Board of Supervisors Meeting   11/10/2020

Linda O'Rourke, Christine Sebelle

Paul W. Nelson, but can't find 2020.

Okay, before we get started tonight, y'all will end the year of error.

This is the first course of our statement being televised or stringed with, I don't know the terms, on YouTube.

So this is a trial run.

Appreciate everybody showing up tonight.

The first thing we're going to do is public comment.

In two words, public comment is based on the agenda, but the limit is three minutes, and we'll listen to what you have to say.

Public comments, I'm sorry.

My name is Joanne Thompson Clarkson and tonight I'm here to reiterate what I said at the last meeting

and I know a committee is going to be formed concerning the removal of the Confederate Soldier Statute.

I'm in favor of keeping the statute and I think that I'm not sure exactly if that committee has been formed or when we will know and I know you all are thinking about that and I urge that you appoint a committee that is safe

One in which they will listen to all people's opinions and that everyone will have a chance to speak at a committee meeting.

And once again, I am in favor of keeping this statute up in the courtrooms.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Worley.

You want to be in this meeting, or be?

Did you say you were the next dog?

No, this is their board.

We didn't have an afternoon session.

We had it tonight, so this is the board meeting.

It's got me all screwed up, too.

I'm all screwed up.

Well, I thought you were talking about the dog rep. Well, we are, but that's my dog, isn't it, sir?

Well, just to touch on the statue.

That's not what I want to do.

I think the statue's... My name is Edward Warfield.

I live on Cedar Creek Road.

I've been here in this county 21 years.

There's a lot of corruption here in this county.

I want this entered into the record.

I ask y'all

October the 9th, 2019 meeting to appoint a board to look into the numerous complaints against the sheriff.

And the Nelson County Times, the News and Banks, no local media has reported.

The sheriff and the Commonwealth's attorney, Mr. Rutherford, were impeached May the 22nd of 2019.

Nobody knows anything about that.

The judge said they did what I said they did, but at that time, it did rise to the level of removing them from office.

Now, they did investigate a crime where two women broke into my house, stole my deeds, and I've been evicted from my own property.

Now it does rise to the level of removing them from office.

All right, and this 50-year toxic dump that y'all have left, here's all the DBQ stuff.

50 years.

I first seen it in 2014.

I went right straight to my end of the zone, reported it to Tim Paladino, called Mr. Carter, told him.

All of y'all, I've contacted all of y'all.

All of y'all say you have no knowledge.

None at all.

And so that means Mr. Carter hid it from y'all.

And let me tell you the other people's names that was well aware of that.

in Nelson County, Jennifer Wilkerson, to Don Tempest, which he's from and warehouses, then Todd Tinneter, he's the MNDQ, Peter K. Merle Kelly from Nelson County, Paul Truslow from Nelson County, Heather Graham from Nelson County, Candice McGarry from Nelson County, another Candice McGarry, then Debbie McCain

and Grace Mauer.

All of these people knew about that thing.

And y'all all claim you don't know a thing about it.

How can that be?

How can that be?

And like I said, I asked y'all about it in 2019.

Bring it back, keep Nelson beautiful.

You haven't done anything like that.

You haven't afforded any boards to look into the numerous complaints against the Sheriff's Department.

There were several other things I asked you to do.

You have to go back and look.

I ask you, you're going to amend the dog under that law, you're going to amend that, but I ask you, like I said in 2019, to amend the, I think the word litter, the litter is a problem, it's trash, it's nasty and filthy.

I ask you to amend the ordinance to make it the maximum fine to throw trash on the Dauphin Highway.

And you haven't done anything wrong.

Like I said, there's a lot of corruption in this county.

Thank you.

Any more to speak to these public comments?

Okay, I'll close the public hearing.

Okay, first thing on the agenda, the consent agenda.

Is that all you all looked at over?

Second.

Do I have any discussion on anything?

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Yes.

OK.

Presentation COVID-19 Upgrades the Thomas Jefferson Health District We all appreciate your name and very much.

So thank you for having me tonight.

I'm the health director for this region that includes Nelson County as the board chair.

We are changing our name to Blue Ridge Health District as of January 1st.

and now we're still Thomas Jefferson.

