Charlottesville Albemarle Regional Transit Authority Meeting   2/20/2025

We're going to be coaching you through just in the short term until we have adopted bylaws.

Alright, and both of you are?

Aye.

Good guess.

So we have a chair and vice chair.

And it's three minutes per speaker.

If anybody from the public would like to speak, please use the raise your hand feature to raise your hand and let us know that you would like to speak.

So our next agenda item is selecting a regular meeting time for our calendars, which is critical.

but in order to reduce duplication since so many of you serve on both of those we were thinking of perhaps a cadence of every other month so on alternating months we have an authority meeting and then in the alternating month we would have the partnership meeting and since that's already held on folks calendars we could have the authority meeting on those fourth Thursdays from four to six so rotating back and forth you're also cutting the number of RTP meetings

really simplifies our calendars a lot.

It seems to do.

So we would count this as in March, and start with our rate questions.

I mean it could count as it's February, and then start with our rate questions in March.

We do.

So we'll talk about this at the partnership meeting so that the other folks know.

that work, and then they will get a cancellation for the alternate meetings.

And then we can take care of that next week.

So the partnership with the meeting.

The partnership is meeting in March?

We'll count February and then we'll move to the partnership next month.

Okay.

We will have the fourth Thursday be the authority.

The fourth Thursday of March is going to be the partnership.

No, we're going to talk next week about going ahead and making it every other month.

We'll try to march this part of April RTP.

And then as far as the authority meeting 90 minutes or two full hours right now the partnership is scheduled for two full hours and

I think the start time would remain the same.

Four o'clock.

This one's five, but we would put it from four to six with the partnership.

Some of the members of the board work and ask that this meeting start after.

We work at the pleasure.

Great.

I think probably planning on that extra time and then we can also... Extra time.

An hour and a half.

An hour and a half.

And then if we leave early and then we can see the cadence, we might want to schedule it back an hour, but we'll see if that works to get started.

They never do.

I always say that.

So we have set our regular meeting time and we will prepare a draft resolution for the next meeting in March.

OK, OK.

And then it goes to section B. I'm going to keep going until somebody waves their hand.

I believe both of you all chose resolution.

All or such portions of the county of Albemarle, why is it not just the county of Albemarle?

Do we have four in mind?

Or where did four come from?

They cannot vote.

And that was also feedback that we got from some of the rural localities, is if you're trying to amend this so that UVA can start being a voting member, we're really not interested in being on your board.

Just observe for everyone that the way it's set up, if we maximize the size of the authority, the rural counties are a equally sized voting block.

And one thing that we may want to do going forward is if we do find things, and this is legislation that's existed for some time, if there are suggested changes, we could package some of those suggested sort of technical revisions to the legislation and membership organization if we needed to do that.

I think this covers the ones right off the top

I think that's something we'll need to talk through, because as an entity of the city, it's kind of already represented.

Just as an example, the CDTA enrichment has

Commonwealth Transportation Board, the RPT, Senator, you know, so they they they're other members that are bringing in state level representatives versus at the local.

But an additional officers can be Designated can be elected at some point in the future The term of office of the officers are two consecutive two-year terms You can only be an officer if you are on the board It says that the annual organization serves between one year

Oh, let's see.

So I'll make that correction.

Yeah.

Is this a legislative thing?

That's what I'm looking at right now.

I do not believe that this is in the legislation.

There is something to be said for continuity.

People get on a roll and then they understand it.

1, but our jail board authority is 2.

MPO is 2.

I'll be right there.

I was going to say, if we're doing elections in July, but the terms run concurrent with the elected officials' terms, it's kind of crazy.

And I was going to mention the fact that MPO goes first.

And I was going to mention that we have our elections, according to this, in July.

And I've always thought that was all important because we nominate people for these positions in January, our boards.

That's a great point.

That would be the preference of the group.

Then you'd elect your, and you all would know who is appointed.

I think that makes sense.

I think that makes more sense to me than July.

If this is something we want to have the same sort of gravitas as they can be, it's important.

and I think it works really well with the jail board and some of the others that I've been on that have that two-year, because it does provide continuity.

So then it calls for a nominating committee and then it defines the role of the chair and the vice chair.

I wanted to make sure it wasn't the first meeting of the calendar year, so we didn't have to lock into January.

Well, we would know who the elected official is, so they won't be around to participate.

But we are happy to wordsmith that.

I think it's fine in this sort of way.

What does it entail?

There are certain things that need to be done.

Some of those sorts of things.

Okay.

Thank you.

The Chair would immediately work to coordinate a site and a time and then notify the public of the meeting.

Is there any statement in here, I'm checking ahead, is there any statement that references the PDC as the matrix or a neighbor of all of us?

