Board of Supervisors Meeting   5/10/2022

We're going to stand for a moment of silence.

Now recently we had a state trooper.

His name was Jeffrey Harris.

His name was a great man.

He served this county and he suddenly left us too soon, far too soon.

So as we go into this moment of silence, I hope some of you will say a prayer for the family.

Think about the family and make a point to always reach out to

our folks in blue and thank them for their service and keep them in our hearts and prayers.

Thank you.

Mr. Barton, would you lead us in the pledge?

of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

And before we begin public comments, we have a couple of housekeeping items to do.

Mr. Reed, we need to make that adjustment of swapping reports, appointments, directives, and correspondence with new and unfinished business.

Can you make that motion?

So we're switching sections four and five?

Correct.

Yeah.

We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a second.

Let's do this without objection.

Any objection?

Hearing no objection, motion passes.

In the consent agenda, we will be pulling the Older Americans Month Proclamation.

Mr. Reed will read that to us.

We will get to that after our public

So going into public comments, we have folks who have signed up to speak today.

We have a number of you.

Some of you may have not had the chance to put your name on the list.

There will be an opportunity for you to speak after those who signed up have spoken.

Please be reminded that you as an individual are given three minutes.

Sharp, Mr. Reed, will be our timeskeeper.

You forgot your phone.

I will be the timeskeeper.

And

Groups will be given five minutes, so what we will have happen is when you come before, state your name, address, and if you do represent a group, please be specific of who that group is, and you will be recognized in the five minutes.

I will give you a 30-second warning with this high-quality sign that we got here, and then I'll start waving the stop sign and interrupt you when we get there.

If we could all just be respectful, keep our comments to the topics that are important to you all and this board and we will get to this meeting efficiently and effectively and hearing all the important things today.

First person who signed up to speak is Beth Ann Driscoll.

Can you make sure the mic is on?

It should be green light.

Just push that push button.

Perfect.

First, I'm Beth Ann, with the cabins at Craftry Falls.

Third side at 11078 Craftry Falls Highway, Tyler, Virginia, 22976.

First and foremost, I would like to thank the board for your time, not only today, but over the last two weeks.

Several of you have taken a considerable amount of your time out of your lives to read emails, to speak with us on the phone, and to meet with us in person for face-to-face meetings.

I'm aware that your time is precious.

and we appreciate the time that you've taken that's necessary to hear the Nelson County people that you represent.

I'm certain that you've heard all of the arguments over the tax increase numerous times and that they'll be able to meet today again.

For that reason, I'll just skip to offering up solutions rather than arguments.

Every person here in this room absolutely loves Nelson County.

That's why our families have stayed here for multiple generations.

That's why we moved here.

That's why we built our businesses here.

The room is just filled with people who love Nelson County.

Every person in this room has the same goal.

We all want to make Nelson County the best that it can be for local and for its to life.

We want our schools to have more sufficient funds.

We want our locals to be able to continue to live here.

We want our locals to have an abundance of job opportunities without having to travel to other counties.

We want to support and promote tourism in our beautiful county and we want to see Nelson flourish.

While raising the TOT may seem like an easy fix to obtain funds, I'm positive at this point in time that you guys have the knowledge to realize that it would harm tourism in the lodging business and that it simply would not obtain the tax revenue that you guys desire.

Nothing that is good comes easy.

Fixing the issue at hand will not be simple.

It will take time.

It will take effort.

It'll take research and reaching out to other counties.

It'll take research and time talking to other commissioners who face the problem and found solutions.

Nelson County and numerous other counties, not only in the United States, but all across the world, have struggled with collecting taxes from services such as Airbnb, VRBO, and other privately rented accommodations.

This problem is not a new issue.

In fact, in 2017, San Luis Obispo County in California reached an agreement with Airbnb

to remit and transmit tax funds for them.

Other places have also been able to find the manpower, the technology, and the time to overcome the solution to this roadblock.

If they were able to do it five years ago, we absolutely can do it today.

I would like to make it clear that we're not against Airbnb or VRBO.

We would like to play on fair playing field, and others are not always following these rules.

There are numerous resources that are available to us, such as the Restaurant, Lodging, and Travel Association, specifically Rob Melvin and Roy Von Dorm, who have offered time, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia, and Maggie Ruben, Commissioner of Revenue at Stanton.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's hard to wrap up that dance.

We have three sisters at 164 things below school road and we also have a STR at Wintergreen and we live right down the hill.

Having not been privy to the previous conversations, I just want to start by saying that I think that being decent tax would have the unintended consequence of really hurting our tax base and towards some.

We drive a lot of business here.

We bring a lot of people to the county and a lot of tax revenue in doing so.

Like I said, I wanted to focus more on solutions.

So again, not knowing about this in advance, I didn't get a lot of thought into it, but Airbnb does collect

Little taxes for other communities.

So I think it'd be worthwhile to reach out to Airbnb and ask them to do so.

I also noticed that there's a Facebook group for winter green, it's called winter green owners that rent.

And being part of this Facebook group, I've noticed that people really are not educated.

They don't understand that they need a business license.

They don't understand that they have taxes to pay or that it's a business.

They just think they're opening their home to other people.

So I do think it's worthwhile to do an educational drive, whether it's something that's included in the water bill or however you want to do it to save funds.

But I think people don't understand that they are responsible as a business owner.

They don't think they can be a business owner.

So I think education would help as well.

It would help people like the revenue that your team took to do.

I also think that for those of us that are doing this legally and following the rules and posing that higher tax,

would have again the unintended consequence of making us less competitive because unfortunately consumers do compare things like that and it doesn't matter.

And the ones that are paying taxes are probably the ones that are in the law of business, right?

So as we become less competitive, we bring fewer people in.

And we create jobs as well, the cleaners, the landscape people and such.

So I implore us to look for other solutions.

Another idea would be

To go through the listings, I know they have a lot of manpower, but maybe we could do interns or volunteers to go through the listings.

And you can tell if somebody's collecting taxes because they'll stay such in their listing.

And you can also see who owns the property and the idea of where they are.

So that might be another idea as well.

So again, with that being said, I appreciate your time.

Thank you, ma'am.

My name is Claudette Dalton.

I live in 175 Rosewood Drive in Nellysford, and I'm here sort of as a substitute for several of the teachers who couldn't come to this session, including my son who just got COVID for the third time in his home.

I want to remind you all, I think you have a letter that was sent by some of the teachers.

I want to remind you that during the COVID, the teachers gave up their entire summer vacation to learn how to do digital teaching.

They had bought their supplies always with their own money.

They've not had substantial rates, more than two or

They're retiring in droves.

You can't get a teacher's aid.

Now they're doing a job for two or three people.

And I encourage you please to look at the budget and see if you can find some way to support your teachers in a better way than you have today.

I know that the budget comes from a different source, but I do encourage you to see what you can do for them.

And I appreciate the time and the energy that you give to them.

Thank you so much for coming out today.

I'd like to associate myself with the comments made by our previous two speakers.

Quite honestly, I became aware of this public comment period yesterday, so I pulled some materials together.

You can imagine I'm in strong opposition to any increase in transient occupancy tax.

We're currently, I think many of you already know, obviously we're currently paying 5%,

Most of us that pay these taxes pass them on to our tenants, our renters, and if you would increase the tax by doubling it to 10% for the county, we're gonna have a very uncompetitive posture with all the surrounding counties.

City of Alba, County of Alba, City of Charlottesville, Amherst, the rest of them, we just, we're talking about the highest tax, highest county tax rate in the state.

So,

My second point would be, I believe strongly that if you raise these taxes, you're really not going to generate an additional amount of revenue for the county for a couple of reasons.

First of all, the uncompetitive aspect of it, people will go farther afield, go to Charlotte or wherever.

Secondly, I think that there are an awful lot of

Airbnb, weekend rental owners that probably decide to give them the real estate market right now to close their facility down and just sell the property.

So you won't generate even the current 5% that you're getting.

I certainly think that I would be in that position.

My property, by the way, I should have mentioned before I started, is on Patrick Henry Highway.

It's called Three Beaches, which is 9257 Patrick Henry Highway, although I live on Emily's Gap Road personally.

You know, I find it really hard to believe, I'm sure everybody in this room understands the current inflation rate, which some people estimate to be double what the official inflation rate is.

We're having a hard time finding labor, whether it's housekeeping labor or groundskeeping labor, our fuel costs are going up, our input costs are going up, and so you add an additional 5% tax on top of that and it would really make it almost impossible to continue to stay in business.

That then mentioned the difficulty in collecting this tax.

Okay, I'll make this quick.

There's something that has not yet been mentioned and that is that last month the governor signed into law legislation that passed both the House of Delegates and the Senate pretty close to unanimously.

There wasn't a great deal of debate about it and it basically when it's implemented will compel Airbnb, the RBO, the vacation runway owner,

and some of the other what they call intermediary, accommodation intermediary facilities to not only collect the tax, but distribute it to the county.

30 seconds.

I think that there are plenty of us in the industry that would be very happy to work with the Board of Supervisors and the revenue folks to help implement that law here, because it really is a major problem.

I think a lot of owners really don't understand their obligation to pay that county tax and would do so, mainly because most of us pass it on to our renters.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

How do you?

Hi, gentlemen.

Yes.

I'd like to just give you a card up here

Thank you.

Well, the good news is I have nothing else to pass out.

I defer not only to my colleagues and the owner of three beaches,

I'm here to represent Foxy Borden from Foxtrot at Barcelian.

I'm also here to represent Carol Stratton, who owns Possumtrot on Old Roseland Road.

And ourselves, we are new homeowners at 785 Jonesboro Road in Roseland.

I thought, up until I heard just last night about this meeting, that Brent's Gap was our biggest obstacle to bringing people into Roseland to our Airbnb.

A five percent, a hundred percent increase in taxes would just about kill us in Roseland.

I manage five Airbnbs.

And so it is a real challenge to be able to collect what needs to be collected to run a business.