So I wanted to, I haven't been here really since the pandemic started and I thought I should come and update you on where you are with your numbers and also give you an opportunity to really ask any questions about the response to the pandemic and how we're moving forward.

As you can see on the left-hand side, the total case numbers for the district are just over 4,700.

Nelson County has 146 cases so far.

with nine hospitalizations and two unfortunate fatalities attributed to COVID-19.

The two graphs that you see on the right, the first is the daily case count and you see for the most part there's one or two cases a day in Nelson County.

There was an outbreak in the county in the August to September timeframe.

where we see the upward look and on the bottom this is a cumulative case pattern again you see the very steep rise right around August beginning of August but for the most part of the cases have been relatively small and limited in number and

We do see a disproportionate impact in the district.

They don't have this data broken up for Nelson County by itself, but for the entire district there's a disproportionate impact on people of color.

So the top line shows you the total number of cases and you can see that we have a large number of individuals who are white, but a substantial number of Latinx

out of proportion to the number of Latinos, Lashes, Panics that are in our community, which is about 5% of the district.

That continues as we look at hospitalizations and African Americans and Blacks have a significantly higher hospitalization rate in comparison to the proportion of the population.

And again, we see that carry on down into our fatalities as well.

So definitely hitting individuals who, again, are of color harder.

When we look at the cases by age, we see that we see a large number of cases in the younger age groups, not so much in our young children, but in the 10 to 19 and the 20 to 29 year olds, really the vast majority of our cases.

But when you look at who's actually hospitalized and who ultimately succumbs to COVID-19,

I have a question.

Well, of the total fatalities, 76% were white, and you're right, and 12 fatalities.

So the fatalities are actually probably in proportion.

If you look at the hospitalization rate though, sorry, I don't have my glasses on.

The ones on the left side, that's just the district population, that's our entire district if you look at it.

So 76% are white, 12% are black or African American, and 4 are Asian or Pacific Islanders.

So if you remember when you answered your census question, you answered both the race question and an ethnicity question.

So 5% of the people who reported ethnicity are Latin or Hispanic, so the other 95% would be white or non-Latin or Hispanic.

That's ethnicity as opposed to the three above that are our race.

There are a smattering of other races that are reported when you look at census data, but this represents the vast majority.

Even in regards to race and ethnicity, I'm sorry, I don't have that data broken out.

We don't break it out because when the numbers start to get really small, you only have two fatalities in your county.

And if I start to report up on race and ethnicity and age, it's pretty easy to identify.

So as a rule, we don't record data that's smaller.

in cells and five.

I certainly could probably give you the hospitalization data.

These are from our dashboard.

We don't report it out at a locality level.

If you'd like that, I can have that.

If this is not unique to our district, this proportionality is seen across the state and across the country as well.

And there's a variety of reasons for it.

Many people of color work in front-facing jobs, which put them at higher risk of coming into contact with somebody who's positive.

They drive the buses in our country, often work in the grocery stores, and those are higher risk occupations.

Probably come already into it to some degree, although not exclusively.

We continue to provide lots of testing.

We are one of the first health districts to stand up our own testing team.

And we have been down here in Nelson County at least once a month or more to do testing primarily at the Heritage Center.

So over 100,000 PCR tests have been done across the district.

Currently our percent positivity, that is the number of positive tests over the number of total tests done is just under 2%.

And that's really being driven by the extraordinarily large number of tests that are happening at UVA.

UVA is doing point prevalence surveys where they'll test everyone in the dormitory.

They're doing a lot of pool sampling testing.

And so you see those big spikes up of the number of tests, the blue bars that go up.

And that's when UVA has a big testing event.

And so because that's the denominator of this equation,

really drives down the percentage.

When I last looked at Nelson County's percent positivity, it wasn't much higher than this.

It was probably in the two to three range.

Again, because Nelson County is a very rural area.

And so kind of by definition, you socially distance in your housing and where people interact.

One of the early Sentinel systems that we use to look at potential rises is looking at what we call COVID-like illness.

The state looks at electronic medical records from a large number of hospitals in the area and look for symptoms that are consistent with COVID.

The light blue bar that you see across the top is the percent of ED visits that could be attributed to a COVID-like illness.

And you can see that there's been a gradual increase over time over the last few weeks.

The dark blue bar at the bottom is by our district.

I can only get this data by district level.

