Board of Supervisors Meeting   2/14/2023

Porter, first rise for a moment of silence.

All right, we will now do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mr. Barton.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

All right.

Thank you all for coming today.

We have a nice, nice crowd today.

A lot of stuff we got to go over on the agenda.

So if we could be mindful in the public comments, if you could, before we go to that, individuals, you have three minutes to speak.

Please keep your comments to that.

If you're speaking for a group, please specify the group.

And when you approach, please state your name and address for the record.

So I currently have some folks who've signed up.

Mike Walters.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Mike Walters.

I live at 119 Old Bridge Road, Lovingston, in the Central District.

I'm here today to again bring up the degrading and hazardous conditions of the state meeting portion of Old Bridge Road, Book Mill Lane, and Bridge 12617 connecting these roads to Route 29.

For context, these roads are no outlet.

Woodridge Farm, Blue Reese's at the end, top of the state maintained portion of the road, to give you perspective on traffic, and there is approximately 28 homes that use these roads as their only access.

The road is extremely deteriorated, the road doesn't support two-way traffic comfortably, oversized vehicles routinely access, or routinely block access from the 180 degree turn from Woodlow Lane to Old Ridge Road.

My concern is that whether there's a medical emergency or fire and two 45-foot tour buses are stuck on the road for hours.

It's happened.

I get plenty examples of these roads being blocked by stuffed vehicles.

180 returns, pressures, cars coming head-on.

The National Bridge Registry states the bridge connecting these roads route 29 was constructed in 1966, but that doesn't make sense because photographs from Camille don't show this bridge.

The bridge barely supports two-way traffic.

People went

wouldn't be able to turn, and then somebody, I guess VDOT assesses average daily traffic at 164 as of 2014, pre-bar.

These issues are compounded by the unaware drivers that routinely mistake Shady's Place entrance to Route 6.

I've spoken here before about these issues.

I've contacted VDOT on numerous occasions about these issues to no avail, my tax dollars at work.

I hope so hard to stop wasting money on Band-Aids.

It solves nothing.

Please conduct a road survey and please consider resurfacing the road.

But if I had my way, I would re-engineer the road.

And finally, I pay my taxes every year with the host of the government.

Thank you, sir.

Eric Fellin.

Eric, I think you signed up with Aaron too.

Yes, sir.

Two for one.

Eric Bowen, Animal Science Extension Agent for Amherst, Nelson County.

He's out of the Nelson County Community Cooperative Extension Office.

Chairman Rutherford, members of the board, Administrator McGarry.

I had the pleasure to be in front of you all several times to provide you all updates.

I've got one last update for you all.

Back in January, working with the district director, since we've got the office fully staffed, we decided to turn the unit coordinator rollover for myself, which I was being split between two offices, to one of the staff members inside the office over there for the daily operations.

So I have been providing some of the reports, but Aaron Harris, before he came in, is now the new unit coordinator and will be working with you all in the county that we're

We go in relation to ANTS final year in reform.

My name is Erin Harris.

I am a resident of Nelson County and I'm very excited to continue in my role as 4-H agent for Virginia Corporate Extension in Nelson County and to continue that role and to be an unit coordinator for the office as well.

Thank you guys so much.

Look forward to working with you some more and congratulations.

As you know, knows of the board.

I'm an administrator.

My name is Reverend James Rose.

I'm a twenty-two, twenty-five year old guy.

I went down, come on behalf of the Gladstone Senior Center this afternoon.

Some of them were supposed to be here.

Some of them, but I don't see anyone here.

So, I'm gonna

Senior Center.

As you know, years ago we got the, oh, by the depot that closed down.

So we moved to the Gladstone Fire Rescue.

We had to reorganize.

We started, we had eight people.

Now we have 135.

And first of all, I want to thank you for supporting us on the Build Act with the hood that helped us with years ago.

But I've come this afternoon to say to you that Grandstone has been denied junk.

They used to get four trips a year.

So that was cut out and they don't get any.

And they used to get them.

And they asked me to speak.

to try to get those chips back.

I know by that time, I know you're going to jump, but we're asking that you give them those four chips back a year that they were getting before.

And it's not fair if Lovingston is getting it, Rockfish are getting those chips.

And Gladstone hasn't been denied.

So we want you to reinstate

They chipped the glass off for a year.

For a year.

And that's not asking too much.

That's not asking too much.

They deserve it.

We're working hard up there.

We increased our membership, as I said.

So, they paid taxes.

They told me to let you know that they paid taxes and they deserve the same treatment as the other senior centers are giving.

Again, thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Will Flory.

I'm one of your assistant counsel attorneys.

I'm sure you all now, maybe you're even tired of seeing me.

I'm back again about drug court.

I understand the drug court MOU is on the consent agenda for today.

That is sort of the touchstone piece for us to begin operation in drug court because that's what's going to allow us to hire our coordinator.

Bill Irvins.

Is there anybody else who wishes to speak today?

All right.

Hearing none, we now close the public comment section portion of our agenda.

Moving on to the consent agenda.

Do we have a motion to approve as presented?

So moved.

We have a motion from Mr. Parr.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Second from Mr. Reed.

Any discussion?

Moved by acclamation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any abstentions?

Any objections?

Hearing none, approved as presented.

We have a lot of presentations today, so let's try to be a little bit mindful for everyone.

Thank you, Chairman.

Really don't have a whole lot to report on.

We are

As far as our maintenance activity, we have been doing some pipe replacement throughout the county.

We've been doing pipe replacement, two pipe replacements over on Preselia, Route 680.

We've replaced pipe down on River Side Road due to a flooding issue.

And currently, Old Roseland Road is closed for a pipe replacement.

I'm about 6,743 minutes of detour up.

Anticipate that being closed at least two weeks.

It's around a large structure, but that is ongoing now.

Other than that, I do not have a whole lot of other maintenance, more about maintenance.

We are working on a whole bunch of projects to get rid of the hard surface.

Unpaid Roads, and I think most of you all know what they are.

Last month I mentioned the real rustic unpaid road priority list.

Just looking ahead to when we update the six-year plan.

Right now there are five routes on this road that we prioritized last year, that the board prioritized last year, and those routes will be sufficient to add

and another year, when we have another year to the six-year plan to take care of our allocation.

In fact, we probably won't get through these five, but again, if you have any roads, on main roads, you want me to put on this list to be considered by the board when we revise the plan and hold public hearing, please send them and I will get, we will look at them and we'll get them on the list and see what we have.

and then you all you can you know we'll go to our priority but this year as far as the existing priority list we have more than enough on the current list that's prioritized to add projects to the six-year plan so we're in good shape with that so that just wants to fill that out here actually also uh I see the uh we have a

Stan District, Augusta County, they want to do a truck restriction on about 814 Love Road over in Augusta County.

Of course, it comes over into Nelson County, and they sent that to us asking us for some concurrence from this board for a letter of support, which is usually what it is.

It's not asking for a resolution, but we have reviewed this from a traffic engineering standpoint.

and really we don't find any issues with it.

If you look, that road comes out on the Blue Ridge Parkway and it should not have a major, should not have any impact on the county in our opinion.

But in VDOT, in Lynchburg, we looked at it and we're asking for a, we're asking if the board desires to

Mr. Parr, is it something you want to do?

Absolutely.

All right.

Anybody else have any objections to doing a letter of support as mentioned?

Perfect.

There you go.

Got your letter of support.

All right.

Perfect.

Okay.

That's what I have.

All right.

Anybody have any, Mr. Barton, do you have anything for VDOT?

No.

Mr. Harvey?

No.

Mr. Reed?

I got a list, but I'll email it to you on what roads we won't get paid.

All right.

I'm hearing nothing else.

Thank you, sir.

And don't forget my little project I'm going to send you along the go.

Your field trip on your way out.

Chairman and members of the board, it's a pleasure to be back here with you today.

Talking about probably one of the most favorite topics in Nelson County.

I thought you put an archive on it.

That's another subject.

About three weeks ago, we had our stakeholder kickoff

County Representatives, just to kind of get everything lined up as far as how we're going to move forward with the schedule.

We're about three months behind the data collection issues, and we wanted to also ensure that we had our ducks on the road prior to going out to the general public for comment.

As part of that process, we're in development of an online survey that will associate with the public involvement aspect to hopefully be able to catch

as well not only those that live in the area.

So again, the agenda we went over was the study area and the intersections.

The last time we did a study on 151 was in 2013.

So it's ideal that 10 years later, which is usually about the shelf life of one of these studies, we're revisiting this again.

You know, I'm happy to say that we've had success not only through Highway Safety Improvement Program, but also SmartScale and getting a number of projects

We've been vetted and fully funded and constructed along this corridor.

There's still more work to be done and that's why we're looking at this study again.

We've conducted a field visit and you know as far as the study itself, this is a safety and operations analysis.

This is not a land use study.

This is looking at safety operations through the corridor and geometric issues that might be relevant to the corridor and looking at the

We're going to extend the length of the study.

It's approximately 14 miles in length.

We're going to run it from Afton Mountain Road intersection and then 2.5 miles south of Beach Grove.

We want to catch the turns up along the mountain through there because we know there's some issues there, degradation of the main roads specifically during the winter months and still seeing a lot of traffic come through there.

and seven intersections total.

These are what we call PSI intersections.

They are high accident frequency or have meet a certain metric to be identified as a high accident intersection.

We are aware that there are other intersections that have come up and this is one of the things I like about the Nelson County community.

A lot of these folks have my email already and have already started reaching out, which is always a good thing.

So we find out about other issues.

Again, the scope, evaluate the operational safety characteristics of the corridor, improve accessibility operations and safety.

When we did the 2013 study, we looked at the multimodal approach to specifically the Nellysford area in addition to potential for life routes along the corridor.

One of the other things that we looked at was the economic development viability of the corridor.

to the point that some of these intersections are now even more relevant for study than they were before.

Some of the general characteristics of the corridor.

I don't need to really go over through this.

Everybody travels the corridor.

They know what the uses are.

You've got rolling terrain.

You've got short shoulders.

There's crossover accidents.

There's road departures.

There's no bike path facilities throughout the corridor.

Mind you, when these recommendations come up, they will be pricey.

Pike and Penn, specifically Penn facilities are pricey, very expensive, and they are a high maintenance aspect.

And then from the development standpoint, we're seeing clusters of development, and we're seeing development throughout the entire corridor.

It's a four-season area, so there's traffic at various different levels throughout the year.

Again, I'm not gonna go through the detail aspect

We're going to be creating a website that has all of this information on it as well for the general public to take a look at.

But we recognize there are issues throughout the entire corridor with Tenenbark.

Tenenbark is an active smart scale application that you guys have submitted over the last three years.

The fix for that is a $4 million fix.

At some point in time, it's going to go well.

and you'll see some improvement out there.

Hopefully, as part of this study, we'll come up with some different alternatives.

And I say that from the standpoint of alternatives are never received too well.

It's a selling point to get a roundabout.

Everybody has seen the roundabout that was built up to 250.

You just got fully funded for the roundabout at 6 and 151.

So that's gonna be an active project.

And then we'll see other different projects that, alternatives that will come out through.

And this is a point for the discussions in the community meetings to educate the general public on what these alternatives may be.

Again, we've got a breakdown of the field visit efforts throughout the corridor.

We have an understanding of what the accident matrix is throughout the corridor, where those are occurring, what type they are.

and we've taken out the COVID years and looking at the analysis through that in order to make sure our evaluation is correct and we have levels of analysis that help correlate that information and make sure there's density maps which is something that's newer in this study that we didn't have before which shows the relative

frequency of crashes along the corridor.

