Planning District Commission Meeting   11/5/2020

Thank you.

There it goes.

Thank you.

There we go.

Appreciate that, Rory.

All right.

Do we have any objections to the agenda as those two items together?

I think everybody was here to last meeting.

I think it's not that great.

Thank you, sir.

We do.

Mr. Chairman, we approve combining, what are those items?

I'm not looking at the agenda.

We approve.

Yeah, the consent agenda as presented.

Sounds good.

So Mr. Rutherford made a motion.

Mr. Smith made a second.

Happy to.

Commissioner Bishop?

Aye.

Commissioner Wilkinson?

Aye.

Commissioner O'Brien?

Aye.

Commissioner Price?

Aye.

Commissioner Stolzenberg?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

Next time on the agenda are resolutions.

We have two to discuss tonight.

The first one being at home, CDBG, Consolidated Annual Performance, the Advantage Report.

And these are referred to as CAPER, C-A-P-E-R. And Chip, I believe this is you and Christine.

I think this one will be me.

It should be fairly short.

Two months ago, Sharice Franklin and our office gave you a detailed presentation for the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report for the city of Charlottesville and the regional home consortium, which we manage.

This is an annual report to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development who funds both the CDBG and the HOME programs.

We have to provide them what our annual goals are and then the performance as to achieving those goals.

Sharice presented all of the details to you and it was out for a public comment period of which we did not receive any comments.

And we have the final report before you as it was at your meeting two months ago.

And just a brief kind of overview for those that may not have been here for that meeting.

The Community Development Block Grant Program, the City of Charlottesville is an entitlement community where they can provide a number of community services and improvements for neighborhoods and families that are at least 51% of those who benefit or low to moderate income, which means they make less than 80% of the average median income for a family.

In addition to that, we manage the home program where we provide assistance to some of the regional nonprofit housing developers, Piedmont Housing, AHIP, Louisa Fluvanna Foundation, Nelson County Foundation, and I think Skyline Cap up in Greene.

And they do home repairs and new home construction with the funds that we get from home.

And so this is just the annual report of those activities.

And we would ask you to accept and approve the resolution for this report.

Thank you, sir.

Are there any questions for Chip?

Or any comments?

If there are none, do I have a motion to authorize the submittal of the 2019-2020 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, or CAPR?

So moved.

Motion by Mr. Price.

And that was Andrea.

No worries.

Commissioner Bishop?

I'm back.

All right, I got you, Commissioner Bishop.

I got you, Commissioner Smith.

Commissioner Wilkinson?

Aye.

Commissioner O'Brien?

Aye.

Commissioner Price?

Aye.

Mr. Gentry?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

Item 4B was added.

Each of you should receive this through email.

It's a resolution to approve revisions to the Rural Transportation Planning Work Program.

Thank you and also I think Sandy Shackelford is on the meeting with us as well should you have any specific questions but the Virginia Department of Transportation actually changed their invoicing system after the fiscal year began this year.

We have two different transportation programs that we manage through the PDC.

This one, the Rural Transportation Program, which covers about half of Albemarle County and all of the rest of the counties.

We also manage the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the MPO, which covers the balance of our region, which is all of the city of Charlottesville and the urban area of Albemarle County.

What we're doing tonight is strictly the rural program, but what's happened with VDOT for both of these programs is that we have to start providing more detailed reporting in our invoicing so that we can connect the hours of work that we spend with specific projects.

We have never had to do that before, and so we had a little bit broader work programs

And those were the work programs that were approved by you in May for the rural program and by the MPO in May for the urban program.

We're now having to come back to both of you because we've had to, to give you an idea, the MPO is much more cumbersome.

We went from six accounts to 36 accounts to be able to meet what VDOT is asking of us.

There's no more money.

They're the same projects that we proposed.

We just have to break them out into much more detail.

And so we're here tonight to, we've revised our rural work program.

It remains to be the same projects that they've worked before in the rural area.

We're concentrating on the Zion Crossroads area of Louisa and Fluvanna County.

We're also going to be initiating a north 29 corridor project, which will pick up some of the urban area of Albemarle County and go into the rural area and into the rural area of Greene County.

as well as we also have a joint urban and rural electric vehicle charging station and infrastructure study that we'll be doing with these funds.

Thank you, Sandy.

Chip, did you want to add to that?

No, I mean, I think the other important thing that we're trying to do is to simplify and condense the places where we account for staff time to provide some flexibility.

So we still have some opportunity to be somewhat fluid with where we're needed for the rural project that's still built into this process.

Thank you.

Are there any questions for Chip or Sandy?

Everybody's quiet tonight.

Any, no questions or comments?

Thank you.

Yes.

Can you tell me who the second was?

Thank you so much.

Commissioner Bishop.

Commissioner Wilkinson?

Yes.

Commissioner Price?

Aye.

Commissioner Gentry?

Aye.

Let me come back to Commissioner Bishop.

Thank you.

Did we hear?

Aye.

I got you.

OK.

All right.

On to new business.

Chip, the quarterly financial reports.

I do.

We provide you, while we give you monthly financial reports, we do go into a little bit more detail every quarter.

And we have finished our first quarter of July, August, and September.

And I'm pleased to say that

With a number of programs, especially the regional rental and mortgage relief program, we have really picked up financially.

Our net quick assets is above our expected goals right now.

We closed out September with $746,274 in our net quick assets.

That is just under seven months of operating expenses that we have in the bank that's available to us.

So we are very happy with this.

One of the other benchmarks that we use this particular dashboard for is just looking to see how much money we have available to us based on what our average monthly operating expenses are.

And right now, over a 12-month period, our average operating expenses are $107,000 a month.

So we've got roughly seven months available to us with the current net quick assets that we have.

The other thing we use this dashboard for is to determine our capital reserves, where we do try to take excess money and put into a savings

Future Capital Uses, and we currently have just over $200,000 in that.

So while it's not the highest of the Net Quick Assets months that we've had, it's still pretty high as you can see over the last 12 months.

A little bit more restrictive is the unrestricted cash on hand for us.

which we currently have just under $300,000 available to us, which is almost three months of operating expenses.

This is very good file.