We are astute business owners, I believe.

I would like to humbly request that

If the notifications in the future that they be made electronically as well as in the newspaper, I would never have known about this meeting and been able to come and speak to you.

And I'm very grateful for the opportunity, but I wouldn't have known had it not been for that matter and writing to 144 business owners in the area.

The second thing

I think that their job has got to be almost impossible.

FERBO, which used to be VRBO, sends a lump sum payment every month, but doesn't specify which of us are actually paying these taxes.

So we would do anything we can to help support the commissioners in being able to show that the revenue is coming from our individual businesses.

I have to tell you it's almost impossible to find out from Airbnb what is owed.

We know what is owed because we collect it, but what they actually pay.

And I don't think that Airbnb takes the responsibility to pay to the county as they are supposed to.

So I'm here to humbly ask that you help us as managers and owners of lodging businesses

and work with us, please, please reconsider this property on the tax hike.

And I will defer to the next speaker.

I thank you for giving us this opportunity.

And please just give us a little more notice the next time.

Thank you, ma'am.

Good afternoon.

Pete Roberts here for POA.

I've had numerous conversations over the last year with Pam to try and assist in some way helping the county level the playing field.

POA has been dealing with the RBO, this challenge for the last probably year, thinking long and hard about what our options are.

I have spent

Not a single one of them have doubled the tax rate.

What they've done is they've encouraged people in the community, businesses, VRB owners, to work with them to try and find a solution.

I don't think this changes the VRB challenge the county has, and that is the VRBMs that are popping up in random places all over the county and in many ways making life here a little bit different.

But the reality is the solution is not a double.

people that are in the business to try and figure out how to make it more successful and put things in place for the county to control it.

But there are lots of examples.

Keo Law, Sea Pines, Hilton Head, Jekyll, all up and down these coasts that have what we have in that part of the county here, Wintergreen.

It's just, it's their tourism.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for

Being here, thank you for the work you do.

I actually didn't plan on talking, but I did want to give some support to the Airbnb and Vrbo group.

I'm an Airbnb owner up in Wintergreen on the 33 Smoke Prize.

And I wanted to thank Mr. Barton for picking up last night and talking.

We had a good conversation.

He explained why he thought a double tax was

necessary.

We respectfully disagree.

I think what I wanted to mention is that look, we all understand inflation, prices go up.

And the idea of getting revenue from people that don't live in the county is not a bad one, I have to say.

You know, Vegas does it, right?

I think the issue which Jay just hit on is the amount.

I just think that

Thank you.

My name is Reverend James Rose.

I reside at 2225 Union Hill Drive, Indiana.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

I've come before this afternoon on behalf of a group of concerned citizens of Nelson County in regards to the Confederate statue located on the barn in front of the Nelson County courthouse.

Our group, or a member of our group, has been before you on several occasions in regard to the Confederate statue in front of the courthouse.

Other localities that have had the same issue and it was resolved by removing the statute for having to be located without any problem.

All the other localities that have been taken to court with the same issue and have lost.

Our group has been very patiently waiting for the county to take action on the tissue and have had no response on the county.

The county failed to take any action

leave our group no charge but to take further action who would be an expense to the county.

Our group is determined to have this issue resolved.

Our group is not present today because we don't want to make this issue a spectacle.

Thank you, Reverend Rose.

Good afternoon.

I'm Billy Harrell.

I'm a new resident of Nelson County.

I moved up here in mid-December.

I live at 567 Berryville Road, which is listed as Fobber, Virginia, but is actually a dial.

And I have a simple question regarding something I've

I have no information about otherwise, but I had the occasion to call VDOT last week to make a complaint about the drainage that's just on either side of Berry Hill Road or Block.

And after talking a little bit with a service representative about that, I asked, do they have any plans for paving Berry Hill Road?

It's three and a half miles altogether,

and the upper one mile up towards 151 Rockfish Valley Highway.

That's paved and then the lower two and a half miles is not paved.

And what he told me was that they wouldn't initiate something like that, that I needed to speak to the Board of Supervisors and happened to see that the meeting was this Tuesday.

Good afternoon and thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to speak today, especially related to the increase in the tourism tax

My name is Jay Gamble.

I live at 926 Wintergreen Drive.

In disclosure, I'm general manager of Wintergreen Resort.

I wanted to speak on a couple parts of this bill that may be helpful for you as you consider whether you pass or reject this bill.

First, I would say that Nelson County Tourism is very, very specific to discretionary tourism spending.

Unlike larger municipalities who may have substantial businesses, airports, UVA as a university, as a medical center, many of the tourists who come to Wintergreen and to Nelson County are solely tourists.

They're very sensitive to total cost, and we all have competitors.

We survey our guests.

We know other resorts they go to.

They do not have to come to Nelson County.

Paul Wintergreen, and I'm afraid this will hurt many businesses in this county.

Again, you take 151 and Wintergreen itself, we're somewhat of a lodging hub in that area for a lot of other businesses throughout the county.

And so while the tax directly hurts lodging properties, I think the ripple effect

throughout the county who rely on tourism and rely on those tourist techniques.

Another point is, quite honestly, we're just beginning to recover from the COVID pandemic.

For two years, group business has been down substantially.

People have not traveled.

The phone is now starting to ring again.

People are starting to return.

And at a time when we really need a rebound,

speaking of Wintergreen we paid in the last 12 months maybe $264,000 in taxes.

In a normal year that should have been over $300,000 but that's the effect of COVID and the pandemic.

Also Wintergreen owns no lodging whatsoever

We rely on properties rented through us to host conferences, to host weddings, to host skiing.

And again, where you choose to have your wedding, where you choose to have your conference, it's completely discretionary.

And I would hate to see Nelson County lose those segments of businesses, which are very high spending.

The more overnights a person stays, one night, two nights, three nights,

So with each successive night of spending, more spending occurs throughout the county.

And so finally, I'll leave you with all of the lodging properties that I've spoken to would be happy to work with Nelson County to try to equitably collect taxes from all lodging properties.

By our estimates, you may only be collecting 50% of what the county has actually viewed.

And the current proposal puts the burden

and all of us who are paying and not the burden on those who are not paying.

Thank you.

This is Will.

Is there a Will here?

Will from 39.

My wife writes all these checks, so I don't have to.

Thanks, sir.

My name is Will Fenton.

I live at 39 Sheldon Oil Trail, and I'm the owner of The Fenton Inn.

I've talked to all of you on the phone, except I talked to your better half over there, and I learned a lot.

I think she understands the issue extremely well, and I think if you put her, my wife and a few other people that understand the issue, we could get the collection from

the different Airbnbs.

Other counties have done it.

They've been doing it for four years.

We're probably missing out on several million dollars a year in revenue lost to that.

And it's not just that.

When we started our business, we had to pay taxes, business license.

I pay taxes on my refrigerator.

There's things that are

businesses had to do, and we had to go to the county and ask them, you know, what are the procedures that we had to go through?

So it was a challenge, but it's not something that every business doesn't have to go through.

Thank you, sir.

Well, Brian, is there anyone else who wishes to speak today in regards to anything as a matter of, come on forward, state your name and address,

and the three minutes is still the same.

You know me.

Hi, my name is Tom Brokant.

I live up at 26 Afton Depot Lane in Afton.

My wife and I bought two homes up in Afton, two little cottages 34 years ago.

And a lot of you know me as the owner of the Lugginson Cafe for many years.

One of the houses we converted, we had

We rented long-term for 34 years.

Our 25-year tenants moved out, just bought a house down at Pounding Branch, and that is now our home again.

We moved back from Waynesboro after a hiatus.

And the other house was a long-term rental for all but the last five years.

It's been in the Airbnb and VFBO.

Decided to turn it into that after I had one of my tenants rebuild a motorcycle engine in the living room.

We've carted away tons of debris and flipped the hats every year.

It was very expensive.

A lot of people think Airbnb is a huge amount of money.

We're about even, but we don't have the wear and tear on the place.

VRBO, VRBO, started collecting taxes on behalf of the county.

I think it was two or three years ago.

It was a nightmare, I think, for both us and for the county.

only started collecting taxes on the new reservations after the start date.

So I was left to figure out what they collected and turned over.

And I believe the county was also very confused by the whole thing because they don't get a listing of who gets what.

Airbnb, I believe, is set to start collecting and remitting taxes the 1st of July.

I believe.

I did talk to the tax office.

They did see an increase in revenue suddenly out of thin air back when Burbo started collecting.

And I believe the same is going to happen on a greater scale.

Don't know, but I believe that because I think that a lot of people that are flying under the radar to suddenly go to 10 percent, highest of anyone around, is

is spooky to me.

My boss was a jerk at the cafe, and I don't have a pension.

We depend on this.

So please consider its economy.

All right.

That's all I got.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Clinton Bibb, Phoenix Road, Arrington, Virginia.

I didn't come prepared to speak.

I just actually came to listen to the meeting today.

I represent a fairly large conglomerate that does a lot of events in the county as well.

And not only does a significant increase in occupancy taxes affect cabins, Airbnbs, vacation rentals off-site,

and Kevin from the Creek.

They also affect temporary campsites, whether they're on a permanent basis or through the permanent PDH of large-scale events.

So everything across the board is affected.

To me, that 100% increase on tax rate is asinine and shouldn't even be a consideration.

That is a pretty strong-handed move, in my opinion, and it's probably more of a way to present discouragement

Turning buildings into bigger needs to start with, picking from the inventory of rental properties for long term.

And there's most certainly better ways to go about doing that and better ways to collect, you know, potentially missing revenue as well.

That's all I have to say.

Yes, sir.

First of all, I support the comments and opposition of the tax increase from my fellow lodging operators.

And just to lend weight to the sort of ancillary effects of a tax increase like this, you know, we obviously rely on traffic coming to Devil's Back Home to pay our food and beverage taxes, and we are still at a guest count that's lower than pre-pandemic.

We're still hoping that that traffic is going to come back.