So you can see higher concentrations in certain areas.

And this is one of the reasons why certain intersections are looked at higher above some of the others.

I mentioned the PSIs, potential for safety improvements.

These are the high crash frequency intersections.

And from a relative standpoint, our district is 10 counties, two urban areas, and we have a lot of PSIs in the district.

Some of these are ranked pretty high, but we know that there's accidents along through the entire corridor.

How many fatalities?

I don't know if I saw that.

Off the top of my head, I don't believe.

There might have been one or two.

When we did the first study, and I know that I'm pretty sure there's at least more than two other ones through here.

I'm not sure if they have been at these intersections or along the corridor.

Got it.

We're going to be looking at the traffic analysis, what we did from a data collection standpoint.

We wanted to make sure school was in session in order to encapsulate the bus and school traffic.

We looked at the A&P and peak hours at each one of the intersections to see where issues may be.

For those who love data and want to get into the analysis, we'll have all this information.

Looking at traffic growth, one of the things along this corridor when we were in 2013, we had as high as 3% traffic growth that was applied in the study.

It's kind of leveled off from a linear standpoint, so we're looking at an applied growth of 1% through the corridor.

There may be particular segments of the corridor that we apply a higher growth, but from a grand scale corridor, 1% is pretty relative.

3% is very, very high.

And so again, we did encapsulate that in the original study, but looking at a 1% growth through the area currently.

So takeaways, multiple intersections and segments needed for safety enhancement.

Speed along the corridor could be a barrier for bike and pet issues.

The corridor, now I will get arguments from this statement.

The intersections operate are generally good

except for River Road specifically.

The corridor, from a standpoint of its day-to-day activities, runs pretty well.

We do recognize that during peak hours on the weekends and in the summer specifically, those characteristics change quite a bit.

And it's one thing that we were able to do in working with our traffic engineering sections, we have traffic data from all four seasons to be able to identify where some of the problems,

We may not see a problem in data collected in the fall at certain intersections, but summer will tell us a different story.

So again, public transit access, these are type of recommendations that will be coming out of the study as we move forward.

So next steps, again, public survey, and we will have two public in-person meetings.

We are working on defining where those are with the county administration.

and we're getting ready to get set on the MetroQuest survey.

We have to have that complete prior to our advertisement.

We're working through that now.

Looking at range of potential concepts relative to, again, multimodal aspect, pedestrian improvements.

There'll be intersection reconfigurations, different alternatives that'll be brought out.

Concepts will be shown in area photography using

and various different funding levels.

Again, second public outreach towards the end of the study where we'll find the concepts and produce the final report.

So, most everybody has my contact information.

Anthony Donald is our main consultant with RKK.

They've been working in our district probably for about 10 years and have worked and had success in the various studies that we've had.

For those who don't know me,

I've been with VDOT for 22 years as a district planning manager and have conducted numerous studies throughout our district.

Great.

First of all, in terms of data, there's a lot of data in the presentation you gave us.

And thank you for the presentation, by the way.

Thank you for getting us moving forward.

Very appreciative of that.

So for the data collection, you know, we do the typical, the average data traffic,

We look at the volumes through the corridor.

We look at the freight movements through the corridor, the size of the freight moving through the corridor.

We look if there's any pedestrian cowpats, different things that occur.

We look in the Nellysford area and find some areas that pedestrians are using, that there's no relative sidewalk or safe aspect of being able to move.

So we'll have that information.

and then from the analysis standpoint once we start applying that information into the intersection analysis you'll get some feedback as to what alternatives work better based on that feedback or based on the analysis input and then you'll have output information that shows whether it works well or it doesn't work well to really answer some of the questions as to why certain alternatives are being recommended versus others.

Now the other side of it is I'm sure

When we do the public information, we're going to hear a couple different things outside of the element of what we're doing for the study.

We're going to hear concerns about land use.

We're going to hear concerns about other things that are going on from an economic development standpoint.

I can't answer those questions.

I'm hoping that the study and the outcomes of the study help the board and the county in their comprehensive plan update like it did back in 2013 to be able

economic development land use.

We look at that as far as the growth to see how the applied growth factors take place in the corridor.

But again, we're looking at the safety operations and capacity issues around the corridor.

So what we've done with the data, it will be used through the entire study.

Again, we've got relative information from last spring, summer, into the fall and also the fall before that.

So we've got a year's worth of data that we're able to use for the analysis.

And through that, we'll identify where the linear progression or regression is as far as looking at that.

That's why we did the 1% grade based on how that information is being used.

No, we're not going to do any future updates based on

One other thing, when we talk about prioritizing multimodal transportation, the roundabout at River Road, my understanding is that that's not funded to have anything built into it for multimodal.

So as part of the design perspective,

When we did the intersection improvement up at Afton at 6 up there, we were able to tweak the design to put bike lanes through the intersection.

Roundabouts are a little bit different from a bicycle standpoint.

They can use the roundabout based on the low speeds through it, and they can basically just roll through pedestrians.

I understand the primary, in my question, the primary responsibility of the county,

When you analyze the number of vehicles and all those things and the development of the area, will you ever put a number on or calculate the amount of development that would be possible without, I mean, at some point, to me, we're close to that.

You'd be surprised where people develop things.

As part of the daily traffic volumes that we see, as part of the seasonal traffic that we see, we will be able to make a determination possibly from a capacity standpoint.

But what we've found is there are particular choke holds within the corridor during those times.

So you may see improvements there that affect the entire corridor.

You may see particular recommendations that specifically through Nellysford and everything that improve some capacity and operations through there.

So I guess in answer to your question, we won't, the part of the study aspect is not to define future growth or the possibility for future growth.

We're trying to correct the measures and issues that are there now in preparation for the future based upon the data that we collect.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Rick.

Have a good one.

And make sure you drive down to that exit and then you go to each one on your way out.

Good afternoon, John.

As many know, we have been on a mission

So to speak for the last year, the thereabouts in order to gather data, present it, and analyze it in a way such as will give us the information that we need in order to determine if our pay scales are competitive for gathering new and existing employees to retain them.

Last year, we contracted with Management Advisory Group in order to complete this analysis study.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board.

I'm very pleased to be here today so I can present to you the findings of the Adam Moore Classification Compensation Study.

Linda, and also your county administrator, Andy, for their help in the leadership.

We couldn't have done this without them.

So what I want to do first is give you a little bit of background on how the study worked.

Basically, we performed a compensation classification study.

This is where we come in.

We take a look at all of the jobs within the county.

By the way, we did separate studies for the county, mostly for DSS.

So when I say county,

I'll be referring to both.

But we did a classification study where we looked at all the positions within the county and we compared them.

We made sure that any jobs that were similar had similar duties and responsibilities, we made sure that we put them together for classification purposes so we can make sure that they have equal compensation.

So that's where the classification part comes in.

Compensation, we also wanted to compare

Nelson County to the other local counties around here and some of the other markets, municipalities, just to find out where you all stand when it comes to being competitive within the local market.

So like I was saying a minute ago, our main

The methodology of this was to gather the most current information possible directly from the employee and their supervisor.

We considered them the subject matter expert, we considered their job, so that's where we want to make sure we're getting our information from when we're assessing these different jobs and the duties and responsibilities.

We're also able to identify recruitment and retention concerns by way of the market study.

We conducted interviews with top management and selected staff

The questionnaire I've been telling you about is called the Job Profile Questionnaire.

It's basically an online product, and that's what we used to have the employees give us the information that we needed to get more familiar with their jobs, so we understood exactly what they were doing.

Typically over time, jobs evolve and start to change.

It was key that we had the current information possible for the jobs themselves.

It wouldn't be a PowerPoint presentation without a flow chart.

This is ours.

I want to show you here.

These are the steps that we use as we go through the study itself.

And it's also our way of balancing internal equity with external equity.

Again, the internal equity is comparing things within the county.

External is comparing Nelson County to the local market.

So these are the steps that we take.

We start out by talking with human resources and department heads, go through the questionnaire process, conduct a market survey,

From there, that's where we get into the inner workings of the study itself.

That's where we come up with proposed salary schedules based on what we found and the car adjustments and our calculations based on our software.

And we're able to come up with the organizational cost and come up with implementation plans for the study once we come up with our findings.

This is a list of the 14 column targets.

These are the people we compared Nelson County to.

We consider targets in one of two categories.

They're either going to be a competitor, which means if someone here in Nelson County wanted to stop in their car and drive a few extra miles for more compensation, they can do it.

We also like to include peers.

So these are people that aren't necessarily as close by, but they're similar in size or in structure.

So they give us a good gauge

These are the results that we came up with based on our market survey and the information we got back.

And as you can see, there is a bit of a lag.

And if you look at the minimum and the midpoint ranges for Nelson County, there's about 13% lag.

So we need to get that caught up so we're competitive when it comes to hiring people and retaining people.

Also for the DSS ranges, their minimum ranges are way behind, but the middle

from the high ranges or not because there's such a wide range in salary ranges right now, more from 175 to 180% within the range, which is extremely high.

So we're going to bring that in a little bit with our proposed base scales.

So that's going to change that just a little bit.

I did want to mention, though, as we're looking at each and every one of the jobs, the ones that really stuck out for us as far as ones further behind than others.

It's the Animal Control Officer, Millennium Spectrums,

and a lot of the director positions.

This here is for the- Can I interject?

Yes, sir.

We take those and we average them.

Yeah, I know how you do it, but it doesn't really reflect

Well for all of these counties here and the municipalities that are included here, we have detailed information from each and every county.

Well, you know, I know that we are lower and need to increase our numbers, but I don't think numbers would be as large if you compared apples to apples.

For instance, I don't think our model would be comparable to us.

Well, this is when we coordinated this list of human resources.

This is the list that we agreed upon.

So if there's any ones that are not a good representative.

Well, you know what I'm saying, right?

For each one of these targets, and if we see something that's going to inflate things or something that's going to drag it down, we take those outliers out.

So, for example, maybe something like, maybe some of the entry-level positions are more comparative than some of the executive positions.

If that were the case, we would be able to use a portion of what we can

We do have a lot of information behind the scenes.

It's not showing up on the slides here.

I just thought that point should be made.

For example, if you were losing people to Albemarle County, if you were having accountability issues and certain jobs, we want to know why.

So we would compare their information.

So why are people leaving here and going there?

One quick question in the next slide.

What's DSS in this slide?

Department of Social Services.

That's what I thought.

The report you're looking at, we took all the results from both and combined them, everything from the county, everything from the DSS is combined into this one report.

There's separate information for both rather than write separate reports

So a lot to say about the DSS is the way their pay ranges are set up right now, there's about 175 to 185 percent width.

The pay range is very wide.

So that's allowing the middle and the upper pay ranges to look like they're competitive.

We wanted to make sure that we're looking at apples to apples.

So when we come up with those pay points, we're going to make a pay structure that has a 50 percent range versus one that's triple that.

That's going to make things a lot easier to measure.

This is the county portion of the study.

There were a total of 67 job titles.

And again, we're going with open ranges with a minimum, midpoint, and a maximum.

There's 34 grades within the pay range.

And we adjusted all the widths to 50%.

So that just means that whatever the minimum is, the maximum is going to be 50% of that.

For DSS, we're talking 10 unique job titles, and it's the same criteria with the open ranges.

This time, there's going to be 29 grade levels.

And again, bringing the woods down significantly under a 50% range so we can capture accurate middle and high range as well as a minimum range.

