Economic Development Authority Meeting   12/15/2020

Why don't we, yep, can you put up, yep, thank you J.T.

or Jennifer, whoever's running the show here.

So I'm gonna read the preamble and then we're gonna take a roll call vote.

Notwithstanding, oh wait, hold on a second, I gotta adjust here so that people are not in the way of my reading, sorry.

There we go.

Notwithstanding any provision of EDA bylaws to the contrary, as permitted under the Albemarle County Continuity of Government Ordinance adopted on November 18, 2020, Chapter 1283 of the 2020 Acts of the General Assembly enacted into law on April 24, 2020, and the resolution of this body adopted on April 21, 2020.

We are holding this meeting by real-time electronic means with no authority member physically present

at a single central location.

All authority members who are participating, all authority members are participating electronically.

This meeting is being held in accordance with section six of the county's continuity of government ordinance.

All authority members will identify themselves and state their general physical location by electronic means during the roll call, which we will hold next.

This meeting is being recorded and will be uploaded to the county's website.

The public has real-time audiovisual access to this meeting over Zoom and real-time audio access over telephone, both provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

The public is invited to send questions, comments, and suggestions to the authority through the county's Economic Development Office at any time.

The public is also invited to offer live comment during the meeting's public comment period.

Comments are limited to three minutes and must be germane to matters on today's agenda.

I will do it if people can hear me.

Why don't we, Jennifer, you wanna call the roll?

Can we see each other while we're doing the roll call?

Can you go back to our, I'm sorry.

That's lovely.

Thank you.

Okay.

I can do it based on the list here.

I'm pulling the list.

Cismont?

Present here in Albemarle County.

I'm here in Albemarle County.

He's here.

and Blackdale.

All right.

So now we're going to proceed to matters from the public.

So we'll have three minutes.

We are still refining our process for telling people how their time is going to, oh, there we go.

So we have this, so it'll be hard for anyone to miss how much time they have.

I can hear you.

Very good.

Neil Williamson.

I'm the president of the Free Enterprise Forum, a privately funded public policy organization located here in Albemarle County.

I am hopefully not breaking too many rules with this statement because I don't know that it is directly germane to your agenda.

However, I did not want the year to pass without commending the EDA for what might be one of the greater pivots in the county.

We had a long, well thought out operation plan, project enable.

that somewhere near the 16th of March was thrown over the side and said, we'll get back to you.

And we got back to a project rebound or project survival.

The EDA grants that have been put together and well vetted by the CIC have created a lifeline for many businesses.

This is in my mind what an economic development authority should do.

It is objective.

It deals with preserving local business, local jobs, and keeping our economy moving.

I am thrilled that we have a vaccine.

I am concerned that the rebound will take a while, but I know that it will happen faster because of the significant efforts of this board.

And I just wanted to commend you for that and thank you for your service on the EDA.

Thanks, Neil.

And the chair will generally rule all complements as being germane to the meeting.

Along those same lines, I think we ought to give Neil 13 minutes.

All right.

Is anybody else, Jennifer, expressed an interest?

OK. All right.

Well, so much for our successful first public comment session.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I want to thank Jennifer because she spent a lot of time thinking through how it was going to work, how we could get people signed up, what was the right way to make it work.

And I appreciate that because it makes it much easier for us.

And thanks for spending that time, Jennifer.

And that was a be hard for anybody to argue.

They didn't know how much time they had left with that approach.

Okay, so next on the agenda is the minutes.

We don't have minutes this week, so we're going to defer that.

The financial report is also deferred until next meeting.

I do not.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

It seems like after six or seven months of this zoom virtual meeting, you had figured out the mute button, but somehow I managed to not

be able to do it correctly all the time.

Nonetheless, it's interesting from the public comments we just heard from Neil Williamson.

I was gonna spend a minute and share with the EDA directors context about how we moved from project enable and pivoted into helping all businesses survive.

So I'm gonna ask J.T.

to go ahead and go to the next slide.

And I'm gonna take you through a chronological

sort of revisiting of what happened, when it happened, and how we came to the conclusions that we did.

