Economic Development Authority Meeting   3/16/2021

Stuart, but we can go ahead and kind of get started and run through our things we need to do here at the beginning to get going.

Hopefully he'll join in before the end.

So, all right, there we go.

So I will read our preamble.

Notwithstanding any provision in the EDA bylaws to the contrary as permitted under Albemarle County's continuity of government ordinance,

Chapter 1283 of the 2020 Acts of the General Assembly 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 in a single central location.

All authority members are participating electronically.

This meeting is being held in accordance with Section 6 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 as provided in the lawfully posted meeting notice.

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.

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

All right.

I will do it.

Let's see.

Director Munson.

Director Ray.

I'm here in Albemarle County.

And Director McNaughton.

Present in Troy, Virginia.

Mr.

All right, I'm thinking it may be

You know, Jennifer and I need to go around and like I can read that off and she could film me in different parts of the county.

That way it's not me just sort of reading off and it would be a more entertaining presentation.

Not currently.

Nobody has raised their hand.

All right, then we'll move on.

Approval of the minutes.

I was reading them last Thursday.

I haven't finished them yet.

Yeah, you're doing a good job with that, Jennifer.

Yeah, I appreciated that.

I'll second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

The minutes are approved.

Financial report.

Yes.

Only a small change in our status from the time of the last meeting.

We added interest earnings of $314.31 and incurred legal fees of $225.

So our cash position changed by

a whopping $89.31 overall.

And as we saw the last time the, see if I can find the document, I can give you the exact overall cash position.

As of

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

That's unanimous approval there.

Well done.

All right, so new business.

Our first is a presentation by Rebecca Hayduck.

from the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center.

So, Roger, you want to do the introduction?

Yeah, we've been having audio and computer issues.

I'm glad that is, in fact, the case.

I think it's important that I provide some context before Rebecca speaks to you.

OK.

So about three years ago, we went through a strategic planning exercise, as you know, as Project Enable was the result of that.

During that analysis, we did a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats type exercise, as well as looked at all the existing business support.

At that particular time, we learned that the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center was providing resources and support for our existing small businesses.

As a result, when we presented to the Board of Supervisors, we did not recommend any staff or funding per se in-house to provide those level of services for small businesses in the community.

We did not want to be redundant and we want to be good stewards of the taxpayers' money.

As such, we decided that for Albemarle County, Central Virginia Small Business Development Center would provide support to the small businesses in our community.

As such, we provide funding directly to Central Virginia's Small Business Development Center.

They also get matching funding from the federal government.

And they do a host of activities to help our small businesses.

And Rebecca is about to share those with you.

I will say, and she may reiterate this, that Albemarle County is by far and away the biggest user of the SVD.

in terms of volume, in terms of counseling sessions, in terms of folks who participate in webinars.

So we gain a large percentage of support from this particular organization.

And so when she talks to you about what they do, I would like you to think about Rebecca as a partner of ours.

While she's not a staff member, she does the work that you may find in some economic development offices around the U.S. for Albemarle County.

So with that being said, I'd like to introduce a colleague and friend, Rebecca Hayek, and I'm sure she can take it from here.

Well, thank you for that introduction.

And hi, it's nice to see several of you, which I know pretty well.

A couple of you are new to me.

But what I'll do is I'll go ahead and run through what's going on at the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center.

Because even if you were familiar with it a year or more ago in response to the pandemic,

And as a result of us just digging up resources and expanding partnerships, things have changed quite a bit.

So I'm going to do a screen share and go through a PowerPoint.

Can you all see this all right?

Good enough, okay.

So, as Roger mentioned, we think of ourselves as your organization, and of course, I'll get into the numbers where you'll see that we are at least half of what we do is in and for Albemarle County, and if you include the city of Charlottesville, it's well more than half.

and we do have a large territory but what I'll do is quickly run through sort of the big picture of what is the SBDC, how do we see ourselves, what were the numbers in 2020, a little bit more about the team, an example of a few Albemarle clients and then I'll talk to you about the growth that we've experienced as well as the financial implications of that growth.

So we view ourselves and are being told by the community that they view us as trusted partners in business.

Our services are hands-on advising that is free of charge thanks to Albemarle County, SBA, as Roger mentioned, and other regional partners.

We bring resources and talent to entrepreneurs to empower them so they can achieve their goals.