Just want to give you a little bit of a breakdown on how these costs go.

Basically, what we were looking for

Across the board increase of 5%.

And for the county, there's a total of 128 positions.

It's got different titles.

Once we get that 5% across the board applied, that's when we address with the new pay wages, we have to make sure that everybody is at least up to the new minimums.

So that's called our adjustment to minimum.

That's going to affect 59 employees in the county.

And the cost for that is going to be roughly $190,000.

Now that number does not take into account fringe benefits, correct?

Okay.

The last adjustment is going to be we call it employee equity.

What we're doing here, since we've made these new pay ranges and most likely raised the entry level, we have to make sure that people that have been in these jobs for a while

are not right up against the few people that are coming in.

So the equity adjustment takes into account promotion dates and how long people have been in a particular job and it rewards them for that and pushes them further into the case scale so we don't have a color compression.

If you have people that just started bumping up against people who have already been there for a while, we're trying to decompress that.

So that's the point of the equity adjustment.

So the total annualized adjustment for the county would be $625,800.

and that's roughly 11.22% of the current.

We did the same thing for DHS, Department of Social Services, and for them, they have a total of 22 positions and 10 job titles.

So again, we're going with the 5% across the board increase, followed by the adjustments minimum.

and then the equity adjustment for people that have been in their job for a while, that affects 722 positions.

So we're looking at an overall total of 68,300 with a change in total payroll of 7.5%.

We also provided in this report and we worked with Human Resources on this.

We also like to include recommendations on

compensation policies, things they're gonna run across over time.

Things like reclassification of a job, promotion criteria or issues, lateral transfers, demotions, temporary assignments for somebody to step in for the time being for one who should be compensated for stepping up and taking on that extra responsibility.

Hiring practices, and we'd also like to address employees, since here they're maxed out.

Those are people that are at the top of their pay scale.

They've been with the county a long time.

progress through the pay range and up to the top of the pay scale.

So these are the types of policies that we've run across over the years and we just like to make sure that human resources is up to date on those so people are consistent with what happens nationally.

So as a result of this classification and compensation study, we feel like that we've come up with a fair and equitable

Ben, for internal relationships amongst all jobs.

I also think that we've made you all more competitive with your starting salaries so that you can compete with some of the other markets around here that may be a little ahead of you when it comes to entry level pay.

So if you could go back to where you showed the scenarios.

Yes.

So I think it's one thing, just obviously whenever we talk about any pay raises, fringe benefits always go along with that.

So if you look at, let's just say that adjustment minimum, it's just 189, the county would probably more likely realize $240,000 to $250,000

and Hugh Kosh.

Am I incorrect in saying that, Candy?

Right.

The reason why we didn't really mention that is because when we were doing our comparisons with these other counties and municipalities, we were strictly looking at their compensation as well.

So we see the 13 to 14% disparity.

Right, this is our initial analysis and what it shows, it puts you guys, you're not leading the pack, but you're definitely not a lot of them.

So that's why we went through these presentations because we're showing you what we came up with as our best analysis and then from this point if there's

All through the state, people are having problems getting staff to pay.

So there are also these other places where you're raising their pay.

Right.

Well, we ran our market survey a few months ago.

We actually took into account additional information and things like that.

So we call it an aging process.

Obviously some of this dance goes with the comp board and whatnot.

I'm not sure that we've calculated that yet.

We're still working on December's budget.

So if we did, in the event the state does the 5%, obviously historically the county always followed suit, we would be doing the 271

And then in between, we haven't ever really adjusted our scales by any factor, so we're not keeping up with the market at all in that time period.

This is not the right time for a new study, because we recommended it usually every three to five years, so 2016, seven years ago.

Internally, I think staff has discussed

Just the need to look at some factor to apply to our scales on an annual basis so that we're sort of keeping up at least a little bit as we go forward in between our compensation study periods.

And that way we won't see such a big blip when we do these studies.

I've got a question, but just to let you know, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission has had a really brief discussion last month about this.

It turned out a lot of our, a lot of the counties and Charlottesville City closed by are

We found that out in the regular market surveys.

We call people asking for information.

They say we're in the middle of one of these ourselves.

We have the primary Virginia.

We're doing Stanton right now.

One of my colleagues is also doing Monroe City Schools and Monroe County Schools, Chesapeake Schools.

And we just did Frederick County, Virginia.

No, I just want to really thank Linda Staton and her staff and all of our employees.

As Mr. Foster pointed out in the beginning, it's taken a lot of work between staff and our employees to get them the data that they needed to complete the study.

Excellent.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

All right.

Davenport, we have Ben.

Do we want to take a quick five minute break and let folks leave?

All right.

We could settle the conversations a little bit so we can proceed.

All right.

Good afternoon.

As you mentioned, my name is Ben Wilson.

I work with Davenport & Company.

We serve as financial advisor to the county.

This is a continuation of a conversation that started over a year ago.

So this is a continuation of a conversation we started over a year ago with the county

about your debt capacity and affordability.

So this is really talking about large capital projects that you all may be considering taking on over the next couple of years and how that sort of fits into your overall budget.

So let's get started.

So like I said, we started this conversation last year, December of 21 and March of 2022, sort of leading up to the development of the fiscal year 23 budget.

We are here revisiting it because we are going towards the fiscal year 24 budget this spring.

We just wanted to revisit the assumptions and the timing just to make sure that we were still on track with everything.

So sort of the bottom section just sort of goes through the analysis that we've done and some changes that we've made to it since last year.

So what this looks at is potentially funding up to $75 million worth of projects.

We really broke that into two segments.

There's a $57 million portion of it, and then an incremental $18 million on top of that to get to the $75 million.

Now, I think the important thing here is that these dollar amounts aren't assigned to a specific project, so they're a little bit fungible in what exactly you all will be funding with these dollars.

Just going down to that bottom section, like I mentioned, we're looking at funding these projects in the next three to five years.

We have increased the interest rates compared to the analysis we shared with you all last year.

I'm sure many of you are aware that since the analysis was presented last year, we've pretty much only seen rates go up.

So we have added a little bit of cushion to it.

And on the other side of that, we have extended the maturity of some of the debt we're looking at in here.

It's still well within the useful eyes of the assets that you all are looking to potentially fund.

So don't think there's any concern with that.

We just needed to do that to take into account the fact that we're going to have higher interest rates if we were to do this right now.

So moving on this page, I'm not gonna go through every detail here, but the point here is the left side is the projects we were looking at last year.

Again, they're fairly generic at this point.

And those dollar amounts can sort of move in between them with relative ease and still get to a very similar end point that we're gonna look at here.

In the first section there, we're looking at the assumptions we had in our prior analysis on the right side.

Just what we've updated.

I mean, the big things that we are looking at here is the timing of the borrowing.

So in the second section there, the Capital Facilities Project and DSS building, those have been pushed out from fiscal year 2023 to 2024 because they aren't quite ready to be funded right now.

So it's looking like the borrowing for that is not going to happen until at least later in this calendar year, which will be next fiscal year.

We've also increased the term in the second to last column.

We've gone from 20 to 25 years to 25 to 30 years for the most part.

And then our interest rates, like I mentioned, we were doing sort of a four to 5% range.

Now we're just sort of doing 5% with a little bit of cushion for those additional projects, just in case they would have to be done on a taxable basis.

Moving on to the next page.

Looking at that first incremental $57 million, a key assumption here that we're wanting to point out, you all have already implemented a portion of this plan, a little piece of it, in setting your budget in fiscal year 2023 for debt service at $3,933,000.

So that is a little bit higher than what you were looking at before, and that was included in the plan previously, and you all implemented that in your 2023 budget.

You also set aside $2.3 million in the debt service reserve.

And I'll get into that in a moment, what those dollars are going to be used for.

But essentially you're using fund balance to prevent the need to come up with a lot of new revenues over the next five, seven years.

So just to fund these $57 million worth of projects, you're looking at recurring debt service of

3.9 million dollars.

You'll see that's right about the same as what your budget is for debt service.

So that's good.

However, you do have debt on the books right now that you're going to have to pay off over the course of the next 8 to 10 years.

So the point is here that where you can fund the 57 million dollars because you are budgeting that three million nine thirty three, you set aside two point three million.

And over the next couple of years,

Your actual payments that you're gonna have to make on the debt service that you have right now is a little bit lower than that 3.9 million.

So you're able to set aside some more funds that will be used to sort of pay debt service in the years where it's a lot higher.

And we'll see on the next page, it's a little bit easier to get that picture.

So what we're showing here is on the, in the graph, we've got in brown there, the brown bars,

your existing debt service.

So that's debt that's already been issued.

We know exactly what those payments are going to be.

And we've graphed what those payments look like out through 2031.

So you can see that it steps down a bit.

And the fact that that steps down gives you all the opportunity to fund more projects if you keep your budget at a similar level.

That red line there is your budget for debt service so as you can see going from 2022 to 2023 it's gone up a little bit and we've held it constant going forward we're just assuming that you all will keep it at that level and in that brown box in fiscal years 23, 24, 25, and 26 you can see that the payments that you all are making are actually lower than your budget.

And the reason that we are planning this way is in that yellow box you can see once this $57 million comes online, you're gonna have a couple years where your existing debt service, the Brown, overlaps with the new debt service, the light green.

And because you've got that overlap, there's gonna be really two big years where the debt service is gonna be well above that $3.9 million that you're budgeting.

However, you all have set aside the $2.3 million

And if you set aside what's in that brown box in the next couple of years, you'll have more than enough to cover those peaks in debt service that you see starting in fiscal year 2027.

And then as your existing debt service goes away, the brown trails off into 2031, that level returns back to your budgeted level of 3%.

All this is saying is you're able to fund $57 million worth of projects based on your current budget, the $2.3 million that you've set aside already, and the assumption that you all will set aside a little bit more over the next couple of years to cover those peaks.

Okay?

Was there any questions on that?

Okay.

So this page is really just a

The details behind that graph, I'm not gonna go into a whole lot of detail here.

Column B is your budget, so that was the red line that you were looking at on the last page.

We would look at, do you need any additional revenues?

In this case, you don't, so that's column C. Column D, you've got your total revenues available.

E is your existing debt service, so the green there corresponds with the brown bars on the graph on the last page.

and then column F is the light green on the last page.

So that's the projected new net service for the 57.

Okay.

I may be going backwards a little bit.

So see if I have this right.

You're projecting that when our current debts are paid off, we will recognize revenue from that based by

and then that that would then be folded back into our debt service as opposed to being having it be used for some other county needs that we might have.

That's exactly right.

So if you didn't fold that back in,

You would be looking at recurring debt service of $3.9 million that you would have to make up for.

So it just so happens that this $57 million, the debt service that you're going to have to pay is very similar to what you're already budgeting.

And that's sort of how we arrived at that $57 million number.

So $3.9 million would be the number you would need.

If you were to get rid of that budget and go and put it somewhere else in the budget, you would have to come up with $3.9 million.

Any other questions?

I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers at you and talking a little bit fast.

So back on page six, we've got our existing debt service in column E, our projected debt service in column F. So that's associated with the $57 million.

And then column G just adds E and F together.

And then you've got a surplus or shortfall in column H,

And as you can see, that surplus is positive for the first four years, and that's what I was talking about, where you can bank some of those dollars, set them aside, so that once you get out to 2027, and you start seeing those shortfalls, you can cover those shortfalls with the funds that you set aside.

And then column I is just where we are setting aside those funds.

It starts at the 2.3 million you've already set aside, it banks some, and then it uses those dollars up when you have those negatives.