As you see on the left hand part of the chart, we are used to higher levels

But with some reduced revenues coming in during the COVID months when it began with April, May, and June, we've been building this back up.

And so we have gone from $100,000 in April to $300,000 at the end of September.

And by the end of the calendar year, we should be right back up into that $400,000 to $500,000 range.

Please stop me anywhere that you may have a question.

We have had two consecutive negative months as far as our revenue less expenses where we did lose $6,200 in September.

That was due to a number of

One time operating expenses, we did pay half of our audit costs in September, so that came out as a one lump sum.

We've also had some increased IT expenses, both from our remote working, trying to have everybody, while we haven't purchased any IT equipment, we have had a number of

operating expenditures for repairs and maintenance.

We've also, I'm trying to think, we have one other type of, well, with our website,

As you'll see a little bit later, we have expended quite a bit of money there for both the PDC's website and for the housing website.

But even with two consecutive months, we still have a positive net gain for the year of, I'm trying to see, $4,364

And that's way ahead of where we were in fiscal year at the end of September where we had already lost about $6,000, but we still ended the fiscal year with a net gain of 14.

The other thing I'll just point out here is that

Over the last few years, we've had a goal of trying to end the year with a net gain of as close to $50,000 as we could in trying to rebuild our reserve accounts.

We've gotten there now, and so we don't put as much importance on trying to reach that $50,000.

And what we've been doing over fiscal year 20 and continued into 21 is spending more money on local projects.

rather than putting the money into the bank.

If we were a for-profit corporation, we would have a very different view of this, but as a governmental agency operating more like a nonprofit, once we have reserves that we feel very comfortable with, which we do, I believe it's very advantageous for us to put this money back out into services to the local governments.

The,

I do want to touch on, let me pull it up real quick.

Our income and expense statements, we are at roughly 25% of the fiscal year expended.

And while our, make sure I'm reading this, our expenses right now are actually at 54%.

We try to maintain both our revenues and our expenses so that they're very close to the percentage of the calendar year or of the fiscal year that we're through.

We're way out of whack on this one where we've already expended 54% of what we had budgeted.

But what we didn't budget for was the rental relief and mortgage program.

Been taking in a lot of money.

We've been spending a lot of money in that program because it wasn't budgeted for.

But when we do amend our budget next calendar year, we will be able to account for that and we'll fall back into line with where we should be.

But as far as our operating costs and our revenues and our operating expenses, we are right at 25%.

which is exactly where we want to be.

In my economic, my executive director's report, I go into detail in giving you the exact figures that shows where we're over 25% or where we're under.

But I just wanted to kind of bring that to your attention.

The final report

that I'll touch base on because we have been updating this one as we've gotten new contracts.

The biggest one being the rent and mortgage relief program is we account for all of our known contracts and agreements and revenue sources, and then compare that with what our average monthly operating expenses are.

And so through September,

With the available funds minus what we've already spent, we still have just over, and I'm down in this area, we've got just over a million dollars available to us for the rest of the year, which is an average of $112,000 a month.

and our normal average operating expense is 107.

So we have enough money available to us to get us through this fiscal year, whether we get any additional grants or not.

But a little bit later I will talk about, we do expect to get three more grants that will be awarded in December.

Mr.

Thank you, sir.

I have one question.

Chip, do you expect any demands

Before the end of the fiscal year?

No, I do not.

I do believe that for next fiscal year, we may come to the local governments to look at some financial assistance for our housing program.

And you'll start to see where the regional housing partnership, they have really taken a leadership role throughout the whole region for housing programs.

We've been funding that so far over the last three years out of our per capita funds.

We believe those funds now need to start to be looking at another priority.

And if we want to continue the housing program, we may want to come to the local governments, as well as the for-profit businesses and the University of Virginia to participate, similar to what we do with our ride share program and our legislative liaison program.

But prior to FY22,

We don't anticipate having to come to the local governments for anything new.

The other thing I've spent a lot of this week doing the funding requests for FY22.

And we are not proposing increasing the per capita request for FY22 either.

Any additional questions for Chip concerning the financial reports?

Yes, let me see again by pulling this up for you all.

The Zoom thing is right over where my cursor goes.

Thank you, thank you.

You're welcome.

We have been working for quite a while

A new website for the PDC.

And I'll start this with thanking you all for your patience with the agenda packets.

As you all know, I'm sure you've been through it with your local governments, businesses, and agencies.

When you get a new website, everything is different.

This one is, we do believe it's going to be much, much more efficient.

It's certainly more user friendly.

And we just wanted to take the opportunity to begin to show you kind of the direction this is going.

It is live to the public.

We've been working from a dummy site for several months now, but it's just really hard for staff to keep going back and forth.

So we felt comfortable that we've got enough

We've got enough people or enough information on here correct, but we're going to continue to update it, make improvements, and we would certainly welcome any input from you all as you navigate through this.

But we're trying to make it a lot more aesthetically pleasing than our previous website that just listed a lot of things.

We're also trying to add, and we'll continue to do that, more local photos from around the region and connect those to the services that we provide.

One of the things that you can see, and I'll click out of this so it's not so bold, but we're keeping a notice about the rent and mortgage relief program.

That will be there for quite a while longer, but that's the first thing we do want people to see.

We're trying to also reduce the number of clicks that people have to make to get to the things that interest them.

Coming up soon,

Coming up soon.

Next on the agenda, Christine will be walking you through a regional housing locator website, and I'll be working with her on that as well.

This is one of the things that we'll want to highlight for people to be able to get to, as well as our commission meetings.

How you access the agenda packets, as you all saw, were quite different.

A little bit more cumbersome, we're working

to make that smoother.

But one of the advantages that we're going to have now is that all of the past packets of information will be easier to access.

And we'll also have access to be able to change things right up until the meeting time, where in the past, we always had to go to our web developer to do things like that.

One of the goals that we had, we gave to our consultant and we gave him actually a couple of for-profit engineering design consulting companies and said this is the way we want our website to look more like.

And we believe we've been able to accomplish that.

Just to work through, we're really concentrating on our programs.

Not just from the higher level, but also work that is currently underway.

For instance, our regional housing plan.