And so anything that's going to

Keep people out in the county, especially on other days of the week, right?

Saturdays are huge for us.

People drive in from other counties, from D.C., from Richmond, from Charlottesville.

But those shoulder days, the Fridays, the Sundays, the Thursdays are days when we're really slow.

There's a really significant difference in our business on those days.

And local lodging really helps to support those days because those are the people who are standing by and looking for a place to have a meal.

And so anything we do to discourage people's ability to stay locally and spend them on the

and our ability to pay food and beverage tax along with the lodging tax.

So I hope as we talk about sort of all the unintended consequences of increasing the tax, that's something that we're keeping in mind.

I appreciate your time.

And yeah, thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else wish to speak?

Hearing none.

We will close the public hearing or public comment section of our agenda.

Moving on into the agenda, we have the consent agenda.

We have pulled the proclamation.

We will recognize Jon at that time, leaving items A and B, the minutes for approval and the budget amendment.

It is the chair's recommendation that we approve those two items as presented.

Do we have a motion or is there any edits or anything that we wish to ask staff?

Items A and B are the consent agenda.

That would be the minutes and the budget amendment.

We do this every month.

Very minimal.

There is an appropriation of asset forfeiture funds for the sheriff's department, $1,180

Do we have support?

I'll second.

We have a second for Mr. Reed.

Any discussion?

We will pass this without objection.

Is there any objections to this?

Hearing none, motion passes.

Moving on to Proclamation C, we have John with us today.

Danny, if you don't mind coming up, saying hi.

That means Java, sorry.

Sorry, got John.

Thank you so much.

How's Java?

Appreciate all that you do.

I had a great conversation with Martha.

Glad to have you guys here.

So us making this recognition today is, of course, pertinent to

our aging demographics that are within our county.

So thank you.

Is there anything you have to say?

Thank you all.

All right.

Sounds good.

Thank you, Danny.

I'm happy to do so.

This is proclamation P. 2022-1, Nelson County Board of Supervisors as May 2022 is Older Americans Month.

Whereas Nelson County includes a growing number of older Americans who contribute their strength, wisdom and experience to our community.

And whereas communities benefit when people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds are welcomed, included and supported.

Whereas Nelson County can work to build an even better community for our older residents by planning programs that encourage independence, ensuring activities are responsive to individual needs and preferences,

Now, therefore, the Nelson County Board of Supervisors does hereby proclaim May 2022 to be Older Americans Month.

Got it.

We have a motion to approve the Proclamation P. 2022-01.

Do we have a second?

Second for Mr. Parr.

Mr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you all so much.

We have, of course, swapped three and four, so we are now in, or not three and four, four and five, so we are now in the authorization to contract architectural services.

CountyStat previously issued a request for proposals for architectural services to provide for the design and construction of a new county office facility that would house the Department of Social Services and the Department's building official in planning and zoning.

We received three responses, statements or qualifications from individual architectural firms.

We decided

to interview all three firms.

There were seven county staff who participated on the interview panel, including two Department of Social Services staff, the director and her assistant.

The interviews were conducted virtually via Zoom, and the conclusion of the interview panel was to recommend to more PMA architects

as their number one choice, the most qualified firm, illustrated their families exceptionally well, including several Department of Social Services facilities.

Got it.

I just have a question.

Were any of the contractors, the subcontractors listed under the PMA qualifications section, were any of those lead applicants?

With PMA, the other sub-consultants, I think two other sub-consultants, Timmons was on the interview and spoke in concert with PMA staff that they worked, which their proposal acknowledged several times with PMA on multiple projects.

Okay, any other questions for Mr. Carter?

Hearing none, can we get a motion to approve R. 2022-27 as presented by staff?

So moved.

We have a motion from Mr. Parr.

Do we have support?

Yes.

We have support from Mr. Barton.

Is there any more discussion?

Mr. Harvey.

Yes.

Mr. Barton.

Yes.

Mr. Parr.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Moving on to the proposed amendments to ACRJA Service Agreement.

Resolution R2D22-28 would provide the board's authorization for the rewrite of the Avamo-Sharksville Regional Jail Authority Service Agreement, which the authority is comprised of Charlottesville City, Almore County, and Nelson County.

For the primary emphasis for the rewrite

including the proposed construction and renovation of the regional jail authority to the regional jail facility.

The primary changes, there are two primary changes.

One is to the membership, the representation.

Currently, Nelson County has two representatives on the member of the authority board.

What's proposed in the amended agreement is to add a third representative to Nelson and to remove the joint sharps for Omaha County Citizen Rep.

Now the members will pay for the jail's operation and debt services and it will be based upon each locale that is present in population on an annualized basis.

Otherwise, the agreement is substantial and very similar to the current agreement.

And as is noted, the resolution that we presented

I do.

The jail party meets this Thursday and that will be appointed, this will be appointed to discussion both Albemarle and Charlottesville.

Their meetings are later this month and my understanding from speaking with the chairman of the authority who is a member of the Alamo County

These changes was Nelson's request to add a member, and the chairman of the authority has conferred with both the Albemarle Board and the Charlottesville Board in subject to final decisions they concurred with the change of composition.

All right.

Any other discussions?

Or any other questions?

We have a motion for Mr. Barton, do we have support?

I'll second.

Mr. Reed seconds it.

Is there any further discussion?

Hearing no discussion, let's do a roll call vote.

Mr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Barton?

Mr. Barr?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Yes.

Mr. Bouscher?

Yes.

All right, moving on to Commonwealth Attorney Funding Request.

Mr. Rutherford, Mr.

Good afternoon.

I'm Daniel Rutherford, the Commonwealth Attorney.

I would be remiss if I didn't wish my baby brother a happy birthday.

Of course, the Honorable Bill Arkin as well.

I appreciate the time.

I know you get a baby brother.

I appreciate all the years of your life.

I've known you, Jesse.

Thanks.

Just as an update is where we are.

I have my assistant, Will Flory, who has taken the lead for the drug court.

Two days ago we received notice from the panel from the Supreme Court of Virginia that was very favorable.

They received our application, they had some very friendly amendments, and they look forward to receiving our amendments that we are finishing up and submitting and with the foresight of approving.

So we're moving in a very great direction of getting to having the drug court.

So again the process, but their amendments were very

Originally, when we were here, I asked for a settlement for Mr. Flory and only Mr. Flory.

to fund him at the equivalent of $15,000 a year.

I know that's a lot, but Mr. Flory has done a tremendous amount of work.

He's taken the lead and made something go from very hardly any movement after four years to getting an entire packet of 36 pages that I presented to the board or emailed previously, just showing what we've done, what we anticipate

that were applying for these kind of three different types of grants all in one that they will give you if you get approved for what they think the need is.

The best would be four years at $750,000 and three years I think within the 600,000, they break it down.

And so depending what our need is within those funded for that period of time.

That deadline we have coming up at the end of May and Mr. Porter's working on getting that grant as well.

As you see in the application that we had submitted,

If we don't have a grant, we've created what we anticipated, what we will need for the county to fund drug court if we don't have it.

We anticipate it to be about $88,000 between an OER member, drug testing, court services, security, or other matters like that to help assist.

That's if we don't have any grant because we believe it'll be extremely, extremely important to be able to keep going this step with drug

I'm not going to read over all the numbers.

Clearly, we have a lot of individuals in Nelson County who have this addiction issue.

And I may know bones about it.

I don't mind litigating.

I don't mind going to court having jury trials.

But we need to have more tools in our toolbox to address the addiction issue.

So the biggest thing I need is for Mr. Flory to be paid.

He's doing all the same work as the assistant commerce attorney.

We've had a host of jury trials.

We've had a host of DUI maimings.

We've had a host of cases coming down the pike.

We haven't reduced his workload in my office.

What he's doing is he's taking on drug court as an additional duty.

And so that's why it's important.

He's doing an

Mr. Foyer has offered to take that as the additional duty and I think it's just and fair and equitable that he paid that additional part.

Thank you, good afternoon.

I trusted everybody had an opportunity to look at the application.

If you didn't, I'll sort of give you the quick hits.

So we are on track with a planned first participant in drug court, January 1, 2023, assuming that we are in a position where we get the grant.

I expect us to be relatively competitive.

So the Department of Justice administers a grant program through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and there are three tiers to that grant program.

The first is drug court implementation grant.

The second is drug court enhancement grants.

and the third are for establishing statewide programs.

The second two are not committing this conversation.

We're applying right now for what's called a Drug Court Implementation Grant.

And that award is, as Ms. Rutherford mentioned, that's $750,000 over 48 months.

And the vast majority of those funds would be dedicated to staff.

The biggest and most significant line item here is that we have to hire somebody to run this program, a professional probation officer with a background in substance abuse

and those folks are hard to come by right now.

You'll notice in the, as Ms. Rutherford mentioned, there's a proposed budget in the last couple of pages of the application.

That proposed budget is, I would sort of encourage the board to look at that as sort of the floor.

That's the cheapest we could do it.

There's certainly, I would love to be really competitive and be able to hire somebody to run this program that's really, really good.

That's sort of, that number came from what OAR thinks

They would expect to hire new employees at them.

Obviously, we want to hire somebody with some experience who understands the program and understands how to run the program, hopefully has some experience running the program.

When we submitted our application, we drew heavily on some of the experiences that Fluvanna County has had in the last couple of years in establishing their drug court program.

Fluvanna County received a Bureau of Justice implementation grant for $750,000.

I think that's a pretty good sign for us that we are likely to be competitive because we're a similar jurisdiction in terms of resources as it relates to this conversation.

The ultimate goal is for us to be able to have up to 30 people in the drug court at our current staffing levels.

And the reason I want to point that out to you is if you had a chance to look at the application,

You'll see that our total drug court eligible offenses year to year are about 186.

But if you look back to 2020, that's 243.

So if you cut that number in half, because most people have more than one charge, let's say it's around 150 for the sake of argument.