And you would want the PDC identified as a as the convener.

So a memorandum of understanding or something like that.

I tried to scoot ahead to see, but I didn't.

A majority will constitute a quorum, but the vacancies will not be considered for purposes of the quorum.

So a majority is three.

We did that on purpose because we were having trouble.

We didn't want to have meetings with just one community.

We provide a resolution in advance and a copy of the proposed resolution will be provided to all of the authority directors.

and then there could be a motion which would be a quorum motion provided.

In my experience as chair is that the voice votes were very confusing when you have voting and non-voting members.

That's why I've moved to a roll call vote because I realized

I just think it's a lot.

All voting will be five.

and even for the person that's trying to take the count.

The chair will provide the agenda at least 10 days in advance.

I mean, we do have a, you know, if you're going to pull, bring something up or add

So we could say we'll submit them to the chair no less than one week prior to the meeting?

I mean the idea is that you if you have an agenda but you can certainly add something if something comes up

I wouldn't make it ten.

So is there a difference here that we're trying to establish with a five or a ten?

Monday, Tuesday.

A three-day requirement of notice.

So if you're meeting on a Wednesday, you have to provide the materials that you provide to the board three days in advance of the meeting.

And then updates up to three days before?

will be provided in accordance with open meeting requirements.

But I would think that this, I would think you all would want to have, ordinarily you would want to have those agendas to you prior with more time than just three days to review.

I would always want a weekend.

Right.

Right.

It doesn't mean that what you want to work for is maybe a bit more notice so that.

It's ten days for the first draft table and this is where it is and then you can add to it up to five days.

I see we followed the law but we continue with our practice to send all materials out one week in advance.

And you're only going to, that's a special sort of item.

So for the voting paragraph,

So we may internally want to check this paragraph to see about those, Christine.

So there will be a written policy for this that would be adopted annually by requirement.

Yeah, for the most part.

Our policy has some things that we need.

And we'll work on providing those guidelines and they copy and paste some of those guidelines for another.

For the MPO room before RTP, is it two minutes?

We have three minutes.

I think it's three.

Okay.

Right, yep.

Nobody will speak.

I thought this sounded very severe.

Robert's rule though, if you're right, it speaks about questions and authority discussion

Your vacancy is not considered towards that map, so it still would be three.

I would have interpreted it the other way around, right?

That's how I was reading this.

And in this case, the quorum would be two, which would have to be a city and an accountant.

Correct.

In a way, if you don't have representatives from the localities, I think it's pretty normal for vacancies that vacancies don't come.

Okay, I'm going to go and then the last section that I'm going to do is decorum and it basically sets the chairs responsible for keeping everybody in.

Right now, we have it set up so that it is basically staffed by the current staff that is the working group, but with additions of DRPT, VDOT, and then

And members could also

So then I'm hung up with the word it says, consists of five members of the authority.

You would want to be able to bring other... You see what I'm saying?

Currently there's two members of the authority.

participating in our sort of a stand-in for us.

Well, the member of the authority is the city of Charlottesville and then Ben is the representative of the city of Charlottesville.

You could have any member that you appoint as the city of Charlottesville.

I know.

We could say that many will consist of five persons who represent

who represent members of the authority and who are appointed by the board.

So the directors appoint the five.

A director is a person, a member is an organization.

Albemarle County is a member and you and I are directors.

The committee will consist of five persons who represent members of the authority and are appointed by the authority board.

I'm not constrained to just those committees.

Well does this mean that the committee has six voting members who vote on things within the committee?

This is much more specific because it talks about VDOT and I do like on the technical advisory committee to have that expertise of VDOT and DRPT for sure, right?

I see that it's not capitalized to indicate that it's a different word, but I would still avoid using the word members.

Let me take voting out.

Six persons representing.

That's good.

I think the reason we have to track that initially is having one non-voting member.

Well, the three members are all non-voting.

So the voting part is a functionary thing.

So I have functional things that will consist of up to six persons representing members of the authority who will have voting power within this committee.

I'm sure there is probably a slightly more elegant way we can write it on the back end.

members of the authority.

And so we keep the rest of that.

It's really just the first sentence.

And I was trying to think if there were any other technical groups besides VDOT that we needed from ERPT, but I guess that pretty much covered it.

There's some more information about quorum.

OK.

And then any questions about that?

That works.

It does say that.

Right.

So I think that contract with staff could be that MOU with the PDC.

And we talked about the MOU.

So go back to audits.

Well, audit the authority.

And I'm going to be honest with you, I do not remember what you said.

That's an audit, but it seems strange that we would go to the commonwealth's auditor, public accounts.

I don't know if I can find that.

Is that in the original

I do not think that is an original, I'd just like to let it check and see.

