Economic Development Authority Meeting   8/18/2020

All righty.

So that establishes a quorum and we're permitted to go forward.

Because the officers that we had at the last meeting have vacated their office and their membership on the Economic Development Authority, we need to, the first order of business is to nominate and to elect officers going forward.

Let's see, we've got three offices.

We've got the chair, the vice chair, and the secretary treasurer.

And the election of those officers will be to fulfill the unexpired terms of the prior officers.

And those terms expire in January of 2021, when we will meet at the annual meeting and elect new officers for one-year terms.

We do allow, Virginia Code does allow for the secretary treasurer to be someone from outside the board membership.

But in the past, we haven't we haven't had that designation.

The process involves a nomination for an office.

There has to be a second.

We would close the nominations, discuss and then vote on each on each office.

We start with the chair, move to the vice chair and then do the secretary treasurer.

If, however, there is a single slate of candidates for the offices, and there's no opposition, and we have a consensus to present the slate, then someone can nominate the entire slate.

It could be seconded, and we can move to closed nominations, closed discussions, and just move towards an election by acclamation.

So the first thing I would ask is, is there a slate

Well, I'm willing to do it through the end of the year if that would be helpful.

I know often these people aren't here to jump into these roles.

So I'm willing to take that on just through the end of the year if nobody else wants to do it.

All right.

So George has nominated Don.

All right.

Are there any further nominations?

All right.

All right.

I'll second that.

That's fair.

All right, no further discussion.

We'll just put the matter to a vote.

All in favor of Don serving as chair until the annual meeting?

Aye.

Opposed?

All right.

Oh, thank you.

And thank you.

In fact, you can do whatever you want.

All right.

And I'll second it.

Any other nominations?

All right, let's just move to the vote.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed?

All right, the ayes have it.

And obviously the most important spot, the Secretary-Treasurer.

It does not have to be.

No, it can be.

I mean I wonder if it would make sense to have a secretary from the board and then have Cecilia serve as the treasurer.

I think it does make sense.

I don't know if that's been vetted, so I'm not in a position to be able to volunteer Cecilia to do that.

Doug looks like he's unmuted himself.

Well, I don't know if in fact that it could be a member, other than a member of the EDA itself to serve in that role.

But as we all understand is that the Cecilia and the finance department does do the heavy lifting.

So I think that whoever would serve in that role for the remainder of this year, that seems to be the way this is kind of setting up, would have good confidence that they'll be in good hands with Cecilia and other staff.

Okay, that's fine.

Since she's doing all the work, I thought she could serve in that role.

Understand.

Even though I don't fully grasp what it would entail working with her, I'd be happy to hold the post temporarily if it didn't entail too much extra work.

I'm probably the most likely member unable to make all the meetings, etc.

So I don't want to

Well, and I think Jennifer provides significant amount of support in that effort.

I do assist Cecilia.

Hi everybody.

Yes, I think that whoever might take that position does get significant support with respect to financials for the EDA.

We've always been made ourselves available for any questions regarding any transaction, regarding income forecasting.

We work really closely with the team in the EDO office to make sure that you get the information from a financial standpoint that you need to make the decisions that you

Okay, well, Dave, if you're willing to give it a shot, I'll make that nomination.

Stuart, did I hear you second that?

Okay.

Alright, so we'll just move to...

We'll just move to the election.

Opposed?

OK, let me find the agenda.

I thought I had opened it up, but I seem to have lost it.

Hold on just a second.

So it's posted on the- Oh, and Jennifer's got it on the screen, yeah.

Okay, I pulled it up.

So I guess we need to approve the minutes.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

Any discussion?

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

The minutes are approved.

I don't think we have a financial report this month.

That's correct.

We'll have a report next month due to the county's ongoing fiscal year ending.

Okay, I look forward to an exciting report from Dave next month.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the EDA, Roger Johnson, Albemarle County Economic Development Director.

A couple of things I wanted to make you all aware of, and I noticed that Matt Lawless was in the audience, and I will certainly invite him to make any comments as well.

I think it's important for the CDA to know that there is a company that is looking to relocate to Central Virginia and we have been working with the state and the VEDP as well as the Central Virginia Partnership for Economic Development to find appropriate sites.

After some vetting and working hand in hand with Matt Lawless, the Town Administrator, we submitted a

a site for consideration in Scottsville.

The company itself has been to visit.

And as far as we know, we are still on the shortlist of potential locations for a new business.

It would employ about 100 people.

These would have career ladder jobs.

It certainly would be good for the town of Scottsville.

I would like to share more details, but as you can imagine, it wouldn't necessarily be appropriate to do so at this time.

given that the project is still in process.

We'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have as directors, provided that you afford me the opportunity to say no comment.

It would be probably most closely related to agriculture.

No sir, they're not.

They have other locations throughout the United States but this would be the first one I believe in Virginia for that.

and I don't know if Matt has his hand raised or not, if he wanted to make any general comments.