And we're taking a really significant amount of our, take 30 people out of that 150 and you can burn them from the jail and put them into drug court.

That's a significant reduction both in jail numbers, it'll be a significant reduction in jail costs, and those are people that we're going to rehabilitate that we're not going to see, hopefully not going to see, reoffend folks that we hope will go on to have productive lives.

So I'll, since I know you're taking a look at the application, I'll spare you sort of a brief overview of the program, but I wanted to ask the board if they have any questions about the application at this point.

So as Mr. Rutherford mentioned, we're in the process of writing that Bureau of Justice implementation grant right now.

That's due on the 20th.

I'll be going to Richmond on the 18th.

to the meeting of the Supreme Court.

We did receive word that the committee who reviews our drug court application plans to recommend that our application be approved.

I spent the last day responding.

We got that response from that group on Monday.

They sent us a number of questions.

I've been responding to those questions over the last couple of days and waiting for one more statistic from Region 10 so we can send that response off.

The next thing, and one of the things that they asked for is whether or not we had a drug court manual and a drug court participant handbook.

And these are sort of the two cornerstone documents of a drug court.

The manual tells you how to run, tells the drug court team how to run the drug court.

And the participant agreement tells the people that are in the drug court what's expected of them.

We have a mostly complete manual.

I am still working on the participant agreement.

significant documents and documents that require the approval of the drug court team to be implemented as part of the program.

So that's the next thing for us.

And then we've got to develop all of the documentation that goes along with the program in terms of bringing people in.

And then the next step for us, once we get approved, will be to reach out to all of our partner agencies, OAR, Region 10,

and establish MOUs with them about rendering services and that kind of stuff.

So that'll be the next, once we have the entity formed, those are sort of the next steps that I'm going to be engaged in over the next couple of months as we work towards that aspirational goal of being up and running by January 1, 2023.

Any questions for me at this point?

Well, so this is the person whose job will be to interact on a day-to-day basis with the drug court participants.

One of their primary jobs is to collect oral and urine screens of participants through drug screening.

So this is somebody who's got to be a professional probation officer.

Is there licenses needed for that?

We will look, I don't know, not that I'm aware of as it relates to the grants or the legal requirements for the program.

The way that this will likely work is that we will rely on OAR as our partner agency to vet and employ that person because that's what they do.

They provide probation services.

And so they have the expertise in that area where I don't necessarily have the ability to answer that question.

My expectation is there will probably be a licensed clinical social worker, LCSW, and there'll be somebody that has background in probation.

You also want somebody who's familiar with the treatment side and who understands co-occurrence, substance abuse, mental health disorders, diagnoses, and sort of for lack of a better word, fluency.

Finding a dispersion is absolutely key.

Absolutely.

And I commend you all for this rather than

Any other questions, Mr. Reed?

So first of all, thank you for talking to me about this yesterday.

The second time you hear it, it starts making sense.

I'll come back as many times as you want to hear.

Is this something I'm excited about?

Yeah, well I am too.

You know it's ambitious to be able to start first of next year and of course finding this key person is key to that and also the success of the grant.

So these are kind of hurdles we have to get over and you said that finding a person like this could be a challenge in and of itself and I'm wondering if

And so if we can't, if we don't have that person in place to provide supervision, then we're not going to be able to stand up the program.

I think the timeline

that we're working with with OAR, we're gonna start the sort of thing that begins this whole process of approval, right?

Because nobody wants to talk to us about getting hired for something that doesn't exist yet, for lack of a better way to put it.

And so the key is to get sort of get the approval and then we can start that conversation with OAR of how we're gonna go through that process of hiring somebody and how the funding's gonna work

And this is a topic that they're highly familiar with because OAR provides the drug court coordinators for Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna, and they're getting ready to provide the coordinator for the Orange Madison combine fund.

OAR is the Offender Aid and Restoration.

It's your community-based probation group.

So they provide community-based probation for post-offense misdemeanor probation and pre-adjudication

So, we call it pre-traumacy division in the legal partners.

Alright, any other questions for the Commis office?

Alright, hearing none, the current request is for the, I believe it is 15,000 correct, Steph?

Yes, 15,000.

related to that position.

OK. We have a motion.

Do we have a second?

Yes.

We have a second for Mr. Barton.

Is there any discussion?

Mr. Harvey?

Yes.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you.

Moving on to the transient occupancy tax, which is why our audience is here today.

Thank you all for staying with us.

Staff, if you want to start, I'm sure Pam, we may have some questions for you as well.

The board's briefly conducted a public hearing on the proposed

When it's 2022-01, that would increase the local transit option tax from the current 5% to 10%.

The status estimates for what that additional 5% due rate is $1.3 million.

Consideration of the economy

Monitor to see if there is 50 percent more revenue out there than 5 percent.

Or you could add a reduced increase from 5 percent to from 10 percent to something between 5 and 10 percent.

But if you do anything other than approve as presented the 10 percent ordinance of

I don't think it's fatal to the county's operations if the board does not approve the ordinance and the increase.

Great.

I have a few questions.

Is there any questions for staff for the, I have some questions for the commissioner.

Yeah, I've heard so many different figures about what percentage of people aren't paying the tax

Do you have any figure?

Yeah, that's a commencement revenue question.

Pam, you want to come on up?

Okay, got a question first.

Oh, question.

Can you recount how the increase of the tax beyond what goes towards tourism was going to go to schools?

I'm not sure committed yet, but by consensus, said you would allocate an additional $1.5 million to the schools.

And I think the discussion is that regardless, the TOT increase would be targeted towards that increase.

That doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

that has presented with the decisions the board made on the real estate tax could provide for that adjustment.

But then it will impact the board's considerations on capital improvements and debt service.

And that's why I've suggested in talking to Mr. McGarry that it would be helpful to the board, depending on the decision on the tax, the TFT tax, to then conduct, prior to the approval of the budget, another short work session just

Regroup, and make any necessary adjustments.

As I said, we proposed a temperature tax, but it was not noted just a minute ago.

The biggest problem I've got is we're not collecting this tax from people we should be collecting from.

I'd say it's a very low percentage that pays this tax and if we could collect what is owed, I think we'd more than profit from what's proposed.

What are some avenues, if you have any suggestions,

You know, most things we've got ways of checking and all that.

Can you lower your mic down?

We can't hear you.

We check people's tax returns.

We get to go to the Department of Taxation, but we've got to know that they're out there.

We check the computer every day.

We find a lot of people on Nelson and don't know they're putting it out there.

And so we do everything that we know how to do.

Of course, we're missing people and we could do better.

We're working with Jay at Wintergreens.

That's my thing.

People that owed it paid it.

We find people every week.

And we call them up.

Well, they've been doing it for two years.

I'm not sure.

I know we do want our real estate taxes.

Yeah, well, we did.

I mean, every day we find somebody.

That's why we had to raise it when we got collected and when folks had to collect.

My previous question, do you have a percentage?

Do you have any idea?

Well, I mean, let's not interact with the crowd.

I think I have some numbers for you.

So I think one of the, I spent the week, and of course I have, I am also in the short-term rental business myself.

I'm up in the news, so I don't, I've learned how to pay my taxes, I think, so far.

I was on the book, he was sending me a check.

So I had an opportunity to kind of serve several different platforms that give you an indication of how many Airbnbs, or short-term rentals is the better term, exist.

And so I had stumbled across a couple different websites.

One was like your airDNA.com and that one I learned a lot.

I specifically procured an opportunity on there just to look at the Nellysford zip code.

And I think in Nellysford zip code alone, it was 511 short-term rentals.

But you don't know if they're going through ARBO and whether they're paying us.

Well, I understand that.

And it does actually give this particular website, if you have the opportunity to use it, it does indicate whether they're on what platforms.

There's a whole lot of stuff.

And I'm sure the private sector can contribute some of that data without the county having to burden themselves with buying the software.

And that's just Nellysford.

In Afton, there's probably another hundred.

Throughout the rest of the county, there's probably another few hundred.

I'd venture to say that there's probably close to a thousand short-term rentals in Nelson County, with the bulk of those being Wintergreen, Stoney Creek, Nellysford, probably five, six hundred, five, you know, just kind of some rough numbers.

It is an intriguing thing, and it's a lot bigger than I ever imagined I thought it to be.

And it's everything from not just

BRBO, Airbnb.

It's also private room rentals, which a lot of people don't look at that though.

That's not a massive number.

There are some data points that show that on a given weekend, there can actually be $50,000 in revenue just for private rooms or $50,000 a month.

in Nelson County, just in the Nellysford area.

I think one interesting piece of data, and I had another Airbnb person provide this to me, was how much the Nellysford zip code cash flows a month.

And obviously, I don't know how accurate this is.

Back in 2019, the average was about $500,000 a month, roughly, just that zip code.

And as of late 2021, it had its peak month, which was close to three and a half million dollars.

And now it's averaging out to be about just the zip code, about two million dollars in gross revenue a month, which is just astronomical.

It's not even counting, again, the Wintergreen Resort, which is probably several million dollars on top of that and whoever else.

It's astronomical.

And I think with the assistance of the private sector, we can really pinpoint who these groups are.

And honestly, if we pinpoint the Wintergreen area, we will find 80% of those who aren't paying the taxes.

So he says thousands.

Well, we don't know exactly.

We have roughly 547 plus boroughs.

We don't know how many they are paying for because

Ish, maybe.

We don't know.

And so I'd venture to say without us taking action on the tax, we could find that revenue just by enforcement.

And that is the mechanism that I would encourage how we can help you.

You let us know if you want a subcommittee.

I have no problem sitting on that with some of the stakeholders in the short-term rental industry.

I have the guise of the government brain a little bit, and a little bit of my own experience of short-term now, which is not much.

But I think with some of the databases that exist in the short-term rental market, it's there.

I understand your point, but I still

Now, unlike some other governments, we have to balance our budget.