We certainly want an auditor, I'm just not sure if the Commonwealth auditor is who we want.

And is it normal to have it done annually also?

Uh-huh, we always have it done on an annual level.

On my quick review,

That makes sense.

And right now we don't have it.

That makes me feel better.

It's something that probably is in the original language.

That makes sense.

I was under the impression that

I chatted with Steve Rosenburg about this and I cannot remember what he said.

I just don't remember what it said.

You know how my father-in-law once did, and once got a contract to audit the books of Spotsylvania County?

Because you want somebody from the outside to audit the books.

We have our own independent audit system.

legally authorized representatives of the Commonwealth Auditor of Public Accounts and I just don't know that.

while the auditors are defined by the Constitution, the code of Virginia, it has a work plan.

As opposed to like a municipality or county jurisdiction, maybe that's the difference?

that the officers of the authority and any employees are bonded.

Officers of the authority and such authorities may be required to give bond

I don't believe it's called out in the legislation.

Would you be vulnerable?

And are the employees the PDPAT?

No, they're any of the administration under Article 6, which I guess if we're extending that.

Sorry, officers is actually only the chair and that's fine.

And having bonding for people who are dealing with financial records is probably very appropriate.

What's that?

I gave you my first one.

And most of that would relate, I believe, to whether or not there were funds, money coming in and money being dispersed from the organization.

And a chair and vice chair is like a sign-off seat of some sort of checks.

But this is something I'm not as familiar with.

So this we can check on here.

Yes, against embezzlement or whatever it might be.

Yes, that would be my understanding.

We can ask attorneys, I've only ever seen that in non-profit organizations.

I haven't seen VML insurance in any of our other organizations.

The same thing for it.

Right.

Does that make sense?

And to your other question.

And then finally, we all agree that we'll use Robert's rules of order to round the meeting.

I think we mean the abbreviated.

Because the other, if you really are following it, it is very... I don't pretend though.

We would be abbreviated at the abbreviated manual when these questions come up.

Anybody have any other changes or suggestions or thoughts about the bylaws?

That is part of the legislation.

Do we need to add like a definition so we know we're talking about this kind of bond versus that kind of bond?

I mean again, I would presumably be under the finance piece.

That's really important.

So do we need to put that in here?

I don't think so.

No, that makes sense.

Because the powers of the RTA are not actually identified in the bylaws.

That is whatever that legislation is.

At some point, I guess,

I mean, that sounds like a great political stunt to make.

Honestly, it would be funny.

I think it's best to keep your phone safe.

Unless it's in a nice empty parking lot.

So goals and intent for CARA

When we're looking where we want to invest the trend division plan points to first we should be looking in underserved areas, areas where we can add

Yep, exactly.

So we want to work with all of those, see where we can move forward specific priorities in the region.

What routes do we want to put extra funding on?

And if you're listening to DRPT, we'd like some funding.

So when will we know about the grant?

This is our top priority.

Is the notion that we would supplement the work that the city is doing with CAT?

Maybe eventually we get there, but that's not really what we have our eyes on in the near term.

We're under special time keepers so we have

current legislation at the General Assembly, some trends in the Commonwealth related to transit, and then his experience with the different transportation authorities and transit funding that have happened in other regions so that we can continue to educate ourselves, but then we can also talk about what might be a path for CARTA moving forward related to dedicated funding.

I was on the VTA board and actually chaired it for a while.

So that's all I have is just kind of laying out what we plan to be doing for the next six programs.

Is it prudent to invite our delegates and states to just a round table with us when we do?

So this is what we're doing, not really... Yeah, I mean just the general information session and I think they have some sense of what we're doing.

I would think we need to do a little bit more work than it seemed like to me.

Hopefully we'll get the grant, we can do some prioritization, identify where are a few of our wins that we want to see and maybe that's the right time to begin to engage with the legislative body when we sort of have a plan a couple of steps out.

We just might need to do a little more time to get organized.

Certainly we'll want to have a really good sense before we go back to the job.

Then we'd like to leave space for that on the agenda moving forward.

We've done so much work in the RTP that I feel like maybe there's a question we can explore.

I just know

And there's many of them out there.

Katie's the only one left.

Thank you.

I think the rest just dropped off.

you know like truly right like that sounds stupid but like they are a huge locality inside a locality basically and i'm sure there are coronaries and some of our other potential rural partners and i do think at some point we're gonna have to figure out how how this umbrella works with

So having those discussions, I think, with Mike Murphy and Jalt will be really helpful.

But I think that that's a really positive sign that we're going to meet regularly with them to talk about priorities and talk about this study.

So that's a first for that, and I think that's great.

There might not be as much.

I don't want to say profit, but friction.

That's awesome.

That's really good.

Thank you everyone.