Now we're going to look at an incremental $18 million worth of projects.

So this assumes that all the same things that we talked about in the last scenario where you funded the $57 million, and now we're saying, all right, what would it take to fund another $18 million on top of that?

And the answer to that question is about $1.4 million per year.

And

So what we're looking at here is actually a borrowing that occurs in 2026, so a couple years out from now.

And because of that, your debt service principal and interest would start most likely the year following.

And so that is when you would need that $1.4 million of additional revenues to cover this $18 million additional project costs.

Now, like I said, this still assumes all the same things that we were talking about in the last case.

Your budget of $3.9 million, $3.9 million 33 stays at that level going forward.

And it assumes that you keep that 2.3 for these projects, which you've already set aside for.

So here we've got our graph again.

The brown is the same, it's your existing debt service.

The light green is the same, it's the $57 million that was funded.

The light blue that we've added in here is that incremental $18 million, so that just gets added right there on top.

And as you can see, there's still a little bit of a peak there in fiscal years 27, 28, and a little bit in 29 through 31.

So you all need to be able to cover that over and above the 3.9 you're already budgeting and the 1.4 that would be needed in addition.

So that's going to be made up by the $2.3 million that you've already set aside and whatever dollars you can set aside over the next couple years because your budget is higher than your debt service right now.

And as you can see, that gold line, it's a little bit hard to see on the screen, but it might be easier to see on your paper.

The gold line that comes up in 2027, that's where that $1.4 million comes into play.

And as you can see, once you get past your existing debt service again, the debt service ends up down at that level of that gold line.

So that's your budget plus the 1.4.

We'll be able to cover that in the future.

Again, Mr. Reed, that assumes that you budget the 3.9 million for debt service going forward.

So this goes into the details again.

I'm not going to go through this one.

You all know the setup.

This is just if you'd like some perspective on what the actual numbers look like instead of just a graph.

But this is all just saying the same thing that the last page was.

So one thing that's very important that we look at on a regular basis for our clients is your debt ratios.

So when you go to borrow money, the lender

If you borrow in the public markets, you go out and sell bonds, you have to go to the credit rating agencies in New York and say, show them, all right, here's all our finances, here's what we look like, here's our plan, and they would give you a rating.

They pay a lot of attention to these ratios.

Even if you stay within the state and go to the Virginia Resources Authority, they're gonna pay attention to this kind of stuff as well.

So we wanna keep an eye on it for you all.

because $75 million is not an insignificant number for Nelson County.

So the first one we're looking at here is your debt capacity.

It's your debt versus your assessed value.

So this takes into account real estate, personal property, and all assessed values that you have, and it compares the amount of debt you have outstanding to your assessed value.

It's not a perfect measure, but it does give a good general order of magnitude whether

Someone is overburdening themselves with debt when they shouldn't be.

And it's based on your tax base because that's how you all make a decent portion of your revenues.

As you can see on the right side, we've done a comparison here.

The gold, 0.5, Nelson in 2023, that's before you do any of these projects.

So that's relatively low.

You'll see it's below your

These budget and population peers, so those are just some peers throughout Virginia that have similar budget size and a similar population.

And then the regional peers, that's the counties sort of surrounding Nelson.

So you look very good right now with that.

If you were to go forward with the $75 million, we would be looking at something closer to 2.8%.

Now that is well above where you are right now, but it's still a very reasonable range.

No rating agency would look at that and say, no, they have way too much debt.

What we would even recommend is that you all put a policy in place that's in the three and a half to 4% range.

So 2.8% is higher than where you are right now, but you all are in a very low spot right now.

So this still looks good, even after the 75 million gets put in place.

Now this other side of it is debt service versus expenditures.

So before we were looking at the amount of debt outstanding.

Now we're looking at the debt service you're paying in a given year compared to your budget, essentially.

So what percent of your budget are you using to pay off debt?

Right now you're at about 6.6%.

If we were to implement this, the height of this would be 10.9%, but it would come back down.

That's shown here.

That very tall year, 2027, that's the 10% we're looking at.

So it would come back down right after that.

You'd have a short period where that's higher than the peers here.

But again, what we would recommend is a policy with this ratio in the 10 to 12% range, which is really even a strong policy.

I mean, many places in Virginia have a policy of 15%, and some even have 20%.

So 10.9% is still very strong.

A 10 to 12% policy would be viewed very favorably by predators.

So that's something that we can revisit over the coming months if policies are something you'd be interested in putting in place.

I mean a lot of the times policies that are put in place don't actually change any of the stuff you're doing on a daily basis.

It's just a way of showing lenders and

This just leads into sort of our wrap-up slide here.

We can make adjustments to this analysis if you think that there are specific projects you want to be looking at or if any of these assumptions that we've made in here are not what you envision for the future, we can make adjustments to that with Candy and Linda and Amanda.

And then, like I mentioned, we could consider looking at some financial policies.

We could put together some materials for you to look at and help draft those if you would be interested in doing that.

And then we'll just continue to work with you all to keep track of this and make sure that as you go forward and as you do more projects, we're still keeping this in mind and thinking about everything strategically rather than just going to borrow money as you need it.

I think some of this we did see, I guess, the DCR info, really, where we were.

We've seen that before.

I think the thing is though the interest rates we're assuming here are still well above the current market.

If you all were to go out and borrow money right now,

You wouldn't be getting 5%.

However, we don't know when these borrowings are going to happen.

So I think at the end of the day, the point I'm trying to make is that it'll probably look even better than this.

When we determine what we're going to do,

We don't have to.

So this is something we do with a lot of our clients where they have a big picture these are the things we want to do but I mean the reality is you're not going to sit down and borrow for seven different projects at one time because you're not going to know how much they are you're not going to be able to bid all of them at one

So this is something we would revisit from time to time.

Say you all decided to move forward with the DSS project later this year, we would help you all with that.

We would take this into account when we help you with that borrowing.

And then once that borrowing is in place, we can revisit this and say, all right, what does that mean for the rest of the projects you're looking at?

So it's sort of a

It's a little bit of a moving target, but it's flexible, and it's important to stay on top of it, which you all end up doing.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Safe travels.

Appreciate it.

Now I know we let some folks in here, like Keith and Albemarle's representation.

Be kind.

Be kind?

I can't do that.

Are you leaving now, Deb?

I'd like to invite you guys up.

We're going to talk about housing.

It's nice for someone else to talk about it other than me on this board.

So we have Mr. Ned Galloway, who's an album model chairman, of course.

What are you?

Former chair.

And also head of our regional housing partnership and Mr. Keith Smith, who's a big part of that story.

So

Well, good afternoon, Chair Rutherford, honorable members of the board, and Mr. McGarry, good to meet you.

Pleasure to be here.

As Chair Rutherford mentioned, I'm a current member of the Elmore County Board of Supervisors.

I'm the current chair of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, and it's my pleasure to be here in front of you today as the current chair of the regional, Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership.

I'm joined today by my colleague, Mr. Keith Smith,

who I'll talk a little bit more about that is the current vice-chair of the Central Virginia Housing Partnership.

He is also a 12-year member of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission representing Blue Bay County.

Joining us is our housing planner, Mr. Ian Baxter, staff at the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

So he does all the work behind the scenes for us.

And as you'll leave for a bit, but is with us today.

Oh, there's Christine Jacobs.

She's the executive director of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

Our intent today is to introduce ourselves and to tell you a little bit about what we do at the Regional Housing Partnership.

So the structure will be, I'll talk a little bit about how it came to be, why it came to be, who's a member of it, and then I'll hand things off to Mr. Smith who's going to give you some overview, some information, some data on Nelson County specifically.

Ian will be discussing some deliverables, we'll be doing some invitation to some future events.

And then we hope that you'll be ready to ask some questions and have a brief discussion about housing and Nelson and how we can be helpful to you.

So I'll jump right in.

So the first piece is how was the partnership created?

And you're going to get to hear from the man who was really the energizing force behind the creation of this partnership.

So as I said, Mr. Smith has been with the Donnie Jeffers and Planning District Commission for 12 years.

as a realtor, housing affordability is a issue.

And there were different segments of the population all talking past one another and not really getting down and having one conversation regionally about housing affordability.

And that, he thought, was part of the issue.

So why not bring everybody together and start discussing, okay, this is a regional issue that we're all dealing with.

We have crossover and things that we can learn from one another.

And why don't we start getting in the same room to have those kind of discussions so we can learn from one another about how to go back into our jurisdictions and help solve some issues.

So as you can see on the screen, when he started talking to people to pull this together and ultimately had the Planning District Commission sign off on it as something that's under the umbrella of the TJPDC, we wanted to make sure that there were keys.

Rightfully so, so we need to have representation on the body from these four particular pillars, if you will.

The public sector or the folks that we serve, right?

The folks looking for the housing and the affordable housing.

Folks in the nonprofits that are working with the people looking for affordable housing who are providing services and whatnot.

The private sector, the people building the units and those who are through different means of trying to provide either affordable units or put something into their developments

And then I'm sorry, the public sector is the electeds and us and the service officials who we serve are those looking for the housing piece.

So that just basically started having a conversation.

The TJPVC formalized the partnership together.

We came out to each of the

So we all came together.

We have quarterly meetings with the entire partnership.

And then the nuts and bolts of the work is done through an executive committee that meets monthly to focus the work and do the work and kind of drive the work of the Regional Housing Partnership.

So as you can see right now, the current membership is here.

I'm not going to read through that.

And you can also see our mission and vision.

On the previous slide, the Y was there and started to speak to that, and that crosstalk

We know we are dealing with housing crisis and housing affordability issues within our boundaries.

What are we doing about it?

The Regional Housing Partnership is not here to tell you what to do.

We're not a policy setting body or a policy directing body.

We're here to serve as resource to Nelson County or Fluvanna County or Louisa County to say what issues are you finding and what can we do as a body in our collaborative efforts

in Nelson County.

So that's what we stand here for.

So right now we're going through a strategic planning update.

I don't hope I'm not stealing anything from Ian.

Margaret is our chair of our communications committee so we happen to have two folks that are chairing those committees here.

The data committee is about what information can we help gather around not just for those participating but to provide the jurisdictions to help you with your affordable housing issues and then the communications body is to say how do we push that information out but also receive your requests back in to stand as that resource for you.

So gentlemen, that is how we came to be, primarily why.

And you can see here who's particularly right now involved.

And our strategic plan, the third element of it, is looking to do we have the right people around the table?

Do we have the right churn with the people around the table?

So our strategic plan, we just effectively hired our consultant that's going to help us with membership.

If you haven't heard of the Central Virginia Regional Housing Partnership, why is that?

Are there other people in the spaces under those four pillars that we need to have at the table to help us deal with this issue?

And before I sit down, I'm going to say thank you officially to this board.

Not only have you contributed to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission in the past, but you for the first time also agreed and budgeted money to us for

A direct contribution to the Regional Housing Partnership to continue our efforts.

That is based on a per capita basis.

Here in Nelson, that amount was $2,875.

And we're very appreciative of that because that allows us to move to the next level, to be able to gain and gather those resources and focus them better to be at your service.

And we also will, Ian will be talking about an event that's coming up in March.

And I'll leave that for Ian.

So I'm the guy that's going to show up and kind of knock into good news, right?

Ned did all the flowery talk.

I'm going to kind of tell you guys about what's before us at the moment.

So the next series of slides, what we're going to be looking at, and they're in your package, these are single-family detached.

This is Nelson County only.

So just to define that, because you have Wintergreen, I break out the numbers between Wintergreen and Nelson County, because if you put them together, it can skew things a little bit.

