Economic Development Authority Special Meeting (Virtual)   7/22/2025

We have at least one person who has signed up to speak.

We have, I don't know whether we have anybody else who is on our attendees list who wishes to speak, but I'll just go ahead and read these while we wait for Frank, although we may want to wait for him to receive the comment.

if he's planning to get on.

Matters from the public in order to allow the EDA to effectively conduct its business.

Public comment is limited to 15 minutes total.

Each speaker may speak for up to three minutes and may only address the authority.

If there are more than five speakers, the chair may limit the speaker's time to two minutes.

Speakers cannot engage in speech or other behavior that disrupts the meeting.

Speakers may include a visual or audio presentation provided the presentation has been provided to the County's Economic Development Office at least 48 hours before the meeting.

The authority requests that speakers adhere to the following guidelines, called on to speak, state your name and magisterial district, address comments to Economic Development Authority as a whole, statements must concern matters on the EDA's meeting agenda,

Written statements may be submitted in addition to or in lieu of speech.

Please deliver or email those.

to the county's economic development office.

Contact information is on the county's economic development website.

We have received one written comment, which Avery's gonna provide to everyone.

At the end of three minutes, speakers will be asked to end the comments.

Actually, in this case, what we've done is we will have a notification when you have 30 seconds in your time just so you can wrap it up and then your microphone will stop after three minutes.

If a speaker does not use all three minutes, the unused time cannot be shared with another speaker.

Directors of the authority are not to respond.

Back and forth debate is prohibited.

Please be aware that all comments are live streamed, recorded, and published on the county's website and will be retained as a public record.

Okay.

All right, seeing us now, seven minutes in, I think we should just go ahead and proceed and hopefully he'll be able to join us.

So,

And I'll just say a program note, there's a slight delay when we recognize the speaker.

I can hear.

Can you hear me?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you so much.

All right.

We'll start the clock now.

My name is Joy Herriman.

and I'm a resident of the Samuel Miller District.

I'm here to express my concerns about the Economic Development Strategic Plan.

As an active community volunteer, vice president of the nonprofit historic Batesville and engaged citizen, when I came upon this plan, I was truly dismayed by its direction.

It does not reflect the place where I live or what I and others want to see for its future.

The plan is sorely underspecified in terms of its impacts, beneficial or otherwise.

It ignores environmental concerns in this time of climate crisis.

Most importantly, the drastic growth strategy it proposes has moved forward with minimal impact from county citizens.

We would like to address this lack of transparency by scheduling a meeting with residents of the rural community, the Economic Development Authority, and county representatives prior to its adoption.

Albemarle County is an extraordinary place whose citizens cherish its unique qualities.

In a rush to grow the defense intelligence sector, life sciences, and a modern agribusiness economy, this plan proposes changing zoning and land use policies that protect Albemarle's special natural environment.

Yet in the 2020 Weldon Cooper Center Community Survey, a majority of citizens already considered the county's rate of growth as too fast, citing overtaxed infrastructure, overcrowding, traffic, and a lack of affordable housing.

This plan, this draft plan, needs to be revised to scale appropriately to Albemarle County and to the environmental challenges of our times.

This document that will, quote, set the strategic direction and priorities of the county's economic development, but it's sorely lacking in quantitative analysis, vaguely promising increased commercial tax revenues and committing this county and its citizens to costly upgrades in infrastructure.

We expect from you, the authority, a careful cost-benefit analysis for its numerous externalities.

The significant environmental ramifications of this plan for growth need to be quantified and deliberated now, not left to the future when specific decisions will be made.

I have many additional comments concerning, which will be detailed in my written testimony, but the limits of time forced me to end with a question for all of you.

If the current economic development strategic plan were widely publicized and Albemarle County citizens were broadly aware, how will you explain its stealth process of development, its ambitious plans for defense, biotech, and agribusiness, and account for future impacts that will affect their quality of life?

A meeting with rural residents would be a good place to test your answers.

I look forward to getting this on the calendar very soon.

Thank you.

I don't see that anyone else has asked to speak, correct Ashley?

That's correct.

Okay, then we will move on to

New Business, the Economic Development Strategic Plan.

As I shared with you, Vice Chair Morrill has some

had some comments that he wanted to put together and we wanted to present those so he could talk about them before we did.

So I think that's what he's going to, we've got those slides and he's going to

talk about them and let us know his sort of give give us some some of his thinking on those things.

Okay great thanks.

So if nobody else has any

Anything else beforehand?

Yeah sure, sounds good and Avery maybe you can scroll with me as I'm talking because the slide doesn't have all of it, but

Yeah, and I think it's good just to start because my intention here is not so much, Steve, as you're referring to, to have like that this is a resolution to be voted on or anything, but rather just to stimulate the discussion.