We've got a website where you can go in and look at the status of what's going on there.

Meeting information, a past regional housing needs assessment document that is there.

Back out of that.

We've got a history of the Planning District Commission.

We've also got some information from the state's Virginia Association of Planning District Commissions to show people that we aren't the only one in the state.

We do have a staff directory as well with both emails and direct lines for people so they can find us on here.

And then we have a rolling announcements page where we can put news that's whether it's local government news or regional government news on here.

So,

A couple of the changes that I can note, which is especially important to me that we will be making.

We do have one of the language translators on this.

We're going to be moving it from the bottom where it's really hard to find, and we're putting it up beside the search.

Tool, that Google Translator probably has 100 different languages that it will translate the website into.

That is it in just a very summarized manner.

I would really appreciate if you do ever have spare time and you want to click through here or just look at the areas that are of particular interest to you,

We would love your feedback.

This is not just a one-time consulting project.

The consultant working on this is our ongoing web developer.

And so we will be improving this constantly.

Thank you, sir.

A couple of questions for you.

And I like the graphics of Charlottesville that appear throughout there.

I see that you're in one of the pictures, as a matter of fact.

I forgot which picture you were in.

I did raise my hand, but one of the great things about this is something that is desperately needed.

90% of people search or do their web search on this thing and do yourself a favor.

Take a look at this website on mobile option.

It is so easy to use and that clunky.

So hats off to the team.

They made a website that you can search on this thing.

Again, 90% of folks do this on this.

Very few folks do it on a laptop.

So the public is going to get engaged in this a lot more than they have in the past.

So hats off to everybody.

Yeah, so I like the new website, but the big question I always have whenever we're transitioning anything to a new website is what kind of happened with the data that was on the old website to make sure that, you know, any reports or documents, PDFs, that sort of thing are both available on the new website.

and ideally with redirects in place so that, for example, a Google cache of a document will now still lead to the right place if it shows up and someone searches for it.

I can't answer much about a cache of it that you're starting to get a little bit beyond me.

I have a general idea.

I can tell you, every document that we had on our old website, we're transferring over to this one.

And what we're also told is the search tool for this website

is a lot more robust than what we had.

So rather than if you know what you're looking for, it will be easier just to type it into the search and find it than the old website where you had to kind of click through, click through and click through until you found the document.

Great.

There's a search feature on this thing that says reports and studies archive.

So you can actually search it.

It's pretty simple to do.

What Jesse's really referring to is that if there's already a search that's been saved,

for say a document and let's say that the URL used to be TJPDC documents and now the URL is TJPDC archives that you need to have a redirect in place so that it goes to that when somebody clicks on that link.

You can look at the website analytics and look to see how many 404 errors you're getting to highlight where those are.

But that is an important thing to do because it can affect your Google rankings.

Great, I'm great.

Tony, I'm not smart enough to know that.

Sorry about that, Rory.

I thought I heard Jesse there, so, but that's okay.

It's all good.

Yeah, no, thanks.

I appreciate you chiming in.

And yeah, I'd add it's super important to have those redirects, both because of Google, but also because everyone who's ever linked to TJPDC's website before anywhere, right?

So, you know, for example, Sevilpedia has many links, I'm sure, to TJPDC.

Yeah, also to make sure, I'm sure that during this, Chip, to make sure that the out-of-date documents, you know, for example, wherever you modify a website, you have a document that's no longer current.

People might still have that bookmarked with the old links.

If you don't redirect, they have to have out-of-date information.

I know in the school division, that was one of the biggest complaints we had.

Okay, we will.

This is great.

Thank you.

Please, please do.

And I can save you one email.

We're very much aware we haven't updated.

We've got two new commission members from the old website to this one.

Those will be up shortly.

We also mentioned it back to the Zoom link.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Under new business, original housing partnership, affordable housing search tool.

So let me make sure I unmuted.

OK, good.

So the Regional Housing Partnership last year set their strategic priorities for what the partnership would be working towards and one of the initiatives that rose to the top was developing a regional hub for folks to kind of have a streamlined access and it's actually going to serve dual purpose.

So one of them is to provide

Streamline access to the resources that currently exist throughout the region, both in the localities in the region and the state.

And so that will be one piece of the website.

Another piece of the website will be a way to connect property owners and developers that have affordable units with community members that are searching for those units.

And eventually we will have both for rent and for sale properties available

In the short term, we are going to focus our efforts on the for rent.

With the pandemic, there's an increased urgency enabled in helping community members find not only access to those supports that exist, but also to housing that's available as their financial situation changes or their housing needs change.

And so we intend to roll out this new website that Chip has pulled up.

It's a regional housing locator is the part that he's showing you.

And it will operate similar to like a Zillow or an MLS system that will help people be able to search for units that are affordable to people in the range of around 80% AMI or below.

There isn't a hard cap set right now.

And so that's why I say in the range of

The next thing that I would love to share with you all is that this website, both for backend users like developers, property owners, and for the citizens that are using the website, there's a multilingual call center that's a part of the package that can support folks that need help navigating through this.

So you don't necessarily need to be tech savvy or have access to the internet.

If you know of this resource, you can call in and they can help you either list a property or find something that meets your needs.

And then one thing I want to say, and I'm sure Chip will echo and Keith will echo, but we very much appreciate the support.

We received commitments from all six of the localities to help us get this up and running as quickly as we can using CARES funding, because we know that the demand is out there in the community and the need for this

type of a tool to be readily accessible now that we're in this pandemic.

And then we also received a matching grant from the Community Foundation that will help us with some more marketing and long term support of the website.

Okay, sure.

You know, as Christine said, just very similar to the existing online tools of Zillow or Trulia, except this one is restricted to income restricted properties.

You can go and search for it by zip code, typing in the name of a community, or you can go as I did to hopefully saw a drop down menu where you can click on the community.

This was for Standardsville.

You know, it's automatic input from those property owners that have these properties.

Once we approve them as a partner, then they can put in their properties.