You know, I'm sorry, I don't know.

I looked at it probably.

This is all public so you can actually go to this website and play with it if you like and pull up the other one.

I think it looks very similar to that.

We don't have a large, we have a large major medical center in our district and so there's a large number of people who show up at that ED but I don't, it doesn't change as much.

The pandemic metric dashboard is the dashboard that the state put out a couple of months ago.

In the public, I've put all the links here so anybody can go and, again, play with this.

We are in the northwest region.

That's the region kind of over to the west and up.

So it includes Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Winchester are kind of the big cities.

What this gives you is a transmission extent and you can see that we're in a moderate transmission extent for the entire region and then down below it tells you whether that's a trending upwards or downwards.

Right now we're in a fluctuating phase which is that little gray dot.

You can see that the southern and western half of the state are having significant outbreaks at large numbers going on right now.

That reflects what's going on around in our surrounding states too.

If you look at Tennessee and West Virginia, their numbers are going up substantially.

What is not public, but we do send every week to Mr. Carter is the locality metric dashboard.

I've only given you the top two because the bottom two are outbreaks at which you don't have any and the number of infections in healthcare workers, which is very low for you right now.

So the top number is the number of cases.

This is an average, a rolling average over time, and lower is better.

And you can see that while you did have that big blip when you had the outbreak earlier in the year, in fact, you're down below five right now, which is where you want to be, and you're trending down low.

So this is showing that Nelson's doing great there.

And here's your percent positivity for today at three.

I just pulled this one off earlier today.

which again is a very reasonable and low percent positivity.

They do have it as rising a little bit but you can see the last trend shows it's going down and there's been sort of an up and down pattern.

On the pandemic metric dashboard there is a page for schools.

You can see the map of all the localities on that page and you can toggle through a variety of different

measures there.

I'm giving you cases, I believe, there.

And then on the right are the core indicators and secondary indicators for schools to use to determine whether they should open or go into a virtual mode.

You can see that Nelson right now, other than the top one, which is looking at the number of cases.

And I'm giving you what that color means in that little bar at the top.

But generally Nelson's doing great, all in green, which is really pretty outstanding.

There are two ways to look at outbreaks if people are interested in doing outbreaks in the area.

So the first is the K-12 school outbreak dashboard.

Nelson County Schools hasn't had any outbreaks.

And remember, an outbreak is not just a single case.

It has to be at least two cases that we're able to link

And so Nelson's virtual at the moment, and we haven't seen any outbreaks amongst teachers coming into the school.

So that's the top one.

The bottom one is nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and multi-care facilities.

And again, I've just cut out the section that Nelson would be if they had any, but there haven't been any outbreaks in any of the conjugate living facilities in Nelson County.

And you don't have a lot of those.

but it's great that you haven't had any outbreaks either.

So there are a variety of things that I encourage people to do.

The first is if you have a smartphone, you can download Covidwise.

This is an app that looks for other phones that have Covidwise on it around you and keeps track of those phones.

If you spend the appropriate amount of time, 15 minutes,

with the appropriate amount of distance, 6 feet.

And then if you or one of those other phones ends up testing positive, when a case investigator from the Department of Health calls, they'll ask if you have COVID-wise on your phone.

And if you do, they'll give you a code that you can enter in there.

And then that app on your phone or whoever's phone will send out a little message to all of those other phones that it kept track of.

It doesn't.

Downloading new private information, it just puts a code on both phones that match that allows it to send that message back out.

If you had been within six feet for 15 minutes with someone who had COVID-wise on and did all the appropriate things, you would get a little message that said you might have been exposed to someone who had COVID-19, you should go and seek testing.

So in a way, if you're spending lots of time

in a crowded area, if you're commuting on public transit, for example, this would be a really great app to have to alert you to potentially a stranger that you spent time next to that ended up testing positive during that time that you were spending here.

We still encourage people to do the physical distancing, 16 is the recommended.

It's not a magic number.

You can certainly look at lots of scientific studies and COVID spreads further than 60, but generally 60 is a good measure.

And that's what we use for contact tracing.

And then I put two different things.

I get asked a lot about cloth face coverings and masks about whether they really work.

And they do.

The first is a video that you can go and watch if you just Google that or

Take the slides.

There's a link in the slide.