And we'll talk a little bit later on about the numbers on it.

One of the great things about Nelson County, you're the only one in jurisdictions around here that has condoms themselves, so that's a good positive.

So if you take a look at it, 2022 numbers, your volume of sales has went down over 2021, about 21%.

So what you're looking at over here is a total volume of sales of single-family D dentistry.

So as you can see, you can be tracking that.

It's kind of a little over the place.

The next slide is what the sales prices are.

These are the numbers

So I just did some quick search from the beginning of the year with your internet.

It excludes Wintergreen.

$435.

$400.

It excludes Wintergreen.

We're going to talk about Wintergreen here in a minute.

So that excludes Wintergreen because when you mix them together, it really, it really skews the numbers.

So if you're looking, the average sales price right now for a single family detached home in Nelson County without, you know, outside of Wintergreen is selling for 400 grand.

They're closing for 400 grand.

And oh, by the way, you sit here right now, you've got 22 available for sale.

The median list price is 722,000.

There are six homes for sale right now in Nelson County that are under $289,000.

The next list price jumps up to $495,000.

So there's only six homes for sale right now as we stand here at this very moment between $0 and $289,000.

Mr. Smith, may I interject a question, Mr. Chairman?

Yeah.

My home is one acre or 100 acres, so it breaks it down.

Wait, I can break it down further, but at the moment, this is just a big picture.

Okay.

Great question, because in rural counties, you have a little bit more land, and if you take a look at it, as you start going into the larger sales prices, you usually have a little bit more land.

So, this is Wintergreen.

Nelson County Wintergreen sales.

Wintergreen sells single-family, deep-touch homes

though not large, percentagely has dropped quite a bit year over year.

So again, you can take a little bit about what's going back and forth on that.

The price on the other hand has jumped.

So sales of volume has went down, sales price has gone up.

Now we talked earlier, Wintergreen has a unique feature to it.

It has condoms, right?

Very few in our car footprint, Charles Willis Area Association Realtors footprint

has condos.

Wintergreen's an exception to that.

So the number's a little bit higher, but our sales have dropped a little bit year over year.

But take a look at the prices.

We were in the bottom right, 2017, you could buy a condo in Wintergreen for $119 and sell it for $253 right now.

So why am I doing this?

Why are we having this conversation?

Why is the Regional Housing Partnership here?

It's here to help housing affordability.

And as Ned has mentioned, I'm in charge of the data committee.

So we're going to be posting a lot of this stuff on our website.

But one of the sources that we can be for you as elected bodies is to help you understand a little bit about where the market is out that way.

I'm going to give, should I call you Chairman Rutherford or can I call you Jesse?

Whatever you want.

Okay.

So Jesse pointed out on a conversation we had once before, which really rocked my world, it was last Friday, that the Nelson County teachers, and correct me if I'm wrong, the Nelson County teachers can't live, can't afford to live in Nelson County.

Yeah, so and if somebody wants, so I also chair a thing called a community land trust, Piedmont Community Land Trust.

So to put some perspective to it, to an order to buy today at between 60 and 80 percent area median income, the sales price cannot go over to 15.

You know, your excellent internet did not give me enough time to go ahead and dig into that book.

But next time on your excellent internet, I will go ahead and dig into it.

But if you look at some pictures, some of the lower prices are...

I'm the guy that's given the numbers.

He is going to talk a little bit, come up, and we'd love to answer questions.

Yes, I'm from North Georgia, in case you weren't aware of that.

North Georgia.

All right.

Well, thanks folks.

I'm just going to briefly elaborate on what some of what Ned was talking

Thank you publicly, Nelson County, for contributing $1,000 to our Coming Back Home Housing Summit.

We very much appreciate that donation, and we're really looking forward to having, I know a few of you have signed up.

Jesse is actually a panelist at that event.

That's going to be March 24th at the Charlottesville Omni.

We'd be happy to provide more information.

Tickets are $45, include parking, breakfast, lunch, and coffee, and a bunch of great sessions.

One of the strategies that we're looking to implement is basically having these regional housing events, these networking events, and basically serving as this venue for regional collaboration around affordable housing.

So some of the information that Keith has shared, that's sort of one component of what we're hoping to have.

We're hoping to have a housing data dashboard that's similar to what Keith presented, but also might include

information and statistics about rental housing and homelessness, a grant library for developers and nonprofit housing providers to find funding that would be able to fund affordable housing, and then also an affordable housing toolkit that'll have case studies and information about similar jurisdictions.

Oh yeah, and we're also, there's a tool developed by an organization called Hand in Northern Virginia that's a slider that basically has a set amount of these fake individuals, but it has a picture of them and then their occupation.

And so as you drag the slider from left to right, left being the least amount they pay for housing and the right being the most, shows how many of them become housing insecure.

So paying more than 30% of their income on housing.

And once you get about three-fourths over, not even to the maximum, the only people that can really afford housing or at least are not considered housing insecure by HUD's definition are doctors and lawyers and folks that are making at least three figures.

and try to email that to us in the planning.

This problem is daunting.

I think probably it's a strong reward.

Having to do with income, having to do with availability, building costs, and everything.

I respect you for trying to address.

What place are you at in beginning to address this problem?

I mean, you know, those figures will reflect the difficulty of what you are facing.

We're all facing.

Where are you beginning?

Before I answer that question, I want to ask a question over the chair to make sure I don't go off too much with you.

So that's how it works, right there.

Bringing everybody under the tent and having a discussion.

So the public sector is you guys.

But nonprofits are the land trust.

And I'll give you an example of a project that the land trust did here in a minute using this four pillars to actually achieve some what I call magic.

The private sector, the builders, the developers.

I'm also a recovering developer, by the way.

I'd like to think I'm in my 10th step and I'm really probably in my first step.

Then the people who we serve, who we're going to serve at the table.

So let me give you an example.

Al Moore County, one of the supervisors gave the land trust $625,000.

That was the public sector.

They also helped us with a little bit of red tape turning into green tape.

So I was able to get some stuff approved through the process.

brought in a non-profit, which is a land trust.

I went and made a deal with Stanley Martin Homes and what we ended up doing was building 23 in Albemarle County affordable houses for $215,000, putting teachers, cops, firemen, folks making less than 85%, which is, excuse me, less than 80%.

They were 65% AMI.

Who was the people who we served?

And it took that to make it happen.

One column isn't going to make it happen.

Two columns ain't going to make it happen.

Three columns might get that roof to stand a little bit, but as a builder, you know it's not going to last all that long.

It takes all those four columns to make it work.

So it can be done, but everybody needs to be able to do the same thing.

Did I preach a little bit?

I think some of the discussion and as I've gotten to learn a lot in the last four years about what processes and procedures and methods exist in preserving affordable housing and of course I've been in that in my own personal life and what that looks like in creating housing inventory.

You know, some of the most solid methods you'll see happen are communities such as Montreal Village and Nelson, right, where there was an acquisition of land, where the housing stock was built with a specific purpose for a specific group to afford.

You know, land trust is a huge piece, you know, but there's, even then, we're talking on a scale that needs to be quadrupled, you know.

23 is a great number to do.

The housing deficit that we got is in the thousands.

And that's why we as a region have to look at this issue together because reality is Albemarle's inability to take care of their housing needs becomes our inability to house our Nelsonians.

And so that's why when we got our comprehensive plan statistic recently with the, I guess that was census data and the employment commission that said there's 1600 people who live and work in Nelson County every day.

Yeah, 4800 leave Nelson County every day to work.

The most intriguing number after that is the fact that 2000 people drive into Nelson County to work Nelson County jobs.

And so, you know, that tells you that you got a whole other different kind of scenario going on with the inventory complicatedness that is not easy.

And the reality is, we talk about the teachers, you know, they drive in from all over the, not north normally, but from Amherst, Appomattox to work in those kind of jobs.

I mean, you look at deputies, we have countless number of deputies who now are living in Amherst, working Nelson County jobs.

So is it a wage thing?

I'm not going to say no, but I will say more than likely you'll see that that number, that same group of 2,000, even if there was a certain wage correction, would find themselves preferring to have a better lifestyle in a different county because they're more money than trying to infiltrate the housing market in Nelson County.

Again, the median is $400,000.

That's a serious number.

And the demographics to hit that number, I mean, you're making real money.

I mean, preaching and quiet, I mean, all I'm saying, I mean, all this is real.

I just want to add to Jeremy Rutherford's point.

As an elective, it gets easy, right?

We save teachers, firefighters, and police department.

That comes off our looks fast, right?

They've been living there.

But what opened my eyes a few months back is we got a presentation at the Reach Mountain Partnership that talks about folks even making $20 and $22 an hour are having trouble affording rent, rental units.

If somebody's earning $20 an hour, I'm in my, just started my sixth year on our Almore County Board of Supervisors.

A year ago, if you would have said, what kind of hourly wage are we talking about here?

What kind of folks are struggling to get housing?

I probably would have said something like $15, $16 an hour.

So when I'm hearing that $20, $22 an hour is having a hard time getting into units, it just brings it home a little differently.

Because now we're not just talking about our teachers and our fire trucks.

We're talking about the police officers.

We're talking about the people working on our cars and changing our oil, right?

I'm in the car business.

We're talking about the service providers that we all who are, you know, coming into to help us now and Albemarle says the same thing.

Our teachers and our fire folks and our police folks can't afford to live in Albemarle.

I'll drive from Nelson and that's happening.

So, what can, you know, and it's not about, you know, Albemarle has shares a lot of the same issues you share

We also had to be a very urban county in areas.

And that's where the partnership comes about.

I have learned a lot from your county and what you're dealing with and the folks that have come up and shared information with us on how to attack the rural issues that we have in our particular neck of the woods.

And that's what this partnership's about.

It's about not dictating or setting your policy.

You get to decide what your path forward is and how you're going to do things in Nelson.

We all agree it's a huge issue.

Why, as a society, have we been unable to address this?

Because it's nationwide.

It's a problem.

And I think I'll let Keith take a stab at it as well, but we had this conversation.

So you're our, we've made presentations to Greene County, the city of Charlottesville,

Alomar, and you're our fourth jurisdiction.

This conversation started to happen a little bit in Charlottesville, but there's a conversation, do you build your way out of this problem or do you subsidize your way out of this problem?

So when you talk about, well, what do you do about it?

Just building the units is not going to happen.

If you just came in to do the development, if you could buy rights, you're just going to drive those numbers up.

So we, Albemarle, and I just said this a week ago in my meeting, I looked at my other board members and said, if we don't think we're going to have to pay, invest in and subsidize with these units coming online, we're not going to be able to provide affordable housing to our residents and the folks that are living in our county.

And that becomes budget questions and that becomes a lot of other things.

And that's what I say, like what your policies are, you know, the public body, can they solve the problem?

What are we going to do to start attacking some subsidizing and be able to provide the units that are coming online to get the folks in here?

I don't think I could have said it any better myself.

Yes, it is a national problem.

I'm part of a couple of national cohorts working on this very issue.

And I don't want to conflict conversations here because I'm going to put my chairman hat on as the land trust.

I agree with everything you said.

You do little things and you try to deal with the problem.

But we need to think about what's the cause of the problem.

And that needs to be verbalized.

I mean, you know, in my opinion, and I've had this conversation with your chair because of your great internet, and you're able to show people to live in their homes and work from their homes.

A place like Nelson County became a premium during the pandemic because if you're, people were not moving to a place where they did not have good internet or good fiber, am I right?

So what happens?

