in my cases, I have no argument.

The right of ingress and egress over the set of purposes and any adjoining lands of the graners at any and all times for the purpose of exercise, the showing of rights herein granted and for doing anything necessary for use or convenient in connection

I'm gonna see where they define premises.

Right.

And then that convenient, so same process.

That premises would be the whole parcel.

Cause they gotta get on to, they gotta get on

So the other problem is you don't know how the technologies change.

And so you're signing up for something in perpetuity that you don't know the outcome.

And again, going back to the 1929 Eastman's Southwest Mountains, they were basically

They were signed and put up a pickup truck to get electricity to the farms.

Now there's the possibility of the largest transmission line in central Virginia.

And certainly with data centers, there's not going to be less of this.

There's going to be more of this.

And so I think, personally, from a conservation perspective,

easement utilities are one of the most important aspects of conservation values going forward.

We talk a lot about preserving scenic resources, preserving the character of the land, that sort of thing.

And so these things can fly in the face of that.

So I don't, the preamble here, I should have said, started with this.

It's not as though we don't trust staff because you guys are very talented and you've been through a lot.

Unfortunately, some of us have scars on our back from having done this for a long time.

Peter, your example makes me wonder.

I mean, we really have people between a rock and a hard place.

Because you may have had an option to have something other than Firefly.

But like in our house, there's nothing else.

What about Starlight?

But you know what I'm saying is that sometimes that's the option that everybody's been waiting for and that they feel is their main and only option and so we may end up if we can't get them to to adjust their contract then we are in the position of telling people they can't use

One or more of the providers.

I mean, it is interesting.

So you're just like Elon Musk on the one hand and protecting the conservation values and the other.

And this is first time we've seen Sherry in that situation.

But, you know, musk aside, I'm not sure it's always an option for people to use something different.

I'm not sure that we could use Starlink if we wanted to.

I mean, that never sort of presented itself as an option for us.

Everybody in our part of the free market.

You have to have an approved pocket.

Well, I think in that case, Sherry, I think that you make a very fair point.

But I think in that case, if we were reviewing your East property that we have Eastman on, and those were the facts, then the body would likely say, well, okay, we get it.

But I think

I'm just worried about what you're saying, that they won't change.

I can only speak from my experience, but the feedback I got was no chance.

The last few that we looked at last time, all of those were underground.

They were only for, well, one crossed over, but it was just one thing.

So you take the example, utilities, medicine, infrastructure that serve up the properties.

If it's a major power line,

It's 100, 150 feet wide.

Right.

Because they need the high power to run it.

Yeah, what you agree to now may not be eventuality.

That's the whole point.

It sees things off.

Well, I know you did.

I'm working with an energy company that's trying to get in, but anyway, they, and you heard some of this, 40% of the energy in Virginia is from out of state.

So the governor and everybody's looking at how do we do that?

A lot of it's in Northern Virginia.

And what's the grid operator, TJP or PJM?

They fast track 50 projects that got the leapfrog over

a lot of these others, whether they're data center driven or whatever, but it's gonna come.

I mean, as far as what's the future is, I mean, I think the next three to five years, we're gonna see a lot of new power lines and feeding around the state and going over rural properties.

So my thought was if it gets to be one of those big kahunas, I think it needs to come back, you know?

So we could either change this to the ACA or we could distinguish here between the local network underground distribution lines.

So again, if you look at what went on in my particular area, so this is partly due to Firefly, but they're upgrading the distribution power lines.

So if you look at the Cismont store, they just put in a fiberglass

right next to another coal that's much taller.

They've installed probably four or five newtles.

And it is, in a rural historic district on the scenic byway, these are very significant intrusions on the conservation value of the surrounding land.

Again, what you agree to today isn't necessarily what you're going to get.

So you just say the distribution line is the distribution line, they can do whatever they want.

The reality is you may not like the outcome.

So I drove out Garth Road last night.

Garth Road is, the power lines are just terrific.

And so I don't think landowners appreciate how these things can change at the bottom.

And I think it requires more oversight if we're indeed trying to protect conservation.

And Sherry makes a fair point.

There may be instances where there are no alternatives.

But anyway, this is one man's opinion.