And it was a promise we didn't talk to Neil beforehand, but what we're going to talk about is how we pivoted and why we pivoted.

So Neil, appreciate your comments if you're still listening in.

So from left to right, you'll see our team pictures.

It's Jennifer Schmack, J.T.

Newberry, Doug Walker, and myself.

And then in 2018, we had a board approved strategic plan.

We implemented a business, it was called Project Enable, and we implemented different strategic activities that included things like business retention and expansion program.

This is a program where we go visit with existing businesses, find out what their issues are and provide customized solutions.

An example of that would be the Seraphic Group.

The Seraphic Group produces and manufactures a gut health supplement.

Their process is much like you would see in a brewery.

They have to take it through a process, add cultures, et cetera.

Anyway, their product is reasonably successful.

They're a growing business here locally and wanted to expand internationally.

Although they're very smart people, scientists and PhD, not everyone understands how to open a business in Europe or Australia or the like.

So our team worked with the State Virginia Economic Development Partnership, connected them to the right people so they can understand distribution channels in Europe, import-export issues, how to set up companies in those particular locations.

Long story short, we set them up to sell their product internationally.

Some other examples in Project Enable include the public-private partnership creations for public good.

An example of that would be the Barnes-Lumber Plaza, where we partnered with an existing developer to build a new Crozet downtown area and include a public plaza for public gathering space for things like, you know, maybe

Fireworks or parades.

We don't know exactly what the future will look like, but I'm sure it'll be utilized in some fashion similar to that.

Another example is site readiness.

This is not something that's been very visible, but our team has tried to increase the diversity of product.

For existing businesses to expand, whether that's a rail serve site or Class A office space or other sites that are green fields that can be built on.

We're trying to work with existing ownerships to make sure it's appropriately zoned, has the electricity necessary, the redundant if necessary.

gas, water, sewer, fiber, permits, et cetera.

The general idea is that if a business wants to locate there, it's ready to be built on or be occupied.

And then we also are growing new businesses through innovation and entrepreneurship.

We just received word last a few days ago about the future for Venture Central, which is a collaborative partnership between the Citi County and UVA to create and the Chamber of Commerce to create a space

for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Activity.

Good news coming.

You'll hear a public announcement about that soon.

So that's what we did from 2018 until Neil Williamson just mentioned until early March.

And then in early March, the coronavirus hit.

And next slide, please.

How do we know it hit in early March?

We brought this little diagram for you that shows the initial unemployment claims by month.

If you look the week just before March 14th or on or about March 14th,

There were 12 unemployment claims.

By the next date on there, which is March the 14th or thereabouts, shortly thereafter, by March 21, 600 people had filed for unemployment in the county.

By April the 4th, over 1400.

You do the math.

That's over a hundred times the normal amount of unemployment claims that happened.

Clearly, businesses were negatively impacted and layoffs were happening.

Next slide, please.

Also, we had anecdotal information to illustrate the issues.

We had daycares closing.

We had small businesses becoming insolvent.

We had nonprofits that were struggling.

In particular, we learned that all groups were being impacted, but particularly the hospitality restaurant and the lounge and anything related to tourism were the hardest hits.

Next slide, please.

So about late March, the federal government passed the CARES Act.

And it included a lot of components such as forgivable loans for businesses, $1,200 in cash to families.

It increased and extended unemployment benefits.

And there was a little footnote that you see highlighted there on your screen that says money for local government.

Next slide, please, J.T.

So this is a sort of a short story about our economic development programs during the crisis.

This is kind of where our mission moment starts, if you will.

At this time, we had no real understanding.

J.T., if you could back up a little bit.

We had no real understanding of what money for local government meant.

Still, the county exec's office met with our office, as well as the project management office.

We just sort of huddled up to discuss strategies.

And shortly after this bill passed, and we all agreed that this was not only a health emergency, but also an economic crisis.

So the county execs gave us a favorable response to a request to set aside a portion of this funding from CARES to assist with economic recovery.

Much later we learned that we were going to receive about $19 million, but at the time we first met, we had no idea.

Next slide, please.