Our goals are very similarly aligned to economic development goals, create jobs, strengthen businesses, and make our communities a special place to live.

In case you haven't heard about our numbers, because we've been talking about them a lot, I think mostly because we're in shock,

We went from, in 2019, the office did under 1,000 hours in direct consulting time.

If you can see here, this is what happened in 2020.

We were over 3,200 hours, and that was with about a one-third budget increase.

We also were around 150, 160 clients.

We did 423 last year, so we've been incredibly busy.

The county of Albemarle makes up for a large portion of that.

I actually pulled the percentages out here.

If you look at clients, exact clients, none of this includes event attendees, either of which there were over a thousand last year.

We had about 44% coming from Albemarle County, 57% of our counseling was Albemarle County.

And I know that Charlottesville and Albemarle are separate in terms of municipalities, but I popped their numbers in here because we are all part of the same neighborhood.

And if you put it together, Charlottesville and Albemarle, it's a huge part of what we do.

61% of our clients as well as 73% of our counseling hours.

And you can also see

The numbers in terms of capital formation were very large.

Jobs retained was also a big number.

And of course, some of this had to do with the CARES Act, but there were a number of investments, business purchases, business sales as well.

Our territory has grown as well.

We were six regions.

We are now 10.

We are almost the exact same footprint as region nine.

There is a second office which is in Culpeper.

The staff that serves all of this, I am the only full-time person.

We are about to hire, thanks to a Go Virginia grant that was approved today.

We're very excited.

We're going to get our first ever full-time business counselor that will be in the form of an assistant director.

Our office staff also, we have a office manager and client services coordinator, a part-time events coordinator, and David Reardon runs the Culpeper office.

This group of terrific people are all of our contract counselors.

They are business and technical experts.

They used to work between two and four hours a week, and there were only four of them.

Now these folks are working anywhere from 10 to 25 hours a week as a result of the pandemic.

We also have additional partners.

The Virginia Small Business Development Center, the statewide center,

has a number of experts that we access free of charge.

We have a, and these are just a few of them, but I wanted to highlight these folks because these we work with frequently.

We have a robust international trade program.

Erin Miller's the director.

In fact, I'm getting certified in international trade because we have so many Charlottesville and Albemarle companies that needed this help.

We're meeting frequently.

We have a craft beverage expert.

This is the person that has put on the food

and Beveridge Cohort, which I'll talk about.

The International Commercialization Assistance Program is an SBDC program.

That's ICAP, if you're familiar with I-Corps.

ICAP is the other version of that that people need to take if they want to get certain research dollars.

It also helps them with customer discovery.

We have a retail and restaurant consultant that has come to town to visit.

We have a cybersecurity expert.

Government contracting has become a big part of what we're doing.

We actually did 15 government contracting programs last year, and they were all well attended.

People are looking at that as another market, as well as, as you all know, there's an increasing need for SWAM certification, and that is done through these offices.

And of course, none of this would have happened without Community Investment Collaborative.

They took over the SBDC in January of last year,

I can't say with any more emphasis other than saying I could have never done it without Stephen Davis.

He's been phenomenal.

We've been able to grow and deal with this incredible onslaught of need, thanks to Stephen, as well as all of the supportive partnership in the community.

But Stephen has really helped us pull it together.

I feel like we came into their organization like a giant toddler

made a big mess because we had so much going on so fast and they just helped us tremendously keeping with this crazy pace.

We've also built a number of programs and partnerships.

We did almost 60 training programs last year.

A number of them were specific to the CARES Act, but we immediately started doing marketing for online communications for businesses

These are some of the more popular ones, Managing Your WordPress Website, UVA Propel Program, which put 300 UVA students that lost their internships to work in the community.

Online marketing and communications programs.

I think we ran this two or three times in Albemarle County, helping people build their capability statement, passport to global markets.

The food and beverage cohort, which we just announced last Friday, there are three companies from Albemarle County that made it into that cohort.

We had a total of five for our entire region.

and three of them were yours.

So that's pretty exciting.

We've also got some new partnerships at the SBDC, which have grown very strong in this past year.

We are starting a new pitch preview and pitch practice program with Charlottesville Angel Network, where people will get to present to actual angels for feedback.

We've been helping UVA procurement

make it easier for people to understand how to do business with UVA and we've hosted a couple of programs for them and of course we've worked quite a bit with career services making their programs available to entrepreneurs and making it easier for folks to access their talent.