And I'm very interested in hearing what the other directors have to say about the content and the slides.

So yeah, the first one here I'm proposing that we recommend to the supervisors changes to the vision and the mission and these consequential statements provide the guiding principles for our work here and big picture I'm starting from the position that the whole point of government is to facilitate the conditions that encourage human flourishing and

And that sounds very aspirational, but if you think about it for just a few moments, like, that's what we're trying to do here.

We want people to live good lives, you know?

And when I talk with neighbors and friends about what economic development means to them, I hear repeatedly from them that they don't want to sacrifice what they love about living here.

Yes, they'd like lower taxes, they want vocational education, they want good kids, I'm sorry, good jobs for their kids.

but I also hear that it breaks their hearts to see huge farms turned into subdivisions one right after the other and they're definitely not asking for more traffic.

They want to keep the Albemarle in Albemarle County.

So I'd like to see language that acknowledges the tension that I'm describing here between growth and the expected and pretty predictable negative impacts of that growth so we can balance these priorities and keep our focus on human flourishing.

So I've divided it in two parts here, the vision and the mission.

One option would be to just combine them.

That would probably be my suggestion because they're duplicative, they're overlapping.

I don't think the vision, at least in its current form, conveys a lot of meaning.

But I'd be open to keeping both.

So anyway, if we want to keep both, you can see my proposed vision is stripped down a little bit.

Albemarle will achieve economic prosperity, full employment opportunity, and environmental sustainability while preserving our exceptional quality of life.

and then we can, you know, before we talk about that, if it pleases the chair, I'll cover the mission and then we can- Sure, sure.

I think that's a good idea.

So as far as the mission goes, I tried to work with what was there and rather than, you know, a wholesale revision,

and you can see I want to work people out, people first.

So the proposed suggestion for the supervisors would be deliver lasting prosperity for all of our residents by expanding employment opportunities, strengthening and diversifying our tax base and supporting local businesses and redevelopment while protecting our environment and exceptional quality of life.

So maybe, Don, the question I have for you here is, would you like me to move on to this?

I mean, they're slightly, I mean, they're sort of different ideas.

So why don't we talk about, give people's thoughts on your sort of first slide, the mission and vision.

And I might ask Emily, what is the different focus of vision and mission, and how do you see those?

And what happens if we

Combine them, what are your sort of general views?

Not on the specifics of what we're talking about, but kind of what the focus of those things should be.

Thank you.

Okay, now you're fine.

So I think, not getting into the specifics of what they say, a vision and a mission are consistent with a lot of the ways that the county approaches, you know, we have several plans.

We have a county-wide strategic plan that the board adopts that covers all the areas of local government.

Updating the economic development strategic plan is actually one of the

Strategies in the county's strategic plan right now, for example.

And there's also the biodiversity action plan, the climate action plan, several other plans.

A vision and a mission are consistent with how those have been approached in the past.

And I think functionally, they speak to the different ways that different people think about things.

So some people are really mission oriented and they want to know what is my mission.

I think some people are more inspired by vision.

What's our future state?

And so having both, I think just gives us some flexibility to talk a little bit about both.

The vision is aspirational.

It's where we want to be.

It's where we want to get.

And the mission is sort of our role in getting there.

And that's

sort of the broad context for why we have both.

I think they're both helpful.

They're certainly not both required.

Yeah, yeah.

What do, comments from others?

Yes.

Bill, do you have some?

Very low volume.

I could go either way, but I do like it the way it is in terms of the aspirational, because Jeff, you said that this is aspirational, like Albemarle County will achieve increased economic prosperity or something like that.

I got my speaker back, I think.

I can hear you now.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, my mic was my headphone.

Anyway, I think Emily alluded to something or not, or identified something that we need to understand and be clear with, I guess, one, backing up a little bit, I understand this meeting was to prepare our brains for a discussion with a joint meeting in the Board of Supervisors, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's also to,

Yes, in preparation so that they have that in advance.

Right.

Okay.

This is an economic development plan.

This is not a comp plan.

This is not a parks and rec plan.

This is not an infrastructure plan.

This is not a land use and zoning plan.

I think it's important to consider that, as Emily stated,

This is a piece, this will become a piece of the comp plan.

It zeroes in on economic development.

It will be and needs to be aligned with the other parts of the comp plan, including our overall community vision, which would involve quality of life, right?

This is one aspect of quality of life is to, you know, take advantage of the unique opportunities we have here to advance economic

opportunity for our citizens and the businesses that they own and folks coming in to facilitate the other goals that we need to facilitate in the county, which might be related more to specific elements of quality of life, whether that be an infrastructure improvement, education, schools, building a park or whatever, nothing in this world is free.