So the story I'm about to tell

is told from the economic development perspective, but I'm not going to go through all of these one by one like I may have earlier, but I will say this, our board and our county execs were very supportive.

At that time, they didn't know exactly

What our office would do, how we would do it, but what they in effect did is allocated $2.5 million to the Economic Development Office to help businesses and they basically said here's a couple million dollars we believe in you go figure out how to help a local economy and for that we're thankful.

And then although economic development is getting some kudos, this doesn't happen but for the support of the whole organization.

And you can see all of those across, all those departments across the organization.

And I've just mentioned that the county attorney's office is located in there, much thanks to the county's attorney's office for helping us with contracts and attestations and other things.

And also our outside partners.

Next slide, please.

So here's where we are now.

The global economy is now in the tank.

You'll see that's a fresh set of unemployment numbers in the top left-hand corner.

By this time, there's an accelerated social movement across the United States.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is getting worse.

Local businesses here are getting financially destroyed.

We mentioned earlier the daycares and the small business and et cetera.

But certainly, no, we couldn't help everyone that we had.

We had $2.5 million to decide what to do with.

used this money best.

It was not a simple decision.

We had to answer questions like who do we help?

In what order?

What's the best way to help these folks?

How do we establish meaningful outcomes or accomplish meaningful outcomes?

How are we transparent?

What about fairness?

How does the social movement and equity fit into our plans?

I could continue on with all the unanswered questions, but you get the point.

So next slide, please.

So what did we do?

Our team first decided to help the most vulnerable businesses survive without somehow propping up businesses that would fail without regard for whether the virus happened, which meant we had to make some data-driven decisions that included some sprinkle of common sense and emotional intelligence.

In examining the data, we learned that minority women in veteran-owned businesses had less access to capital.

A little bit of historical information about the federal government.

Included in their package were things like economic injury disaster loans and paycheck protection programs.

They rolled those out through the private sector, which was generally a good idea.

And this private sector was administered through the banks, our existing banks.

Well, what we learned is that these banks were helping their existing and larger customers first.

Not surprising.

We also had other anecdotal information through the SBDC that this administration process was leaving behind if not leaving out some businesses without influential connections to banks.

So if you didn't have an existing account or you weren't a large customer, you weren't first in line for any of these PPP or EIDL loans.

We also had a ton of data from the travel industry, which included that hospitality and tourism and restaurants were the first and hardest hit economic sector in our community.

This is not inconsequential.

Remember that in direct impact or direct income, they result in about $400 million in economic impact in our community.

I didn't say that very well.

Let me try again.

The economic sector of hospitality and tourism contributes about $400 million in annual economic impact.

It's not inconsequential.

So that being said, we decided we would first help the minority women or veteran owned businesses and the hospitality and tourism and restaurants industry.

So we issued our first round of lift grants, which was just simply money to help them, money being fungible.

They could use it for whatever they wanted.

Here's a couple examples of the types of folks that were helped.

You'll see a picture of Croby's.

They were given a lift grant.

They're a locally owned restaurant down on the southern end of our town.

On the middle picture, you'll see King Family Vineyard,

King Family Vineyard has a large wedding, receptions, and business gatherings that was completely shut down.

They were economically harmed.

And then you see an example of a minority business, Machico's.

They're a Hawaiian barbecue down in Fifth Street Station.

We know that we help these businesses primarily because they called us and told us.

They either sent us an email, they called us a thank you, or they sent us a thank you letter.

And so I'm not going to repeat that particular statement through the rest of our programs, but suffice it to say, all of the programs we're going to talk about today, we received thank you letters from the community for helping them.

Next slide, please, J.T.

So now we've completed the first round to help the most vulnerable.

We also recognize that nonprofits were also struggling.

So we created what was known as the Community Lift Grants for Nonprofits.

We also learned that there was another department or two within the county who received CARES funding that was facing similar challenges to helping nonprofits.

Specifically, there was no prescribed way to effectively get CARES money out of our coffers and into the community, so we decided to work together there being strength in numbers and partnered

with the Office of Equity Inclusion and the Department of Social Services to support nonprofits.