You can watch essentially aerosolized droplets come out of your mouth, out of the individual's mouth with no mask, with a single-layer mask, and then with a double-layer mask.

It's a pretty convincing argument to watch.

We know that COVID has spread through aerosolization now.

We've got lots of studies that support that.

And then the New York Times article is just a little cartoon that really shows you how it actually works, what it does to those aerosolized droplets.

So I think either of those are really helpful.

I use them a lot for people who are unsure about the effect.

We continue to provide testing.

I've listed the different testing venues here.

The first three are in Charlottesville because there's regular testing there.

We will next be at Nelson Heritage Center on Monday, November 16th from 5 to 7.

That's a great time if you're traveling for the holidays and want to see what your COVID status is before you embark on your trip.

You can go there.

It's free testing.

We do encourage people to get registered until they have to be registered.

The hotline number is on the screen, 434-972-6261, and they will register you there and give you a time.

that you can come and get tested.

If none of those work for you, there are other testing events in our other surrounding areas as well.

So lots of testing available.

And finally, I would be remiss in saying we still continue to provide all of the regular services, although in a somewhat limited form, we are doing family-finding, SCI testing, and treatment and vaccination for clinical services.

You can continue to get your well and onsite permits.

You can read these investigations and file records as well as other communicable diseases besides COVID.

And then Women, Infants, and Children, which is our food supplement program, has actually really been booming since the pandemic started and has expanded to fit the need.

So I would be happy to answer any questions.

As I said, I've tried to provide all the links on each of the slides so that you can go and play with all the dashboard yourself.

The plan is still evolving a little bit.

At this point in time,

Looks like they will preposition several hundred thousand doses of the most likely contender.

So when a, if you just heard Pfizer release some of its early safety data yesterday, and they're probably going to submit that to the FDA later on in the month to get provisional emergency approval.

As that is going on, my understanding is they're going to preposition vaccines.

As soon as we get that emergency permission, that will allow us to start on the distribution plan.

The first they've teared out who gets it first because we just don't have enough for everybody at this moment in time.

There will eventually be, but production takes time.

So the first tier of health care workers, people who are on the front line dealing with health care workers and probably EMS is in there, other sort of frontline health care type providers.

My current understanding is that that will not be administered by the health department.

That will be administered by the umbrella organization that they work under.

So they're EMS organization or their hospital or

whatever entity.

And I'll say this is all subject to change, but we plan right now.

As more vaccine becomes available, then they'll work down the tiers.

We will be distributing vaccine at some point in time when it gets to the tier that we're responsible for.

But that, it probably won't be that first, that very first one.

I'm not anticipating that we would have

Significant vaccine at the health department for anybody until after the first of the year.

And really for the public probably in the spring at the current rate that things are moving.

The good news is that the data that Pfizer released is very promising.

That's extraordinary data.

It's a really novel new vaccine development platform.

and to have it come out so positive is good.

I think that goes well for having a really good, effective vaccine.

We just need a little more safety data in order to make some noise.

Any other questions?

There are questions up here.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Brown from VDOT.

It's been a while, but no.

Some of us have been in contact.

I think they've been taken care of.

I think so.

Dr. David, I can't suggest it.

It's been a while.

It's been a long time.

We're any strangers, but I just want to bring you up to speed on a few things that we've completed.

Of course, our people live in St. James Church Road 648.

We have finished that.

We did have a little drainage issue over there.

We're working on that.

That should be resolved.

Our rural residents are servicing the unpaid residents.

Pleased to report that our

Carter Hill, around 699 Shields Gap, Bottoms Lane, they've been completed.

And we have started working on high peaks, which was scheduled to be completed this week.

We probably won't get the surface on that this year, but certainly do the drainage and get the drainage in place.

Up on Shields Gap, we may go back and extend that a little bit.

We found out that the toaster length on that runway was not correct.

And actually, it's about three hundred and four rows that should be maintained.

We'll correct that.

We'll correct that.

And we've been doing a lot of pipe replacement.

We replaced a large pipe over on Emory's Gap and just completed that.

We had a pipe failure around 6th near 151.

We had to get someone in there to push the steel line up in the existing pipe and we have that one too.

We've got a couple other pipes that I'm sorry I can't remember another but rather than back up toward Multipoint, we've got a data road up there, we've got two-sided Jewish pipes that will deal with it.