The second thing I wanted to make you all aware of is some time ago, pre-pandemic, we had spent some time vetting a concept called Venture Central, which is a collaboration between the city, the county, UVA, and now the Chamber of Commerce,

Last time we addressed this issue, the Chamber was not part of the collaboration, but they have voted to become part of it, and they will be supporting this endeavor.

The County plans to submit a Go Virginia grant application on September the 8th, if not a few days before, and in effect, we will be asking for $300,000 in grant funding from Go Virginia.

to finance the project called Ventures for Central Decree to begin starting a hub for activity, for innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Again, partners are UVA, City, County, and the Chamber.

Obviously, there would be partners throughout our community who would be joining in this, but the primary steering committee is comprised of those folks.

We hope that that will be approved.

If it is approved regionally, it would go to the state level in mid-October, and then in late October,

notified whether or not we received the grant.

I will remind this particular group of directors that Go Virginia funded the plan itself.

We asked them to fund a planning grant to write the innovation and entrepreneurship startup plan and the plan that they have proposed is what we will be moving forward with as a community.

I'll pause here and see if you have any specific questions.

Hearing none, next, I will close the director's report.

I think most of you were aware of the Lyft business grant that we created, but by way of context, I'll share with you that the Board of Supervisors in July approved the use of CARES funding, which is the funding from the federal level that was provided to the state, and then the state level provided it to local governments.

The county received a little over $9.5 million.

Some of those funds were used to reimburse the county for its COVID-related expenses.

We have two great things.

Welcome to the world of, yeah.

So we were allocated $2.5 million.

We set aside $1.2 million to give grants to local businesses in Albemarle County.

Some details that may be of interest to you.

We had 161 inquiries from businesses.

That was from an application period of July 22nd through August the 3rd.

I'm gonna excuse myself for one second.

Well, maybe not.

We had a total of 78 businesses that completed applications.

We were able to verify that these businesses met all the requirements.

After this verification, there were three additional layers of vetting to include scoring of the applications by diverse committee, this committee and others.

Two other teams ultimately ensured there was no conflicts of interest.

Different committees agreed that 59 businesses would receive a grant for a total of $1.2 million in grant funding.

The grant applicants will be notified later today if they have not began their notification already.

Then the transferring of these funds for these grants will start tomorrow.

We're very excited that our Board of Supervisors is supporting economic development.

This large commitment in funding is just one example of that.

The county has received notification that we'll receive additional funding.

and we fully expect that some of those funds will be allocated for further economic development advancements.

Roger.

I recall there was a

Yes, sir.

I don't have the exact figures in front of me right now, but I do know that we received around 60 percent

The applicants were either minority women or veteran owned and we also received a large number of hospitality and tourism related activities.

Without naming names, you'll probably find that there were quite a few things such as wineries, breweries, distilleries, as well as other tourism related activities that will receive grants as a result of having the scoring matrix.

Roger, I don't have anything to add.

I think you covered it very well.

We're just really pleased that we could do this and that it's worked out this way.

Yeah, I was impressed by how quickly it went out.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, and when you say we did, let me also give thanks to Emily Kilroy, Siri Russell, Phyllis Savitas, Michael Culp, J.T.

Newberry, Jennifer Schmack and

and they were very instrumental in being a part of the task force and helping us create a process as well as do all the behind the scenes legwork, including communications and other things that happen.

Roger, I have one more question.

Of the 19 applicants who did not receive a grant, was there a common factor there?

No, it primarily didn't hit our target audience.

I will say if we were to have a second round of funding, which may be a possibility, those folks would likely receive grants.

If you can imagine, we're given points if you're related to hospitality.

So if you're a podiatrist or you're a locally owned chain restaurant, you just don't score as well as some of the other folks that we were targeting.

OK, thanks.

Any questions?

All right.

Well, I didn't have one sort of related to that.

I guess it's really your first question about your potential business looking to relocate.

It seems to me likely that we're going to be seeing more people as the fallout from the pandemic continues and as large localities

have issues related to office towers and things like that.

And just in dealing with it, it wouldn't surprise me if we started getting more interest from businesses to come here just because we're smaller.

Has there been some discussion about, I mean, I know we're always ready and willing to talk to anybody who's interested, but making a presentation or having information that's more tailored toward people who are

who were thinking about moving as a result of the pandemic.

Yes, we have.

I'm pleased to report that the Virginia Economic Development Partnership is currently having a marketing program where they're promoting Blacksburg, Charlottesville, and Roanoke as three small to medium sized communities that can support large scale technology companies.

Albemarle County was rolled up into the marketing program with Charlottesville.

We were able to provide some sites for them.

So at the Commonwealth level, they're going out and targeting larger technology companies, which is of course one of our targeted industries, and asking that they consider our community as a place to relocate.

The idea being that we have all the assets of a large community with a university and can do

Okay.

There was a question that came from the audience.

I'll be happy to answer it.

