Planning District Commission Meeting   5/7/2020

We asked each of you to mute your telephone.

I'll tell you prepare to speak.

This applies to background noise, any sounds or distractions that go on during a meeting.

When you're ready to speak or you have a comment to speak, ask the chair.

and they will recognize you and give you the floor to speak.

We'll try this to see how it works.

If everybody starts to step on everyone's toes before the whole speaking goes, you can do this.

At that point, we'll mute everybody and have you raise your hand.

At this point, we'll ask you if you'd like to go ahead and mute your speakers.

And Chip, we've got somebody you might want to mute there.

All right.

During the meeting, we're going to do as far as motions, we have motions and seconds.

At that point, we'll have, after a first motion and a second, we'll have discussion.

As a chair, I'm going to identify who made the motion, who made the second.

If for any reason I cannot determine who made the motion, who made the second, Chip or a member of the TJPDC staff will assist with that.

The votes will be a

Vote as in the past where we simply ask the commission, all in favor signify by saying aye, those opposed.

For certain parts of the meeting, for example, on a consent agenda, we'll also have the feature if you wish to abstain in case you were not present at the last meeting.

Community participants, if we have anybody from community that is present and wishes to speak, you'll be allowed to speak during the designated public hearing and public comment periods.

You'll follow the same guidelines of using a raised hand or a chat function.

Outside of these timeframes, visitors will be maintained on mute.

Speakers will be limited to two minutes each.

To raise your hand if you're on a phone, it's simply star nine.

If you do any video chat, you go down to where it says participants at the very bottom portion of your screen.

And on the right hand side, you'll see a little button that says raise your hand.

The director and staff will assist in keeping time limits and requested speakers for the entire meeting.

While precautions are being taken to make sure no one interrupts our meeting, staff will be monitoring the meeting to see if anybody comes in and tries to disrupt this public meeting.

If that happens, we may take action to abort or stop, but I don't see that being an issue because for security features that staff have put in place, there is a waiting room.

During the meeting, we will share the staff screen, providing viewing of the agenda documents until the actual roundtable.

At the roundtable, at that point, we will show the actual video screens of each commissioner's face or whatever they're projecting.

Thank you for working with us on this format.

I see somebody's laughing on that.

So hopefully it's not quite worded correctly, but you get the general.

I'll ask Christine to call each of your names and make sure you respond with here, or present, and this will allow us to make sure your microphone and video are working.

But before we do that, Christine, if any commissioner drops out and has to reconnect, Chip, myself, or staff will be watching for you to reconnect.

So if for some reason your internet connection or your cell phone connection drops out, we'll be watching for you to reconnect.

If the voting's taken place,

We've dropped out.

We're about to allow some time to reconnect.

I'll go ahead and do it.

I appreciate that, Dale.

No problem.

Hopefully, if I misinvise me, let me know.

Ned Galloway, Donna Price, Jesse Rutherford, Dylan Bishop, Keith Smith, Andrew Wilkeson,

Bob Babyok.

Bob is not present.

Lisa?

Lisa Green?

Eric Purcell?

Eric's not here either.

Charise.

And I think Lucinda is on.

Okay.

How can we forget that?

It's the first one.

Did we miss anybody?

Here are no comments.

We do have a quorum.

All right, with that state, we got matters from the public.

Do we have anybody from the public that wishes to speak?

If so, raise your hand.

We do, Mr. Sean Tubbs has asked to speak.

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Just the general one.

Yes.

Just the general comment.

Just as a, so, Sean Tubbs, Piedmont Environmental Council, and also a citizen of this community, I did not actually see the raise the hand function.

And what I mean by that is, is like, you know, and that gets into my comments.

You know, we're all sort of troubleshooting right now how we do public engagement.

And I would, first of all, like to just say, well, to introduce myself, I'm Sean Tubbs, the Piedmont Environmental Council.

I have also been in this community for a very long time, working on a lot of different issues as a reporter and now as an advocate.

I apologize, you can't see my screen.

I'll try to do this so it works quickly.

And you can see me hit, there I am.

Wait, did I go?

The point is, is that generally this is a,

The Thomas Jefferson Planning and District Commission is something that a lot of people don't pay attention to.

And my hope is that in the future, meetings like this can help to really accentuate how important it is to think regionally and for all of the various governments to be able to come together to talk about issues that are facing them.

And gosh, guys, we have an issue right now, don't we, with this COVID-19 pandemic and how we're all responding to it.

Now the question I want to say, and I'm hoping I can actually kind of frame this for the round table, is I would love to hear later on in your discussion, what are the various things that you're doing to boost, either whole public comments, what are the best practices right now for holding public meetings, especially meetings like this one, which are not, I mean, you're all elected officials, but this is a different kind of body.

For each of you in your jurisdictions, I'd love to hear a little bit about what you're doing for best practices to get information to people and to try to figure out ways we can increase community engagement going forward.

Just the fact that I'm able to speak to you from home means that it has eliminated for me, someone who is paid to be at these meetings, finally the chance to speak to you.

I think I've spoken maybe once before, if that.

My point is, is that now more than ever, I think it's

Take this time to think about what we can think of regionally and what you all are doing on this planning district commission and how we can actually make services better for people going forward.

We have a lot of great ideas in this community, but sometimes they don't always get implemented because we don't talk to each other very well.

And I'm just really hoping that in this time and that as we can get more people into these kinds of meetings, we can really think about how we can really bring the best of all of your expertise together

to try to figure out solutions that we need.

That's it.

Thank you, Sara.

I appreciate that.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that said, Chip, we're now into the public hearings.

We have the first one.

which is the 2021 Annual Action Plan for Home.

Okay, I'll just give you a brief overview and then let Charise Franklin, who's overseeing both of these public hearings and projects, but we have two separate housing programs that we administer out of the PDC HUD, Housing and Urban Development's home program, as well as the United States Department of Agriculture's, USDA's housing preservation grant.

This current year I think we're budgeted for about $600,000 in home funds and we have requested $166,000 or so in the housing preservation grants.

Both of these require public hearings for us to submit the applications.

The home

Grant Application is also part of the City of Charlottesville's Community Development Block Grant Application.

There are two different ways of using those funds.

CDBG is quite different than the home.

Home is limited just to housing.