It's got to be replaced, we're working on that.

And uh, over on uh, near Skyline, I think that was 623 Jesse, maybe closer to the intersection of 617 that flooded severely.

Yeah, that's right for Sugar Road.

Well, we're working on getting some pipes over there to help prevent that.

I think the size of those pipes, I don't know what size they're called, but we're certainly working on that.

And, of course, if they give you a run at that point, I would go and find them.

I want them on the 4-land, 49.

I think I started last week.

I didn't get over any time ago to see how far they've gotten, but that should be completed.

And that's about all I have.

Any other standard issues?

I do know, I know we haven't seen the updated list for the five-year.

We've got to get some work on that, get some priorities, see where we want to go, but I think we need some roads.

Any words that your constituents, I know you share with me, but please keep track of them.

Let's make sure we have a count ball request that we have.

I've been making

I've been added to my list.

I've got a list of the six-year plans at the office and you know what I'm hearing and what I'm not.

I just am what I don't have.

Ms. Brown, as you know, Mr. Reed and I

No, I reached out to Augusta, to the VDOT, Oregon Augusta.

I'm going to kind of hurry everything back for me.

That's disappointing because right after you got your sign up, I rode over across the mountain, went about five miles down, turned around and came back.

And at that time, there was no new signage, no reader board, nothing to chain up on that side of them.

And it's my understanding from speaking with Wintergreen Fire Rescue that most of the traffic is coming from that side up and over.

Well, I mean, they do have an existing sign over there, but it's

It's very small.

I'll follow up on that, but I do know that our district traffic isn't there.

I made a response once you get those basketballs up.

I do know that he is following through with a traffic study and he and his counterpart in Stanton District will be out there.

They're collaborating and working together.

What would be more effective is a big splash of silence that says no time to trust.

Thank you for everything you've all done on this site.

One of my favorite things to do is to check your data box on your phone.

I don't know if that's it.

Yeah, on the day of the break, the tunnel came in.

I have been called back in the day of the e-nervous.

I've been working with them for the Virginia Trump Association for information on the actual names of the companies that are going to be having problems coming through there.

And I haven't gotten that e-mail yet, so as soon as I can, I'll get it to you.

I think, I don't know if the Sheriff's Department or the State Police responded in any way that they did it.

I will look in the TRIZ system.

Skip?

Only of the two things that I want to check on is this route.

646 and 848.

Those two roads, 646 and 848.

I just want to make sure.

I know I asked you to do the counts on those.

I believe you did.

I just wanted to see if we could at least get the amount of attention.

That would be Ball Mountain, Ball Mountain Lane, as well as Wiggle Wheel Lane.

848 and Woodfordville, and the recording channel is 60 deal per day, and All Mountain, what's that

646.

I'm pretty sure that did too.

I looked that up.

646.

645.

I'm pretty sure that Lisa, because I've got her a little bit.

I'll shoot you a phone call tomorrow or something.

That's all that happens, right?

That's it.

All right, gentlemen.

I'm pretty sure that Lisa, because I've got her

Oh, we're just up down general Some kind of emergency to do

It's definitely something that is so close upon the road that this will definitely have an effect on what is your road when it goes out.

Second.

Mr. Parr?

Yes.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Rutherford?

Yes.

Mr. Harvey?

We don't want exactly the same.

We normally won't fill the house, but we don't.

We have the same place.

You will love it.

And, uh, that is right.

Well, isn't that wonderful?

Yeah, come back.

I move that we adopt Resolution R2020-47, Nelson County Board of Supervisors Amendment to the Nelson County Selling Classification System re-establishment of the planner position, including trade, assignment, and jobless work.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to move that we support Resolution R2020-48

Nelson County Board of Supervisors support for an application for a business prospect, the company, to the Virginia Board of Pharmacy.

I have a motion to approve.

The discussion is enjoyed.

We have a vacancy on the Board of Zoning Appeals.

Ronald Moyer does not wish to be re-elected, so I reached out to the alternate on the board and I'm trying to see if she wants to be wanted to that position and she hasn't responded.

Did y'all want to do it at home today?

How many of y'all participated today?

One more.

Thank you.

So moved.

Second.

Mr. Rutherford.