We've worked with Gen Edge to help people with engineering and logistics.

Of course, Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, we had Pro Tip Tuesday all last year, every month a new program and a new topic.

And we work closely with Charlottesville Business Innovation Council, UVA, and a number of avenues and Seville Biohub.

A few of the things that are unique to this

The Central Virginia SBDC are some research tools that we use.

We have SBDCnet, IbisWorld, and ProfitSense.

These are all free of charge to any business.

It's incredible research to understand and identify customers if your financials are on track.

Of course, the International Trade Program, ICAP that I mentioned, we use Growth Wheel.

This just outlines some of the things that are specific and that we don't pay for.

This is an asset that comes to our community at no charge to us.

And this is largely available because of the SBA, who is the base funder of the organization.

We are a member of the National Americas SBDCs and the Virginia State Office runs out of George Mason University who supports them.

And of course, our primary support comes from Community Investment Collaborative as our fiscal sponsor and host.

We've grown.

The numbers went from actually around 850.

This is the fiscal year.

In 2019 to 3,220, with the addition of another business counselor, we're going to get up around 4,000.

We're also busting at the seams for space.

We are going to have 12 people.

Once we hire this assistant director, we may be getting a full-time ICAP mentor for this region.

And we

are having more need for trainings in our space, so this just gives you an idea of some of the reasons why we're busting out a little bit.

I wanted to show you a few clients that are Albemarle clients that gave us permission to share their information.

Valente Pasta has been in Albemarle, or actually they were in the city of Charlottesville,

since 1982 and they have doubled in size and need to quadruple in size and Roger's office was phenomenally helpful and we really struggled to find space for them.

They are going to be moving into Alomarle County and they've gotten an immense amount of support from a number of partners including the county.

Delaney Products was referred to us by Roger's office by Jennifer.

We were so happy to meet him.

He had questions on PPP.

And it turns out they've been in business since 1900 and we were able to help them not only with the CARES Act but with the government contracting work that they had been trying to break into for a long time.

They've made great strides there.

They went through our international trade program and are making strides there as well.

We connected with them with some marketing experts which are helping them promote their products and they are a huge innovator.

They've got some products that are first in class nationally.

Several that had patents that have now expired and a lot of the bigger companies are copying them.

And then there's a company like Khadijah's Kitchen.

This is a small caterer that did not have a website.

This was a case study that we went through before we came to you with the proposal for the website Jumpstart.

And Khadijah now is connected on Grubhub.

Her business is growing as a result of having online capabilities.

So that's been a really exciting story as well.

and I wanted to just show you what's changed financially for us.

When I first came on board April last year, we had a budget of about $180,000.

That was the budget originally as well for 2020, but then we got CARES Act funding.

That helped us make those technical hires that we needed right away.

And folks that could help people get online, do their record keeping and bookkeeping to apply for grants, as well as a few other counselors and expanded business counseling.

Since then we applied for the Go Virginia grant.

That is allowing us to hire the assistant director and also launch this digital resiliency program which we can talk about.

This is my last slide so I wanted to give you all a chance to ask questions about that and I believe you all know it well.

and as well we we have to find some office space because we have nowhere to put bodies so we're looking at expanding our office space a little bit and we expect that into 2022 we're going to need to maintain that or we're going to start losing technical experts and business experts and by the way coming into 2021 we're taking on clients at an even faster pace than we did in the second quarter of 2020 so we're not seeing any signs of slowing

And I just wanted to note here that in March of 2022, that is when we do see a funding cliff.

We do have funding that will take us through until then.

And we're working on what the options will be for that.

Elizabeth, I mean, Rebecca, before you do, could you just speak a little bit about the digital vacancy project that's coming up between us and the city?

Sure.

And if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and share the web page for that.

Is that all right?

Absolutely.

Okay.

So this came out of, of course, you know, we've been doing courses and work on e-commerce with people ever since the beginning of the pandemic.

The first hire that I made was an e-commerce expert formerly from Silicon Valley, and he was doing website health checks for people.

And at least two times a week, he was being asked for help on the website.

And a lot of these businesses could not afford the one to three or five thousand dollars necessary to build a website or improve their existing website.

And we just didn't have the budget for it.