Okay, so with the home funds, the funds basically come from four basic program types, home buyer assistance, rehabilitation for owner occupants,

Rental Housing Production, and Tenant-Based Rental Assistance.

The latter one here at the CJPDC, we don't participate in just because our consolidated plan, which is from program year 18 to 22, it recognized that that's usually for low vacancy rate areas.

And that plan identified that we weren't necessarily a low vacancy rate area.

We administer the six localities in the area, which is Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Louisa County, Greene County, Nelson County, and Fluvanna County.

I think I got them all.

And the home funds that we receive, 15% of that goes to community housing.

Well, you have to be a community housing development organization to participate in

The Home Program.

But 15% of those funds is put on reserve for that process.

What else can I tell you about home?

Every year that we apply for it, we usually get it.

It's in the ballpark.

It changes, but it's in the ballpark of around $600,000.

And that is split up evenly among the six localities.

and sorry, I'm trying to think of what else I can tell you about this too.

I wrote down some stuff that might help you out here.

So between 2017 and 2019, the city has received

$278,000 for work on these initiatives.

Nelson County has received $9,549 for 11 activities.

Fluvanna has received $148,000 for two activities.

Louisa has received $115,338 for two activities and AHIP which serves Albemarle and sometimes they work with the city of Charlottesville.

They have worked on 13 activities and received $265,000 in home funds.

So basically our area, we use the funds

And we try to make sure that all of the localities have a chance to participate, and it helps people in our area.

So that's home.

And does anyone have any questions before I move on?

Any specific questions about home?

Okay, so the housing preservation grant, that is basically for our rural areas.

It's rural Albemarle County, Louisa, Nelson, Fluvanna, and Greene, and it's basically the same thing.

It's not home ownership, but it's home repair and

Mainly it's home repair, repair homes in rural counties.

And we generally receive about $100,000 each year for this grant.

We have, for this current grant year that we are in, we have helped have the figures here.

For the fiscal year 2018, I think I'm saying that right, we have dismissed $100,396.

Albemarle has received about $59,000 for 17 activities.

Fluvanna has received $10,000 for four activities.

Louisa has received about $23,000 for 11 activities.

And Nelson has received about $10,000 for three activities.

And this is a first come, first serve.

Unlike home, which the money is split between the localities, for HPG, it's first come, first serve through the

the non-profits that we work with.

And I'm sorry, I'm going to back up a little bit.

Home and HPG, we work with designated non-profits for the area.

So for Albemarle, it's usually AHIP.

For Fluvanna and Louisa, it's the Fluvanna Louisa Housing Foundation.

For Greene, it's Skyline Cap.

For Nelson, it's the Nelson County Community Development Foundation.

So in order to participate in these programs, you would go through those nonprofits first, and then from there, I would get the request through them.

And for the City of Charlottesville for Home,

It's a different process.

Sometimes they work with AHIP.

They have to work with the CHODO, basically.

And the city is not a CHODO.

And so sometimes they work with AHIP.

And sometimes they work with PHA, Piedmont Housing Alliance, to get those funds to go through to the TJPDC to help people with home activities.

So does anyone have any questions, anything I can clarify?

Yeah.

Okay.

At the beginning under the home section, there was a nice list of localities projects

for the 2020 through 2021.

And Greene is listed as having a built and subsidized one home for a first-time home buyer from $50,000.

And the grid immediately following that, it says Greene rental $50,000.

And it's just a question.

For home, it's home buyer assistance, but it's also the CHODOs can build rental units.

In fact, usually when the 15% is set aside, the 15% CHODO itself, that reserve that has to go toward a CHODO project, that is usually a rental unit that they're rehabbing or building.

So that's part of the

requirement that it has to fall under that rental unit to help low-income families.

That's part of being a CHODO.

So was this in the action plan?

Yeah.

The terminology confused me there.

Some of them listed the projects, and some of them talked about homebuyers, and then

Greene is only listed one time in something about rentals, but their project with the $50,000 as a home buyer, it's not a big deal.

One of the projects that we've been helping Greene with is their Chodo, their community action agency there, have been building up some of their earmarked funds to do a bigger project.

Any other questions?

Yes.

We've got it under the resolution section of the agenda.

All right, so we had nobody.

All right, if there are no other questions from the commissioners, at this point, we'll move on to the consent agenda.

And if it's OK, we'll split some of the consent agenda apart.

And I'll start with the minutes for the March 5, 2020 meeting.

Like a motion?

There's a little thing, there's a little comment in there about, in the minutes, about Greene County and the VDOT has, helping out Greene County, it's a small area plan, it says VDOT has

Offered to mow the medians.

And I just want to clarify that they mow everybody's medians.

What they've offered to do is continue to do their mowing on our medians, even if we decide to have a county contractor do some work in those medians as well, which is not what they typically do.

It's usually one or the other with them.

Either you leave the medians alone completely

So that's the point I was trying to make.

They were trying to cut us a break by letting us mingle a bit.

That's all.

Okay.

Do I have a motion to approve the minutes with the suggested changes?

So may.

We have a motion.

Who made the motion?

Tony O'Brien.

All right.

Tony made a motion.

Ms. Bookerson made a second.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed?

Anyone abstaining?

Abstain.

I guess I should abstain because I wasn't there.

That would work, yes.

OK.

Now Chip, we have the quarterly financial reports as the next item.

I believe you can do those all.

Are there any objections to taking the rest of the consent agenda as one item?

Do we have any objections to that?

Hearing none, I would entertain a motion.

Do we have a second?

I'll second it.

OK, so Mr. Rutherford made the motion.

And Keith, let's submit the second.

Aye.

All those opposed?

You know, Mr.

Chair, technically, Mr.

We can do that.

What we actually discussed at the first part of the meeting, what we decided to do is in the meeting and do a vote of this nature.

Oh, I apologize.

I didn't catch that.

I guess, I mean, if there's no objections, then probably that makes sense.

I mean, I'm OK either way.

Yeah, exactly.

The next item we have are the resolutions.

So we have the first resolution.

This is in support of the home

Consortium Fiscal Year 21 Action Plan that we had the public hearing on just a couple minutes ago, we described to you.

And this describes that we're expecting $644,752 for the new federal fiscal year.

And this will be divided up among the six localities within our jurisdiction.