One of the things that we will be doing is just monitoring this to make sure there are no out of date ones, even though if you do look at, and

Let me say we got this at six o'clock today, so we haven't had an opportunity to really run through it in detail, but we have really hurried this along as Christine talked about because we think it is so crucial to have the rental portal in place when evictions begin from some of the families that haven't been able to take advantage of the

the rental assistance programs but yeah there's a map on here that not only shows you the locations but it will also show you if it's a housing complex an apartment complex whether there are available units as well as if there is a waiting list for future units to become available so it does show you that as well

One of the other features and we're going to be improving this over what it is right now, but even if you're not searching for a home and you're just looking for some type of assistance,

whether it's help with your rent, help with your utility costs, you need a roof repaired.

We're gonna have all of the agencies by jurisdiction with their information and a link to their website with a description of what they do.

So that hopefully this can kind of be that one-stop shop for people to go to if they have any type of housing assistance needs.

I can tell you, I mean, this page drove me crazy.

You know, I would get bored with it in less than three seconds.

So we're going to add an additional page to this with more pictures, more depictions, as well as breaking it out probably by agency.

so that people can also utilize that to be able to get more information.

The other thing we wanna do with that is to highlight some of our close partners like Piedmont Housing Alliance and give them an opportunity to highlight some of their own going programs on it.

And we'll do that for all of our partners on this.

So that is, I think,

And then Chip, if I can add really quick, in the next four to six weeks, we'll be doing a really robust marketing campaign because a website is only as good as how many people you can drive to it.

So we are looking at the possibility of contracting with someone to help us market this and make sure we're reaching out to directly affected communities so that they know that this website exists.

And it may be a little while before the for sale portal is up and running.

We had to put all of our effort into the rental portal right now as being the most important because of COVID.

It's also a little bit more difficult with the for sale because you're dealing with a different client base and different providers.

The other thing is trying to make it so that people will have something to look at

I don't have to tell any of you, there is not an overabundance of affordable housing for sale in our region.

So finding product to put on here may take us a little while as well, not to mention the policies that we'll have to have in place.

And so the for sale will be coming, but we're really concentrating on the rental portal right now.

Big surprise there, huh?

So, first of all, you know, we put a ton of pressure on staff.

I know I have, as the chair of the Regional Housing Partnerships, so I wanted to take the opportunity to publicly thank everybody.

You guys really made some magic happen real fast.

You know, this is something that we've been trying to achieve for quite some time.

At the end of the day, and I think Tony will share my sentiments on this,

Something like this is a living document or a living entity.

We've needed to start somewhere to get it out there, but we will bring the for sale component in, but we've got, like Chip has said, there's a bunch of things we need to vet through, and one of my primary concerns is make sure we're on the right side of fair housing.

On that, it's a little bit different animal on the sale side versus the rent side, but

You guys are doing a great job and I'm excited to get out there and push it and sell it and get folks in there and get folks to use it.

So I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you.

I know we put a lot of pressure on you to make magic happen.

So thank you for making that magic happen.

And if anybody has any specific questions on it, I'll be, oh, look at that, huh?

Big surprise.

Yeah, thanks, Keith.

On the rental side, it's a lot more open because the range of rental income is a lot greater.

Now, one of the things, and this is a very good example of building the plane while flying it.

So there's still a lot to work out with it, but we do intend to have it as flexible as possible for the rentals.

But at the same time, we don't want it to be a free replacement for Zillow or Trulia or the bedroom type of rental.

So we will have restrictions to make sure that it remains focused on income restricted.

Chip, can I throw in really quick, can we ask all people on the call to please make sure to mute yourself, we're getting a little bit of background noise.

Yes, yes.

We, in our budget, and again, Christine said it, I can't say it enough, thank you to each of the six jurisdictions that put a per capita amount of your CARES money into this.

Thank you, especially, please pass this on if you have any

relationships with the Community Foundation.

They put $12,500 into this.

and a big, big portion of that budget is for marketing.

Christine, I couldn't have said it any better.

The best website in the world isn't worth a darn if you can't push people to it.

And so we're gonna spend a lot of effort, not just to get home buyers and renters, but those property owners.

We were talking just today of scheduling with the end users.

We want to have several neighborhood meetings, walk through this website with people and say, if you're looking for a home, what is the information?

How does this help you?

What are we missing that we could add to it?

And I can tell you, because I don't think it matters with income anymore,

We are getting the developers of this to put a section so you can measure the broadband speed at every location.

Because you can move further out from an urban area to get a cheaper price, but if your kids can't get access to school from their own line,

You're defeating your own purpose.

Dale, do you mind if I jump in a little bit and Chip real quick?

So Bob, best way to think about this is this is a basically a soft rollout of a restaurant, right?

We're going to try to vet through some of the things that we need to improve before we really start hitting this thing pretty hard and heavy as far as the marketing goes.

And one of the key things that an MLS provides other than putting people together or entities together, buyers and sellers and renters and tenants and landlords, it's data, right?

And that's the long-term goal here is the data of this where Chip has just explained is that where we can start taking a look at some data over time,

on where the sales are, where the need is, and so forth and so on.

So it's a start.

I can't tell you how awesome this is.

This is something that has been needed for quite some time.

So we're moving in the right direction.

And I can't tell you how personally I'm pumped about it.

So we're going to get it fired on all 12 cylinders pretty darn quick, Bob.

Sorry to interrupt.

And then a final thing I would like to add is that they're on November 12th as a part of the Regional Housing Partnerships Fall Speaker Series.

November 12th session is dedicated to this housing locator and resource so that we can, as a part of this soft rollout, we can begin to educate people on how it works and get that feedback that we've been talking about.

So all of you are welcome to attend.

You can find

Thank you.

Any additional questions?

Chair, I have a question or two.

Sure.

So the first is a comment.

I echo Keith's sentiments about appreciation of staff and getting this rolled out.

Just as another member of the Regional Housing Partnership, it's very much appreciated that this is out there and coming online.

Christine, you said you were going to send those instructions out of that meeting.

That was one of my questions.

How do we get this in front of the rest of our boards?

Is this something that we can, I think my board would appreciate seeing this, a demonstration of it, what have you, and don't know if you'd be open to doing that, if we could find a way.

I don't think it's very long.

It might be a 10-minute agenda item, something like that.

I can, yes, we would love to be able to do that and appreciate that.