So we started thinking about how can we inexpensively put together a program

And under Cameron Nelson's leadership, who was our e-commerce expert, we decided that if we had a certain number of templates and we really set it up very efficiently, we could put together websites for under $800 each with a WordPress developer.

And we chose WordPress because as these companies grow,

If they multiply several times in size, WordPress can grow with them and we can train them in that.

So thanks to Roger and Chris at The City.

We have already launched this program.

We called it Website Jumpstart.

And what we're offering is a three to five page website.

You'll see here the summary.

We provide a simple video because they have to have one.

and that can be launched on social media.

If they need a simple logo, we do that.

Up to five items on e-commerce if they're selling or we'll help them set up to a shopping cart like Grubhub, which is what we did with Khadijah's Kitchen, Connect2 payment system.

And we also help them with their initial press release and social media launch.

So they can not only get the site built but let the world know that it's there.

We have highlighted here as well, what are the things that we won't do?

And of course, we're going to talk to them from a business perspective and make sure that they have the cash flow necessary.

They do need about $200 to maintain that website.

And then the objective is because we're not in the business of building websites.

The objective is that they improve cash flow and then they can go out into the private sector and maintain those websites.

Thanks, Rebecca.

Just before we open to questions, just a couple of comments.

One, I think that the website program you're talking about, you know, that was one of the surprising things that came out of that survey that was done.

And it's nice to see you guys taking the information from our business survey and implementing something that's helping people because that's exactly what we need to be doing.

So I think that's great.

Well, I'll just put in a plug for Rebecca.

She and I have worked together for a while.

We've known each other through the Charlottesville Angel Network and then she's worked with a client of mine and we've had joint clients together and she does a great job and has really, really put her effort behind this and really pushes things along.

And I think she's doing a great job.

I'm afraid to come off video, but I'd love to hear a little bit more, Rebecca, about how do you get the word out?

Well, thanks for asking.

One of the first things we did was we built a website because we didn't have one coming into this.

And that website, the traffic has increased phenomenally.

But I, upon taking the job, reached out to everyone I could think of that helps small businesses.

So the chambers help promote what we do.

Of course, Jennifer, J.T., Roger promote what we do, the city.

All of the partners, you know, CBIC, UVA puts us, when we have programs, they put it on their list, so we'll get their entrepreneurs.

I have a list, I think I have 83 on my, what I call my community partners list, and it includes people like Don, Flora Pettit, Woods Rogers, Hansman Wiebel, folks, you know, bankers, folks that are working in the community, and I still haven't met so many people.

My list is, you know, small in comparison, but

With folks like Roger's office, you know, the information gets out there.

Everybody's newsletters, I guess, is the answer.

Dave?

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, I too, I'm really impressed with the array of services and your partnerships and

Glad to know that you and Stephen and his crew are working hand in hand.

That seems like a really great relationship.

I just have a couple of small questions about operations going forward.

And one has to do with the grant, the Go Virginia grant.

What did the grantors say about your use of the funds

putting them, I don't know what percentage, but largely toward the assistant director position.

Going forward.

What did they say about that?

Did they offer any recommendations?

No, they realized we needed capacity building.

They know that we've been

You know, we're burning the candle at both ends and then some so and we just needed more bandwidth.

Because that, you know, the numbers more than doubled.

And it's clear there's no slowing and we only had a one third budget increase.

So we were just

Killing ourselves, trying to take care of everyone.

And of course, we'd like to spend more time with companies, right?

Because there is such a great need.

And we had a number of clients, which is problem solving out the door.

But there's so much more work that we could do.

And they wanted us to have the capacity to do that.

So, yeah.

And they were really happy about the fact that it serves a whole region.

Right.

Because what we do, we develop a lot of these programs in Charlottesville and Albemarle, but they're available to all of the municipalities.

And so it's really great, especially with this format and Zoom, right?

This is just for a year, this capacity building grant.

Of course, the digital resiliency part of it, which is that WordPress developer, I expect that will go away, but we'll see if there's additional need.

Regarding the website development and the WordPress advice, and I see the way you described it as kind of a jumping off starting point.

You're not gonna help them maintain websites, but it's just to get things started.

We know, so this initial program that Roger and Chris and you all funded is for 24 websites.

It is absolutely massive.

What do you anticipate happening with that, say in the next year or two?

Do you think it'll double, triple or...

Continue moving along at the same pace.