So anyway, I just wanted to

to point that out that the plan's goals and vision are maybe purposely my perception, purposely generically ambitious, and are zeroed in on economic development.

I think the reference to quality of life and alignment with our values and quality of life that Jeff has put forward has a lot of value in discussion because we're going to probably get a lot of people

to react in that way, hold up, like our current speaker, or our recent skipper, with concerns about where is this leading.

But I think it needs to be very clear what we're outlining here and what we're not outlining.

There will be a process because of the

things we have in place to ensure that the comp plan, special area plans, right?

We have ARB, we have entrance corridor guidelines, we have all these things that will filter the perceived or actual aggressiveness of our goals and vision related to economic development.

So anyway, that's my just context, how I perceive this.

If I'm wrong, you know, talking out of school,

And I think that's right in terms of the, I mean, I do know that Emily will correct me if I'm wrong, but the comp plan itself does refer to, you know, references this plan, this plan references, you know, the other plans, the

Climate Action Plan, I think some of the others.

So I think that's part of what we're talking about is how much do you need to bring in from each plan?

But I think I agree with Jeff's idea that making clear that we all think it's important to continue and stress the value of

living here.

That's why we live here.

That's what we want to keep.

So, perhaps, when I was looking at this, you know, maybe an objective, there's a lot of objectives here.

Overall, ultimately, I guess it is about enhancing and complementing the quality of life, right, in the county.

Like you all say, that means a lot of different things for a lot of people.

Some folks haven't retired to certain neighborhoods and are living off their retirement funds and they need a job.

So that is important to their quality of life is an opportunity to develop, get a job, get decent pay and benefits, develop their skills, maybe increase their education level and things like that.

So quality of life,

opportunity, generational opportunity, I would say I'd like my kids to stay in the county and actually work in the biotech industry because that's what they know.

That's their chosen profession.

And they're very talented, intelligent, and I don't want them moving to Baltimore and D.C. to do that.

Income level, our reputation for innovation and leadership, right?

That's important to the folks.

The jobs, obviously, the access to a job nearby, not

an hour away in Richmond or two hours away.

And then obviously the tax base issue, which as we know, we have a grossly undiverse tax base and we are missing out on opportunities and we're not increasing amenity and opportunity and mortality because there's limited funds.

So anywho, I would just offer that and also offer that

Given that this is a specific plan to economic development and that we have these processes, I propose to be careful about diluting the, what's the word?

I guess just not diluting the intensity of our vision and goal, knowing that it's, yes, it has to be right-sized to fit our community values

and get into alignment.

I can find some.

There's a great deal of merit in what Bill has said and what Jeff has proposed here.

And if we consider this as part of Albemarle County's comprehensive plan, I think we do more than just nod to the things that make Albemarle, Albemarle.

This is not the community I first came to almost 40 years ago.

as a UVA student.

It's not the community I moved to 20 years ago or over 20 years ago when I came to work for the university.

So it's changed and it will continue to change.

And that change is probably more rapid now than it was even five or 10 years ago.

And we need to adjust for that.

I don't think any of us on this authority or anyone on the board of supervisors

actively wants to destroy, as Jeff has phrased it so well, the exceptional quality of life.

But as we know, that quality is going to take different pieces.

And as someone with young kids who are going through the Albemarle County School System now, I worry that we have already priced them out of living locally.

without our ability to lower a potential tax burden or creating good starter housing and missing middle housing for them, which we can do through economic development in some respect, but also through a comprehensive look that the county is doing.

I don't have a problem with Jeff's proposals.

Honestly, the current drafts feel a little bit, they come from very much a business centric perspective, which makes sense.

And it may just feel to people not engaged in this community.

Like it's a lot of jargon.

whereas Jeff's feel a little more, I don't want to say common is the right word, but a language that speaks to more people, that is more inclusive in terms of referencing everyone.

So just for these points, that's where I'm ready to go now.

Have we heard from Frank?

Do we know anything about what his status is?

Don, he did text that he was going to listen to the meeting or be involved in the meeting via his telephone.

But that was about 10 minutes ago.

OK. All right.

Bea, do you have any thoughts you want to share?

Okay, as a non-member of the board.

One question I would have for you is what do you think is helpful for the board in terms of guidance?

My reaction, and you can tell me whether this is wrong, is that really probably what's helpful for the board is for us to say, hey, here are the things that we think are important, and here are the issues that we would like you to consider as you're making this decision.

I am actually very impressed by all the comments of the members that I've heard from so far because they're very thoughtful.