And this resolution allows us to apply for that funding

Anybody more discussion on this resolution?

I'll make that motion, Mr. Chairman.

This is Keith.

I'll second that motion.

All right, so Keith made a motion.

Mr. Rupp, you made a second.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

All right, the resolution passes.

Very similar.

We have a resolution and it's also an intergovernmental review.

which for USDA they require.

We have sent notices to all of the local governments and stakeholders

as well as all of the environmental agents.

So far there have never been any comments back on the intergovernmental reviews of our projects or strictly rehab projects, so we aren't ever really disturbing ground or building on any

Greenspace, and so the Intergovernmental Review came back clean and then the rest of the resolution is to be able to apply for this funding.

Do we have any more discussion on this resolution?

So moved.

Donna Price?

Second.

OK, Ned.

Do we have a motion?

Donna Price and seconded by Ned Gallaway.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

Resolution passes.

Next time we have is the fiscal year 21 operating budget revenues and work plan.

Yes, it will.

Thank you.

For the first time in quite a while, the proposed operating budget for FY21 but our operating budget is quite a bit tighter than it has in the past.

I don't have to tell you all, especially the elected officials,

what we're going through financially.

I will say for us very, very luckily that we aren't anticipating

Huge losses or huge concerns, but we do have some red flags here or there because just as with your budgets, we're very uncertain as to what will be coming down from the state.

One of the things that we are anticipating is less work at the county and city level with local contracts, knowing that all of the local governments are cutting back wherever they can.

To balance, the practice has been for the past six years here is that we shoot for a balanced budget for our July 1st operating budget and without having to borrow from reserves.

And in the past six years, we haven't had to do that.

This budget does actually

have a revenue source coming from reserves of $59,650, but luckily from that $21,777

will be money that's coming from the regional transit partnership that we have reserved for activities just of that partnership, but that will be rolling over from FY20 to FY21.

So the balance of just over, well, almost $38,000 is actually what we'll be dipping into savings.

We, what you would have seen looking at the budget is we do budget very conservatively.

If we don't feel at least 90% sure that we're going to get a funding source, we do not include it in there.

So with this budget, even though we'll be borrowing from ourselves $38,000, all it really takes is for one unexpected grant

for us to be awarded.

So a $50,000 grant will put us back to a break-even point.

So it's not the end of the world for us by any means, but it is a lot tighter than what we're accustomed to.

We've been very lucky with expenses for FY20 with the COVID responses.

We've been working from home predominantly since March 18th.

We haven't had to purchase any new equipment to be able to do that.

Most of our staff already works with laptops here at the office as their desktops.

So they were just able to take those home.

So we've been able to do quite well.

We haven't been going to any conferences.

We haven't been traveling out.

So we've even had some expense savings there.

On the downside for fiscal year 20, though, we have had the Department of Rail and Public Transportation who asked us to quit spending in our rideshare program.

So we decreased that budget by about $15,000, and so that was a little bit of a hurt for us, but still nothing terrible.

We're still anticipating to add a minimum break even for FY20, but I think when it's said and done, we'll still have at least a $10,000 net gain for FY20 that can roll over into FY21.

Davis, some of the other highlights of

The FY21 budget is that we are not proposing any salary or benefit changes for our staff.

We're not anticipating adding any, or we're not gonna add anybody.

Should we lose any of our staff, we aren't anticipating to fill that role unless we have added projects and new grants to fill those revenue sources.

This really keeps all of our projects going.

We're still able to do our regional projects with per capita.

And in our pipeline, we have about three or four projects that we'll be applying for that are very sizable.

One is a regional economic development plan.

Another is some transit planning that we've applied for and we anticipate with the COVID money coming down and we've had discussions with the Department of Housing and Community Development in Richmond that the PDCs around the Commonwealth will likely be

the go-between between the state and local governments for some of this COVID money.

So we anticipate to see some revenue sources there as well.

As far as our expenses, we've really tried to kind of shave everything that we can out of our expenses.

I can just touch on, I have been able to discuss with our landlord,

and is willing to continue a longer lease with us.

Our current lease expires this August.

We have a committee that works on this and we'll be sharing it with them, but we'll likely have a new lease to come to you in the June meeting.

All that I'd really like to say on that here so that I don't get into the details of it is it is a very, very good lease for us if you compare what we pay to the market rate for office space in Charlottesville.

And we're able to recoup about $15,000, $16,000 a year by renting out our meeting room space and our extra office space here in the office.

The other final thing I'll close with, and then I'll take questions from you on any particular line items if you'd like, is that our indirect cost rate, which had skyrocketed for a number of years and had actually gotten into the 90%, will be down to 62% this year.

We really don't want it to get any lower, but we've been able to change our accounting methods as well as inputs

We did include, I'm just trying to make sure I don't miss some of the things, our health insurance was one of our larger increases, but still not bad.

It was 4.8% for our coverage.

That's very good and we did see quite a savings in FY20 for some of the employees that had been grandfathered in where we paid a portion, we used to pay a portion of the family coverage for all new employees.

We only pay the employee coverage but we do pay it a hundred percent.

So that was a savings from FY20 and that will be moving forward.

even though we had an increase of 4.8% for our premiums.

Are there any questions for Chip concerning the budget?

You might want to check.

So it's more of a comment than a question.

For those of us who have not been on as long as Andrea and I, this little hiccup that we're having currently now, if it was five plus years ago, would be devastating for us.

And so

My hat's off to staff and over the years to build up the revenue that the reserve that we have so we can weather such a crisis and storm as this.

So I just wanted to give kudos out to everybody over the years that got us to where we are now that we can function as a body and move forward.

So I just wanted to give a quick kudos to everybody.

Chip, this is Ned.

Some of us, we've been so focused on our budgets and looking at following revenues.

And really, the grant world is not one that I've done a lot of thought or got a lot of information on.

As we go through something like this in terms of grant sources, as you had mentioned, it would take one grant to get you back to not having to go to the reserves.

Yes, definitely.

We've given it a lot of thought and

Even though it is an election year, I think the COVID has kind of changed things.

A lot of times in federal election years, you see federal grants go down that one year, and then they work their way back up.

But with COVID, what we're expecting is local projects will go down, state grants will go down, but the federal grants will really go up.