So I'll tell you, you know, and you you all may disagree with me.

I've been bumping around Charlottesville, as I've said to Roger, for like 14 years helping businesses, but as an investor.

Right.

And I had not really run across the SBDC because the SBDC was working primarily on Main Street businesses and largely just in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Word is out, right?

We are the local SBA affiliated office and now SBA is a household name that's being talked around the kitchen table.

So I don't know what we're going to do because I know it's never going to go back to what it was, especially now that we've unearthed all of these incredible assets and people know we have an international business program.

They know that we can help them raise equity capital for their innovation company.

These are things that the SBDC was not known for before.

and more of the mainstream businesses know that we're here and that we can help them tap into grants and bank financing and, and, and, right?

I have no idea, but I know it's not going to slow down.

I was curious about just the web development piece, not necessarily for

The grant accounts for another 90 websites, the one that we were granted today.

But again, we have a large area to cover.

I don't know.

I'm not sure how many people.

We do have to hire another WordPress developer.

We just hired one before we can really get that rolling.

Well, I suspected as much and I'm wondering if you might consider something like a middle tier or a lesser tier of service in that regard.

It sounds like the folks you're helping didn't know where to start and you kind of did that for them and then taught them a little bit about how they might maintain it going forward.

I do a lot of this work with nonprofits

and I've found that there are plenty of folks like that, but there are also some who can actually manage a Squarespace or a WordPress website development tool if you just give them a real quick refresher or introduction that may be something short of what you're already offering.

And I'm wondering if you couldn't tap like the chamber for pro bono service at that tier and leave the more extensive work to,

Yeah, well, and we are now every two weeks offering a program, How to Manage a WordPress Website.

and we do go through, it is a one-hour training and we still are taking one-on-ones with our e-commerce and marketing folks for that little bit of help, not the full blown, you know, you don't even have a place to start.

Good, good.

Director Shreve, I might add this, that Rebecca's mentioned that there's funding for 24 websites, both the city and our economic development office.

I thought we would take a time out at the creation of 24 websites, poll the folks who received the service, make sure they found that it was valuable and they got the service that they needed.

Thanks Roger.

Any other questions?

I don't think so.

You know, I just would love to hear from any of you anytime.

I have a couple comments I'd like to make.

I think it was implicit in what Rebecca was saying, but when she talks about counseling sessions, that's a wide array.

Website's just a portion of it.

She does financial acumen, debt consolidation, strategic planning, writing a business plan.

The amount of support that's provided by the SBDC varies in complexity based off of the needs of the individual businesses that come in there.

So she sort of lumped all that information together, but she serves all the needs of small businesses in a variety of ways, not just in the complex ways that we talked about today.

And I want to echo what Don said.

Rebecca has been invigorating to the SBDC here locally, has given a greater standing in our community.

Well, thank you, Roger.

Yeah, you know, I guess what I do want to say is it's been quite an experience, right?

When Stephen first talked to me about this,

I wasn't sure about the SBDC because I really didn't know what was there.

And then when I dug in and I saw what are the assets, who were the people, how is this supported, and also realized what a great community we have here and how supportive folks are, I thought, oh my gosh, there's an opportunity to really support the business community here, especially with CIC.

It seems limitless to me, right?

We're still running into people who don't have any idea that these services are there.

The ones that know it know it well and you know even today we had, you know, which I should talk about this side of the spectrum, I have a

A tech company, we have two.

One just raised $1.7 million, and I had another conversation today.

We're about to close on a million dollars.

These are both UVA technology spinouts, right?

We work with them from soup to nuts, from forming the business, should it be a C-corp, should it be an LLC, right?

Connecting them with vetted service providers in the community to getting the pitch deck, to getting them in front of the investors, to making sure the financials are right.

And then we have very early startups that are, you know, trying to figure out, is my business concept going to work?

And it could be a hairdresser or it could be somebody with a lawn mowing service.

We've been doing a lot of M&A.

We've been helping people.

I've got, you know, two deals.

We just we closed one for over two million dollars where somebody just bought a business to expand their invest in existing business.

And there's another business purchase for four million dollars that's on the table right now in Albemarle County.

So there's just so much happening at our office.

It seems like there's nothing we don't do when it comes to helping small businesses.

There is a need for capacity and we would love to partner with you all in any way possible and understand your vision because the action is at CIC and SBDC.