You guys are really bright, frankly.

I understand when I read, and we're looking just at the vision right now, right?

When I read the one about proposed, and maybe it's my logical thinking, but when it says will achieve and full employment,

Those are almost promises that I don't know if you can ever, frankly, if you can ever achieve those.

So those two I have a problem with to say will.

and Full, that I have a concern about myself.

But I don't know, maybe combining the two, I do understand that we are an ADA, so it is economic.

And we want to achieve the proposed through economic development.

So whether or not we combine that, I know we have an exceptional quality of life, but economic development, our business scale partnerships, it is changing Albemarle.

I mean, it has to, because everyone's not happy about the increased taxes.

And frankly, they're just gonna go up unless we do something.

We're at 11.7.

for commercial, we need to be at 15 to 17% for commercial.

So we do have to do something in order to lower the tax burden for our residents to have economic prosperity, employment opportunity, environmental sustainability.

Only when you have a strong economy

can really you be generous in the social programs.

Without a strong economy, you can't do that.

So you need one in order to do the other.

But I do understand that a lot of people that have been here, because I hear from them many, many, many years, I've only been here almost 20, and I've seen the change.

That's okay, because you know where I come from,

It's a lot less than what I know.

But it is, people do worry about that.

And we either grow and move forward, frankly, or we stay behind and we don't grow.

I mean, people will come here.

So even if it's for the environmental, even if it's for the natural beauty and everything, we are going to have more and more people coming here.

That's a matter of, that's a fact of life.

And I think 25% of the population is older and do we put the tax burden on them?

So we do have to, I am, I guess what I'm saying is I don't, I'm not against the proposed or incorporating it in with the current draft with maybe a couple

Modifications.

But I don't have a say about that.

Well, is somebody going to say something?

John, can I ask a question?

Sure, sure.

And you guys might be a bee, might be tired of me saying this.

But I guess just maybe kind of elementary, sophomoric, or whatever, how can the county

Only 5% of our land is developable.

So 95% is not.

So of course it appears crowded.

All the growth's on 29.

Everybody lives in one spot.

And in my mind, it's not, maybe it's not an economic question.

Maybe it's a math question.

I mean, is that sustainable and is it legitimate as we expand?

Because what we're guaranteeing ourselves

is everybody on 29 and that's it for all the time and it's not feasible and it does make the quality of life dissipate because you know I've been here 18 years and you know it's different but it's all in the same spot I just don't know and I understand like our speaker I'm certain

where she's one, there's a gazillion that feel that way.

But I just don't know if it's a legitimate way to proceed.

Only 5% can be developed.

So we're only arguing about 5%, and I don't even know, somebody answer me.

Here's one more just simple question, because I don't know the answer to this.

I'm not baiting anybody, but does a 5% that's developable

Does that include what's developed already or does that exclude?

Because I mean, if you look how much land UVA takes, get gracious.

I'm just, excuse me for interrupting.

I will tell you there is more room for growth in the development area.

Yeah, it has to go higher and denser.

And that's how you also solve the middle housing crisis.

But there is room, but we have some very large, well, Fashion Square, Seminole Square, Albemarle Square,

We have to wait until the developers, until it's economically feasible for the developers to come in and propose something great, because their land, we can't tell them what to do, but hopefully we can build a lot of homes.

I will tell you that if you're familiar with Seminole Square, where the Kroger is, they're planning on building three, that's in Charlottesville, but they're planning on building 300 units there.

All right.

I'm sorry.

I was late.

I got tied up.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, and Bill probably can answer, Steve could probably answer your question.

My understanding is the five, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the 5%

includes developed land that is, I mean developed and undeveloped and that that the developable land remaining is only three percent of that five percent for things like critical slopes and those sorts of things and you know it is as Bea said I mean one of the issues is while we do have sort of green

Greenfield type land.

So the rest- Well, not land cost, but just, you know, you have to figure out where the easements are and you have to, you know, tear stuff up and you have to do those sorts of things.

But yes, I mean, I think so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And let me offer this.

I think

No, I know.

I'm sorry.

Right.

No, I think, you know, there's metrics that will be developed.

You know, again, we have an economic development plan where Almonic has ambitious goals.

They're general on purpose, right?

They will align with their other instruments of planning that we have through the comp plan and otherwise.

Part of this, I agree completely with Jeff's sentiment because this is going to be a concern of all our citizens representing citizens in the economic development capacity.

In terms of integrating the concept and reference to the whole purpose of this is obviously to, I would say, strengthen, complement, enhance whatever our quality of life, right?

maybe perhaps as be wisely recommended, we avoid whatever the lawyers would call those words, will, shall, will, all that, those kinds of words and leave it up to the process.