We have to come up with the revenue to pay for what services we offer to the people of Nelson

Now, industry we're talking about benefits greatly from what the government does because the primary attraction in Nelson County is the view.

That's why people come here.

I've seen this board and this board has made decisions to protect the beauty of this county.

And you and your industry benefit greatly from it.

but don't necessarily pay for that benefit.

There also are other costs that we as a county bear for your industry having to do with traffic, garbage, different kinds of things.

Now, I think that, and people talk about 100% increase,

It's a 5% increase on the cost of coming to Nelson County.

We're proposing a 5% increase.

Now, the laws of supply and demand are going to tell you that that will diminish demand.

But how much will it diminish demand when you compare the benefits that could come from that revenue?

Now, we have not fully funded our school

We, you as members of this community, I know support education.

I would maintain that a 5% increase in the price of lodging Nelson County will have much smaller impact on the demand for this service than the money that would be accrued by Nelson County could do to benefit the people of Nelson

and I call upon you to recognize that.

It's never been my way to try to win an argument, but I just want you to think about what I just said and the benefits that might improve the county further.

Remember, we're not asking you to pay more money.

We're asking people who come to Nelson County from other places who come here for the beauty to contribute to the cost of maintaining that beauty.

But the problem is, I know I can think of a lot more that don't pay this tax and I can do pay this tax.

So my thing is, and it's just for

I say there's probably some 40% that's paying it.

So there's a 60%.

If you want to get some money instead of raising the ones that are doing right, let's work out a program.

And I don't think it's a real good setup the way it's monitored and stuff.

We all agree on that.

We've got to make the people pay the taxes.

But I know that.

But also, you know, there's another issue here having to do with the cost of maintaining the beauty of Nelson County.

You're missing that link where

If you receive the money that the county owes, it could do a lot more than what's going on.

Okay.

Commissioner Reed?

I'm pretty much in agreement with both of you on this, but to me, this is not just a question of revenue.

Taxer, who's paying it.

Our short-term rental system, no matter how you look at it, it's not equitable, as we've seen by our discussion on revenues.

The impacts that short-term rentals have on single-family housing stock in the county is not positive.

When you're looking at new construction in the county, oftentimes what you're looking at is further increase in the short-term rental stock in the county, which affects everybody, not just us, but those people that already have existing short-term rentals in Nelson County because you're increasing the supply.

We're not the first county to grapple with this by a long shot.

We're the first locality.

There are various possibilities in terms of registration, regulation, and other things that can be done to limit the negative impacts of short-term rentals in the county and maximize those to the people as well.

So while you can't give everybody everything they want,

I think that before we consider increasing the tax on the existing short-term rentals in the county, that we would, I would say, fast-track the planning commission, the county administration, and whoever else we can.

And certainly supported by the people in the county who have brought more information to bear on this than anybody.

to put their heads together as quickly as possible.

And that through our planning department, we come up with a range of alternatives that then we can consider that would be more equitable, less harmful and beneficial to all residential sectors in the county because they're all affected by this.

So my idea would be to

to not pass the tax now as proposed, the tax increase.

I'm not averse to a possible tax increase in the future.

Again, this is tied to school funding, whether that's a good idea or not is up to you.

I don't think it's particularly good.

I'd like to see the county step up and fund the schools.

But more than that, what I'd like to see for this issue is that the county

The problem is, in most cases, the state has got something there to go by.

This is the way it's taxed.

It's hard to get around it and all that kind of stuff.

But this is almost like nobody's over monitoring it.

And it's almost all voluntary all the way.

I don't think that's the way it's intended.

But yeah,

And I do know that some of the things that have been put in place in other localities, we may not be able to implement here because of the Dylan Rule.

So it's going to take some in-depth research and outreach to try to find out what other things are.

Well, it should be simple.

It's the only thing as far as taxes go that we deal with that there's nothing that jabs you to pay it.

And I would bet we can make it simple.

All right.

I was going to suggest a subcommittee.

Yeah, that's right.

You know it.

A subcommittee of sorts.

We could comprise of myself, Mr. Reed, and several members from the public, and the Commissioner of Revenue, and the staff members.

And I think that between those, that entity, it can really pinpoint without having to use the board's time, how the best enforce, what a good process and procedure is.

And then, you know, if once we've figured out that enforcement mechanism, then we can come back and say, hey, you know, what further do we want to do?

My goal is making sure those who aren't paying are paying.

And I think the best way for us to do that, it's a couple of us, a bunch of the community and some large stakeholders such as Wintergreen Resort and WPOA and whoever we think makes sense, the Commissioner of Revenue and one of our staff.

And I think that would be a great next step.

And probably it would take the public to talk to each other before we had that meeting and say, hey,

Here's the list of people and pinpoint it.

And we can hopefully pinpoint that to our database in accounting to make sure we're paying.

So that's my my thoughts.

Who did you say on the committee?

Do you want to be on it?

I said who?

I would suggest, since Mr. Reed is interested, I have no problem participating since I've also been part of it.

So one thing I do want to say is the stakeholders, congratulations to you all for getting together on all this.

Congratulations to you.

But when you all leave here, you all have already taken the afternoon off.

I just want to thank all of you that reached out to me and all of us and I want to apologize for any of you that I didn't get back to or return the calls because we were inundated with contact.

A couple of things, one thing that was said earlier a couple of times was that the transient occupancy tax increase would be agreed to go to the schools.

I remember, I thought we decided that we weren't going to allocate it for anything specific.

Because one thing that I specifically remember throwing out was if we're going to do this,

that I wanted it to be going towards something that we could touch and feel, something that the community could say, this is what is paying for this park or this swimming pool, this aquatic facility or these ball fields or whatever the thing is.

I specifically remember saying, if we do it, that's what I want.

And then the conversation kind of went sideways and we decided not to do that just to put it in the regular budget.

But to me,

I feel like saying the word at schools is a good buzzword for a bad economic decision.

But I've learned a whole lot in the last week, thanks to members of that community.

And what I thought that was proposed by the county administrator as somewhat of an invisible tax to the locality, turns out it is a tax on our small business owners here in the county.

And I said at the last meeting,

I travel, I go to Airbnb's and I never, I look at the per night rate and that's all I look at.

And then at the end, you're like, create the cleaning fees and taxes and all this.

And you know, it expands.

But it never drives my decision on where I'm going to stay.

Just like when I go out to eat, the tax, the meals tax doesn't drive what I'm getting for dinner.

I look at the menu, I decide what I want and I get it.

But I now understand that it's a little different in this industry than the way these taxes are paid.

So that was a big,

and the action on this tax.

But who pays it?

Is it the visitor?

Is it the business?

But here's my thing.

Until we're comfortable and confident that we're collecting at least 80% of this tax locally, then I can't support making any change to the existing because it feels to me like we're penalizing the honest business owner and rewarding the people who are keeping the system or who are too ignorant to the system that they don't know they're supposed to be paying.

Whichever the case may be, I think we have an opportunity.

In the words of Mark Cuban, for that reason, I'm out.

Okay.

Mr. Reed, are you open to that?

I'd be happy to be on it, but staff participation is really vital.

To be able to know what we can and can't do,

or at least what we can't do.

I mean, the community can pretty much say what we can do, but what we can't do is equally important.

So, and we have, you know, both planning and revenue, you know, directly involved in this.

I'd certainly like to see at least those two, you know, to be participants.

Dylan, you got drafted.

Well, the other thing is that everyone's plates are full.

And to do this right, there are other people we can reach out to to try to get more information.

But I would like to see this happen.

One of the things we talked about before is that if something goes into effect, the best time to do it is not mid-year.

If we have something in place

Prior to next year's budget discussions, I think that would be a really, really good thing because at that time we can look at all those things that we have in front of us in terms of revenues and expenses and decide if

The only reason why I think us doing this subcommittee, if we don't start today, we'll miss out on potentially an organic $1 million of revenue because people aren't paying the tax.

And that's why I think time is of the essence on that.

And if we do it soon, I really think it's a lot simpler than we think.

That's really going to come down to how we can build something for the Commissioner of Revenues that they have a quick, easy enforcement mechanism, you know, get a legal name and you can call a summons, hopefully.

And maybe the Commonwealth can help on that, ma'am.

But I would ask that the purview of the committee, you know, not be just about that.

Right.

This is round one.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, I mean, the committee or you don't necessarily know you need to appoint the members of the committee right now.

You need to have conversations with people.

All right, I'll lead the committee.

We'll start the conversations and I'll report back in July with how our committee's going.

I know I'm not going to get, we're not going to get this done by June.

Maybe, we'll see.

All right, so short-term mental people, our outreach to some of y'all, Pam, Dylan, Commonwealth,

We'll all kind of have a powwow at some point with our staff as well, hopefully, and have a discussion on the enforcement, hopefully.

So, does that work?

Thank you, guys.

You do realize you've got two other boards?

What do you want to do?

I was looking that way.

Exactly.

I know.

Do you have something else you'd like to add?

Well, not right now.

Mr. Barton?

Alright, so I'm not hearing any actions on TOT.

It's fine.

I will outreach to some of our folks and uh I'll pick some folks and we gotta make it relatively effective.

So, thank you all.

Have a great day.

Uh do you guys wanna go to recess before we get to the next item or well, I guess we could close session.

So, let's go on to the proposed joint ag facility with

Amherst County, Steve.

Yeah, let's keep going.

Let's do that and then do a recess.

Well, we got the last one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I know.

I was just trying to get through here.

Oh, yeah, you're it.

You can get all the stuff.

I think I'm sorry.

It's a little upside down.

Four or five.

Cheesecake rollers.

Coffee.

Alright, folks.

If we could calm down the gallery, that'd be great.

Mr. Carter.

Now, let's just go ahead and continue with the Ag facility.

All right, guys, if you could continue your conversations outside, that'd be great.

I included this subject in Ag Culture Complex reports.

I make reference to that report to the board, which I handed out earlier, which included

Last week, it's the 80% Progress C middle.