It's busy.

We're seeing literally hundreds of entrepreneurs.

And we would welcome your input as to how we can best serve them, how we can build this.

We're constantly developing new programs, new ideas.

People want to form, you know, a manufacturer's group for young manufacturing entrepreneurs, right?

We got together a group specifically for massage therapists during COVID because that was a unique challenge.

So we had

More than 30 massage therapists and developed a program specifically for them to deal with safety.

So you can see we can go down a lot of rabbit holes.

Well, I certainly think that, you know, I think we need to be looking at what we can do in terms of support, because a lot of what you're doing is directly focused on the kinds of, you know, building up those businesses in town that are, you know, selling things to other places.

That's the kind of business that Roger loves.

So we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to grow those businesses.

So I want to make sure we do what we can to support you both by, you know, encouraging

Elmore County support, but also by I think what the EDA can do as things proceed.

So I certainly would be in favor of that.

I have a question, actually, a random question.

I'm from Scottsville and we're constantly trying to revitalize, figure out ways to revitalize the town.

And I was wondering if you would consider

working with us and the town of Scottsville being the product and how do we promote the town and attract more businesses and those sorts of things.

Absolutely.

In fact, we did that with Orange County.

We did research for them.

We got the GIS studies to see who's coming through the town.

We got, you know, median income, age, all of that information.

So you know who your customers are.

And then we got them a team from UVA Propel.

And each of those, I don't know if you all knew about that, but there were teams of 50 students.

There'd be 10 teams of five students and they'd all attack the problem with creative solutions.

And that's a really fun thing to do because they'll dig in on, you know, what's the history of the town?

What's the culture of the town?

They'll talk to stakeholders and try to come up with some creative ideas.

And because of the UVA Propel program we did last summer, it's now become a signature course that's year round.

Yeah, we've done a lot of that kind of work.

The question that we're running into is how do we implement some of these things?

So we've got lots of ideas, but we're sort of grappling with how do we take this idea and make it happen?

Okay, I guess I have to think about that because, yeah.

The SBA doesn't allow us, well, we can work with nonprofits, but technically we're not supposed to.

But we tend to find support, right?

So we can, yeah, let's connect.

Thanks for having me.

All right, Roger, you want to give your report?

Mostly we wanted to reiterate and thank the EDA for supporting what you originally knew as Project Knight Rider later became the avenue project where there was an autonomous shuttle

driven in, I say driven, halfway driven in Crozet.

It was autonomous, but we put a driver behind there for safety reasons.

And I think you may have heard about this or read about it in the Daily Progress and maybe even mentioned it before, but Perron Robotics actually had a $10 million capital infusion as a result of that particular project.

There was a direct connection between the investor and the funding.

I wanted to mostly to make you aware that our team is currently working with Paul Perron and his

is the new VP to find them a home in Albemarle County.

We are actively looking for sites, working with different developers and or landowners to find a good site for them to build a test track and perhaps put their shop and headquarters at the same location.

Again, just reiterating some of the work this authority did has resulted in concrete and objective positive results.

We have a factory, empty factory in Scottsville.

It's on our radar screen, Stuart.

We don't really talk about individual properties.

I'll just say we're aware of the highest level in our county.

There was an announcement recently that came out from the federal OMB, the Office of Management and Budget.

There wasn't much fanfare made, but I wanted to make this authority aware of it because it could have an economic impact on our community.

Statisticians who do the census data has recommended that those metropolitan statistical areas that have a core city of less than 100,000 population be downgraded from a metropolitan statistical area to a micropolitan statistical area.

And while they have purported that this doesn't impact federal funding in any way,

I just wanted to share with you a couple experiences that I have and give you an opportunity to weigh in on your thoughts as well.

While metropolitan statistical areas are not supposed to impact federal grant funding, the data that they pull together is utilized by investors, by site selectors, by retailers, by commercial entities, and other financial folks who use the data to begin the mining process of finding locations for investments and or shops and or all kinds of different services are provided.

So if we move from a metropolitan statistical area to a micropolitan statistical area, it may in fact not hurt our grants for roads or community development, but there will be an ancillary or even a tertiary impact where people will look at the data of those areas first and not necessarily dig down far enough to find out about our particular community.

I actually had this happen when I was in Wilmington, North Carolina, where they looked at the traffic patterns on 17 South and found that there was the preponderance of traffic heading from North Carolina down to the Myrtle Beach area.