And again, in terms of what Steve's talking about, yeah, that could be true, right?

Your perception could be accurate

Once we understand really what our redevelopment, you know, brownfield or grayfield reuse, redevelopment opportunities are, our current properties, opportunities are, we may have plenty of capacity in the growth area.

We don't know that yet.

The counties may have already done an analysis through the planning department.

That needs to get done.

So I guess that leads to, I just want to say, I agree with what the sentiment Jeff is offering here.

You're going to be careful about the language.

Ultimately, it's evident and obvious and should be communicated that there are next steps to this plan in terms of moving it forward that we've talked about in previous meetings, like assigning metrics specifically to it, right?

What does that translate to?

What does the goal translate to?

And it could just start with the example of tax base.

If we're trying to diversify tax base by percentages,

that equals dollars, that all backs into actual stuff.

We can quantify that we can assign to industries, so on and so forth.

And then we understand the metrics of what kind of land and resources those industries take, and we can get a better picture of them.

I will say I honestly feel that what happens with our economic development plan and with things that may happen in the future, I do believe that is going to pave the way for

probably more development along 29.

That seems to be, and I told people that.

I said, if we develop anywhere, it's not gonna be out in all these other areas.

It's going to be up 29 because that's where it makes the most sense.

That's where you have the infrastructure and easy to put the infrastructure in there for development.

I mean, it's only, that's logical to me and that's my area.

Frank, I don't know if you've had a chance to sort of get up to speed here to offer your thoughts.

Basically what Jeff had prepared, you saw the information Jeff provided.

We've been talking about the slides and the information that's up on the screen in terms of what are your thoughts?

You've been through lots of strategic planning exercises.

I think Jeff did an excellent job in what he has proposed, but I also think that the consultants who were hired were hired to propose a vision and mission and then the rest of the plan flowing from the vision and mission

And I just don't think it should be our job at this point to wordsmith

The vision and mission.

I would tend to go with what the consultants have given us, although I think what Jeff has put in there is very well written.

The problem with vision and mission statements is if you get 100 people, you get 100 vision statements and 100 mission statements.

Everybody has different words they like and different emphases they like.

Once we open that can of worms, I don't know where it stops.

So that's kind of my feeling.

I also feel terms like exceptional quality of life can be interpreted in so many ways.

My quality of life and an unemployed individual in the county's quality of life is really quite different.

And

Terms like that I think can be used to almost promote anything and we should probably avoid things like that.

Well, Frank, I appreciate you complimenting my cardio or writing skills, which is what they are.

My only comment would be, I guess I don't have that much confidence in consultants.

They don't live here.

They're not going to live here.

Let me say this.

I said this at our last economic development meeting.

I'm not impressed with the work the consultants did.

I find a laundry list of a hundred suggested actions with no indication of what's the priority, with no indication of who should be doing what on those actions or when they should be done.

I don't find that an extremely valuable strategic plan.

I also think

when they tell you, go do marketing, but they don't tell you where, how, who, when, what to emphasize, nothing strategic at all.

And they say, go develop a brand for Albemarle County.

Okay.

Any thoughts on strengths, weaknesses, things we should mention?

No, it's not in there.

I was disappointed in that their roadmap, if you will, for, you know, wasn't very strategic.

So I agree with you, Jeff.

I was not blown away by their work in general.

But rather than

Worry about the wording on the vision and mission.

I would want to look more at what are the actions that they're recommending?

What are the priorities for Albemarle County?

You can't do a hundred things at once.

I thought there were things omitted that I was surprised were omitted.

Somebody just mentioned the almost empty shopping centers on 29.

Yeah, they could be developed as housing, but is there a way they could be developed for economic development?

Nothing in there about that.

I don't remember seeing anything about North Fork and how that fits into Albemarle County's strategic plans.

Frank, I'm just going to quickly mention that the plans for the shopping centers, we'd like to work with the developers.

We'd love to have commercial on the bottom.

and then go up and have housing on top of that.

Yeah, but I was just surprised that there's no mention of that, I don't think, in what the consultants gave us.

And Frank, what I heard you say first was,

You know, this has a lot to do, and we can't do everything.

And then you're asking for either more in terms of the redevelopment of brownfield spaces like Albemarle Square and Fashion Square.

And maybe we need to get away from the squares there.

But we do, right?

So we have all these potential industries in Albemarle County.

What we've got is three areas for the Economic Development Office to focus on.

and I don't know that I want consultants who is, in Jeff's words, who don't live here, who aren't from here, who aren't gonna stay here recommending marketing plans.

I don't know that I want a generic marketing plan from a consultant.