It's through grants like the home program and housing preservation, economic development grants, and especially in the community development block grants is how the federal government pushes a lot of the money that they put to emergencies like this into the local coffers.

So we anticipate federal opportunities to go up drastically with COVID.

Now, in two years, they'll be tightening the belt a lot.

And so you'll see then drastic drops.

Quick comment, Mr. Chairman.

I think, you know, looking at our situation, I'm happy with the budget that has been presented.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connor.

I feel the same way.

As I made a comment before, I wish our budget county-wise looked as good

I'm sure each of you may feel the same way in your localities.

We have any more comments?

Hearing none, do I have a motion to approve the fiscal year 21 operating budget revenues and work plan?

I'll make the motion.

OK, I think Ms. Ferguson got it there first.

Second.

All right, so we had a motion by Ms. Wilkinson and a second by Mr. Rutherford.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed?

And it passes.

All right, Chip, we're on to new business.

Can I raise my hand?

What did I do?

Yes, you can.

I don't know when to bring this up, but I had a concern on the remote meeting policy, really about how it affects the Corp, which is a 501c3 non-government entity.

And also, it mentions about

committees, but our executive committee just met by Zoom.

It's really a non-voting committee.

It's an advisory committee.

And as we go forward, it seems like Zoom might be a good answer for a lot of meetings where it's a two-hour travel period, such as for the court meetings for a lot of people, and then it's a one-hour meeting.

So it's very hard to get a quorum.

I'm dropping it here.

I'm just throwing it out there.

The remote meeting policy doesn't exactly directly discuss whether it applies to those committees and to the court or not.

But it seems like as we're going forward, we'll probably continue to use

remote work from home.

The employees are doing very well with it.

And we had set it up before COVID so it could be used, but probably keep using it.

And that's expected to continue around the economy.

And for some of our meetings that are not the full commission and are not subject to all the rules of the full commission that we could consider, we don't want to

Keep ourselves from using the Zoom procedure for those types of small advisory groups, I think.

That's all.

I just wanted to throw it out there.

Right.

And I will just at a higher level, without trying to get into all of the details,

The TJPDC corporation as a nonprofit can adopt its own policies for meetings and can allow remote meetings.

The executive committee though, though it's not a quorum, it's an advisory committee that would make recommendations back to a public body, which then means that it does need to meet the public body meeting requirements.

And as of right now,

The ability to do these remote meetings only lasts until the end of the state of emergency.

Now, I think the success of these, like you said,

Ms. Wilkinson, that a lot of people, the PDCs, I'm sure the Association of Counties and the Association of Towns and Cities, they will all be lobbying for some different freedom of information and public meeting laws that will

blend to more remote meetings.

But my understanding as of right now, we can really only do these through the state of emergency.

And unless something changes in the state code, then we would be back to normal.

But we will be following that because especially for regional governments, when people have an hour and a half to drive or an hour to drive and for some of our commissioners, they've done it in snow and it's at nighttime, this would really help participation.

So if the City of Charlottesville is still under a state of emergency but the state is not, at that point we'd be required as a commission to meet in public just at another location?

Yes.

Okay, so make sure I understood that.

All right, thank you, Ms. Wilkes, appreciate that.

OK.

This first is just for your review.

I wanted to get it in front of you so you could begin to take a look.

We'll have a lot more detail at our June meeting.

But the Planning District Commission is required to consider and show support for transportation projects submitted for smart scale funding from the state.

You're not required for the projects within the MPO, but we wanted to show you those anyway, just so you could see, have something to compare with, and at least you would know the projects that are happening within the MPO area of Charlottesville and the urban area of Albemarle.

We gave you as much information as we have right now.

Some projects are being submitted by the counties.

and a cost estimate hasn't been derived yet, but we just wanted to get you this list and I promise by June we'll have Greene County's name spelled right on that.

But if you have particular questions, if you let us know and by the June meeting it's our goal is to have kind of a half pager or even one pager for each one of these so you can see the type of improvements that are being suggested.

Just for those that aren't as familiar with the smart scale process, local governments, PDCs and MPOs have the ability to submit applications until August 3rd.

All of the entities I just named, they each could submit up to five projects to VDOT to run cost estimates on and to be considered and reviewed for scoring

but each local government can only submit four.

So you'll see in Albemarle County's case, they submitted a full five to be reviewed but most of the counties, they only submitted two or three projects to be reviewed.

So these are the projects, we just wanted to get them in front of you so that if you needed to ask us questions, you would feel free to do that.

Be glad to try to answer any questions.

My question is, as far as the funding for some of these projects and maybe others in the future, how soon do we expect the legislature being passing these improvement as far as tax revenue enhancements

with the, especially the raising of the fuel tax.

How will that be distributed?

Well that will be added and I don't want to guess very much given the financial times that we're in and what the General Assembly may end up doing with those funds, but right now what would happen is those funds would be put into the VDOT's budget

and to create the smart scale pot.

And then that pot is divided between appropriations to each one of VDOT's construction districts, in which case for the Culpeper District, which all of us except for Nelson County is in, they get about $20 million for two years worth of projects.

And then there's about $500 million at the state level that everybody can compete for, for bigger projects.

Those have to be on statewide corridors of significance and other major roadways.

But I guess there's no real answer to say what the new taxes that the General Assembly passed

when that gets down to the local level.

I can say one of the things just like with these projects from a time scale, if they're submitted this August, they will not be awarded until June of 2021.

And then they will not be constructed for another four to six years after that.

So even for the projects that you see before you now, you likely will not see construction on those for five to six years, and that's if they're awarded.

That was a long answer, and I'm not sure I was able to answer your direct question, but I don't want to try to... Well, thank you for the optimistic, happy news.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're very concerned about transportation funding.

The other thing, I'll just restate what the Secretary of Transportation has said quite often.

One of the real dilemmas we have is that up until COVID, there had been more miles driven on Virginia roads than ever before, but the gas tax was shrinking because cars are more fuel efficient.

And Chip, we discussed that before in a previous meeting, if I remember correctly.

That was probably several months ago.

Let's see if I got this microphone working.

Hi everybody, it's good to see you all.

Chip, I have a couple questions.

And so I was hearing that potentially, and again, we're, you know, budgets everywhere, but that potentially for an economic boost that funding would be put more toward transportation projects.

Have you heard anything?

I mean, there has been a lot of discussion.