In particular, we helped the economic development and business nonprofits as well as the arts education causes health and support services while the food, shelter, financial security, and child care was funded through a different bucket of CARES funding managed by the Department of Social Services and the Office of Equity Inclusion.

Quick acknowledgement to J.T.

and Jennifer, I know that you two know how much they contribute to the overall success of the economic development mission.

But when we worked with Community Investment Collaborative, we learned that they didn't have the resources necessary to carry out the request that we were making of them.

In particular, there were 10 other local communities or municipalities that asked for the community investment collaborative's help.

So suddenly they went from really just a small number of customers to having to hire contractors and additional help to try to help really 11 local municipalities.

They told us that they wouldn't be able to help us for about a month and a half and we said that doesn't meet our timeline.

So J.T.

and Jennifer volunteered to do the majority of the work

to make sure that our nonprofits receive funding quickly.

They would not have received the funds that they needed as quickly as they needed them, but for Jennifer and J.T.

's contribution.

And for that, I'm thankful.

So what were the types of people that received nonprofits?

An example of an economic development recipient would be the Chamber.

They also had some employee impacts.

They had to downsize a little bit in order for them to maintain the same level of service.

They needed some technology so they could add value to their customers.

So we provided them with a grant.

The second slide is Blue Ridge Music School.

They teach children without regard for their ability to pay.

Maybe of interest to you, this group historically holds concerts at locations like nursing homes and provides some additional public good.

And on the far right, you'll see an example of

Yellow Door, which is a nonprofit that provides long-term shelter near the hospital for parents of critically ill kids, usually pediatric cancer or heart transplants.

Whenever the parents have to stay near the hospital on a regular ongoing basis and they can't afford long-term rent, this particular nonprofit

finds a location for them to stay there.

And I'm happy to report most often the children are able to stay there as well since they're so closely related, excuse me, so closely located to the actual UVA hospital system.

They're able to spend a night at home on a regular recurring basis.

So this is just sort of a sporadic view of the types of nonprofits that we help.

Next slide, please.

So now we've helped the most vulnerable.

We've helped nonprofits.

We had some remaining funds left.

One of the things we noticed under the original LIFT grant were many of these businesses were using those funds to overcome revenue loss.

Just pay the bills, keep the lights on, pay their lease, those types of things.

And that was fantastic.

We were glad that we could help them.

But we also recognized there were other types of barriers preventing them from being successful, obviously that being the COVID pandemic.

So we decided to launch something called a Safe Spaces and Places Grant.

that allowed local businesses that were cash strapped and could not afford or risk spending money on upgrading their outdoor facilities to provide safer space or technology for business transactions.

That included things like tents, outdoor heaters, outdoor furniture.

You can read those yourself, whether it's Wi-Fi or point of sale systems.

The general idea is we wanted to make businesses as safe as practical given the conditions that COVID had created.

Next slide, please.

Here's a couple of examples that you'll see.

In the top left-hand corner, you'll see the wool factory.

They're using an outdoor patio to expand gathering space and still maintain social distancing.

In the top right-hand corner of your slide, you'll see Albemarle Sideworks.

They have expansive green space for outdoor seating.

They decided to use the funds to create these tents, amongst other things.

So you can see how they utilize the funding.

And then quite a few businesses invested in contactless point of sale technology.

So you won't necessarily see it as visible as the first two.

Nonetheless, they're preventing the spread of germs.

They're able to transact business and outdoors and do other things.

Just one example would be the Timberwood Grill up on North 29.

This sort of exemplifies how safe spaces in places grants have been used and are being used.

Next slide, please.

So now, at this point, we've just gotten word that the county was going to allocate more CARES Act funding to economic development.

At this juncture, we've helped the most needy to nonprofits and helped businesses expand outdoor footprints.

Well, without exacerbating the public health emergency.

So we decided to open up the new grant program, we call it Lift Grant Round Two, for all local businesses that endured some form of economic injury due to COVID.

If you'll go to the next slide, please, J.T., thank you.

So we provided grants up to $50,000 to companies like Blue Ridge Cleaning.

Blue Ridge is a professional cleaning company that's been in the surrounding area for over 13 years.