As I said, I've seen it for two hours and 15 minutes so far.

We got it at six o'clock tonight so that we could play with it before the 12th.

and we would love the opportunity for every elected board in the region to get before them and do just a quick, just something very simple, but so that we can get this word out.

Thank you.

And then one of my questions, you had mentioned future unit availability would be available on this.

What triggers that, Chip?

Do you know?

Like how future is a future unit?

Do we know the ins and outs of that sort of thing yet?

That's that's probably a good parking lot question.

Yes.

And I know I think.

Well, I guess I'll tell you what I'm thinking about and we'll see if when you said future unit, this is what I thought of.

You know, at some point, especially for a new development,

That's going in, not just units coming available, but a new area that's actually new buildings are going in, new units are coming online.

I mean, a land use decision could go into place, but then the actual construction doesn't happen for a year or something like that.

At what point do those brand new units

At what point do they show is available on the website?

So Ned, we're already having communication with local developers on projects that they've got coming up.

and some on the sales side, some on the rental side.

And, you know, when they get to the point that they're ready to turn these loose, you know, pre-construction sales, those kinds of things, that's when they're going to start putting projects onto the website.

So, we're in the middle of that.

You're actually going to hear a little bit about this when we get together on Monday for an executive, RHP executive committee meeting.

Keith's exactly right.

As soon as the owner has the information, they can put it on there and we can put some type of banner across it that says, you know, coming December of 2022.

But it will just, you know, it may not have a picture, but it'll have all the other information on it.

Yeah, I've got a question.

So is the intent that developers or whoever owns these units are going to directly put the units on the website with their own accounts?

Like are they users of it?

I know Christine mentioned there was a hotline for it.

Is that how they're going to get on board?

They will try to

Trying to find, oh, there we go.

There will have to be some type of auditing of that.

And that's why we, you know, of course we're making a username password so that if somebody violates it, you know, we can give them a warning.

And then after that kind of boot them off or whatever the penalty may need to be.

A lot, you know, being quite frank with it, a lot of it will rely on people notifying us because we won't have the resources to really check out everything.

But

So if Dale, you see something when you take a look at it that is inappropriate, then you report it upstream.

That's generally how that goes.

Another nitpicker in a way, and this is tremendous.

You guys did a fabulous job.

And it'll also include, do they accept housing choice vouchers?

So some other things related to folks that would income qualify for properties.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

And I don't want to lose also the second or an equal important part of this is

The information, I mean, there's a calculator on here where people can calculate 30% of their monthly income compared to what the housing costs are.

I'm sorry, this is David.

Thank you, David.

I noticed it at the time, but I let it go, not being an attorney.

So I would like to suggest that we accept the quarterly reports

I'll second that motion.

Yep, happy to.

Mr.

Commissioner Rutherford?

Yes.

Commissioner Bishop?

Aye.

Commissioner Wilkinson?

Aye.

Commissioner Price?

Aye.

And thank you, David, for bringing that to your attention.

I appreciate that.

Please, I do have it in my economic developers report.

I got to stop, I think.

No, I think I can.

All right, great.

So this is just a summary report.

I'll go through high level, and then I'm happy to take questions.

Or if not during the meeting, you can always email me directly any questions that you have related to your locality.

This data is through the middle of last week.

So as you can imagine, this is a very fast moving process.

And so everything that's on here has changed slightly, but will give us the big picture.

DHCD, Department of Housing and Community Development is calling this RMRP 1.0 because they anticipate to continue this emergency relief into 2021 and potentially through calendar year 2021.

They have dramatically updated the program guidelines to allow more flexibility to get more funding out to households that need it the most.

The program guidelines now can cover 100% of rent or mortgage payments that are in arrears

as well as 100% of the current month's rent.

They have now extended it so that we can also cover rent and mortgage through December of this year, as long as they can show a valid lease or mortgage that goes through the calendar year.

So with that, you can imagine that many of the requests are significantly higher than they have been previously.

RMRP funds now can also be used by tenants in public housing or with section eight vouchers.

Previously, that was considered duplication, but we are allowed to help them with any rent that is in arrears.

And then finally, they've developed a landlords program where landlords can apply on behalf of their tenants through Virginia Housing.

To date, we've been approved for up to $1.8 million in funding.

Funding is received on a reimbursement basis.

So that means they gave us some money up front and then we have to apply based on what we've used to continue to get money up to that cap of 1.8.

We've currently received 969.

That is updated as of Tuesday this week.

We did receive this 155 that was requested.

And then tomorrow I will likely put in another request for another $240,000 based on usage in the last two to three weeks.

The per capita allocations to date are in this table.

So you can see where the rent and mortgage is going by locality.

The next bit of funding that we received, the $155,000 and potentially the $240,000, DHCD has made clear we will now be distributing that money based on need.

So rather than doing it as a per capita, we will do it as a per capita by our sub grantees that can then use that money as it's needed in whichever locality is showing that demand so that we don't end up in a situation where some folks are on hold for assistance while other places are holding on to cash that they're not able to spend down as quickly.

And I will show you each locality

Quickly as just an overview, and then again, please reach out to me if you would like locality specific, I can get much further into the usage and the demographics.

But Albemarle County, prior to the new funding that we just received this week of the 350,000 in funding that's received, 307 has been distributed, an average of approximately 1500 per household.

Majority of the pending documentation, what we're finding with a lot of these pending folks are people that originally reached out that are now they're likely ineligible, but have just ended their process.

So they're not calling us back.

They're not answering when we call them.

And so we're going to see, and across the state, they're seeing large numbers of pending in the books, just because some people have chosen not to continue the program.

Other folks that are in the pending status are pending specific documents that are required for the program as part of the federal funding requirements.

Charlottesville, of the 159,000 received, about 90,000 has been distributed.

Again, an average of about 1200 per household.

Fluvanna and Greene, Fluvanna receiving about 86,000 and 50,900 has been distributed.

I can tell you in the past two weeks alone, that number has changed.

So that number has gone quite a bit higher.

There was a lot of the pending kind of came in all at once.

And so they have also spent down and then Greene County, 64,000 has been distributed and 52,000 spent about 1800 per household, close to 1900 per household.