I mean, ever since the new administration, there's been talk of additional infrastructure money, but even more so with COVID.

I guess one of the few areas, I'm pessimistic, I'm usually optimistic on almost everything, is a lot of times what you'll see happen is the federal government will push money down to the states

Well, what the states will then do is take their local money that they would have put to transportation, and then they'll move that to something else because they have additional money from Washington.

So you may get more money from Washington, but end up with the same pot.

Okay.

All right.

And through COVID, a lot of money has been put to transit.

A lot of additional money have been given to both the rural and the urban transit systems.

But that's initial.

And a lot of that was strictly just to cover their losses.

Right.

OK.

The second thing I have is specific to the city.

This is West Main phase three.

Can you just refresh my memory?

Yes, you did.

I can't remember how much.

It wasn't a lot of money.

And what made that project score very well was that the city was putting in a very large match to it.

Any other questions?

If you have questions throughout the process between now and the next month, feel free to email Chip or myself and we'll try to get the answers to you.

I know some of you are new to TJPDC, sorry, speaking a little quickly there, so you may not have been through this process before.

If you have any questions, feel free to email or call or reach out and everybody make sure we try to get the answers back to you as soon as we can.

I'll actually turn that one over to you if I can.

Our bylaws we elect officers at our June meeting.

It's that time again, and while we weren't able to appoint it last month because we didn't have a meeting, we would need to appoint a nominating committee who could give us a slate of officers to consider at the June meeting.

Can I ask if all of those persons can serve another year?

I'm good.

It sounds good to me.

Feel free to object, anybody.

This is a public meeting.

All right.

Will do.

Thank you.

I will.

Just I think most of this has been covered, but just the highlights, all of it is in the written report that I've sent to everybody.

Financially, we're doing well.

We had a, make sure I get the numbers right here, a $24,000 net gain for March.

We anticipate a very similar net gain for April.

Our staff, even though they've been working from home, have really been spending a lot of time on the programs that we have funding for.

Currently, we have a $22,000 net gain for the fiscal year.

Very likely, June will not be so good.

We will have spent all of our program dollars, but we still, as I said earlier, expect to have a positive net gain by the year's end.

All of our financials remain strong.

We do have our

volunteers for the TJPDC Corporation.

So thank you to Supervisors Price and Babyok, who have agreed to represent the Planning District Commission on the corporation, and we appreciate that.

Pretty much, oh, I do have about two or three fairly important things I just wanted to make you aware of and let you provide direction if you wanted.

We have been participating with the Chamber's Project Rebound.

Hopefully all of you have heard about that.

The Regional Chamber of Commerce has put together a very diverse group of stakeholders that is going to make recommendations back.

on how we could help to restart and jumpstart the economy from all of the recent losses due to COVID.

Doug Walker, the Assistant County Executive for Albemarle County, and myself, we're co-chairing the Economic Infrastructure Committee.

We'll be having our first meeting tomorrow.

But we will be discussing infrastructure changes that could produce immediate or short-term gain in our economy.

Well, I don't have to tell any of you or anybody else that internet and broadband is by far the number one topic talked about right now.

With that in mind and with other discussions, and I'm sure each of you will be seeing a copy soon, the Go Virginia Region 9 committee or council recently received a report on rural entrepreneurship.

The report came back and above availability of capital, above training employees, above grants, above location, overwhelmingly rural entrepreneurs said they needed improved broadband access.

So I bring that up to you.

It may be a good direction for the PDC to look.

We've had extreme success with our regional transit partnership

and with our regional housing partnership, we may want to look at a regional broadband partnership.

It's similar than what we look, I mean it's different from what we looked at a few years ago of trying to create a regional broadband authority which would be more official capacity.

This would be more like the housing and transit partnership that would work just to facilitate and bring all the different stakeholders together.

and so that's one idea I throw out that you may want to discuss or give us direction on.

With the housing partnership, it began a few years ago with Commissioner Smith suggesting it and we came back with a framework of how it would operate and how it would be budgeted.

We may want to do the same for a broadband partnership.

So I'll throw that out as one item that we can talk about more if you'd like.

The staff had made a recommendation or at least presented an opportunity to all of our local governments to put together a little video that we could stream out and just showing support and what people should or shouldn't be doing during the COVID emergencies.

We only had one of our local governments who wanted to participate in that, so we didn't push it further, but this has lasted a bit longer, I think, than originally thought, and we may still want to do that, and it may be something that even our commissioners representing their local governments may want to do.

Other PDCs around the state did this with a lot of success.

It's just a very brief snippet of each one of the elected officials speaking and in our case, instead of talking about the safety measures, we may look at the focus of bringing the economy back.

Chip, this is Ned.

I would think a regional partnership around broadband would be something you would get enthusiastic participation from from the local governments.

My comment to follow up on that is I would suggest we create an exploratory committee, one that can kind of digest and create a good image for the PDC.

You're talking about for broadband?

Yes, for broadband.

Yes, yes.

And that's exactly what we did for the housing partnership.

Or the video?

Well, there was two things that Chip had mentioned.

Chip had mentioned the broadband commissioner or group, and then the second one, I believe he was discussing the possibility of doing like a regional video with the commissioners.

Sure.

Sure.

Yeah, I you know, I think one thing that we're all going to be wanting to talk about is how we as a region are going to be approaching the post COVID

What I'm saying, I mean, I know here in Elson County, we're having a lot of small businesses, especially restaurants, especially breweries, wineries and whatnot that are struggling and some are not coming back.

And I think one topic that might be worth talking about as a region is

Okay, culture just changed.

Mortar businesses are changing.

How do we as local governments adapt around that?

And some of this is gonna be irreversible.

I really, just from my perspective, I do not see things going right back to day one before COVID, you know, before C-Day, wherever you wanna do it.

But, you know, I think having a committee just to talk about what they're seeing and how this is gonna impact

Thank you.

I would just add on to that.

I know a conversation we've had in Charlottesville already is that the governor has presented sort of the outlines of the three phases for reopening.

And then in his press conference yesterday, he mentioned that localities will be given potentially some kind of authority to deviate from those phases in some ways.

It remains to be seen what that looks like.

But I just bring it up because

It probably makes a lot more sense to think about how to handle those different phases of reopening to the extent possible at a regional level just than, you know, us alone and Charlottesville as a locality.