They came and talked to a lot of people and there are firms, local firms that do great marketing work that we can hire and keep the business locally and there are national firms who would jump at the chance to work with Albemarle County.

to develop a marketing plan in that way.

This is a five-year vision, a five-year goal.

I don't want all of the specifics.

I've been looking at the written plan and not just the slides, and it talks about these are the metrics we're going to look at, and these are the things we're going to do.

I think this gives us a place to go from and to lead from as an authority, as an office,

with of course the Board of Supervisors blessing in how to get Albemarle to grow.

Because it's growing.

And if the only people who can afford to come here are people with remote jobs, with salaries from bigger cities, or people with inherited or generational wealth of some variety.

That's a shame.

I think that when we have the opportunity to take advantage

We've been good recently at it.

Home Depot is a huge win in so many ways.

Our small contribution there, bringing in a major retailer on a dying space with the opportunity for

multiplier effects from our investment once Home Depot is up and running next month with whatever they choose to do with the rest of that property where we could get more housing in a central location.

So I think I think we already know about some of those things.

These are the things where we can make a substantial and concrete difference in

the life for many people in Albemarle County, for those just exiting college, for those career ladder jobs in the biosciences, in national security and intelligence, in agribusiness, if you wanna go into the wine industry or the distilleries or cideries or meaderies or breweries that we have.

I think this is,

A great starting point for us.

And I don't want those specifics, because the experts that we have on staff are going to be the ones implementing it and giving those specifics.

Sorry, I didn't mean to make a huge speech.

So somebody told me it was time to get off stage.

It was a beautiful speech, Dave.

Well, and Emily, is your microphone still not working?

Do you want to try?

How about now?

Okay.

Okay.

So I will, I'm going to call on you in a second, Emily, but I think I'll say, as somebody who did interact, I understand what Frank's saying about the plan, but I, I

interacted with the consultants and had very positive experiences.

And I thought what they were providing was what they were getting in terms of the feedback that they were getting from people.

So I think that some of the limitations, and Emily can speak to this better than I can, were just what they were asked to do.

I mean, they were asked to sort of get a plan to a certain point, and that's what they did.

I can't say that I've looked at lots of these plans, but I think in general I was happy.

I mean, my interactions I thought were very, very good.

The little green box wasn't coming my way.

So I think, you know, if you look at, again, just borrowing from some of the other strategic plans that the county has, they are also not what you might think of as a implementation plan or a work plan.

They stay a little bit higher level.

And part of that is because these strategic plans are multi-year efforts and

how the county allocates resources to specific program areas is done through our annual budgeting process.

And so we use strategic planning to sort of set the near-term direction and then work through annual budgeting to determine how we actually are able to advance some of those initiatives.

And then also just recognizing that we don't exist in a vacuum and there are kind of macroeconomic factors, there's environmental considerations,

There are opportunities that kind of present themselves and we have to respond to those sort of in real time.

And so these strategic plan efforts are generally a way for us to sort of focus.

What are the things that we should be focused on the most?

Let's set goals around those.

And that's I think what this plan tries to do by setting three target sectors and then also looking at workforce and entrepreneurship as well as investment opportunities

and then use that as really a decision-making tool as opportunities present for us to think through, is this the right allocation of resources?

Is this the right way for us to use dollar resources?

Is this the right way for us to use staff time resources?

Understanding that we get presented with a lot of opportunities and we simply do not have the time or the people to go full bore at all of them.

The way that we kind of operationally use these strategic plans is to help us decide sort of as things come about, what do we need to be focused on and sort of in what priority level.

And so that's sort of the high level approach that we designed the scope of work for the consultant services.

and then have sort of worked through with the consultants as they've done the plan development process to deliver the draft that you've all received within the past week.

What about the, so one,

One thing I will add to that, give Emily a chance to get her train of thought back is, you know, one of the things that she and I have talked about is, you know, when the county adopts an economic development plan, having us as an EDA, because a lot of the things in this plan are not EDA things, come up with an implementation plan for the things to address the kinds of things that Frank is talking about and us saying specifically, here's the things we're going to do.

Yeah, so Avery, I think it's the next slide.

And I was live editing a slide deck.

It's a risky endeavor.

So I think Avery, if you bring the slideshow up, it should just be the next slide on the deck.

Sorry, I was just gonna say I had a PDF version.

Okay.

Oh, thank you.

Thanks for bringing this up.

So I wanted to pull this up just to sort of show this is the mission and the vision that applies sort of countywide.

and this is part of the comp plan.

This is part of the county's, again, sort of the broad strategic plan that covers all of the work of the county.

It's how we orient our staff to the organization when they come on board with us.