Our potential partner is the lead consultant for this study, with a joint study between Amherst and Nelson Counties.

As noted, the report included with my report is the 80% progress report from our

of Amherst County.

Interestingly, Mr. Smith from architecture partners conferred with Dean Rogers, the Amherst County Administrator, and what the board received from architecture partners at the December 7th Strategic Planning Retreat, December 7, 2021, was confirmed by Mr. Rogers as being the scope of the project.

contrary to what's more occurred in Montgomery, I think, from some of the representatives from Amherst County.

So if you, when you have time to study this 80% progress report, you'll note that the composition of the project remains the same as you heard in December.

The cost estimate, which will be revised and increased upwards, is still just below $52 million.

What Amherst, when they did talk to Patrick Carter,

into arena seating was not sufficient.

They would increase to 3,700 seats from the present 1,500 seats and add agriculture, aquaculture,

continues to be the same scope.

One of the outstanding questions, which I don't believe is going to be resolved when this report is finished, is the adequacy of water on the site.

There is an existing well, but the architecture part is more

Bishop for that.

As the board may recall, architecture partners at Nelson County's request had revised the scope of the work to look more intensively at water capacities, sewer capacities, etc.

The board here said no to that

So, I think you're going to note that the report is pretty much unchanged.

With more work to do, what Mr. Rogers suggested to me in an email was that the county's committee members, which earlier just Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Parr, review the report and make comments back to architecture partners

I don't think I've made it unclear that I don't support the project.

I don't think it's in the county's best interest.

Of course, that's not my decision.

It's 24 years of experience, right?

Well, 35 and a half.

35 and a half, I'm sorry.

Why?

Well, I think the biggest question is if the scope as presented is, I'm noting it's been

confirmed again by Amherst, which was their original scope, is going to be north of $52 million.

How is that going to be made for?

And then if somehow a miracle occurs and it is made for the death service, how are operations going to be sustained?

and got a tour by the person who runs it.

And one of the, you brought up operations.

He made it quite clear that in order for that place to even survive, he was doing all sorts of things and lucking out, not lucking out, and puppet, you know, it was hanging out, just hanging out.

And then, you know, he made it, in my mind, very clear

It's not my decision, but I'll reiterate to the board what I've reported to you previously.

You know, I asked the guy how they paid for it, how they got started, and they were totally dependent upon the back of money initially to get started.

One possible source is through the Go Virginia program, but I don't think that it's gonna yield, if it stays at the current cost estimate or greater, that amount of money.

That would take a lot of due diligence.

And I'll remind the board, as I've said, I'm not supportive of this project.

When I asked Mr. Rogers on the county's business project if they would be the county's partner in name only so that the county

If the board decided to proceed with the Business Park project, could realize greater Go Virginia funding because that is a source for that type of project.

Because it would be a regional project with two different Go Virginia regions, Nelson would be able to realize greater funding, but they had to absolutely not.

I could be wrong about this.

We have really, I mean, tremendous projects in front of us that we could do for the people of Nelson County.

Some of the things that we could maybe do in Nelson County would be beneficial.

I would like to see some of those things, the scope of what they're talking about, the necessity to fund that thing with all sorts of events and things.

When I spoke to Mark Smith, someone at length about this 80% progress report, he confirmed several times that he had spoken to Amherst County and the scope of the project was as presented to the board in December last year and is still containing this 80% progress report.

Thank you, Steve.

Okay.

Any further comments?

I have, you know, a report to build on what Mr. Barton said from our visit in Chatham.

One thing of note is that the Chatham facility was modeled on a facility that's in Lumberton, North Carolina.

The only reason that I'm familiar with Lumberton, North Carolina is because it was able to be the terminus of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, so I actually researched Lumberton.

And if you've been to Lumberton, Lumberton is a predominantly African American, Native American community, incredibly depressed, and has no tourism

to try to bring revenue and people into the area to try to generate something in the area.

That's what the Chatham facility was built on.

That model where there's not a lot of tourism in Chatham and this was a way to bring people to the county.

Mr. Harris, who runs the facility, virtually said that the facility doesn't make money.

You could fill it up every weekend with events and you would still live or die

I'm trying to keep the facility, to keep money going in there.

Not only did the facility begin with tobacco money to get it initiated, it also depended on condominium agreements with the major people that have offices in there, the Farm Bureau and others.

What that meant was as part of being a condo owner and putting a lot of money up front to get it off the ground, those people were going to have free access to the meeting rooms and the facilities.

Well, Mr. Harris shared with us the challenge that that brings to him because

He's dependent on bringing events from outside of the county there that bring lots of money into the facility, whereas the people that are bedrock of the community there want to have it for free.

Those weekends when they can possibly have weekend events, they're in direct competition with each other trying to figure out if they're going to get something or nothing from making it available.

Most of the events that happen on a local basis don't produce any revenue for the facility.

And yet, one of the things that he said is that the only reason that they have been able to

continue with what they're doing is because he has what they call total community commitment to what they're doing.

They have about 50 banners on the inside of the arena from different organizations, different businesses and such, and they depend on generating

over $30,000 a year just by selling banner space inside that arena for when people are there.

The fact that clearly Mr. Harris felt like a facility in

Amherst County would definitely make it more difficult for him to do what he needs to do at his facility because they'd be in direct competition.

It made it very difficult to put a positive spin on when we were there.

In fact, I would have to say that, I don't know if Mr. Harvey would agree with this, but I think that

Outside of a couple of the staff people that were working there, the tone was pretty somber.

All right.

So at this time, as it relates to that facility, the plan is to finish the study.

OK. All right.

Sounds good.

And we will wait to see what that has to do.

So we had four board members in town.

Yes, Mr. Harvey, did you have anything else you'd like to report?

No?

I was able to attend.

I was there for a brief moment.

I was there for an hour, 30 minutes before the rest came, and I had a chance to see the facility and hear about some of it.

I didn't get a chance to see the vocational side of it, which I was very interested, but as I had spoken with the booster,

I think it was Mr. Bryant and Mr. Harris briefly on kind of how the interactions were with that.

I think it was a chance to see how many pupils they were turning out and that was some info.

That was more interest to me.

It was a very beautiful facility, very large.

They definitely do have a considerable number of events.

I think the question of what sides of that facility would be with Amherst, I know it's been emphasized it's career and technical education.

And some of that was very industry specific to heavy equipment,

and then welding and whatever other opportunities could exist.

So I think necessarily was that the entire example of what we would be?

Okay.

Yeah, I think it's just,

Whichever way we go on this, I think it's important that we realize, and I'll tell you, I'm tired.

The proposal, the location of this, whether it's in Amherst County or Dallas County, was picked because it was equal distance between the two hospitals.

And that was one of the reasons.

But I think we're forgetting the scope of the project was mentioned a couple of times.

And personally, I couldn't care less if the scope of the project was $51 million or $151 million.

The investment requested from day one from Nelson County was only half of the land acquisition

and then of course we're doing some studies.

So a $1.2 million land acquisition, 600,000, let's call it $700,000 from Nelson County.

So let's not be provide half truths and say this is a $51 million project for Nelson County to share half of, because that has never been a proposal by anyone except two county administrators who obviously don't either support the project in the first place.

So I'm just saying, let's just be aware of what's being told to us and what the reality is.

But once we decide, we need to find out if there's water before we can do anything else.

And if we find out that there's not water, then the point is mutual.

And it's really irrelevant.

All right, moving on.

We are now going up to reports, appointments, directives, and correspondence.

Current status from the COVID-19 virus in the county.

Currently the department has the most recent data as of yesterday.

Based upon a 13-week average, the county has had three new cases of the virus and a seven-day average of new daily cases of 2.9 cases.

Today, the county has had 2,572 cases of the virus and 35 deaths.

Burlington Center for Disease Control, the county, in its status, is at a low risk for the virus.

The 2022 general reassessment of real estate

and the board of supervisors, we think shortly thereafter.

The comprehensive plan, the joint board of supervisors and planning commission meeting, kickoff meeting with the consultant and project the Berkeley Group is planned for May 31st.

Bishop, Director Clayton-Zung is facilitating that meeting and we encourage the board to confirm

Underwater and Sewer System, the Musinko Pump Station repairs the station and the full operation capacity continues.

As we continue to repair it, the repairs seem to become more complex and difficult, but we are in the process of getting that

We prepared the termite damage in the hallway on the judge's side of the chambers of the circuit court courtroom.

It's been previously reported county staff issued an invitation for bids for the due date of April 19.

No bids were received.

We've reached out to local contractors.

There were no interest from local contractors.

So we've reached out.

The next step is to actually engage them and get them under contract to repair that termite damage.

The real issue is not the actual flooring but the substructure below that is going to require some more extensive repairs.

The VDOT TAP grant program, the Commonwealth Transportation Board's six-year improvement plan for the primary highway system,

fiscal years 23 to 28 included $734,000 in funding for the Gladstone Deco project.

That would be $587,000 in state federal funding with a 20% local match of $147,000.

Funding for the Lovingston sidewalk project was not included in the six year card.

The next steps for

Sometimes, probably late summer, early fall, VDOT staff will contact the county staff on a contract for that project.

The funding will come to the county, so the board will have to decide, one, if it can be accepted, and two, if you do, then the county staff will have

And so what this study will do is not the complete overall restoration of the depot building and its relocation from its current site to an adjacent property.

What will the funding

The design of the new foundation for the depot structure and site preparation for the foundation and placement of pier footings.

The original total project estimated cost is

I already discussed the agricultural project, Renaissance Ridge Housing Development.

I note that the Planting and Zoning Departments received a preliminary major site claim from the developers of that project, but the site plan is incomplete and we won't review it until a final fully deployed site plan is submitted as an example.

The project proposes to contract 136 units in a phased development process.

The state biennium budget for the next two fiscal years, I checked with legislative plans on yesterday and similarly the budget is just lingering in the General Assembly.

without any real or unknown progress on agreement for final budget, so we'll just sort of end them by waiting.