Appreciate that.

I'd like you to be more restrictive if you wanted to.

I think that was his words.

I mean, deviate meaning you could go above what the phases were.

But I know, at least in Charlottesville, there's already pressure to think about if we would want to go above what he's ordering.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

All right, Chip, I think you've got some positive feedback.

It looks like you can proceed with both of these options.

What I would suggest the commissioners do, if you think of any other comments between now and the next meeting, please email Chip.

We may have something for you at the next meeting, especially on the broadband partnership.

We may have, or at least be able to present a framework of what that would look like, who the members would be, how they could meet, how much time it would take, that type of thing.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

I'm done.

I think everything else was in the packet, fairly self-explanatory.

We have a lot going on with our monthly staff activity report.

One comment I'll make, and I made this comment to Chip this morning, if you read through the proposed grants, as well as the monthly staff activity report, it seems that staff is standing extremely busy.

So I, for one, appreciate that.

So thank you guys for everything you're doing, for those who are listening.

We appreciate it.

Sure.

This is Wild Babyok.

The subject on what the status or any update on the census report, since we're so dependent on the importance of getting as accurate a count as possible, has there been any input as to how it's going so far or any other additional

Unfortunately, I don't have the staff members on with us tonight that have been working on that.

Our count was above average for the region compared to the state, so we were doing okay until COVID.

I will say, especially for Charlottesville and Albemarle, and this is a national issue, college towns are expecting to be woefully underrepresented in the census because of students not being in.

If you'll remember, the census is based on where were you living on April 1st.

and college towns are really gonna take it on the chin with that.

And so that's one area we've been trying to look at, trying to get pushed out to make sure that people are speaking up as to where they were on April 1st.

But that's about the best I can offer right now.

OK, any other comments?

If not, we're going to item number seven of our agenda, other business.

Item A, I think we've already discussed.

We'll have a vote in the June meeting.

Do we have any more discussion on item A from anyone?

OK.

The next is the roundtable discussion.

What I'll do is I've got a list of commissioners who are here.

I'll call you by name.

And if I happen to miss anyone at the end of this, please let me know.

We want to hear what each of you are doing in your community.

And so I'll just go through the list and we'll call you one by one.

Yeah, good evening.

So obviously, I think like many of the locations, we're dealing with the impacts

Budget wise for the current fiscal year and then moving into how that's going to impact next year's budget.

And our county executive has brought forward a good plan that the supervisors have been supporting and how we're going to be balanced this year and then how that carries over into next year.

And he's broken it into a three, six, six approach, which takes a look at the first three months since this had started.

And then we'll do another look.

and then go into the next six months and approach it from that standpoint.

And all the supervisors were supportive.

We're still working through that.

We just had a public hearing last night.

And then two work sessions.

We'll be back in another work session on Monday just working through how we can get the budget all sorted out for us in our school division.

And then to the point that was brought up in public comment about what

what we have been doing from a virtual meeting standpoint.

I know Mr. Tubbs has been a participant in our public hearings.

We've started doing virtual meetings.

We've been trying to keep business moving as much as possible.

So a good example is last night we had a we had a public hearing for a rezoning request and we had I think by the end of it, we probably had twenty five, twenty six speakers who were able to participate in the public hearing.

O'Brien online or via phone.

And it seemed to go off with a success.

And we even had a couple of chats that have come in through a public hearing.

So the plan and Albemarle is to continue, as we discussed last night, to try to keep business moving via the virtual meetings as we can.

And even last night at the end of the meeting, we found out that our viewership, if you would, or participation has increased.

So when we've had our live meetings and live stream, we've had more folks

tuning in and listening in since this has started in the virtual meetings have been there, then we have had others.

So I would have been curious last night.

Some of the speakers were obviously parents of young children.

It was a child development center that was up.

And I'd just be curious if they would have been able to participate if they had to come down to the county office building to do so, being that it was after eight o'clock at night by the time we got to that item.

So I think we're continuing.

I think participation has been good and we'll continue to see how it goes.

Thank you, sir.

Donna Price?

Well, Chair Galloway for the Albemarle County Board really just covered all of it.

We seem to be bearing up pretty well under the procedures that we're working under and

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Sir, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

You know, as we're looking at this whole scenario, the Nelson County Board, we, as some of you are aware, we made some pretty radical adjustments in our budget this year.

We waived the first six months of personal property tax on as well as machinery and tools with the exception of manufactured housing.

which is going to cost our budget probably upwards of I think it's $2.4 million in waiving those taxes for our constituents.

As we've approached the situation, it's a nightmare.

And I think anybody who thinks it's not, I think you better be thinking again, because as we're looking at this, we're seeing huge impacts in our food and lodging.

We're seeing huge impacts in just our local business community.

I mean, we're watching brick and mortar shut down overnight and then finding out they can work from home, which is also

That's a great thing.

Obviously in here in Nelson, we have a great, when we're talking about broadband, I mean, we now have, are getting access to Firefly internet, getting a hundred mags of speed.

So people are realistically operating from home now.

And I know of a half a dozen people just in my district.

And of course my constituency is very small who are now telecommuting from work and their bosses have said, you might be staying there forever.

So, um,

I think it's going to be interesting.

We're postponing our budget as late as we can just so that we can get a grasp of how things are looking.

We've obviously applied for a lot of grants, and some of which have been compromised, whether that was because of corporations' commitment or just the commitment of those grants.

I've seen it in a Go Virginia grant recently, so guys, just keep your heads up on that one.

I'm sure Chip had heard about the misfortune that we had with our Go Virginia.

You know, I think one thing we have to be asking ourselves is what is this going to look like?

You know, it's going to be a huge impact.

You know, we're also realizing, as someone else said, that we're realizing how many meetings we can get done off of Zoom, like seriously.

And that's been almost a wonderful thing because we've been able to, at any time, everybody is able to hook up and then get business done as usual.

And to get to the point of,

The gentleman earlier in the public comments said, when it comes to public comments in rural communities like mine, it's difficult.

Obviously, it's almost next to impossible.

In Nelson, we've opted for in-person meetings still.

And it's not just because the constituency and having access to internet or telecommunications to participate in that public comment.

It's also board members who may not have a high speed enough internet to do something virtually.