The denies that you see, the majority of our denials at this point are people that are not eligible for the program based on their income.

So they're not income qualifying for the program.

And then Louisa County has received about 116,000.

Again, this is different now.

I know they're above and beyond.

So they've spent down the majority of their funding and are receiving a new transfer already to cover that.

and then Nelson County, 47,000 received about 47, 40,000 spent and that's through Wednesday of last week.

So that has changed significantly.

And I'm happy to take any questions that you have.

Chip and I will be sending this report out to you all since we did not have it in the meeting packet.

Any questions for Christine?

Okay.

Chip, I believe the next item on the agenda is yours to take the director's report.

I am very conscious of the time, so I'm just going to hit a couple of higher note things that are just in your packet is a report from the

Department of Housing and Community Development that they provide to the governor's office and the General Assembly every year.

And I think it's just a very good comparison to be able to show you what other PDCs are doing across the Commonwealth compared to what we're doing.

A lot of the same activities are similar.

They're spending time on broadband.

They're spending time on transportation.

We're one of the PDCs that are probably more focused on housing than some of the others are.

So that's one of the areas we're a little bit different, but I welcome you to take a look at that.

I mentioned earlier in the financial reports, the Commonwealth Transportation Board is expected.

They have received a recommendation that the Planning District Commission will receive two grants at their December meeting.

One is to look at transit expansion in Albemarle County.

in three locations, Route 29 North, Pantops, and Monticello.

A much bigger project is recommended to be funded is for a regional transit visioning plan, which will be region-wide.

We will be looking at all of the transit providers within the entire region

and see how we can improve services where we need to go and look into the longer term.

So those are some additional funding sources as well as I think very worthwhile projects that we'll be looking at.

David and Dominique just had a very successful regional broadband partnership meeting on October 22nd.

And so that is now gaining speed and momentum there.

The item I did want to bring to your attention and receive direction from you, if so chosen, is I don't have to tell you all that a number of different agencies, churches, and others within our region that has the Thomas

Jefferson.

I always have to catch myself.

My hometown is where Thomas Hayward, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, is from.

So I always catch myself saying Thomas Hayward instead of Thomas Jefferson.

But a number of agencies and churches are looking at changing their name from Thomas Jefferson to other things.

It's something we looked at a few years ago, but we haven't looked at since.

I did wanna bring it to your attention so that if you wanted our staff to consider this and come back to you with suggestions and recommendations, or if we wanted a committee of some sort to look at, the big thing was that it is happening around us and most recently was the Thomas Jefferson Health District has changed their name to the Blue Ridge Health District.

I wanted to bring it to your attention and just receive your input and direction on whether we should be doing anything.

Thank you, sir.

Any questions or comments for Chip at this point in time?

All right.

Hearing none, we'll move on to the roundtable discussion.

If I miss you,

I apologize.

It's not because I'm intentionally overlooking you.

It's the fact that I've got a bunch of squares on the screen, not necessarily related to your personality.

So I'm just trying to figure out how to make sure I touch base with everybody.

We'll go through the process now.

Thankful we'll do if it's okay.

Chair, if I could interrupt for just one second.

So no one's sitting here worried that we've still got an executive session to go to.

Just to let you know that at the agenda, the end of the agenda had put as a placeholder an executive session over a personnel issue.

It was something that was very tentative, but I wanted to get it on the agenda in case it was needed.

I just would like to chime in here that this will be the first roundtable that we've heard Bob's voice the entire time, potentially.

Who was there last time?

And then it would speed up.

But upon that note, I apologize, Mr.

Chair.

I do have to leave.

I will not be participating.

And Bob, yes, it was very nice to hear your wonderful voice.

With that said, why don't we start with Fluvanna.

Mr. O'Brien, we'll let you go first, sir.

Oh, that was very, very, very kind of you.

In Fluvanna, things are moving well.

I think you probably, many of you saw the governor's announcement for Silk City Printing, which is a t-shirt company.

It's opening up in one of our older properties that was the Carriesburg plant there and is slated to employ about 100 employees.

So that was a big win for us in Fluvanna.

We had an unsolicited proposal for maybe expanding wireless broadband into the county and the board is looking at that as a possibility to get into some other areas.

And in general, things in Fluvanna are moving along pretty nicely.

The real estate is doing very well at this point in time and we haven't been terribly affected by the COVID

We may not actually get to spend all of our CARES funding, which is something that is, I guess, good and bad.

It's good in the sense that we've done as much as we can and bad in the sense that the limitations in terms of the timeframe prevent you from using those funds for the betterment of your community.

Listen, I can give you some pointers on that one.

Thank you, appreciate that.

I don't really have too much to add to that other than I did send a couple of pictures over to Chip about our famous roundabout on 53 and 618.

Time doesn't allow to show them anything, but if Chip would mind sharing with it, it's nearly complete.

It'll be wrapped up final top coat on the 15th according to the

And then, you know, again, as far as the regional housing partnership is concerned, we're moving forward at the light speed.

And I wanted to just kind of thank everybody for their support on that.

And you will be hearing from us about more money as Chip alluded to.

Thank you, sir.

Russell with Albemarle County next.

Thank you.

Our next board meeting on the 18th, our emergency ordinance comes up for renewal.

We will probably look to continue largely the way we are given the medical situation around the country.

In our meeting last night, we had another homestay

application to look at and you know we see those as being different from you know the Airbnb type thing because it's supposed to be an accessory use as opposed to a primary source of revenue and obviously the difference between a location in a residential neighborhood versus in a rural area distance to other properties all of those factors we have to take into account

It clearly is becoming a major item of discussion at our board meetings because those applications, if approved, especially exceptions, go with the land, not with the applicant.

And that's something that we've asked our county attorney to look at for legislative action, possibly going forward because of the long-term impact that that could have.

You could have a very good, responsible owner who applies for it, but then sells to another individual.

and it just becomes a little more complex.

Other than that is I think with everyone else we're looking to spend the CARES money and I'll leave it to our chair Galloway for other things he may want to add.

Thank you.

Yes, anything I'd add.

We did have a joint meeting with our school board in October and that was the first of starting to look at budget

and upcoming budgets as I'm sure everybody's starting to do.