You get a lot of people all of a sudden, and that's,

We live in a region for various reasons that, you know, I'm always cautious as an elected official to pat myself and other elected officials on the back.

If you guys are sound or, you know, when you look at your economics and your budgeting, you just had your presentation on thinking out to what your capital improvement investments are, you guys are doing that in a sound way.

So when people look

where people want to come to.

They see stable government, right?

They see people making good decisions.

They see high quality of life and the education, the amenities that are around, and yes, they can work from home, and they have an easy airport that they can get to in 45 minutes.

So if they can come to the Nelson County and have the beautiful home and some land at the rates that are there, and that starts to put that demand on your area, and they can get up to Charlottesville and get out on an airplane with probably once in what, an hour and a half

Well that's what I'm talking about.

So what we do in Albemarle, we do at the end of our executive committee meeting and our partnership meeting, just like some of our other TJPBC meetings, we do a roundtable.

We go around talking about what's going on in your neck of the woods.

And so that gives me a chance to say, like at Alpmar's a few weeks ago, we had one, we're trying to define developer incentives right now to get to the housing targets we want for affordability.

So for example, we're increasing our bonus density from 15% units to 20%, and the rentals are coming down from 80% AMI to 60%.

Well, who's gonna pay for that?

The developers?

No, it doesn't pencil on their sheet.

So we, Alpmar, will have to put money into a budget, into a housing fund that's going to pay

and provide those units that we're looking for.

So that's one particular way that we're doing it.

Each county then in your own housing policy come up with what those targets are and it allows you to control what you want and you know that's your job to figure out how your comp plan works and all this works inside of that.

But that's just one example of how we in Albemarle are doing that and it's been a process.

We've voted on this policy

things to grandfather in under the old policy.

So, you know, but how do I know about developer incentives?

Because I've had developers sitting in this room go, here's what would be helpful to us to be able to bring down the costs, even in the face of inflation and rising supply chain issues and goods and the things that they use to build the homes, right?

Tax incentives, maybe we get expedited review, maybe you make different standards on parking, maybe you waive the tax fees for your water hookups, things like that that can eliminate costs for them so that they can bring down what they're charging either for the unit or charging in rent.

And those are the types of things that you learn, those ideas as you hear others talk about.

So in our rural areas, like when I've heard some of your folks and what they're doing here in Nelson do

I take that back to my board and go, here's what Nelson County's doing.

And their rural area looks a lot like ours.

I probably shouldn't talk too much, but I appreciate the title.

Any other questions?

I just want to thank Ned, and Keith, and Ian, and Christine for bringing the A team today, because it's great to hear this from you.

I've heard it on the perimeter.

I've sat in on some of the partnership meetings.

You probably found the debt service discussion pretty interesting in the context of all this.

And you alluded to it a little bit, I'll be a little more direct.

Most people look at that in terms of, you know, county capital improvements.

But the important thing is, and Jesse will tell you this, 25% of new construction costs goes to red paint.

So, Albemarle County was able to help streamline the red paint process.

The way we did it was rather complicated.

I brushed off some 1980s developer tricks to go ahead and do it, but we were able to do that, bring that all together without the money,

to work with, the one person walked the projects through, we were able to get them done, approved, built, and put people in it in a matter of, I think it was around 14 months, 15, 15 months.

So that, to your point, that is, that's what the public sector can help with.

Great.

I'll just conclude on a hopeful note.

I really do, Mr. Barton, appreciate your comments and continuing to ask that question because that's one we all are continuing to do.

Each time they come online, the fact that we are all now talking amongst one another and sharing those success stories, ultimately it was going to allow Mr. Rutherford to come back and say, here's what's going on over in the weeds of it, and maybe we should take a look at this.

So it's not trying to invent your own solution from scratch.

We're all in it together.

We're all kind of figuring it out as we go.

And when we do find some success, we're going to share that with one another.

Because the beauty, the one thing I've learned about affordable housing, and I know that Nelson County and Almora County

Politically speaking, we're pretty much in line, but it's not so much so with everybody else in the TJPDC.

But this issue, there's no politics involved here.

This isn't a political party issue.

How you spend money and how you raise money and things like that may be.

But at the end of the day, this issue and how it's going to be solved isn't really politics.

It's just about getting down to work and figuring out what we need to do to help people to resign their jurisdictions.

The conference is March 24th.

Mr. Rutherford's already in because he's a member of the partnership.

And they're working with Art.

But please do come.

There will be sessions.

As you said, Jesse's giving one of the presentations, which I think we're all going to find enlightening because he's given us a little insight into it.

But it would be, I think it'd be a great day for you all to come up and meet the others on the partnership.

What we're talking about is one of the three things that are required for a trip around the sun.

Food, clothing, and shelter.

And by the way, well that is getting close on the internet.

We're almost there.

We'll call it co-op real quick.

Alright, thank you guys so much.

Let's take a five minute break.

Chair and members of the board, I'm here today to ask you all to the 2023 Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan.

If you remember, I was here in the summer to kind of give you some details about the plan.

I'm going to go over those.

Staff recommended just highlighting the features of the plan, what's the purpose, what's in it, and then I'll ask you all to adopt the plan.

So

The background of the plan is it's really here to prepare for natural disasters and prevent loss of life, property damage, and disruption of commerce.

It's assessing risk from different natural hazards.

I'll show you in a moment the ones that we looked at.

There's an incentive for localities to adopt the plan.

That's FEMA requires natural

and those briefly as well.

Virginia Department of Emergency Management or VDOT encourages these regional plans and obviously as a part of the planning district it makes sense for this to be done in a joint way with all five of our other localities and VDOT does maintain a statewide hazard mitigation plan.

It's a little hard to see but this is just essentially a chart of what you're eligible for with or without an approved and adopted hazard mitigation plan.

And the two grants I want to focus on primarily are

Hazzard Mitigation Grant Program, or HMGP, and then the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, the BRIC Grant, both of which can be used for a variety of different things.

And I'm sorry, again, this is pretty small, but the Hazzard Mitigation Plan, or Hazzard, sorry, HMGP, I'll just say the acronym.

Essentially this can be used to fund projects on public and private property

areas, constructing certain types of minor and localized quality control projects.

And this is essentially an opportunity for the county if they were interested to engage in hazard mitigation and prevention work with a 75% federal match as opposed to perhaps covering the project all by itself.

Great grants are very similar but are a little more expanded so you can talk about, you can cover, you know, wildfire and wind retrofit projects.

There's a dimension of nature-based

that's present in the county.

And again, that's 75, 25% federal and local match.

So these are, I'd be happy to send you more information about these.

I can't say that I'm an expert on either of these grants.

The draft plan was included in the agenda packet, but really this is an overview of the region,

How vulnerable we are to these natural hazards, what are the capabilities that we currently have to respond and prevent these, and then finally an opportunity for all localities to engage in planning mitigation strategies, so thinking through some concrete actions that it will take over the next five years to address and mitigate natural hazards.

And so this HIRA is Essentially Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment, it's a matrix that basically presents

Nell, from all six localities that are part of the planning district as well as state experts.

And so this table was basically, this is an average compilation essentially of almost six, including those other stakeholders scores.

So each locality basically did this themselves, depending on, you know,

This is, generally speaking, a survey of the planning district.

As you're probably aware, there are topographical and geological differences that make some hazards more prone in a place like Louisa versus a place like Nelson.

But the top three remain the same from our 2018 plan update in terms of relative risk.

That's hurricanes, high winds, and wind storms, flooding, and then winter storms and winter weather.

You'll notice the inclusion of a communicable disease and pandemic hazard after the 2020 COVID pandemic.

longer than that, but that was, FEMA wanted us to include that as a national hazard.

And this is just some examples of some of the data that we used, primarily relying on state and federal data, as well as local sources, so emergency management personnel giving more narrative information about some of the storms and disasters that have occurred over the last five years.

And this is just a survey of some of the data.

So looking at this, a lot of state and federal sources

And the vulnerability assessment is basically quantifying how damaging natural hazard events can be within the planning district.

There's a tool called Hazus, which is a piece of proprietary software that FEMA maintains that can really do a lot of cool stuff with maps.

I'll show you one in a moment.

But this helps us understand risk based on location.

And so this is an example of a bottle.

This is based off the 1996 Hurricane Fran

So this is just an opportunity for us to model some of the, you know, frequent and more damaging storms, or sorry, weather events that occur.

And you'll remember that hurricanes and high winds and wind storms was the number one hazard because of relative risk.

So the plan is full of

And this essentially maps flooding damage in estimated loss in thousands of dollars and then also death of a storm surge.

And this is a 100 year flood event or an event that would theoretically happen once every 100 years.

So 1% is also what these are known as.

And the mitigation action items, essentially, it's basically determining what will happen, who will accomplish it, how it will be paid for, and how high of a priority is it.

Oops, sorry, I thought there was another slide.

In the packet, there's information about the ones that were submitted for Nelson County.

So it was Mr. Russell Gibson, and then John Adkins, who I believe is the current emergency manager for exactly, yes.

He was the old guy.

He was on there before.

Any questions for Ian, or any of you look studious?

You don't have anything?

If you would like me to make it that, Mr. Chairman.

Yeah.

Excellent.

Motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Hearing no discussion, vote by a commission.

All those in favor, say aye.

Any opposition, extensions?

Hearing none, thank you even.

Okay, you have your packet, a resolution that would provide support for the City of Waynesboro's application for the U.S. Department of Transportation raise grant funds.

The county supported this application as a co-applicant in 2018 and this would be for the City of Waynesboro to construct a trail that would connect from the western trailhead of the Blue Ridge Tunnel into the City of Waynesboro.

All right.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Do we have any other discussion?

Aye.

And just to clarify, this is to approve resolution R2023-09.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Reports.

As usual, I will start by speaking about the comprehensive plan.

Our project website www.nelson2042.com.

The second of four scheduled joint work sessions of the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission was held on January 18th.

There we considered draft content regarding natural and historic resources and community facilities and infrastructure.

An intermediate focus group work session with stakeholders on the next areas of consideration of housing and economy will be held on February 16th at 2 p.m. with the next joint meeting with the Planning Commission being March 15th, 2023.

The county is using state and federal grant funds to implement a community business launch program.

This is to support business growth in vacant spaces in the village of Lovingston.

This is a free business training program designed to provide a base of business fundamentals to individuals looking to start or expand a business in Lovingston.

Following the completion of the eight-week program, selected individuals will be invited to compete for two awards of $15,000 each and two awards of $5,000 each in startup grants.

Three weekly classes start April 4, 2023 and end on June 6, 2023 and will be facilitated by the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center.

This is to help aspiring entrepreneurs build their business plan.

Classes will be held at the Nelson Center in Lovingston and as of February 13th of yesterday, I believe by the end of the day, we have seven applications.

The navigation framework for the county website has been designed and reviewed by staff and the board with some input provided.

Loudoun County's and Fairfax City's websites were used as the basis for this framework and the overall development is continuing.

The current website is continuing to function with the ability to accommodate the implementation of fillable forms online.

So we've done some of that work on the current website.

and thank you to our efforts of Treasurer Angie Hicks and County IT staff.

The online portal for research and payment of real estate and personal property taxes is now live.

That website is www.paynelsoncountyva.us.

There are links to the website posted on the county's main page and some other areas of the website where it's appropriate.

Firefly Broadband provided an update on the county-wide fiber connection.

The detailed report was included with my report here.

Generally, the reporting of the project to make gigabit-speed broadband available at every location in Nelson County is almost complete.