So we're seeing barriers like that.

Now, I'm grateful that, again, we're getting the cooperative internet here soon.

And I'm grateful I got it about two weeks ago.

So I got that just in time, but a lot of people don't.

And how that's going to change the world, who knows?

I also suggest that you guys look at your constituency and ask yourself what it is you can give some relief in terms of taxation.

That is one thing I've tried pushing around the Commonwealth.

Thank you sir.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks.

So as great as it is that, you know, county administration, the board has been able to set up this tax relief program.

Unfortunately for us, that also means that our comprehensive plan update budget is off the table for now.

So what we've decided to do as staff is, you know, step back and take a look at what can we do in the meantime so that we can cut back on cost and time later.

So we can start working through that.

As far as current operations, we've in the planning department only got one public hearing item on hold.

The planning commission hasn't met and we've been afforded that luxury because of some leniency in our zoning ordinance on deadlines.

As well as, as Jesse was saying, the projects just aren't happening right now.

People are putting everything on hold.

So we've been able to maintain most of our normal operations, but

Thank you.

I have nothing to add that I haven't said already.

All right.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

We've, mirroring most of the comments that have already been stated, we've been fortunate to be able to continue the county services in general, although some of them have been slowed down.

We issued a number of laptops to some staff so they could work from home.

We've been rotating staff.

We've closed our building.

Edmond Building, basically, but on exception for different situations.

But the meetings are going well.

And the only caveat we had is we've got pretty good viewership, but we've had very poor, in my estimation, very limited public participation.

What that's done is cause us to postpone some decision on some items because we think that the public deserves better and the current situation is really inadequate for us to determine or get a good feel or give a fair option for people to state their opinions.

We were able to hammer out and pass both the 2021 operational and CIP budgets

So that's done.

We were able to do that with other tax rate increase.

So we're all happy about that.

Anyway, so far, we expect, obviously, like everyone, some decline in income.

But we're kind of blessed in a way because the 10 major companies in our county

I have not been really detrimentally affected and I'm talking about Dominion and Walmart distribution and Walmart itself is going to gangbusters and blows is and so we're not quite as affected as many other communities are.

We're obviously trying to do as best we can with the meetings and way we're conducting it and we'll do it until you know changes and we hope those changes will bring about a

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate that.

I don't have much to add.

The city of Charlottesville, we haven't had any Planning Commission meetings since COVID.

So we're still eagerly awaiting to potentially have our first one

Thank you.

Well, I guess like everyone else, our budget has taken a pretty big hit.

And the timeline for the budget has been extended into June.

The process the city manager has come up with is to keep our funding levels similar to fiscal year 20.

And then once this budget is passed,

They will be monitoring our revenues weekly and providing us with an update each month with the goal being if our revenue situation improves that we can go back through amendments and add things back into the budget once it's passed should the revenue situation change.

I know a big concern for myself, as I'm sure everyone else, is just that thinking a year plus from now, what our impacts on revenue will be.

And I'm pretty worried that even if we were, in theory, able to open up in June, that the amount of demand destruction, local businesses out of business, savings destroyed, is going to have a continued negative effect on our revenues far beyond when any stay at home or quarantine orders are out of place.

I guess we've been fortunate compared to a lot of localities.

Our revenue hit is lower than it is in some other localities.

Obviously, a huge thing will be whether UVA comes back after the summer or if they delay beyond that.

It's obviously a huge hit on meals tax as well as I think our biggest hit is in businesses and licenses fees.

In terms of

Public participation at meetings.

Like everyone else, we've been doing Zoom meetings.

It has been interesting.

It's definitely made me think about how in-person meetings have barriers of their own for participation.

We've definitely gotten a little bit less public participation through

Zum meetings for a budget process so far.

One challenge has just been trying to get the word out on as many channels as possible.

We can do it through email and social media, but that is a really limited group of people who are going to see that.

I think the biggest limitation on public comment

is honestly that people are just sort of so overwhelmed that a lot of people just don't have the energy to follow this stuff closely, even folks who you know usually do follow the local government very closely.

Our communications director has also set up a weekly show on public access TV, Seville 360, where each week updates are provided from different people in local government about different things that local agencies are doing to respond to COVID-19 and providing regular updates.

and that's got some pretty good viewership and I think has been an effective communication tool and we're meeting next week as a city council to discuss what exactly want to happen with boards and commissions at this point as Lisa mentioned our planning commission has not started meeting again really none of our boards and commissions have been meeting and I think that's going to be something really important for us to figure out you know what the scale of how we want our boards and commissions to operate

And if they do operate, you know, it'll be like everyone else through Zoom.

I guess one last thing on public participation.

Internet access is much less of a barrier here than I am sure in some of the other counties, but there is still a divide here.

And something we've been trying to do is figure out, with any of these Zoom meetings, you can call in by phone, obviously, but a lot of people who see the meetings online haven't been able to figure out what the number is and figure out how to participate via phone.

So we're trying to think is there any way to make that more front and center for folks who just want to call in, you know, maybe if they're watching on public access TV, they can easily call in, you know, at a public hearing or make a comment rather than needing to be on that zoom call the whole time.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

Well, we passed our budget last

Two weeks ago, I guess, or a week ago, we were able to hold the budget at the same rate as the previous year, which was a bit of a surprise.

But we have an assessment coming up, so we baked some of that into the assessment.

And we also had a pretty healthy situation going into it.

So it was a little bit of a surprise that we could keep the rate flat.

It was still a very tight budget.

We had nothing in the CIP.

which I find disappointing because of course that's just deferring the problems and or the needs but that's what you have to do in a year like this.

It was a unanimous vote on the budget which is always nice especially in times like this and we are delaying payments until June 30th for property tax so we haven't been able to offer the kind of relief but we also aren't as affected as some of the other counties are because so much of

our taxes come from real estate taxes.

So it's a one time that it's a benefit that we have a very undiversified tax base.

And of course, because you get so much of your collections from mortgage companies, we really, while we've anticipated a reduction in collections, it's not gonna be a brutal, it's not gonna be terrible from that standpoint.

We're going to continue to monitor it.

We're concerned about the impacts of the COVID and what it's going to do in the long run.

But for right now, we're just paying close attention to what's going on with Fluvanna in terms of keeping our people safe.