Everyone who lived down there understood that the adjoining county actually lived, played, and worked in Wilmington, North Carolina, but the data showed there was more traffic heading to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, so they moved Brunswick County into a different metropolitan statistical area.

As a result of that, when the state put out RFPs for companies to locate, they wanted certain metropolitan statistical area sizes in order to qualify, and on a couple occasions, RMSA no longer qualified.

So there are ancillary and tertiary impacts to the downgrading of a metropolitan statistical area.

It's really hard to prove a negative.

I can't tell you what opportunities we may miss, but for me, I would articulate it as saying,

We won't have our name on the ballot to be voted on.

And so I'd like, you know, to just share those thoughts with you all, solicit your feedback, see if you agree with those assertions in a fair and comprehensive way.

I would also like to report there are some communities who may actually lean into being a micro statistical area.

in that they're just going to say we're different because of that.

Come to a smaller community, come be part of what we do.

So there are different folks who have a different perspective on that.

I just wanted to share a holistic preview and maybe gather your thoughts to see if this is something we ought to weigh in on as an economic development authority.

Roger, I guess my only question would be

Do we have any control over it?

I mean, can we say because we don't do eminent domain and we have a large urban area, obviously,

This is just- We meet the definition of the MSA, but Charlottesville doesn't have 100,000 in population as- I know, it's such a fine point, yeah.

It's so annoying.

To answer your question directly, the Office of Management and Budget has opened up a website where we can solicit feedback between now and Friday the 19th.

And then secondarily, there's probably a secondary way we could do this in that we could write a,

a letter stating our position to the federally elected officials who represent our community.

And I can't remember, I think there's three off the top of my head that we would have to write that letter.

Obviously, we have an existing MOU with the Board of Supervisors, so we couldn't move forward without their concurrence.

Roger, I think we should definitely do something like that.

Sure.

I would agree with that.

Roger, is it just solely because Charlottesville, the city of Charlottesville doesn't have a population of 100,000 that we're in danger of losing?

You should realize that there are only two states in the United States that have the kind of system that Virginia does.

And that is in all the other 48 states, at least that was the case 15 years ago.

All the 48 states, you'll find that cities are encompassed within counties, while Virginia has this unique structure where counties are completely separate political entities from cities.

And I'm not sure if OBM statistics take that into account.

They don't, no.

Yeah, so we should qualify if we were considered as a standard or the typical designation where the counties and the cities are combined.

And I don't think that would be a hard point to press, really.

On the other hand, if they're going to be strict about city size and population,

Just to play devil's advocate a little bit, I think, Roger, you have very eloquently talked about how our mission here, particularly compared to other places, is more in line with helping existing businesses do what they can do better and prosper and so forth.

And I don't see where it would alter that course of action in any dramatic way.

This would probably come into play, as you suggest, with the

recruitment of new businesses, potentially new businesses.

And probably what the OMB has in mind is that it's all about an exercise in fitting.

Smaller places have smaller capacity generally.

There are historical circumstances where that's not the case and they've lost a factory, for example, or whatnot, but we're not in that boat.

We're probably in many ways brushing up

Yeah, Dave, the only thing I would be concerned about, I mean, I agree with everything you said.

I would want to make sure, though, that this didn't somehow, you know, and I know Roger could qualify it by saying it shouldn't affect transportation dollars, it shouldn't affect dollars, but I always have that little part of me that goes, once they retitle you,

Well, Kat, that's one of the biggest arguments you hear from other folks is it may not affect federal funding today, but if you reclassify them, you don't know what the future holds and if they're gonna separate grants for metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas.

I'll take that back.

So I don't know if we need to take any further comment or not.

I mean, obviously this is something that will be at the will of the board to weigh in on, but certainly your input would be shared with the board should we decide to do something.

I don't know that there's a consensus, I can't see everyone.

I would propose that we simply be watchful and see what it implies and what this portends.

I don't think there's a clear-cut analysis on which we can rely to say yes or no one way or the other.

There could be

compelling reasons to make the change.

Yeah, well, the reasons they put in the report at the actual federal level was that the last time they set the boundaries was in 1960 or so, and so it's 50 years old, and now there's been a gravitation towards cities, and they wanted to statistically change that.

factor to consider to a more modern standard.