The fiber network should be in place and operating within the next four to eight weeks, except for the outlying areas near Afton and Love.

98% of Nelsonians will have access at that point.

Last week, the Board was apprised of a significant pipe failure at the Piney River Wastewater Pump Station and the repair plan.

Thanks to the coordination of Paul Truslow, Ms. Spivey, and Jeff Brantley of the Service Authority, the repair plan began last Thursday

with localization and trenching and two crews began installation yesterday on February 13th.

Cost of these repairs are approximately $29,000 plus the cost of the pump and haul of wastewater from the pump station to the Black Creek wastewater treatment plant.

And we have yet to been advised what those costs are.

So pump station is expected to be functional again, possibly two days.

Quickly, Mr. Truslow will give me an update on that status this afternoon.

As you know, the county is under contract with architectural partners for master planning.

The next steps to these, next steps being to schedule an initial meeting to review the results of the county's recreational needs survey.

And this is for the formal arching of property development.

When will that be completed?

When will, which?

This.

Well, we haven't started exactly yet.

That's going to be my next question for you all, would be to get some direction on scheduling that initial meeting.

I want to be proactive yet, respectful of your all's time, given we have a lot of current commitments for meetings.

So if you have any thoughts on that now,

We can try and possibly coordinate a meeting with them in conjunction with some budget work sessions coming up in March or try to get something scheduled before then if you'd like.

And we do have another joint meeting coming up with Amherst next week.

That works for me.

So I will speak to this later in my report too.

We intend to, I guess, provide the budget at the March 14th Board of Supervisors meeting and then schedule work sessions thereafter.

So maybe we can get it

We used them before March 14th.

How's that sound for everyone else?

All right, that's what all work towards.

Thank you.

As reported previously, every five years, the members of the regional library are tasked with reviewing the regional agreement.

The paramount consideration is keeping or not the out-of-area fee and its impact on member library costs.

This primarily impacts Charlottesville and Albemarle.

We recently received the analysis from the JMRL executive director, and the committee's review and discussion will ensue here shortly.

Any proposed amendments to the agreement will need to be approved by each member governing body.

So we've been talking about the Glassstone EcoTAP grant for a while now, and we're still working to schedule a meeting with Jay Brown of the Lynchburg District VDOT office.

and the Friends of Gladstone Depot to schedule this meeting to discuss the project and the draft TAP agreement.

And my understanding is the draft TAP agreement from your central office is just about ready.

Once we have this meeting, the TAP agreement will then be presented for consideration by the board.

So we're still working on that, but it's forthcoming.

We scheduled a meeting next week with

Region 10 to discuss the potential for an application to the state opioid abatement authority.

Additionally, the county may opt to participate in a second multi-state opioid settlement with Teva, Allergan, Walmart, TBS, and Walgreens.

And this would be accomplished through the adoption of an authorizing resolution.

And we'll present this to the board at the March regular meeting.

So we can meet the April 18th deadline for submission of the participation forms.

So there's no change from January's report on the new office building.

In terms of short-term rentals, the Commissioner of Revenue and County staff have participated in three Zoom demos with vendors that provide short-term rental tracking services.

We're now in the process of checking references from current users in order to provide a recommendation regarding the procurement of these services.

The approximate cost of the basic service, which is address identification and compliance slash rental monitoring from two of the vendors is approximately $25,000 to $35,000.

And both offer additional services that can be added on for additional costs.

These companies utilize programs that scrub the internet for short terminal listings and provide a dashboard of that related data.

Commissioner's office is receiving payments from third-party collectors such as VRBO and Airbnb with our FY23 collections on Tractic Seed Budget.

The final audit report for FY22 should be received anytime from Robinson, Farmer, Cox and Associates.

and we will intend to schedule them to report to the board at the March meeting.

Supervisors will be provided the agency notebooks at tonight's meeting for the FY24 budget cycle.

The draft budget calendar is attached to my report with the budget introduction proposed for the March board meeting and work sessions to follow.

There is no change from January's report on the Renaissance Ridge Housing Development

I did want to add something that wasn't on the report provided to you and that is that county staff is meeting with the judges and clerks tomorrow to discuss the proposed parking space solution for them.

I'll have to look.

It's going well.

We just saw a mock-up of what the main page might look like and then how you navigate from the main page through, I think, two other pages.

I think it looks good.

I think those that provided input thought it looked pretty good and we're happy with it.

So I think it's going all right.

Any other questions?

Mr. Barton.

Sheriff and Candy and I went to the Charlottesville, Walmart, Jen Nelson jail.

And it was mostly about renovation.

And the chairman of the jail board was reappointed and I nominated

And you know, I'm just always struck by the amount of people who have stayed in that jail for a long period of time.

And it's something that we can be proud of, even though the problem, of course, of transporting the people there still exists.

Neil does a good job.

They do.

Well, I'll do that one first then.

That was February 2, and we had a preliminary presentation that we saw the final piece today on housing, which was great.

The American Rescue Plan money, which when

from HUD through TJPDC to the different counties.

Interestingly, it was equally distributed through all counties, so it didn't depend what your demographics were at one got the same amount of money for that.

And 347,000 went to each county.

For us, it went to the Community Development Foundation so that they can create four units for seniors at the greatest risk of housing instability.

kind of goes farther for us than it does in other places.

So we were, I was really happy to see that.

So that's my Java piece.

I mean, my TJPDC piece.

Let's see, there was a Sentara healthcare presentation at the Heritage Center back in mid-January.

And, um, uh,

While there were a lot of people and representatives and staff from the Blue Ridge Health Department and Health Center there, it was really interesting because right after that, there was an announcement made through UVA that UVA Health Services is going to bring the pharmacy back to the Valley Green Center in Nellysford, so we're going to have a pharmacy there.

Again, they're starting to work on that.

They've just finalized a lease for that, so that's going on.

School board meetings, there were two of them since our last board meeting.

They presented their draft budget, and they didn't have any speakers at the public hearing on the draft budget, which I thought was interesting, probably because they were busy honoring all the teachers of the year at that meeting, so that was that.

Service authority,

Got a clean audit for the sixth year in a row since I've been on the board, which was great.

And the board has expressed an interest in creating a water master plan for the county.

So that'll take some coordination between us to make that happen.

And the Schuyler water system is on track to be completed late spring, early summer.

and the only thing we'll be waiting for is the generator system for the whole thing to go live in the fall, so that's moving forward.

Nelson Community Wellness Alliance meeting, they had two meetings, membership meeting and board meeting.

They're moving forward, implementing their federal healthcare grant,

They're intending to create health and childcare services at the Heritage Center, so they're working on details of that, and creating employment and job opportunities in the service sector in the county.

and went to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Black Creek and Hat Creek TMDL presentation that's total minimum daily load in terms of doing further research and studying the state of Black Creek and Hat Creek which are you know

There were an amazing amount of people at the library for that, mostly the public and community members.

Most of them were very gratified to know that there's no

No regulatory programs connected with this.

It's all voluntary and hopefully incentives will be put into place if they can identify the pollution stressors.

There'll be incentives for landowners to be able to take steps to try to remedy that, which would be really good.

They've got an advisory committee that I'm going to be sitting in on.

I think that's about it.

There was a Java board meeting that I attended.

Is that it?

That's it.

Which part?

As you know, the Director of Social Services, Angela Rose, will be retiring in May and so the board has finalized the advertising for the interviewing for that position.

That'll be posted for a couple of weeks and we hope to get started on interviews

So that's all I have.

All right.

Regional Housing Partnership is kind of monopolizing a lot of my time on getting ready for a conference.

Excited to see that, have more discussions on housing situation in our region.

Reason 10.

What else, Candy?

You made me work a lot this last month.

The judges' situation, we're going to talk about that some more tomorrow.

I think we have a good plan of figuring out the driveway situation.

We also did recently get an update from Firefly.

So Firefly offered to provide them with that updated report and then answer questions and then proceed to a conference call if they so desired and they did not.

So it just ended with the report that is provided to you all in your packet from them.

We have no inquiry, just frustration and disappointment in promises.

And I know there was watching issues and I know there were things going on, but we were expecting to be a lot further along at this point in the year than we're going to be come June, right, apparently.

Maybe get Mr. Creekmore, shoot Mr. Parr, phone call.

I'm not necessarily, I read the report.

Beyond that, I don't really have anything else to bring up.

Moving on to appointments, we have two things to talk about today.

The first one is James River Alcohol Safety Action Program.

Mr. Hall, I say we put him back on there.

He's been pretty consistent.

That's for James River Alcohol Safety Action Program.

We get a motion for James.

So moved.

Motion from Mr. Parr.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second from Mr. Harvey.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, vote by acclamation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right.

Nelson County Economic Development Authority.

Yes.

So we're advertising right now.

We've gotten two applications.

That'll be something we'll look to.

Sounds great.

All right, moving on to correspondence.

Mr. Barton, Mr. Harvey, Mr. Reed, Mr. Parr.

Moving on to directives.

I have an item I want to bring up, but I'll probably bring it up in the evening session since it'll be short then.

We've got a long closed session.

I just want to bring up a concern.

I've got a couple calls from elderly people who are really

Nonplust from Walgreens Clothes.

And their concerns were they felt that the price of drugs for them would go up considerably because, I don't know if this is accurate or not, that fluids does not have the scope of

to be able to negotiate prices with drug companies and they would be paying significantly more.

I'm glad UVA is opening up a pharmacy in the other part of the county, but these people, they would have to drive 25 miles to get drugs at a comparable price.

They feel that CVS and the Emirates does a poor job.

I don't know what we can do about that.

So I think further than that, I think it is worth an inquiry to Blue Ridge Medical.

And we as a board can ask this.

Because one of the other concerns I've heard is hours of operation.

I've heard multiple concerns and I'm not really sure what that is or what the differences are but I would be interested in hearing Lou Ridge's reaction and what they hope to kind of insist because the conversations we're having would be sure nice if our local doctor's office could kind of help us point some conversations in the right direction and maybe that drug question that Mr. Barton just brought up is a fair question of them as well because if we need to be advocate of you know I mean I don't know I don't either but

I think that's a reasonable question to ask.

So referencing definitely timeframes of being open and, you know, any of their reactions or how they hope to alleviate some of those burdens.

Yeah, that'd be great.

And, you know, to mention the fact that, you know, in the price of Walgreens, it's closed there.

The other thing is a particular case the kid isn't aware of.

I remember a couple years ago we passed a fence in law as opposed to a fence out law.

And the same problem seems to be occurring with the dog rule.

There's no real means of enforcing.

I don't want to further burden farmers, but I want to know if it's possible for us to give the animal control officer the kind of power to make judgment when someone is being, in this case, I think to be very, very casual, to say the least.

I mean, it's not filled their responsibility in fencing

their horses to a great extent.

Sure, brother.

And the same in West District.

There were herd of cattle

Roaming Fleetwood Grounds and that area of Masses Mill over the last week and it's been remedied but you know good fences make good neighbors and I think one thing that because I've reached out to animal control on this issue and I think one thing that we need to do is look at putting some teeth into what authority they have and

You know, for example, let's say you've got six cows roaming and, you know, animal control goes and gets them up.

Well, who's going to help get them up?

Because he doesn't have the staff to do it.

So he has to reach out to somebody that can do that.

Well, they're not going to show up for free.

Where can we put the livestock while we're trying to make, you know, reach out to the owner and then kind of

Tom, can we put on, okay, if you don't step up within 30 days, then they've come property of the county and we could sell them and offset those expenses.