Likewise, we've had Zoom meetings, relatively small attendance.

We have been able to have

Biermann, and public comment through the Zoom meetings, and that's worked okay just as you guys did just a little bit earlier today.

But the participation hasn't been particularly high.

Our water tower is almost completed.

If you drive through Zion's Crossroads, you can see it's much prettier than Louisa's, I'm going to say that.

Bob.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I agree.

It is.

It's nice.

And it's new, of course.

LKQ, which was the recycling plant, is proceeding through the planning commission.

So that's exciting for us.

It's about a $10 million investment with 30 or 40 jobs in the long run.

So we're happy about that.

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate that.

I have seen your water tower.

I do agree.

It's nice to have water towers going through all the items represented there.

Thank you.

Keith has left a meeting.

Is that correct, Keith?

I don't believe you're on anymore.

I think he stepped out.

No, but can I add one comment?

We've added a telephone bank so that the public can call in, and then that call is then ferreted to me, the chair,

to open it up.

Thank you, sir.

Just to go real quickly in Greene, we are doing our meetings electronically.

We've had two board of supervisors meeting, a school board meeting so far, a commission, plan commission meeting electronically.

For our public comments, just to reiterate, we are taking emails at a certain timeframe.

Those emails are read as part of the public record.

We also go through the actual Zoom application and we give instructions on how to raise your hand if you are calling in.

Or if you're doing a video participation.

And so we tried to allow people to speak and we just did our public hearing on our tax rate, which we did not increase.

And from my viewpoint, it seemed like we had more input than prior.

It seems like people are emailing.

are taking advantage of that option prior to the meeting.

And it seems like there are more people who are calling in or taking advantage of electronic meetings.

And that could decrease the next meeting.

Of course, the tax rate is something that's very extensive for a lot of people.

The schools, our division, we sent home Chromebooks or devices for every student that wanted a device to take home with them during this time frame.

And I bring that up because what the schools actually did, they did a survey of all the parents

and we found out that 10% of the population did not have internet access.

It does not mean that it was good access, it just means that 10% of the population did not have internet access.

So our schools are going through the procedure of doing paper and pencil as well as electronic lesson plans at this point and Jesse had mentioned the change in the business environment after this.

There's gonna be a huge change in the way we do a lot of things in the business environment

The educational environment, we have no idea what that's going to look like.

Public meetings, a lot is going to change after this is all said and done, when it's all said and done.

I'm hoping it's sooner versus later.

I do feel that we have to be careful with our small businesses, especially if we suffer a major relapse.

I don't think a lot of our businesses can go through a second phase of lost revenue.

I think a lot of businesses in the area have done well to survive the way they have.

They found creative ways.

Of course the restaurants will have, you know, take out Dimitra Dikara.

We have one restaurant doing like a tailgate type service.

And our businesses are being very creative to stay in business for right now.

If we have a second wave where we have to shut down again, that could be devastating for all involved.

So hopefully that won't happen.

We did

discuss your real estate tax or personal property tax or even a facility fee.

For Greene County, we're unable to do the same relief that Nelson County did.

Back several years ago, the board at that time dropped the tax rate from 84 cents to 72 cents on a real estate tax within one year.

So it wasn't a gradual reduction.

They dropped it 12 cents in one year.

And then they started spending money from the reserve

in an effort to avoid raising taxes.

And the goal was to get the reserve, which we had a very high reserve for our population, to be where our reserve policy was.

So instead of raising taxes, we kept working toward that goal.

And that started way before I was on the board.

So at this point, we've met that goal.

But unfortunately, people were asking for a tax relief after we met that goal.

So for us, we weren't able to do that at this point in time.

But we are very much aware of the impact it has on our citizens and our community.

and that's all I have for Greene County.

Does anybody else have any other comments they wish to make?

Here are no other comments.

First off, thank everybody for their patience for this first meeting.

Tony, I do tend to agree with you in retrospect that maybe we should go around and do a roll call vote versus an all call.

We'll discuss that if we have to do this again for next month.

The next meeting is June 4th.

You'll be notified by Chip if it'll be electronic or if it's going to be in person.

My guess is the way things are going, this will be an electronic meeting if we meet on June 4th.

I think that's it.

I do have one thing.

This question is to Mr. Blount.

Mr. Blount, have you seen

What has the state been saying in the last couple weeks?

Going back to our previous conversation about funding for transportation, I think as Chip was saying,

There's not going to be as much revenue because of the habits that people are adopting.

Gas taxes are going to be less.

I mean, different parts of the state that have the regional taxes are going to suffer.

We haven't even gotten to the implementation yet of the enhanced gas tax for all the other regions of the state that would be taking effect July 1st.

Yeah, I think it's really too early to tell.

I think the state's plans are to come back or the General Assembly's plans are to come back in a special session sometime in the summer after the close of the fiscal year when the administration and the legislature can look at where the revenue sources are, where they think they're heading, and there will be a revenue re-forecast.

And I think

You know, I think everything's gonna be on the table because I think it's gonna be worse than the billion dollar hit that they've been talking about for the next fiscal year.

So yeah, I think it's just like everything else.

It seems like every day, every couple of days, everything is changing.

Thank you.

I just have one more question for David Blount.

Very similar

question as far as funding for the state.

And I think you hit on it a little bit.

One of our concerns, obviously, we're going to have to adapt if the state does not come through with the funding that was originally expected.

But what about things like the safer grants and other state

benefit or usually revenue that is trickled down to the respective counties.

I don't know what the forecast is.

You know, again, I think it's just really too early to tell until we see, you know, what the impact is and how the state chooses to reduce its expenses, where it chooses to cut, if it's going to be looking to make across the board cuts with state agencies and how things that are flowing out of state agencies, as you mentioned, might be affected or where they shift costs, you know, are they going to

you know, whack higher education and then you know, who ends up paying for that?

You know, people that are sending kids to college or paying for them to go to school online.

That's great questions.

I just don't have a lot of answers right now.

Thanks for trying.

Okay, guys, if there are no other questions,

We will meet again on June 4th.

You'll get an email concerning the agenda and the method of meeting.

And with that said, do I have a motion to adjourn?

Is anybody opposed to the motion to adjourn?

All right, guys, thank you so much to all the new faces we saw tonight.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Thanks, Tara.

Thanks, everyone.