They're licensed, insured, they have security clearance from the military.

We gave them a grant to help them stay afloat.

I think they employ 13 people as an example.

The second picture in the center is one of Batesville Market.

They provide daily specials like daily sandwiches, fresh baked goods, etc.

You can shop online for their selections and they carry goods from over 50 local breweries and wineries.

They're basically a local goods purveyor.

They historically hold outdoor music events and the like.

Obviously that's been

impacted by both the weather now as well as the pandemic.

Nonetheless, I'm sure they'll return to that at some point.

And in the top right-hand corner, you'll see bright beginnings.

They have three locations locally.

They provide high-quality, safe, nurturing early childhood programs for preschool children.

So this is just a spattering of examples of how LIFT grant round two helped existing businesses.

Next slide, if you will, please.

So that sort of exhausted all of the funds that we had for CARES relief activity.

And we're going through the process of reconciling all of that information as we speak.

However, we recognize that there were still some businesses that were suffering.

So in conjunction with the city of Charlottesville, we've jointly launched, excuse me, a buy local campaign.

And we're focusing on three key elements.

That's keeping money in the local economy, or three key messages anyway, that it creates jobs, and it keeps our community unique.

So what we're saying here, basically, is that for every $100 spent in our community, with a local business, $45 stays in our community.

If you buy from a chain restaurant, $14 stays in our community.

And if you buy from a national retail, only $1 stays in our community.

The point we're trying to make is every time that a person here locally spends discretionary money, they're basically casting a vote for what they want the future of our retail to look like.

So you'll see that in our messaging and coming out.

You'll see things like this coming out in our

Social media and other things.

We've already started playing radio spots on, I guess, 10 different stations.

Maybe if you've heard The Voice or not.

If you haven't, it's J.T.

Newberry, our very own.

We ask that you, if you're watching and or if you're part of the EDA, that you also consider buying local.

And I'll also say that we have a much larger campaign that's just launching literally today.

You're going to see a big social media campaign.

It's going to include public service announcements.

It's going to be led by Jennifer.

And it's also going to play TV spots.

The video you're about to watch

is the full video that's going to be posted on social media and other outlets.

It's not what you're going to see on TV because the TV spots have to be 30 seconds.

But nonetheless, I'm going to pause here and ask Jennifer or J.T.

David Shreve, David Shreve, Stuart Munson,

Well, I just have to say, Roger, I'm now absolutely starving having seen that video.

But I think I just want to jump in and say the minute I saw a great interview with Roger a couple of weeks ago,

when he first started sort of talking about the multiplier effect of buying locally, and I don't know if it was channel 29 or 19, but it was really well done.

And I just spent this afternoon shopping locally, and I really do think this is a brilliant campaign for us to be pushing, and not just for this Christmas season, but through the spring, through the summer.

And by the way, when you buy locally, you actually have it, and it's not lost somewhere in Amazon shipping land.

So that's another exciting point about buying locally.

And I'll add, Director Imhoff, that these businesses are struggling financially.

They can't afford to market right now.

They can't afford to buy radio spots and TV spots.

We feel like we're also filling a gap in a time of need for them, in addition to all the benefits we have mentioned before.

And I just want to add to what Kat said because she's exactly right.

It is a wonderful campaign.

And just to let you all know, I listened to Roger present this to our county employees recently, early in the month.

at one of our employee town halls, which was really great for our employees to hear this message as well.

And I will add that Grant will deliver coffee right to your door, but they brought me some last Friday.

Two pounds of whole beans.

But thank you very much because it is a great ad.

Let me, I have a question for you, Roger.

I'm not sure if Doug's going to be able to answer that.

When you say expended, we've learned that there are eligible county expenses.

There are expenses the county has incurred related to COVID that are eligible for reimbursement.

So there's a strategy, I think, to put the remaining balance of that toward those eligible expenses and then maybe repurpose those funds to help

Yeah, the Board of Supervisors at their meeting tomorrow will be appropriating the remaining CARES that's eligible to really pay for the costs incurred by the county.