And if you do claim them, then, you know, can that owner be responsible for the fees that were incurred?

But I think we need to come up with some idea of giving animal control a little bit more leeway in how they handle that and let the

Because we all know there are certain chronic offenders and there are some great farmers and so the great farmers are tired of the chronic offenders and the soil and the reputation of those who would write and keep their fences up.

But I think if some of these offenders knew that, hey, you're going to have to pay for whatever expense the county incurs, it might be cheaper for them to fix their fence.

I agree with you but in many cases the farmers are being responsible and

And there's a difference between those responsible and the chronic offenders.

And animal control has a pretty good understanding of who's who.

They know the players.

And so that's where

And we're a small community.

You know who's next week their cows are going to get out and you know this guy's cows got out.

Well, something happened, right?

A tree fell on him.

Are we done on that one?

Skip, what have you done?

So another, it's interesting that we had the presentation with their official name, Housing, Regional Housing Partnership.

Because one of the things I wanted to bring up today and just something for us to be thinking about, everything they were talking about seemed to me to focus on new construction.

But as you drive around the county, you see

Houses that have been here forever that might not be up to rental standards.

They might not be a house that you would want to live in.

They're vacant.

I've got a house that's in good shape right across the road from me that's just not being occupied.

But there are a lot of houses in our community that if the owner maybe had an incentive to do a little bit of work and maybe they would fix it up and make it something that's in the rental inventory in our community,

I wish we as a county had a way of encouraging that, whether it's tax incentives or giving them a break on property taxes or some way.

I'd like for us as a county to look at what options we have without just encouraging development of new housing.

How can we take some of these nice structures that we have

and encourage the owners somehow to fix them up.

And then also put stipulations in place where it can't become another Airbnb.

Encourage that owner to turn it into a rental house that a school teacher could live in, that a firefighter could live in.

I think that's a very fair idea and it could be further than that.

It could be the county participating because let's just say it's in your area.

We own the water tap and sewer tap there, right?

I would just, I would love to see some of the properties that we have scattered around the county fixed up and made livable before we just say

Let's put in 23 new houses in this piece of land.

Not that I'm against that, you know, I just would like to see this as another idea, person.

Do you want to create a, we also have a pretty big meeting on Thursday, kind of talking about a little bit of that.

Yeah, the stakeholders ones.

So maybe that'd be a good time for us to talk about that some more.

That's a great idea.

Mr. Reed.

Mr. Harvey?

No.

I'll bring this up later.

But I wanted to talk about one of the community centers in Schuyler.

They've got a tree that's about to fall on their building.

And they're looking to try to get some help.

I'll get some copies of the bill and bring it up in the evening session and see if there's anything we can do to potentially help them.

The Scotland Museum, they got a big old tree that's about to fall on the roof and they got a big bill that they can't afford to pay.

Well, I don't think we need to pay the bill.

I think it would be something like meet them halfway.

That makes sense.

I'll show you the bill here this evening.

That's all I have.

Is it time for a closed session?

I think it is.

Mr. Reed, are you ready?

Well, I'd like to move that the Nelson County Board of Supervisors convene in closed session to discuss the following as permitted by Virginia Code Sections 2.2-3711.

Discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for a public purpose or of the disposition of publicly held real property or discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining position or negotiating strategy of the public body and consultation with legal counsel and briefings by staff members pertaining to actual litigation where such consultation or briefing in open meeting would adversely affect

All right, we have a motion.

Do we have a second?

Second.

Second from Mr. Parr.

Any discussion?

Mr. Harvey?

I've just got a question.

We have to have a closed session to talk about it.

It happened last month, we talked about this last month, we haven't talked about this month.

Okay.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Parr?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Mr. Rupp?

Yes.

Thank you all.

First thing we got is public comments.

Now you guys came to speak for, you didn't want to speak about the polling place.

You wanted to talk in the public comments about the animals.

I'm going to put you on the other sheet.

So Mark, you want to go first or last?

All right.

MLMorph.

You got three minutes.

State your name and address for the record.

and we'll give you a warning when you get close to three minutes.

You can move it close to your face.

Thank you, ma'am.

Happy Valentine's Day.

My name is M. L. Moore.

I live at 412 Millmont Lane, Amherst, Neotie River.

I'm here to ask you to reconsider the county's fence-in ordinance enacted in December 2019.

At that time, enforcement provisions were considered but rejected.

Full disclosure, I've been a farmer my whole life, mostly horses and cattle, with a few odds and ends.

So I know it takes good fences, consistent maintenance, and constant oversight to keep your animals in.

I'm sure that the majority of farmers in this county identify and retrieve this livestock promptly, make their fence repairs, and discuss any damage with affected landowners.

However, there are also landowners who can't or won't fix their fences.

This livestock is out frequently,

and who refused to take responsibility for any damage.

Well, you say, just knock on your door and ask them politely to retrieve their animals.

I'm here to tell you that doesn't work.

Not the first time and not the tenth time.

There's a broad spectrum of consequences when animals are loose.

From damage to neighbors lawns and gardens on one end, to a random bull in with your cows,

to a herd of cattle in your hayfield, but most especially to potential serious car wrecks when cattle are in the road after dark.

Take a look at Nelson Knows for frequent postings of cattle along our roads.

I urge you to add enforcement language to the existing ordinance, enabling animal control to find repeat offenders who are brazenly ignoring the law.

Give them a pass on the first offense.

Find them $250 for the next offense and double it every time after.

Language should also be included for offenders to reimburse the county for money spent dealing with loose livestock when owners are not retrieving them in a timely manner.

You'll see a dramatic reduction in livestock at large and subsequent complaints.

Enforcement provision will not affect responsible owners.

Be sure to ask animal control for their input.

It's my experience that the officers are courteous people primarily concerned with animal well-being.

They listen to owners' excuses and neighbors' complaints, but they have no authority to enforce the law.

They need a tool to deal with you.

They need a tool to judiciously and effectively and promptly deal with unacceptable situations.

Finally, consider this, offense in law without teeth is offense out law.

Thank you, ma'am.

Hi, my name is Paige McCusker, 315 Millmont Lane, Arrington 22922.

I'm here today to talk about the importance of enforcing fencing ordinance 201902 Livestock Fencing Provisions in Nelson County.

As we all know, proper fencing is a critical component of keeping our community safe and secure.

and helps to prevent the escape of livestock and pets, which is what brought me here today.

We have seen a growing number of residents who are disregarding fencing requirements, either through ignorance of the regulations or simply a disregard for the law.

This not only puts the safety of residents at risk, but it also decreases the overall value and appeal of our community.

My neighbor has grotesquely and adequate fencing for their wild horses and aggressive dogs.

These horses get out of their property, have come onto my property on a regular basis, defecated everywhere, destroyed grassy areas, destroyed plants, seasonal decoration, they've eaten our chickens' food and horses' food from our tack shed.

This continued on a regular basis until we fenced an hour from

These horses are also not trained, making them very dangerous, 1,500 to 2,000-pound animals that will run in front of cars, run up and around people without regard to their safety.

Their aggressive dogs have gotten under our fencing and resulted in a report to animal control.

Also, other neighbors have called out these same dogs.

If fencing lost our course, this would not have happened and will no longer continue to happen.

We've also called animal control on the animal's living conditions, but still nothing happens.

Some may argue that enforcing these requirements will be difficult and time consuming, but I would argue that it is a small price to pay for the benefits it will bring.

By taking a firm stance on fixing enforcement, we can send a clear message that Nelson County is committed to maintaining high standards and promoting public safety.

In conclusion, it is the responsibility of this board to ensure that our regulations are upheld and that our residents are held accountable.

By enforcing fencing requirements, we can maintain the safety and well-being of our communities and protect the investments of our residents.

I would like to urge this board to take action on fencing enforcement.

Let us work together to make Nelson County a safe and secure place for all of our residents.

All right.

Good evening.

Excuse me.

Good evening.

A basic role of the Board of Supervisors is to create tax revenue for the county.

The Board of Supervisors and county administration created a tourist based economy here in our county

It is very evident now to all residents.

The transient occupancy tax should be raised as proposed a year ago to create tax revenue to benefit the county based on this economy.

There seem to be consensus amongst the Board of Supervisors that a better management of insuring these commercial taxes do are being collected.

In nearly a year's time, what has been done to ensure all occupancy taxes rightfully do are collected?

There is no telling how many millions of dollars in tax revenue you are allowing to slip away, in essence costing the taxpayers money.

I bet you could have gotten the school board that extra million or two million that they requested last year.

I bet you could do a lot more for the community, the children, through parks and rec and other activities.

The Board of Supervisors and County Administration currently is not managing the volume of tourism in the very poorest economy you so created.

You are leaving tax revenues on the table uncollected and you further waste Nelson County residents' tax dollars spending our revenues on tourism marketing.

County supervisors and the administration's role should be to manage tourism and the business sector, not spend our tax revenue to promote business for the private sector.

It seems planning and the Board of Supervisors are frequently scrambling to make sense of the development that is coming across this board.

You must manage better, do better for your residents by building our community standards, and stop wasting our tax dollars.

All right.

Sir.

Dr. William, you got anything you want to say?

You're the only two left.

All right, if you're new with the public comments, I close the public comment section of the agenda.

Moving on to the public hearings, Ordinance 02-2022-07.

OK, I'm here to answer any questions you might have.

The purpose of the ordinance amendment tonight is to change the central absentee voter precinct location from the Nelson Memorial Library.

Located at 8521 Thomas Nelson Highway in Lovingston to the registrar's office at 571 Front Street in Lovingston.

This request is paid by registrar Britt and we feel like it would serve her purposes much better than being at her office than at the library.

I open up the public hearing referencing 2020-07.

Anyone here wish to speak towards this public hearing?

Can we get a motion to approve ordinance 2020-07?

You do have a question?

It's on you now.

What was your primary reason?

No, I don't do since last week.

It's a separate precinct.

But we have a conference room now that we can manage it better in.

We have to take all of our voting equipment from early voting by mail

All right, any other questions?

O2-2022, O2-07.

Second.

Thank you.

Any other discussion?

Here we go.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Barton?

Yes.

Mr. Reed?

Mr. Rucker?

Yes.

Great.

Is there anything else staff needs before I do the other business?

So I got this email.

This should be in front of you about the tree.

It was in front of you.

The Schuyler School, Schuyler Museum, it's $6,500.

And the tree's right there.

The guy would take down this tree next week.

And Jennifer Roberts had mentioned to me, you know, trying to see if the board would be interested in

Maybe help them with the pony of it a little bit.

I don't think we needed, if we did do anything, it would be something we'd pay for all of it.

Maybe meet them halfway, 30 to 250.

She's a big deal, so.

We hadn't done anything for them in a long time, I don't think, so.

I don't have a problem with it.

I mean, we've heard it done.

and Walter Fleetwood and for the Heritage Center in the last couple of years and I don't think this is an outrageous task.

Alright.

Do you have anything before I ask for a motion?

No, I retouch it.

I guess you did.

3250.

Alright.

Second.

Second.

Any other discussion?

Yes, thank you guys.

All right, we can continue this meeting to a very fun, exciting meeting on February 21st at 4 p.m.

Wait a minute, what is that?

That's your joint meeting.

Amherst Nelson.

That's Tuesday.

Next Tuesday.

Okay.

What time?

Okay.

Motion to continue?

So moved.

Motion?

Second.

Any other discussion?

We'll do vote by acclamation.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Okay, you can be an A.

You're allowed to be an A. Ernie, are you an A?

Skip.

Alright, Tuesday.