But it was really a hard look at the end of the last fiscal year and then starting to get on the same page with one another in terms of HR, compensation, starting to look at CIP, revenue, expectations, all of that.

So that was a good meeting and just getting budget season started.

October's a bit of a blur.

I know that coming up in December, our board's gonna be getting together with our planning commission to do a deep dive or get down into the weeds with a new draft housing policy that was presented to our board this past month.

And that'll be coming up in December.

And then last night in my district, the Rio 29 intersection, we have a small area plan

And we've been a couple of years working on putting a form-based code in that area.

And we've had several work sessions on it.

Last night was about committing to the county having the public investment of public spaces, pocket parks, streets, other such type amenities.

If those are developed and put in place,

Do we take on the long term ownership and maintenance?

Do we invest and go ahead and put some of those places in?

So the board was supportive of the county having some public investment in that area.

And that, of course, we're hoping that's going to come back for final approval, the whole form based code in the first quarter of next year.

But that's moving along.

I'm sure there are other things that I'm forgetting, but I'll leave it at that for this evening.

Thank you, Sara.

Let's move on to Charles for Rory.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the big news of the week is that we have hired a new director of planning, or of Neighborhood Development Services, our planning department, Parag Agrawal, coming up from Georgia, not to be confused with the CTO of Twitter.

But I don't know much about him, but I'm excited to meet him and hopefully

Do good work.

At the same time, our comprehensive plan rewrites along with the affordable housing strategy before that and zoning rewrite after that is continuing apace.

So just this week, Tuesday afternoon, of all times, they dropped the draft affordable housing plan.

So that's up on their website, cbillplanstogether.com, I think.

Yep.

And you can go check that out there.

If you're interested, there'll be a bunch of public comment periods to discuss that, including a joint work session between planning commission and council next week.

Those are definitely the big items that I'm aware of.

We'll be reviewing our capital improvement program, having a hearing on that next month.

So it will be interesting to see any,

How the picture has changed as COVID's affected revenue, which it has pretty severely as I've seen from the reports to council.

Thank you, Michael.

Yeah, don't have too much to add, I guess, in positive news.

The city has taken some major steps forward on our projects for redevelopment of public housing as well as redevelopment of Friendship Court, which is another affordable housing community in Charlottesville, and those are pretty major affordable housing projects for us.

that are taking some pretty big and historic steps forward.

Likewise, the city is beginning its climate action planning process to develop the plans to meet the city's emissions reduction target goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

As was mentioned this week, the consultants we've hired to update the comprehensive plan affordable housing strategy and do the zoning rewrite have publicly released the draft affordable housing plan.

Obviously it's Charlottesville specific, but if there's anyone in other localities who

are really diving into affordable housing issues.

I think it may be a useful document to read through.

I think there's a lot of information and best practices there that may be transferable to other localities or maybe useful frameworks for localities that are thinking about what they can do on affordable housing.

There's just a lot of information and policy recommendations there.

In more bad news, I suppose, we're beginning our budget process or gearing up to begin it.

And we've been getting monthly updates on our revenue.

We already had a revised budget, but our last update in October, revenues were 4.5 million below the already existing revised revenue projections, largely coming from our restaurant in

Hotel and lodging industry doing worse than was anticipated, even with post-COVID projections.

And so I think that's going to just create a lot of, you know, make it a challenging budget cycle and really force us to take a hard, honest look at what the realities of the budget are and what we're going to need to prioritize.

Other than that, don't have any updates beyond like everyone else.

Thank you.

Well, good evening, everybody.

I'll give you the short, quick version and let Bob finish me off.

How's that?

One of the hot topics continues, of course, to be broadband.

We have come up with $15 million a dangle in front of the co-ops, and we haven't had a lot of bites yet, but we're not giving up on it.

The second item is the CARES Act.

We really think that we've got that pretty much ready to go.

We're emphasizing money to small business and emergency services.

Our counter revenue picture, the latest report that we've got from Monday, shows that compared to last year, we're still in a positive column.

Budget

Wise, we have the end of next week where our department heads and agency will make their requests.

So the budget talk will pick up big time in a week.

One of the things that has been very nice and somewhat unusual, but if you think about COVID and how people are reacting to it, our Lake Anna activities have really increased this summer.

I mean, that's not only activities on the water,

But housing, businesses are very active.

So we really have done quite well there.

And I think that's mainly for people maybe from Northern Virginia, more rural areas, and made a special effort to come out to the country.

So it's been a very big benefit for Louisa County.

That's all I have for now.

Thank you.

Bob?

Well, Willie, in all the important things, I'll come up with the trivial stuff.

We'll put our hand up.

As Willie mentioned, we're opening up a third round of the CARES funding for local businesses.

We are going to be adjusting the criteria probably for those that either were denied last time because of our criteria or because of other reasons.

So we're going to do another look and see if there's any that we can help out.

We're going through the, we have another big work session.

We're trying to get this comp plan revision.

We've been working on almost two years.

We've got the tricky items.

Most of them resolved, but we got the ordinances, still some very important ordinances to go through.

We had a meeting looking at an overall fire and EMS study, looking at different locations.

As you know, most of these were volunteer,

They are where they were when they first opened and operated, but we have to look at the bigger picture of the whole county now to see if those are still acceptable.

We had a very early voting success story of 42% of our eligible registered voters voted early as of the end of the month on Saturday.

I had a question for anyone, but especially David.

We haven't heard much from him, so I'm going to prod him a little bit.

On the Vaco cigarette tax study, I was wondering were there any

I read their report, but there's a lot hidden between weeds there.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Babyok.

Yeah, the VACO had a webinar this afternoon.

I don't know if you were listening in or if anybody else on the meeting was, but I think some good representation from different localities over in the valley, southwest along 95 and even down, you know, headed down towards Hampton Roads and what those individual localities are looking at.

There seems to be

I guess different approaches that folks are taking at this point.

Some wanting to look into this as something they would do as a local government on their own, others open to looking at it regionally and working with some of their neighboring localities.

Of course, I think in areas where you have

You know, a group of counties, but you may have a city somewhere in the middle of all that that's already implementing a cigarette tax.