That will have, in effect, will offset general fund revenues and will allow us then after the first of the year and after the, you know, the timeframe, the deadline for CARES to have that available in a, for lack of a better word or phrase, a pandemic reserve

that we can then continue to use to support COVID related expenses like our own county costs, but also continued support to the local business community, to the local nonprofit for health and welfare and those sorts of things.

So there are still choices to be made, but it was a strategic move to

because we couldn't spend it all and because the pandemic is ongoing to try to do the best we could to kind of leverage it where we could and then have it available to kind of continue on into the winter months, which are going to be, as you know, equally difficult, if not more difficult for a lot of folks than what we've already experienced.

So we don't know if there's more cares coming.

You see what we see in terms of the news.

You can make your own judgments about what that's going to be.

Okay, that's helpful.

And I mean, this is not our form, but I can tell our role in terms of what we're, how the county should be spending that money.

But I can say that at least with what the airport has done, they've taken a similar approach and are sort of using those funds to supplement where revenues have been lower as a result of the pandemic to sort of just kind of keep the budget in line.

So, but.

Just for that, for what it's worth.

Sure.

I'll give you the best update I can, Director Ray.

The biggest hold up to date has been with the road plans.

They wanted some traffic circles, if you will, and some other certain diameters of road width that directly impacted how the project was planned to be laid out.

So the biggest part of the biggest

A barrier moving forward has just been finding a mutually agreeable road plan.

Just recently, the county and Frank Stoner's team submitted 60% design plans to VDOT.

VDOT accepted those plans, say for one comment.

So they're working out some line of sight issues, if you will, on one location.

That's expected to be ironed out in the near future.

which means that we can begin, once VDOT accepts those plans, then we can begin the design of the public plaza which will have to be built in conjunction with the road plans and that will take a few months as well.

All that to say probably by mid-middle, late next year, you'll actually start seeing some of the earth work and dirt work being moved and the grading happening and obviously construction will be predicated on how this COVID pandemic

impacts a lot of that, but generally speaking, late next year, we might even start seeing some things moving vertical.

So it's a, you know, just some standard delays, you know, as well as anybody, the pre-development aspects can be time consuming, and that's what they got caught up in.

I had one more thing, if you'll bear with me, I just wanted to thank Don and his lovely wife for their generous contribution to

The Veterans Memorial we're building on West Royal Road.

Certainly.

One other thing.

Am I a little bit surprised that J.T.

is not getting more kudos for his acting job?

Yes, I am surprised.

You got it.

There's a real low multiplier there.

All right.

So it doesn't look like we have any unfinished business on other matters.

We've got a couple of things.

Just a reminder in terms of attendance.

I don't know if I don't have the statute in front.

Oh, here we go.

Just in terms of when what the Virginia statute is in terms of how many times authority members can be absent.

Well, I don't have much to add other than I should have included this in the orientation materials.

And I know we've had some recent turnover, new members.

So I apologize for not having that in the orientation materials.

But the EDA is somewhat unique in that it has a statute that provides for attendance.

And so what it says in terms of missing meetings that you can't miss more than three meetings in a row, or if you do miss three in a row or four in any 12 month period, then I guess you get called to the principal's office or you can get called to the principal's office.

So I just wanted to bring that to everybody's attention.

I don't think it's not controversy or problematic, but just wanted to let people know.

The other thing I'd like to point out is if, well, right now we're in a period of liberal rules in terms of electronic participation.

So if there's an emergency or personal business or business that takes a member director away, then certainly the attendance can easily be accommodated.

I anticipate that down the road, the General Assembly will continue with some form of liberal electronic participation.

If it doesn't, the FOIA still allows for electronic participation for two meetings in a 12-month period.

So there's still room for accommodation down the road, so just kind of keep that in mind.

Questions?

Alrighty, I think that's it, Roger.

Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, in addition to the the laws and the code, I just wanted to say every one of yours attendance is important.

All of you bring diverse experiences to the table.

In some ways, you all handpick because of your subject matter expertise.

It wasn't just your relationship with other folks.

For that, we're very grateful.

So it helps us make better decisions as a county if we have a full complement of all the

right minds and intellectual capital here so just an encouragement to make as many meetings as you possibly can and to the extent you can make it a priority.