It said, will the full list of LIFT recipients be released?

And the answer to that question is absolutely yes.

We're going to list all the recipients.

We thought it may take us a day or two to notify all the applicants that both received grants and are not receiving grants.

And then once we notify all the applicants, we plan to post the entire list of recipients as well as the amounts,

Okay.

Mr. Chairman, I have one other item that may be of interest.

Sure.

So the positions, the vacant EDA positions are posted on the county boards and commissions website.

They were posted on August 26, and they've got to remain posted for 30 days.

And anyone interested can apply there.

So the earliest we will see appointees will be at the September 16th board supervisors meeting.

There has been some interest, but we

So the question for the council for the EDA, do you have to live within the

jurist, magisterial district of the person in order to be, to serve as an appointee for that magisterial district.

Jim may know better than I do.

You don't have to live in the county to be a member of the EDA.

You'd have to live in either an Albemarle county or an adjoining jurisdiction.

In terms of, there is a technicality in terms of being appointed and how the supervisors appoint people from their magisterial district, which is an interesting twist.

But in any event, the answer is no, you don't have to live in the county or the magisterial district.

Right.

But we have had a little, used a little flexibility at times on the Magisterial District.

So Rich, is that twist that you're talking about, the, simply the tradition that if there's already one member,

from a given magisterial district, there won't be a second.

No, I'd have to pull it up because it was somewhat nuanced and I just don't have it in front of me right now because there was a question that was posed to me, do you have to live in Albemarle County in order to serve?

And the quick answer, the quick answer was no, you don't have to live in Albemarle County.

But then there was discussion in the code about supervisors and being in the magisterial district and then also I think there's an out large member, so.

but I don't have an answer to that right now.

I think I agree with Richie.

I think as Diantha will tell you, it's a rule of reason.

If we know someone who would make a good director,

I guess I could respond to that.

I think the short answer would be I think supervisors always love to meet applicants.

Having said that, I would encourage anyone

to just go online, fill out the application form, because you all do want to get those spots filled as quickly as possible.

I mean, you can reach out to the supervisor, it's great, but in the meantime, if someone is interested, they should fill out an application form.

Yeah.

We're hoping that we'll get lots of applications.

When you're advertising any position, whether it's for a boards and commission or for a job, you hope to have lots of applications and some depth and breadth to your pool.

But we'll see what happens.

I don't know if anybody on the board remembers Bonnie Smith when she was in Charlottesville.

She was a commercial loan officer at the old Sovereign Bank

She was chairman of the Charlottesville Industrial Development Authority when I was working at the city.

She got transferred down to Hampton, I believe, with C&F Bank, but she's been in the commercial lending business all of her career.

She is now living at Old Trail.

She's retired and she's living at Old Trail.

She made great contributions to the CIDA.

And I wouldn't be surprised if she wouldn't be interested in serving.

We lost all of our bankers.

And I'll be honest with you, just speaking for myself, and I'm only the liaison, but I'm always looking at our boards and commissions through the lens of diversity, gender, race.

I would love to have a little diversity on the board if at all possible.

I just think that brings a really good discussion.

So I've pulled up the note in terms of residency and membership.

and I'll just go over that briefly.

So first, as I indicated, you don't have to be a resident.

You don't have to be a resident of Albemarle County under Virginia code.

You have to either be Albemarle County or you have to be in an adjoining locality.

and if you move from any of those localities to outside then of course your office becomes vacant.

So if you live in Nelson County and then you move to Richmond, you vacate your office.

In terms of the county code, it requires that a member, one member must come from each of the county's magisterial districts.

and then one must be at large.

And that's where it gets interesting because in order to reconcile the ordinance with the statute, you get into discussion of what from means because the ordinance says that you don't have to be a resident of the magisterial district.

You have to be from it in some fashion.

So if

The only way to reconcile it is that you need to have some interest in that magisterial district.

So I guess you can imagine if you live in Buckingham, but you have a business in Scottsville, then you can be not nominated from the Scottsville Magisterial District.

So there needs to be some nexus.

Oh, I agree, absolutely.

I am, I'm that large.

I'll take that as none.

So is there a motion to adjourn?

I'll move that we adjourn.

All right.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

Our next meeting is September 15.

I guess the one

Okay, so I guess we need to confirm that our four members can attend on the 15th.

So maybe you can, we can check in with Jennifer, because if they can't, then we're going to need to reschedule that meeting, and we may want to push it back.

to after that 16th meeting in case there's a possibility of somebody getting appointed then.

I think I might have one.

Hold on for a second.

I may be out of town.

Let me just check real quick here.

Yeah, I will be.

I'm going to be out of town on the 15th.

Push comes to shove.

I might be able to get a cellular connection and connect in on the person that's holding everybody up, but I will be out camping in the eastern shore.

Jennifer, you want to send some other, maybe circulate some other dates for that next meeting in the, maybe the, I don't know if these Tuesdays work for everybody.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

That sounds good.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Take care.