It's really part and parcel of the work that we do each day as public servants in Albemarle County.

And I don't know if this helps or doesn't help the conversation, but I just wanted to make sure that you all saw

This mission and vision, which I think, again, the vision specifically sits in the comprehensive plan and talks about a lot of the same things that I think we were talking about on the last slide.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

Because I think that sort of goes to this idea that quality of life for good or for bad in terms of what that means is part of what we need to be thinking about.

And I guess I'll

So to share my general thoughts, I agree that I did have some concerns about the will in that statement.

I think on the vision, the sort of what I would think of as sort of business type speech, more tagline-y stuff.

I think that goes back to the idea that everybody's going to have what appeals to them.

I think what I take out of this

This discussion is that we need it to be clear that in this plan, we're considering, you know, it's not just growth for growth sake, or, you know, build, build, build, that we do this in the context of trying to

make the county a good place to live and preserve what's important with the understanding that that means different things to different people.

But how do we protect the abundant natural, rural, historic, and scenic resources while having a thriving economy?

I mean, there's always going to be balances there that we have to take.

And I do think this plan, compared to Project Enable or other things, gives us

areas for us to focus on.

I think you can, if someone comes to us with a project and says I want to do X, we can look at this plan and say does that fit with where we want to go and what we want to do or does it not?

I mean the example I used the other day was if I came and said hey I want to build an amusement park in Crozet,

I think we could say that's not within the plan and not something that we want to do.

So I think the, you know, whereas there are other things that would clearly fall in this area.

So my inclination would be, unless somebody feels differently, is I think we can provide, I think we should provide the board with Jeff's slides as things that we talked about.

And I think the general consensus is that

Quality of life, whatever that means, needs to be something that throughout the plan we consider in the decisions we're making, but it is ultimately an economic development plan, and that that's part of the balance of what we're doing.

Yeah, and I think they go hand in hand.

I think it was Frank who said quality of life's a good job, right?

They go hand in hand.

And I would commend to you, because Jeff mentioned it to me when I was talking the other day, but the county's cost of services study that they did a couple of years ago, which has a lot of interesting discussion about, you know, the costs, the sort of residential costs versus commercial costs versus, you know, revenues and, I mean,

I don't have any understanding of the methodology and how that gets there and whether what's in there is right or not.

But I mean, just in terms of thinking about what things like commercial development brings and tax revenue versus costs and how that might offset other costs, I thought was very helpful in my thinking.

I do have something to say about that actually because

um so this was um you might remember that supervisor B has on more than one occasion mentioned the benefits of allowing restaurants in the rural area she just for clarity's sake she did not ask me to pursue this this was I researched this on my own initiative at at her um you know prompting in the meetings that that this is something she'd like to see and I didn't know anything about it

And I was surprised to learn that it's nearly impossible to serve sit-down food in 95% of the county, the rural area.

If the county allowed restaurants by special permit, as I'm suggesting here, as we suggest that we'd be recommending to the Board of Supervisors,

It's not like the floodgates will open because the special permit process is grueling.

It's very expensive.

It takes a long time.

The staff takes its first crack at it.

The planning commission then votes on it with recommendations to the board of supervisors.

There's two rounds of public hearing before or at the second one will be at that vote with the supervisors.

And they have broad discretion, the supervisors do, to reject any application.

So what we're proposing here isn't like, you know, a Burger King on every corner.

It's just empowering the supervisors where it makes sense to have the ability to approve, you know, you could imagine a winery that has all the facilities

The customers are already there, so we're not adding traffic.

It increases for the county, the value of the real estate, if it's allowed to serve food there.

It's the win-win kind of thing.

And I chose this one.

There were other instances that I could have used to illustrate this point, but I thought this would be good for catalyzing the smaller, kind of more focused discussion about individual planks in the plan.

And I know, again, Chair Long, you can watch the time.

I think in agreement, I would just, I would change consider to just recommend.

I mean, let's be more emphatic.

I mean, like, why not?

Well, I think, let me just, I think this is, it would be language in the strategy.

David had something to say about this.

Well, I was going to say that this actually ties into a different strategy under a different thing.

Strategy 4.5, which talks about expanding destination restaurant entertainment and retail experiences.

I mean, if I sit here and say, hey, you know, I really, you know, I'm craving Dr. Ho's.

I say just Dr. Ho's, and I think everybody knows what I mean, right?

But you know what I mean, but you know where it is, too.

It's not in a development area.

It's down at the crossroads.

But that's the kind of thing.

That's a destination restaurant for us locally.

I would love the equivalent of a barbecue exchange.

How often do you get a classically trained chef running a barbecue joint, but it's two counties away?

Right.