Another reminder, Jennifer's been doing a good job of reminding us all to do your ADA training so we can get that done.

I have to say I haven't done it yet.

That's on my list for the Christmas holiday.

So, but we need to get that done by December 31.

One other issue I just wanted to bring up

Roger and I were recently talking about the idea of how do we bring, as issues come up that either authority members or others want to bring up in front of the EDA to talk about, I wanted to give sort of what I see as our framework for how to handle those things.

So I think if

EDA members have an issue or particular item that they want to bring up.

I think they can bring it up with me or they can bring it up with Roger.

And then we can talk about how it fits in with what we're doing.

I think the big focus that we need to do is think about when we have other items we want to discuss is how does it fit within our

our project enable framework because that's what we're trying to do and also you know what costs does it bring in terms of staff time and resources we've got a limited uh limited manpower and we don't want to have them the staff running off in a lot of different directions um so i think the idea would be we talk about it first decide how it fits in and if it's something that a that a board member feels strongly about we can bring it up in front of the

The board needs to say, is this something that we want to devote time and effort and resources for, or is it not, and let the board give direction to the

to where it wants to go.

So I just wanted to, we never really sort of talked about how we want to handle that.

So I just wanted to share sort of my my feelings for how we would we do that.

And it's never been an issue.

And I think there's also, you know, if it's a question of, hey, I'd really like to hear a presentation from, you know, we've had members from various

Here's a good example and I'm not real sure how to adjudicate this but it

Kat and I had talked on a more personal level outside of the normal course of doing business and she had suggested that Christine Nardi from the Center for Nonprofit Excellence come and speak and this past, maybe it was a couple weeks ago, I reached out to Christine and made sure that she would be willing to do that and she is willing to do that but here's an example of something that doesn't fit squarely in Project Enable.

I'm comfortable asking her to come speak and we can put her on an

agenda, the time to fill it in.

But that's just an illustration of what you were just talking about.

OK. Yeah, I mean, I think Christine will obviously bring in a good perspective and happy to have her come and talk.

And I think that's an opportunity to bring up a different

issues.

I think that brings sort of having somebody give a presentation is different from deciding that we're going to devote time and effort to a particular direction.

So thanks, Roger.

I did have one other thing that I wanted to ask, which I guess is Doug, you may be the best one to answer this.

At one point, we had talked about maybe trying to get a presentation on sort of the economic status of the county.

And obviously there was a little bit of that in Roger's

At what point do we have a good idea of where the tax revenues are from the county?

Is that something that we would know in January or really it's further along?

Yeah, thanks, Mr.

Chair and you, the Board of Supervisors.

Everybody is anxious for that piece of information.

So the real estate book closes January, and we are currently scheduled to have a presentation to the Board of Supervisors at their second meeting in January, which I believe is January the 20th.

So Diantha and her colleagues will hear it then.

At that meeting, in addition to a presentation from the

from the Assessor, which is all eyes are on the assessments.

There's also going to be a presentation from Steve Allshouse, who will kind of characterize the drivers in the local economy and probably state and national as well, as best as he can.

He is our staff economist.

And so that would be when the information is out, that would be in front of the board.

Well, we meet the day before that, so I don't think he's going to give us a preview.

The board might not approve.

No, I can't say that.

Yeah, I mean, all of this, of course, is leading into the upcoming budget process.

Mr.

Okay.

Well, yeah, good catch.

Well, does anybody else have any other comments, questions, issues they want to bring up?

Is that right?

So that's a consideration of officers for 2021.

Just one, one.

Oh, here's the other question I had.

Have we heard anything about the holistic Virginia or Virginia holistic and their application process?

Is that still ongoing?

No, we don't know anything, Don.

We just know that we received a thank you from Red Light Management, who's a partner in that group, just acknowledging thank you to EVA, thank you to the board, and

and really thank you to economic development, I guess, as well, but they were able to submit their application.

All right, well, if nobody has anything else, I hope everybody has a nice holiday and stay safe and we will see you guys next year.

All right.

Take care.

Wear your mask.

And buy local.