I think it's valid.

This has nothing to do with us trusting you guys or your expertise.

The landscape's changing right now.

I think it's made us more wary.

And I mean, this goes back to, I feel like even one of the very first ones

One of the easements that they wanted to put in and we were worried they're gonna put structures in within those easements too.

So let me get this straight.

I mean, there's power lines and then there's communication, fiber optics.

Is this all bundled together?

So again, what's happened is there was a ruling that said that any broadband carrier has access to the power line.

But what if there's no power line?

If there's no power line, then if they have to use it, they will go to the right-of-way, the highway right-of-way.

And they'll bury it or run polls.

So again, I just know my neighborhood.

One of our neighbors buried the distribution line some years ago for an incredible amount of money.

At their expense.

At their expense, their own personal expense.

And they just put a large firefly pole in its driveway on the VDOT right-of-way, right in the end of the driveway for its country.

Because Elon Musk aside, I mean, he's got competition.

They're about to launch.

So there's going to be a choice.

But I often think he gets rid of all his cell phones in certain areas, particularly rural areas.

I mean, I'm up in the

Canadian border for two weeks, two weeks ago.

I thought I was getting off the grid.

But my Airbnb host thought I should have Starlin.

So I drive up the driveway to this little cabin.

with deer in the yard.

And there is this white plate sitting in the front.

Now, what is that?

Oh, Starling.

But it works.

In fact, we use it in our business now.

It runs in an 18th or better.

But we have competition coming.

So there is a choice.

And the prices aren't that bad, really aren't.

So if you're trying to allow

So what I've heard, am I wrong?

I think just to bring us back to the policy discussion, I've heard a desire from a few to change these two boxes to ACEA.

Peter, is it okay to leave that third one, do you think, and just deal with the sort of transmission?

So I'm sorry, so you're saying the second one, the second one is that it's just serving that property that we hold the easement on.

Increasingly we're finding that where people you just used to just run a wire to the house or to the barn or whatever it was, the actual utilities actually want an easement even for that.

Right.

But the

In the underground easements, I'm learning they aren't strictly underground.

Utilities or the internet service providers are kind of big about what they're what they're putting in but it may be case by case but if there's a long enough run then it's going to require some type of square utility box that is going around and it might be more attractive than a telephone pole but I you know at some some time it might be important for this body to be aware of that considering I think last month that's the

Is that the case if it came up where this body wanted to know what kind of facilities are going to be part of that run?

say yes or no.

I just think it's a question of oversight.

And so I think, you know, we meet monthly by March.

Yeah.

In terms of the deed and this body's position in terms of enforcing it.

If it says that those are to be reviewed and they're not reviewed, you're in a better position.

If they're to say they maybe could be reviewed, then the landowner is kind of in a different, you know, more ambiguity in that sense.

So James, back to,

The chart, I do think we were headed and said points two and three should go to ECA.

And then are we comfortable with the others?

Yes.

Okay.

Do we have a motion?

So moved.

I'll second.

Further discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

Our template currently says that for the utility easements

Esmonts or did you just say that the improvements are okay?

It's interesting because Brightspeed, which I have, has underground wire, no easement, no right of way.

And everybody's asking for easements now.

Which is why they need to come to the authorities, we understand that.

So I think the template needs to be changed to clarify and so I'll work on that.

There's going to be an easement that it needs to come before.

So I'll clarify that in the template.

Good catch.

Thank you.

I don't know why, because if you cancel the service, the easement's useless.

Again, you just don't know what's going to evolve.

And again, this gives them the right to go overhead over underground.

And again, in my case, everything's underground.

OK, great.

We can revisit.

I mean, it is bad from your standpoint.

We have new business, James?

Not new business, we have old business.

We do have a couple of items of old business.

Sorry.

The dog in the car.

Well, I'm parked in the shade and the windows are down, so make me feel worse.

I knew I had to be here for a quorum.

His grooming appointment was late.

Do we have to vote on anything?

If we have to vote, yes, we need you for a quorum.

If not, we just continue for information.

I'll read the minutes.

So this first item of all business is something that I believe has been discussed before I started.

You know, PEC and VOF have signs that they give to landowners to put up on their property to market that's protected.