But but but those are the types of things, right?

So we're already recommending that under a different thing.

And that's part of the empowered talent and keeping people here.

Because you get those types of activities.

So I think this is a no-brainer in terms of that, but it also ties into part of the fifth goal, which is streamlining the process.

You can still keep the special use permit, but it maybe isn't as onerous as it is currently.

So you've got a developer and a restaurateur who are willing to work together to bring something like that to fruition.

I sit here and I think about this and I

I lament that my good friend Wilson Ritchie is no longer with us because I think he would have been somebody who would have been all over this type of opportunity in the county.

So I think these are great opportunities for us and that they will add to quality of life.

So absolutely.

Yeah, my only note is, and David touched on it, is it is a special use permit.

That's all.

Yeah, and I think, you know, the other part of this is there is food now.

It's just kind of arbitrarily limited by the kinds of food that can be served or coming from a food truck or so I think they're, they're, you know,

taking some common sense approaches to that.

And there are lots of balancing and lots of issues there, but I think I certainly support that.

So we've talked about Jeff's suggestions which I appreciate the fact that he took the time to put these together and I think they were very helpful in us talking about the big picture issues involving the plan.

Yes, she is.

You looked right over you, Bea.

You looked over me.

So I'm just going to bring this up because one supervisor made the comment about, well, you know, they didn't want restaurants.

Opening up all over the rural area because it's going to be a drain on water resources or whatever.

I, as you know, I was thinking restaurants with wineries and such where it made sense.

It's not going to impede traffic, not going to bother neighbors.

So I think all those things have to be taken into consideration.

But you all have actually opened up my mind, my thinking, because if you're living out in a rural area, you don't really have access to

You know, restaurants.

And that's kind of a shame that you have to drive so far to be able to have that.

Yeah, there's certainly, you know, you got to weigh lots of different factors.

Just, and I will not talk again.

This is a good example of how things in the strategic plan could start full processes to formally evaluate the details of a lot of the things that are in here.

So

Amending the county code to look at rural area food and beverage service would be a whole effort that would require work by community development and others to evaluate.

We want to make sure that we do a full appropriate process for that.

And so inclusion here is not approval of that thing happening, but simply for us to be able to start focusing on what those next steps might look

and I will finish.

Well, Emily, do you think it should be considered or recommend?

Amending.

Yeah.

I mean, if folks want to recommend, we certainly can.

I think rather than offer specific language to that, I think we would

We would recommend that restaurants in rural areas be considered

by the board.

Don going to the passive voice right away.

We're all winners.

Don, the reason I had chosen the word consider was that it was just consistent with other instances of recommended changes to code.

And I think the consultant, I'm assume just reading between the lines, the consultants were concerned

Right, right.

No, I think that's right.

I think, I mean, it's fine.

I think reading the other, you know, continue to expand support

Producers, consider amending.

I mean, if it lines up with the sort of structure of those statements, I'm totally fine.

We could consider recommending amending.

All right.

That's what Jefferson felt.

Okay.

Anything else that anybody want, any specific comments and if anybody in the course of their reading has anything else they want to bring up, I think certainly

Probably at this point, just sending their thoughts to, I think this group and then to the board as a whole, or sharing them with members of the board of supervisors are probably the best thing to do so that, you know, the sooner rather than later in terms of comments so that the board has time to consider that.

Does the board have,

So our joint meeting is on the 13th.

Yeah, that's coming up on August the 6th.

I think everyone would really like to just why don't we pull it up and let's just start writing right now.

Many, many years as an editor I've got some things that I would like to teach consultants on how to write in language and that sort of stuff but I'll share it with the staff and they can you know take my comments and

Well, thank you, David.

Thanks, everybody.

I really appreciate the time and effort.

I know people have spent time reading and thinking, and I think this has been a good discussion.

And I think, as I said to Jeff when he and I were talking about it, I think having these discussions is good.

It's helpful.

It makes us all think about different ideas that bring up

different things.

Don, I'd like to thank everybody who came and attended virtually.

We don't normally get a lot of turnout, but I'm appreciative of everybody who stuck with us and encourage everybody who's interested to either tune in or find a way to attend and help us be better, basically.

Emily, anything else before we adjourn?

So we have added the draft document that you all received by email to the county's Engage page.

So engage.albemarle.org slash edsp.

And there's also an opportunity for folks to submit comments there.

We'll take those through August 8th and provide an email update to the board and the EDA ahead of your joint meeting on the 13th with the comments that we've received so that you have the full benefit of those as well.

Okay.

Anything else?

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

I will adjourn this meeting until our joint meeting with the Board of Supervisors on August 13th.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Take care, everybody.