So it was really a statistical change they wanted to make.

I agree 100% and I think Jim and David spoke well to the fact that we are kind of an exception in terms of how this is typically classified when you look at cities and counties.

And then we can always propose reversions everywhere, right Jim?

We brought this up at the Board of Supervisors meeting the other night, and Doug indicated he was looking into it.

Yeah, Roger had brought it to my attention, and this is actually a kind of a more full-throated explanation to the EDA about what his research is uncovering.

I think that where we go from here is we'll consider, you know, drafting something for the board to consider, you know, just that we can present to them with, you know, some

What sounds like, I know we're not asking for a vote, but it certainly sounds like there's interest from the EDA if not overwhelming or consensus support.

And just as a matter of reference, the U.S. Chamber has also reached out to our local chamber to talk about bringing this to their attention to see if they want to take a stance on

versus Micropolitan Statistical Areas.

So it may not be a consensus here, but I would say the larger volume I heard of feedback was let's do something now.

So I'll work with the county exec's office and see if we can get something in front of the board for consideration.

I think 344.

Maybe J.T.

can find the website and pull that up.

Or Jennifer, I'm not sure who's running.

But there were three in Virginia.

It was Blacksburg, Charlottesville, and Stanton, I believe.

Was Stanton the third?

And I will also say there tended to, a large percentage of these tended to be in places there was a town and gown relationship, Corvallis, Oregon, Boise, Idaho.

I'm doing this off of memory, so I won't be able to articulate all of them.

You know, there's a distinct possibility with that many that it becomes a positive attribute.

People are leaning into it.

And, you know, particularly if a company is searching for

They have favorable real estate circumstances and they understand off the cuff that the bigger places are going to have more expensive real estate.

They may start their search with the 344, you know, and then winnow it down from there.

Roger, do you understand that if you go to North Carolina, you could have Harrisonburg in its suburbs that it would not be on the list.

Well, how about that?

Well, that's because we're the, I just wanted to make sure you realize what I was saying.

We're the one of two states where they have a dichotomy between cities and counties.

144, not 344.

Thank you, J.T.

Yeah.

All right.

Any other comments on this?

I think we can move along to a closed session.

Should I go ahead and I've got it in front of me so I can go ahead and or somebody else want to make the motion?

I'll do it.

I'll make the motion.

How about that?

I move that the Albemarle County Economic Development Authority go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 5 to discuss and consider prospective businesses or industries in the expansion of an existing business where no previous announcement has been made of the business or industry's interest in locating or expanding their facilities in the community.

To wit, the location and development of Project Leopard in Albemarle County.

And to subsection six, to discuss and consider investment of public funds where bargaining is involved related to proposed amendments to an existing performance agreement where it may public initially the financial interests of the authority and the county would be adversely affected.

To wit, the performance agreement and VCHIP match grant

agreement with Willowtree.

All right, Stuart second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right.

Did we lose?

Looks like we lost Roger and J.T.

and Richie.

It also, Jennifer, looks like we're still recording.

It's like Gilligan's Island.

That's what I thought, yeah.

Thank you.

Here we go, chat.

Well, I'm hitting my chat and it's not coming up.

I saw the link earlier.

All right, George.

What am I supposed to do?

Okay, you should pop out.

Is it?

Yeah, I think I cut us all.

Okay.

George is on his way over.

Okay.

OK, it just came.

You should receive it in your email.

This is actually the most secure way.

I don't know if you guys did see the Planning Commission in, I think it was Petersburg got hijacked from a public meeting.

Anthony, have you been home today?

I'm sorry?

Thank you for dropping it off.

I appreciate it.

All right.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and start.

So I'll call roll.

Not here yet, Director Shreve.

Aye.

Director Munson.

Aye.

And Director McNaughton.

All right.

So, all right.

I guess I just mentioned I know the County Board of Supervisors is going to be taking up soon the plan for the comp plan update.

You know, it's not looming on the schedule, but at some point I think it'd be important to know where if we're going to get a chance to comment on the economic development section of the comp plan through that process.

All right.

All right.

Well,

All right.

Well, thanks, everybody.

I thought that was a really good discussion.

I think we came up with some good things that I certainly hadn't thought of.

So I guess we will see everyone in a month.

Take care.

Take care, guys.

Stay healthy.

Bye bye guys.

Bye.