I think that could be instructive, particularly in our area with the city of Charlottesville having been in that business for quite a while.

So yeah, I think, you know, more broadly, I think, from the statewide perspective, you know, some of the talks are still going on.

with the tax department that's doing the study.

Of course, the wholesalers are interested in a more regional approach because of some success that they've had in banding together, I think about 19 jurisdictions in Northern Virginia that oversee the, you know, the stamping and oversee the implementation and administration of that

of that program up there.

So still a ways to go on that one.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, David.

Yeah, so at our planning commission last week, we had our first review of the solar ordinance draft for utility scale solar.

So we compiled that.

We used information from other regional ordinances.

We had an input from a contact we have with the Berkeley group who is very helpful.

We also had presentations from CVAC, the Central Virginia Electric Co-op and Sun Tribe Solar.

So we were able to get a lot of input from a lot of different stakeholders and perspectives that were able to help us

Get a pretty thorough draft in front of them.

Another ordinance we're working on, we're revising our nonconforming ordinance, which we actually had finalized late in 2019.

And now that we've gotten through a big wave of public hearings, we're going to be able to move forward, make sure that's good to go.

So we're going to be able to address nonconforming uses and structures separately and how they relate to each other.

We're also going to be working on a series of minor ordinance revisions.

Basically to make the zoning and subdivision ordinances more functional and compliant while we also tackle a slower comp plan review and update.

Of course, going to put in the request for that funding again this year and given the circumstances, see what happens and roll with the punches.

I also wanted to thank Michael and Rory.

I'm looking forward to reading through that draft affordable housing plan.

I think that's going to be a big thing coming up in Nelson.

And then lastly, I wanted to thank Nick Morrison and Sandy Shackelford at the TJPDC staff for completely handling the process with our smart scale applications.

And I believe they're finally over to central office and I'm so grateful for all their work on that.

Yeah, so we're over here right with everybody else trying to figure out kind of

What we're gonna do with CARES Act money, obviously we made some fairly major moves in terms of great SBA grant or the small business grants as well as broadband.

We have some really exciting developments on trying to figure out how we're gonna handle fiber in the next month or two.

Probably won't be this coming month just because of circumstance.

And of course, everyone's distracted with the current events of the election.

Now I think in December we're going to have some really great updates.

We obviously have the Livingston revitalization drawing, which is awesome.

I'm going to release that in December so that it can get the attention it deserves.

And hopefully we'll be getting to a point where I can go back to having town halls.

I miss those days.

I miss being with my constituents.

I really do.

I think we all do.

And I think we all wish we would have some level of normalcy and

You know, go back to business like we did a year and a half ago.

I do feel bad for people who were just elected.

So I have to say I've only had a year and a half, two years.

So, you know, I'm acting like I'm a veteran.

Dale and other folks on this board have been doing this for a while.

So I will say all the initiatives that I had worked hard on, you know, all came to a halt and, you know, right, wrong and different.

It is what we're in.

But hopefully, you know, we'll be getting back to some level of normalcy post this election.

You know, I don't care who wins as long as the sucker is going to be over COVID.

If COVID disappeared magically after all the votes are counted in Nevada, that would be amazing.

So other than that, you know, those are the exciting developments.

Wait and see some business opportunities are looking at Nelson County.

So we're going to see what that kind of transpires in.

You know, you just don't know.

But other than that, we'll

Thank you, sir.

That might be a mistake.

Just quickly in Greene County, a couple of things, EMS went live.

I think the first day they're extremely busy.

They did like 12 calls, which for Greene's, a lot of calls.

Albemarle County, Charlottesville, that's probably nothing for you guys, for us, a lot of calls.

But they're doing excellent.

Our FHIR and EMS study is underway, or is completed, and we're in the process of implementing some of those suggestions.

CARES funding, as most people suggested or alluded to, we are in the process of spending our CARES funding

One thing we're not spending our money on, which I wish we were or were able to, is broadband.

And I was just talking to reporters today.

They were asking what Greene is doing for broadband.

And I explained to them what we were doing.

I also explained that once the article came out in the Greene County Record, which is a local newspaper, then my phone would begin to ring wondering why we're not doing whatever our locality is doing.

So for all of you out there who are expanding broadband, push them our way, please.

I don't care who they are.

Just kind of send them our way.

We'll talk to them.

For us, luckily, our revenues aren't as bad as we thought they would be.

Our TOT dollars, being a small county, I think is very helpful.

Our TOT dollars aren't bad.

I think the National Park has seen a boom.

And I think for us and probably Nelson as well, that's helped a lot of our revenue streams.

We still have a lawsuit going on with RSA, Water Authority, that were probably going on for a while.

The goal with that is for Greene County to be let go or removed from that authority.

Two localities that are part of that, Madison County and Orange County.

I guess representatives did not want to let us go.

We're still trying to fight to get out and take control of the water project ourselves.

As Louisa and Fluvanna knows, water projects can be very daunting.

And as Richard Rutherford said, this has been very unique, a very different time frame.

I miss myself, you know, getting with everybody, seeing everybody, I think, seeing everybody's body language, seeing each of you face to face.

being able to talk to you.

Hopefully this will end or at least begin to subside soon.

We said the same thing last month.

I'm sure I'll say it next month, maybe by February, we can start seeing some changes in the direction we're going in.

With that said, a reminder by our next meeting is on December the 3rd.

That meeting will be virtual as well.

Unless there are any other comments,

Well, I do miss being able to have a real meeting and yelling at you in person, you know, it was a lot more rewarding.

Yes, it's hard to yell at people virtually.

Okay.

Mr.

Ms. Bishop.

Aye.

Ms. Wilkinson.

Certainly.

Mr. O'Brien.

He's already left.

Ms. Price.

Aye.

Mr. Gentry.

Aye.

And Mr. Stolzenberg.

Aye.

Guys, thank you very much, everybody.

Thanks, everyone.

Bob, it's nice to see you, buddy.

All of that is virtual.

It is virtual.

Let's go to French quarters, baby.

Our next meeting, when we can do this, let's go to New Orleans.

Thanks, everyone.

I'm going to cut this off before it gets to the program.