Any questions for Mr. Carter at this time?

Thank you, Steve.

Moving on to board reports.

Mr. Barton?

You don't have anything?

Mr. Harvey?

Mr. Reed?

Mr. Parr?

Nothing more than PDC.

We do have a date for the Regional Housing Partnership Convention.

If y'all want to write this down, it is December the

I've got it right here, December the 9th.

You probably want to block out your whole day, or at least the morning, the morning after.

This is the Regional Housing Partnership Conference.

So we're bringing in some stakeholders and conversation people about affordable housing and what that looks like.

So we'd sure love to have the board at least come.

It might be some new, provoking thoughts.

Gonna have some great speakers.

And we'll let you know the location as we get closer.

All right.

Other than that, I have nothing else.

Moving on to appointments.

We do have one appointment.

That's for Candy at the jail board.

She used to be the alternate.

I think that's a perfect move.

Obviously, Candy, you want the job potentially on that?

All right.

Do we have a motion to put Candy as the alternate for the ACR jail board?

Yes.

We have a motion for Mr. Reed, do we have a second?

Second.

Senator Mr. Barton, any discussion?

Hearing none, this will pass without objection.

Any objections?

Hearing none, thank you.

Thank you, Candy.

Uh, moving on to correspondence.

Mr. Barton.

Mr. Barton.

Mr. Reed?

Nope.

I don't have any correspondence.

Moving on to directives.

We are, we're just trying to get through all this and then the closed session.

after that.

Do you have any directives, Mr. Barton?

Mr. Harvey?

Mr. Reed?

Mr. Parr?

I only directed that I was thinking of which is more so a resolution just recognizing kind of something that I think would be good is recognizing our law enforcement and EMS especially those who contributed a lot.

This comes to mind with the late Mr. Jeffrey Harris who was a state trooper for Nelson County.

The guy he was well liked by many Nelsonians and I think it would be a good tradition here in Nelson that

When a good servant of our county, especially in our law enforcement EMS realm, we make a tradition of recognizing them and their importance to our community and that family and whatnot.

So I may ask staff and put that on the agenda in the June meeting, recognizing Jeffrey Harris' service to our county.

All right, that's the only directive I have.

Other than that, we are going into a closed session.

Mr. Payne, are you prepared?

Staff, you guys good?

So, Mr. Reed, you ready to read?

All right, we'll do a two-minute recess, then we'll go into closed session.

And we want to welcome you to Nelson County.

We're looking forward to a lot of success and lots of parents in the audience, grandparents and family members of kids.

So

I'm very excited.

So I don't want to take from your meeting, but I appreciate the introduction and I'm looking forward to getting to know everybody, meeting everybody and working with you.

So I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you so much.

And thank you for being here and active participants.

Perfect.

Yes, Mr. Reed, I just have one thing that doesn't apply to the doctor.

Certainly.

We'll just make sure we get that demanded.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay, moving on to the continued discussion on SUP Permit Number 520.

and Nelson County.

This doesn't make life humorous in any sense of the way, but I'm a taxpayer too.

And I'm a taxpayer who was a teacher for four years.

And I have enormous respect for education.

What it can

Do for a person, especially if it's the kind of education that creates an environment where a person thinks for themselves.

They can make decisions that are in their best interest, and when people make decisions in their best interest, it's in the best interest of everybody.

Now, it's not easy to create such an environment where people

We're students who love to learn.

We're students because the teachers in the classroom is only one person and there's 24 students out there.

And who's more important?

That one teacher, those 24 students.

But that teacher, if inspired enough and loves the students enough, will work really hard at doing these things.

Now,

The last 20 years have been a disaster for public education, which I consider to be absolutely essential to me for my development and my life.

Public education, what was imposed was this feeling that you could test a child.

You could test a child and then

when obviously that had, somebody used the word, unintended consequences, people, University of Virginia came in and said, we're gonna teach these teachers how to teach them the test.

And I hope I'm less responsible.

But also, the pressure that that imposed upon the teachers and the students and the parents was not good.

and it really made it very difficult for schools to really function.

Then the pandemic came and any teacher knows that their motivation comes from their relationship with the students.

When those students were no longer there, it became really difficult for the teacher.

Now I know and I heard

20% increase or whatever and the amount of money that goes toward that education seems unprecedented.

But our nation is faced with unprecedented consequences.

I've talked to people all over the country and they tell me third graders, they have third graders that don't know how to read.

They have ninth graders that don't know how to write.

We need to recognize this crisis and we need to rise to the occasion and provide the resources that are necessary for this school.

Now, the answer to the problem, of course, is not money, but it is the professionalism of the teachers and that the teachers realize that they can problem solve and

and create a situation of love of learning.

And as a taxpayer, as a parent, as a citizen, I want you to think about that.

That at times is necessary to pony up.

Thank you.

Okay.

I'll just do a brief overview.

It's a request for special use permit for Mobile Home Park, the property is owned by A1 Agriculture.

In total, it is just over 204 acres, owned by Shimp, Inc., the contract purchaser, owned by Francis B.

Green, Libby Trust.

The property is currently vacant.

The original site plan showed a configuration of 51 mobile homes.

Some updates since your last board meeting, we did receive a revised drawing this morning, reducing the number of units from 51 to 28.

The 25 foot spacing increased to 30 feet spacing and the 35 acre open space that's recommended by the planning commission was reduced down to about 5 acres.

The entrance location south of the church was approved by VDOT prior to your April meeting.

Anybody have any questions for staff?

Before we ask an applicant to approach, we do not take any questions from the audience.

Thank you.

All right.

Does the board have any questions for Dylan before Mr. Shipp?

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

I'm Justin Shim.

I'm the contract purchaser of the property.

I will be developing the little home park.

My wife, Olivia, is here.

She helps manage all the Nelson County properties.

I have a very brief presentation to show you.

I want to quickly go through just a couple of comments.

Many of these came up at the previous meeting and were discussed.

This is the public that's here to ask these questions.

I think they should be frustrated with it.

One thing I heard is

A comic defective, well this might be seen from Route 29.

We have it on the mobile home park, but on the street further.

And there is, it's, you know, unsightly, there's a lot of stuff around.

I've got lots of stuff in my yard too.

It's all nice and shiny.

It's new.

I can afford it.

Not everyone can.

And so I just think we gotta be a little bit cautious about judging people if you haven't walked a lot on my shoes.

I've been working on this a long time, housing products, like I do for the last 10 years, trying to get ways to get housing in communities.

And if you go into the preconceived notion of what you think is good for somebody, you're missing out on what they think is good for themselves.

And if you ask folks who live in Southwood, the habitats that we're developing, up in Green County, some local home parks being moved around, those folks like that, just fine.

And I just want to make sure we acknowledge that,

Sure, hypothetical scenario, should everyone be able to buy two acres, build their own home, build their own equity?

Yes.

That's the hypothetical, that's not real.

And so, this proposal is, as a result of my understanding over the last decade, that's not true.

So we have to respond to what people can get into.

So, you know, part of the beauty of the site to me was that, even though I don't think we should be hiding people who aren't rich,

It is out of the way, it's next to the church, and I'll admit it's close to that.

But otherwise, it gets a long ways from any other residence.

So it's tucked in there, which is good for the folks who live there.

And hopefully, something that people a little around here will appreciate.

There's no access to Old Ridge Roads, for the record.

We're not getting the largest area up to, especially the Permit Zone Inn, you can't go across the creek and make that connection.

The geology of

Relations between streams and aquifers is well known.

I could bring a variety of geology and tell you that big stream forms a break.

The other important thing about these in this situation, you've got what are now 28 homes.

They all have drain fields.

So the water comes out of the ground, it goes into someone's house.

It goes back in.

It's a circulatory kind of process.

There is not groundwater laws.

from these sort of uses because it's a recharge that's roughly equivalent, comes out of the ground.

All that water binds its way through natural processes of water moving in the earth back to creeks.

So we're not taking concrete, we're not changing aquifers, we're not depleting things because we're discharging in the same place it came from.

Important to know.

As it was noted by Dylan, VDOT did look at this entrance, they approved it.

They are requiring me, anything above 10 units, to build a left-hand turn up at the church.

And then down on the south, another left-hand turn lane.

Supposed to safely make U-turns in 2019.

That's the challenge of this project, because it's expensive.

If not for those, this could be a smaller project.

But there has to be some scale.

What I've done to address the scale is I've removed Eric's reopen space, which I'll go over in half a minute, to allow me to do a couple buy-write houses there,

that essentially will generate some additional revenues to pay for that particular improvements.

So my project is now not all affordable.

It would be a mix of six to 10 standard rental rate, two to three bedroom houses that would be $15, $16, $18 a month, and then the mobile home park adjacent.

So for those curious, I'll be invested a couple million dollars in those houses in addition to the mobile home park.

That's an expensive investment.

It's not one that I'm going to treat lightly and say, go, well, put the mobile home part for a month after I've spent $2 million on these other rental houses that are basically subsidizing the cost of these VDOT required improvements.

So I've tried to take into account what I heard last time, concerns of density and the spacing, and try to blend the mix here.

I'll go to my presentation quickly just to show the maps and the table for those.

You received this earlier, and basically there's no particular change in the application, simply we reduced the number.

So there are 28, I'll zoom in a little tighter here, but provided a diagram for the dimensions.

So these two have, not to mention here, there's a 30 foot minimum spacing.

The ones in the middle are more like 35, and then a lot are minimum 4,000, but five, 6,000 square feet.

So you've got 15 feet or so on the side of your house, and a 50 or 60 foot kind of backyard,

As I said before, I was going to restate this, that the little home park, again, these lots are a size that's different than if you rent an apartment.

I also have apartments, and folks cannot have pets.

They cannot have their own space, regardless.

They can't store a boat in a little shed.

They don't have that luxury.

A little home park provides the same cost of housing, but that additional benefit to the person who lives there.

He's also been to foster a sense of community.