And certain members have expressed interest in having signs of

for ACEA's and I've been working on a draft design.

I've got a quote from the sign printer.

We figured out that we can accept donations to

pay for these signs, whether they're from authority members or from landowners themselves.

We're looking at, we could either do thick plastic, which the VOF signs that I've seen are thick plastic, maybe PEC.

The old ones were metal, a lot of them faded.

So we have those two options.

The minimum audit size is a batch of 25 or 50 or 100.

And the rough costs for those runs from that.

$15 per sign if we're only getting a few down to $5 a sign if it's 100 plastic.

So that's just for your information.

I don't think they want us to.

I'd like to see our letters and see what they actually say.

You can start using that money for, right now we're using it for paying Montana for doing the monitoring and setting the amounts that you all determine aside for future legal defense.

500 bucks.

We can handle it.

I like that both of you hate that.

I was gonna say, what's up?

No, no, no.

So the only question I have is whether we should say Albemarle County Eastman authority, because if someone sees it and they think, I'd like to know about Eastman and Albemarle County, it's more specific.

You may remember an unpleasant encounter where I think putting the whole thing.

I mean we're a separate legal entity and so that's what I mean.

I mean to some extent but my thought was there's a certain efficiency by using Albemarle County and their logo.

This is the official wordmark, which is used in certain places instead of the seal.

The real tension is, is it readable?

Where it comes from is maybe misleading.

Which is the place for them to go.

I think we have to say something, because otherwise, if people have questions, they don't know who to call.

OK, so you're going to put the telephone number up there.

But you could run it on the edges.

And it could be small enough that somebody who cares would walk up to the sign and say, oh, that's the body, and this is the contact.

Yeah, a smaller print might draw them in a little bit.

As long as we don't represent that these easements are held by the County of Almonte.

The more I think about it, Sherry, I mean, there are certainly, it's possible that there are people in Almonte County and perhaps elected officials that don't agree entirely with the easement activity.

So get your point.

I mean, the supervisors may think that they're in control of the thing.

And somebody complains about something that might be happening on Woodlands Road, for example.

Supervisor gets involved.

I agree.

So if you wanted to take the real estate that the Albemarle County logo is as useful as it might be somewhere and use that to somehow distribute

The real proper attribution, that'd be all right.

I wouldn't make it any smaller.

It always irritates me when I see a blurry sign.

It doesn't get any better.

But no, I mean, really.

They eat almond.

Yeah.

You could get it in there.

I mean, is there any, I don't know of anything that prevents us from using the

It's not trademarked, but our staff, they're sensitive and possessive about that.

Keep the conservation easement big.

I just like the physical notice that if you come to the property, if you're looking to buy it, or even if you're, you know, you're the landowner, you see their mind and this thing.

Yeah, I think it's great.

Absolutely.

I'd suggest tacking up a copy of the deed up right over there.

Like that's, that might be a bit extreme.

Infant big enough for Dave to read it.

So again, I think we have direction, right?

Yes.

There is one other item of small business.

Last month, we informed you about a homestay application that had come in for the dwelling on Taylors Gap Road, which is one of the Reagan Mountain

Preservation tracks, which this body has an easement on.

This is the same parcel as the Ragged Branch Distillery.

And Jay is not participating in this.

He recused himself last month.

Enterprise, and we were directed to tell the applicants that what they had proposed, which you can see here in the short description they gave, what they had proposed was an inn and would turn the single family dwelling into an inn.

And because the deed only permitted

a single family dwelling as a structure and it did not permit an end then turning it into that use would mean the structure is no longer permitted under Leesman and so we communicated that to the applicants and they have since come back to say that it is still a single family dwelling and one of the owners lives there full time and so we're going to seek more information from them about who that owner is and

They said they would stick to two rooms instead of five rooms.

I can offer context.

I'm just sorry, I just don't get it.

And this is just for your information, though.

We're seeking more information.

More next month, hopefully.

That is a call of our old business.

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

Motion to adjourn?

Second.

All right.

Thank you, guys.

Well done, folks.

I'm glad that these were worthwhile conversations to kind of iron some stuff out.

Yeah, pleasure to meet you all.

Service in your own right.