It's a little neighborhood.

of folks who maybe are in the light state in the world, and they're there for each other, and that's an opportunity to be missed if we just help or stealth their, to make a lot here and there with individual mobile homes.

One of the things that has happened in the course of time, mobile homes were, as you can see in that bottom chart, 350,000 hands shipped a year in 1997, and declining drastically down to the 2012 range.

Over the course of time,

zoning ordinances and comprehensive plans have been amended to make this difficult to build intentionally because folks didn't want to see the mobile home park.

What that's done is it's forced people into traditional rentals where you have no other option but to pay to spend.

I don't know what those numbers are meant.

What that's done is it's increased.

This just shows, we all know that the top percentage, those people have accumulated more wealth.

I've seen it myself.

I've accumulated a bunch of values in parts of South Austin.

The people who rent there don't.

They have zero equity out of that, no matter how long they stay there.

As I outlined before, there's gonna be some new folks here I'm gonna offer.

This is a resident investor community where individuals can, instead of having to pay a monthly rent, purchase in.

This is a replacement for a traditional investor.

How this normally works is I go out, I work on a project, and I say, hey, I need

A couple hundred thousand dollars out of cash.

An investor comes in, puts that up, and gets an 8% return.

I want to cut that person out, let the folks who live in the community get that return.

The mobile homes themselves do tend to depreciate.

The land underneath the mobile home park does not.

They sell a large property.

Those are a big item for investors these days to purchase.

Because there's such a shortage of affordable housing, investors come in, buy them, raise the rents,

The people who benefit are the investors who own the park, not people in it.

If you own a share in this park and 10 years goes by and the value goes up by 25 or 30 percent and you want to move, you can sell that share for that increase.

And so you've made 25 or 30 percentages on your original investment rather than just simply sunk it all in rent.

This is a very important distinction.

If you look at the folks with the census data, folks in Nelson County,

There are 2,500 households making $50,000 a year or less.

An affordable rent for those folks based on the government's standards, 30% of their income is $12.50 a month.

You search Craigslist, Zillow, apartments.com, there right now I found three rentals in the whole county.

I've got a nice little house, a little apartment in downtown Lovingston here, a thousand, farmhouse, the old farmhouse, $13.50, and a house for $17.50.

That's it.

There are, according to census data, approximately 600 renters trying, looking for housing in the $800 to $1500 a month range.

So when you have one of those outlets, and it gets converted into an Airbnb, and you gotta find a new one, you have three choices right there.

So that is the problem, is that, it's unsustainable, you cannot afford to build traditional apartments here.

So we have to work creative in how we approach housing.

And that's why I'm trying to do this mobile home park.

Here's the thing that's grafting and really the important question that was brought up last time by Mr. Barton.

Are the people who live here better off than they would have been otherwise?

That's the real question.

I haven't seen that completely.

If they're not, this should be done.

But I said earlier, if you rent, let's say 20 years of rent that $15 a month base rent,

You can spend $400,000 over that 20 years, including a 3% increase per year, which is pretty typical.

And you have nothing.

And you've paid for proof of your head.

On the other hand, let's go to the far right.

If you buy a $70,000 mobile home, that's a kind of cheap one, and you get a 20-year loan, and you pay that off, and you put your money into the share, you spend $145,000 on your house.

And even if a mobile home is worth zero, at the end of the day,

You still saved $250,000.

That's the amount of money that's very significant to folks in that range.

That's why I feel very strongly for spending all the options, that this is one that can get people in.

They build some magazines themselves, and they stay themselves in money.

And they have their own place that they can decorate as they want.

They can have a pet.

These are all very valuable things that people who live there will benefit from.

I talked to this earlier because it reminded me of the fact that 50,000 income

There's four jobs I pulled off the county website.

You can get more money to raise these wages.

Well, it's hard.

But if you don't provide housing that fits that budget, those folks are going to be housing challenged to screen.

In closing, this little hole in my opinion is a way to give people some options that are better for them.

That's the important thing here.

A well-managed park, people can invest in,

It's not going to go downhill.

People who live there are invested in it.

The park does offer a sense of community to people.

And lastly, I like to think that Nelson County is a welcoming sort of place that looks at folks who don't have the credit to buy a traditional house, that don't have the family land to inherit to put their own house on, and says, hey, we can welcome you in.

I dig back, last thing I'll say, I think back to some of my youth a bit because there's some folks here who are out, especially they're just like this, who I grew up with.

And it reminds me of, my parents took in two students, my dads, when I was growing up.

And they had drug problems, they were trouble in school.

But yeah, it was Van Marston, not Nelson.

And we didn't, it wasn't just about welcoming your communities into our house, into my room.

I share friends with these guys.

And my parents did that to help get them on a path.

And when I see housing, what I see is when people say, oh, well, we don't want to see that.

That's turning a blind eye to those folks.

To me, we need to find solutions where they can be in our community, be happy, be healthy, and live their lives.

But that is why I chose this.

I hope the board finds that the small scale, something that is reasonable,

If there were other options that didn't involve taxpayer subsidies and things of that nature, I would go down that road, but this is the way that you can do it without that.

So, how do I answer your questions?

I would also just note that this late evening, you do have 12 months in the original hearing to take action on this, so the board feels that's appropriate to consider further.

I won't take offense to that.

Before we interrupt, what you had to say, I mean, it doesn't change a lot what I was saying before.

And I, you know, I appreciate your efforts to think about it.

And I certainly willing to, you know, look at it.

All right.

Any other questions for the applicant?

You mentioned you were going to have some single family housing by right.

Can you elaborate on that?

So there used to be more units along this end here and more open space.

And so what my plan is, is to put some of them down in this area, kind of overlooking the creek.

So I could use, I have a number of Bio-Rite development rights here.

And so I would use some of those to place some rental housing along this zone.

Essentially, the bank has agreed to fund that and split the money that's needed for the 29 work between this project and that project.

So it would be, you know, probably small, not necessarily different

All right, so at this time, we have opportunity for discussion.

whatever the pleasure of the board is.

If there's any further questions for the applicant or staff, this is the time to ask that.

What is the pleasure of the board?

First of all, thank you for the presentation and the amended proposal that you got for us.

There's two things that come to mind, neither of which are really critiques of the project.

The first is that now the project is considerably different.

and we don't have the benefit of either input from Mr. Harvey who's not absent or from the Planning Commission on the new, on the amended proposal.

Those two things may or may not be significant, but it's kind of hard to know.

So,

So it puts us in a position to where I feel like we would, because I've discussed this project with Mr. Harvey and I believe that he has something to contribute to the discussion, but we're not able to benefit from that tonight.

So my comments would be the same whether we have full board attendance or not.

Because first of all, I want to thank the public, not just the ones here, but all the ones who've been emailing and calling.

You know, we always, whenever someone mentioned Mindy earlier, we always get Mindy comments on any kind of project like this.

Everybody who lives next door is going to come out and have a

But I have been shocked at the number of comments I've gotten from well outside the backyard of this project.

And I do commend Mr. Shimp for the adjustments that he has made to the plan based on those concerns because most of them were the density and all of that.

So that is a step in the right direction.

But my concern is that we have

As of 1230 today or 1130 this morning, a really different project than we had yesterday.

And truly what I'm seeing is an idea for a project, but not a complete idea with the area by the creek and the single family dwellings for rental units.

And I don't think personally, I'm not in the position to number one, but on that

I think that we as supervisors, two of you who serve on the Planning Commission, I don't feel I have that expertise, that background.

I rely on them for information like that.

And I feel that we, I feel that you and how it works, Dylan, I feel like this project needs to be reevaluated by the Planning Commission.

And we should not take any action on it at this time.

Because it's a whole nother project than it was yesterday.

I've made my comments before.

Okay.

And you know, it's like, I think anything we do should stand at its own merits, you know?

Tonight I've witnessed a lot of pressure in various, not this group, the other group who was here before, and I wish that as a democracy we could act on the merits of what is being suggested.

I don't think this

reached that criteria.

All right, so we have a suggestion to defer.

I guess Mr. Reed yours was a semi-suggestion to defer, correct?

Yeah, I would like to

If Mr. Harvey were here this evening, I might feel different.

And I do want to state, you know, it is always difficult to have an even board, especially when it comes to making decisions like this that can have discussions.

I can agree with that.

I do cater along with

Mr. Reed and Mr. Parr and deferring this back to the Planning Commission and seeing if the applicant, if there's any other adjustments, whatever that might be, I would suggest that he confers with staff and whoever else.

And then we bring it back from there.

Yes, so as Mr. Shep mentioned earlier, the board has 12 months to make a decision from the initial application.

The board can

Send it back to the Planning Commission.

Ordinance requires that just at least one public hearing be held at each Planning Commission and the Board.

So if you're wanting another public hearing, you would need to make a motion to send this application back to the Planning Commission with or without another public hearing.

There would be one no matter what, because there's always public comments.

So it would be all set in one.

Okay, if that is the action the board wishes to make, can we get a motion to that effect?

We'll move.

All right, we have a motion echoing what Ms. Dylan Bishop has said.

Back to the Planning Commission with public hearings.

Second for Mr. Reed.

Any further discussion?

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on, we have to discuss time frame for the budget.

Also, Mr. Reed and I would like to give an update post our administrative search of the happenings this week.

You all have been polled by one of our staffers one-on-one for the

Pull up your calendars.

May the, is it 18th, right?

18th.

18th.

How does 4 p.m. sound?

Good.

Yes.

Are you okay with that?

Ernie, are you okay with 4?

Yeah.

Mr. Parr, did 4 o'clock arrive with you?

Yeah.

On the 18th?

So, we need a motion to continue this meeting to May the 18th at 4 p.m.

I so move.

We have a motion from Ms. Barton.

Do we have a second?

I'll second.

Second from Mr. Reed.

Any discussion?

We'll vote in acclamation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Abstain.

With the record show, Mr. Parr has abstained from continuing the meeting.